Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekinana Show. Thomas,
how are you doing? I don't know, well, thank you awesome. Well.
After finishing the California series and then covering the nineteen
eighty eight movie Dennis Hopper movie Colors for those of
you who haven't heard, and living under a Rock, Thomas
and I watch movies and comments on them and do
our sort of own mystery science Theater three thousand and
it is available on my website from Emmy on the
Wall dot com. Forward slash movies links to all the
movies we've done there. And right before that, we actually
did tryump for the Will, that nineteen thirty five money
Rife install. So there's some good stuff there. Go check
it out. All right. New topic, and this is one
that I probably brought up a year ago and we
just decided to do other stuff. So the life and
the thought of Oswald Moseley. Where do you want to start?
Speaker 2: Mosley's background, going back by literally fourth centuries, there's a
lot of liminal events in British history. I mean that
that that's not just some sort of like literary trope
or something like don't understand like where Mosley ended up
and like why he took the path he did, Like
you've got to understand the trajectory of his family, Like
he wasn't he wasn't an ordinary like lesser noble or whatever.
You know, it makes perfect sense why he established but
became the only viable like fascist tendency in Britain because
there were a number of them and none of them
gained any traction. Because the people at the helm we
were bizarre people who weren't plugged into the zeitguy store.
They were just you know, or they were just half
assed tories who had some admire ath or Mussolini, so
they you know, they didn't like communism, so like oh
I'm a fascist or you know, they were they were
these simple minded people who were kind of taken in
by Darwinist uh intellectual cultism, you know, like Arnold Lease
and will get into the you know, mostly actually understood
fascism and he actually understood like the historical implications of it.
And like I said, his he had a storied family,
but like not in the way that people think, you know,
like the kind of traditional and punitive description of his heritages.
Oh well, he was just lesser aristocrat and as those
people lost their privilege, they became fascist. Like that doesn't
make any sense and that doesn't really track. You know,
Moseley was basically middle class. His family had a lot
of money. They were incredibly wealthy for hundreds of years,
but they weren't this powerful uh like Noble House or something,
you know, and the unreconstructed House of Commons Like really
until the middle of the nineteenth century, you know, most
of the UK had like no representation in Parliament, and
uh the House of Moseley, as it were, was one
of those was part of that unrepresented demographic, you know,
So they weren't this idea that the Mosleys were, you know,
these kinds of like this kind of aristocratic faction in
Parliament trying to like deny people their uh you know,
being manumented and given the uh franchise. Like that's not
what happened. Like they didn't really have the franchise, you know,
Like it wasn't and understand like where Mosley came from,
Like you've got to understand that peculiar kind of localism
that emerged in England, like specifically England, and uh, like
the Mosleys their fate was was bound up with h
clergy of the Church of England and uh, like the
British military Officer Corps, Like I was kind of like
the such that they had like influence in their locale,
Like those are really the people they indexed with, which
makes perfect sense. But they had this basic mistrust like
both of Parliament and of like traditional nobles, and that's
like where fascism comes from, you know what I mean,
Like it this should be clear as data to anybody.
Like Mosley wasn't a guy who followed fans, and he
wasn't uh, he wasn't somebody who did stuff for cloud
you know, I mean obviously like nor was the guy
who just like enjoyed being an iconic class like you
believed in everything he was saying. And I think it's
not just because like of an anglophone person. I find
Mosey to be the most relatable of like fascist uh leaders.
You know, Hitler was a messianic personage and almost like
a great con like he It's hard to find people
like that relatable, you know, the people like Kuadrian who
were like orthodox mosda head like it doesn't it's you know,
I find that to be like literally Byzantine, you know.
But you know, Mosley is a somebody I think who
doesn't really get enough ink in America. Like the British
write about him all the time. It's usually punitive and
stupid and simple minded, but it's kind of ignored in
the United States or such that he's ranted any attention
at all. People act like it was some like weird
crank or like some or some or some like insignificant
personage like George Lincoln Rockwell, like they don't understand, they
don't understand, like where he was speaking from. The guy
had tens of thousands of followers. And for UH, for
somebody after UH, after the the kind of modern House
of Commons, after eighteen thirty two, like after there were
formats for UH for a true like UH kind of
revolutionary party like upstart party to get like forty or
fifty thousand members. And for clarity, these are like dudes
paying members. Like the UK has actual parties. It doesn't
just have brandings. It's not like the Republican Party, which
is at an actual party, you know. And before mostly
these these schismatic UH, you know, kind of self declared
fascists and national socialists. They'd clock UH at peak like
four or five hundred dues paying members like most of
the serious guy and there's a reason why, you know,
he was targeted the way he was. And there's a
reason why, uh, you know, he he got an audience
with uh, with Gurbles and and some of these other
third personages. He wasn't a joker. But you know, and
also too, like I it's not most of these counterfactuals.
There wasn't jumping around it. But I'll get into the
the a more kind of coherent narrative in a moment.
But a lot of these kind of factual speculations about
what would have happened, and you know, if Edward the
eighth hadn't advocated, and if the War Party hadn't prevailed
in the UK, or alternatively, if Sea Lion had actually
been a serious, we devised mission to conquer the United Kingdom,
you know, by by force of arms by the German Reich,
like like Mosley absolutely like would have been the man
that the Reich looked to the you know, to act
as as kind of like a proxy regime, you know,
in no small measure because Mosley he wasn't really a
fringe figure, you know, like he was he was like
a very respectable guy, you know, like he became something
of a fringe figure, particularly after the War Party was
able to you know, kind of shut down I mean
all opposition you know in the House of Commons as
well as in in the national media and everywhere else.
But you know what, but mostly was dangerous to the
War Party precisely because he he wasn't like this fringe
character you know, and he wasn't and he was he
wasn't just like the scion of of like a respectable
family who who went on some crazy lark, you know,
like Rockwell or something like. He was a serious fascist.
It wasn't. It wasn't a you know, some kind of
some kind of theatrical protus posture. But like the background
of fascism in Britain is range. The first true like
self identified like British Fascist Party was literally like the
British FASCISTI who then became the British Fascists and then
in twenty three like they they they incorporated after the
Muslims march on her own. It was a lady who
formed the organization. It was Rotha intern Ormon. Very strange lady,
very much, I mean to be crashed, very much, kind
of like a butch lesbian. I mean it's just like
a fact. She volunteered in World War One as an
ambulance driver and she was under a pretty heavy fire.
You know. She was like a serious person, but she
was like this weird eccentric and she was, uh. She
was born to uh, an officer who had stood with
the Essex Regiment who was kind of like the Essex
Regiment was kind of the p to like the British
Army Infantry for a long time, you know, and her uh,
her mom was Blanche Simmons, who was another aristocrat. Her
maternal grandfather had been a field marshal. You know. These
people were extraordinarily wealthy, okay, and she was kind of
like the strange like lesbian daughter. She was like she
actually was one of the founders for all practical purposes
or like the scouting movement, like the boy and Girl
Scouts in Britain they call it something different. I think
they call it like the girl Guides. But you know,
so she was, uh, she was kind of like one
of these. She was kind of just like rich kid aristocrat,
you know, and like aristocrats do, like you know, she
she was all about national service. When the Great War came,
but then she developed a hero worship. But Mussolini, which
for context, you know, really up through the Four Powers Packed,
you know, really until the late nineteen thirties, like Mussolini
was viewed as like this kind of heroic personage in
the UK, and it's considered this kind of like moderating
influence contra Germany, you know who really after after Disraeli's tenure,
you know, like we got into in our World War
two series. You know, the Germans were cast as in
the most like in the blackest colors imaginable, but Mussolini
wasn't colored the same way in British media quite the contrary,
and the people like wrote the Ormond, they they basically
admired Mussolini for his anti communism, like she was not
a sophisticated in any sense, you know, which seems in
congruous maybe, but there's something to the cliche of uh,
you know, it's almost like money python like like these
British aristocrats who actually aren't cultured and aren't educated. That's
not just like a trophe or it's not just something
that you know, the middle classes like to kind of
hold out is as as some it's there's some kind
of you know, slam on on people who they resent
for for posturing as their betters. You know. The she
was not. She was not an educated nor intelligent person
in real sense. And so like her her like fascist outfit,
it was basically just like this kind of like Tory.
It was basically like this Mussolini fan club of like
aristocratic Tories, you know, and uh, she literally established this
British fascist outfit. She placed an ad in uh, what
was then kind of like the dominant like right wing
alternative paper in the UK you just called The Patriot,
you know. She said she was like looking for anti
communist partisans who wanted to you know, basically basically constituted
a pressure group you know, to force a more serious
uh posture against the Soviet Union, which uh in early
on that was like a big rallying point of the
Tories is that like, well, you know, labor is gonna
they're they're they're too soft on Sovietism and this is
like a fifth column and in the empire and you know,
all this all this kind of stuff. So that was
later on, and we're talking like much later, you know,
like a decade subsequent the uh, most of them male
membership of the British Fascists defected the b u F.
But by that point the organization miss Ormond's organization was
kind of like existed in name only but just for
context they I think it's relevant the uh and famously
UH mostly said UH mostly referred early on to the
British Fascist just quote three old ladies and a couple
of office boys and uh, which wasn't the really inaccurate
the success of organize not It wasn't a successful organization.
I don't mean like linear, I mean in linear terms.
I don't mean that it was. It came from the
same ideological persuasion or head membership in common. The The
kind of subsequent iteration of a national socialist or fascist
tendency in the UK was the Imperial Fascist League. It
was found y Arnold Leise in nineteen twenty nine. People
are familiar with like our lineage, our lineage being people
of the right. They probably know LEAs because like it's
an elderly guy like in the fifties, and he made
a habit of slandering Francis Perker Yaki in right wing
press despite having never met it. Mean, by that point
least was a total nobody. And Yaki famously he used
to go on claiming that like Yaqui was Jewish, and
then he claimed that Yaqui was part black. Then he
claimed that he was an Indian, like an American Indian,
and Jaki fantasy said, like, I don't know who this
camel doctor is. What's his name? Laus? And Lee's literally
was a camel doctor, like he was a veterinarian and
his specialty was diseases afflicting camels, like I'm not kidding,
And his claim to fame was that he'd met Julius
Striker during somem Lark to Germany, and Striker was a
crude guy with Striker also was like a cutting satirist
and like a skilled artist and just like a tough bastard,
even though he was something of a vulgarian and a
dummy otherwise, like Lee said, none of those skills, and
he had none of the insight, like he was just
a fucking idiot, you know. So Lisa's old thing was, well,
because I know how camels breed, and I know how
you know it's are in heritable, you know, in camel populations,
But to extrapolate like zoological principles like human populations. So
the Jews are just like evil race, you know, and
they have you know, bad racial characteristics, and you know,
we need to breed the right kind of race, you know,
just like abject, abject, objectly moronic bullshit, you know, reducing
politics to the principles of animal husbandry. Well, the Imperial
fans this league, they're like lasting legacy. They had an
incredibly dope like heraldic standard. It was like the Union
Jack with like hack and crews like in the center
in black. It like looks incredibly cool. But other than
that it was, uh, it was like an embarrassment. The
b UF famously. Uh they shut them down through a
lot of ledgered Man and through direct action. And one
of the things Moseley did, Uh Mosley hit a very
gangsterous streak. You have black shirts, they dress up as communists,
and then when the Imperial Fascist League a hold meetings,
they'd assault and like beat the fuck out of everybody
and then like LEAs to gir On saying like this
was Mosey and like mostly be like what are you
an insane person? You got you got moved on by
the Reds. You gotta you gotta you know, provide better
security for yourself. What's the matter with you? What kind
of outfit are you? Which is kind of brilliant and
it's uh in in in and it's gaslighting. But that
was that was UH. The Imperial Fascist League had like
an outsized profile, in no small part because p like
the Board of Jewish Deputies and and and some of
these left wing UH newspaper types. You know, they'd say
they they'd hold them out as an example, I mean,
very much like today, you know, they hold them out.
Was like, Oh, we're being subverted from abroad. You know,
this is this is this is the Germans, this is
the Hunts trying to you know, undermine and meddle in
our in our affairs. You know, the UH during a
moment of UH, I guess amicability in nineteen thirty two
when the BUF and we haven't gotten there yet, but
we will in a minute, when the BUF was very
much ascendant, they'd UH made something of a peace offering
to the Imperial Fascist League by like allowing their members
essentially patch over you know, the appeal Fascist League like
turn this down. And so Moseley returned to like having
his people's like like smash them, you know, like it
was Lee's then and later in his later in his life.
And I'm not going to dignify it by calling it
a courier, but he as this typical of today with
like right wing schismatics. He like delusions of his own significance.
You know, It's like this guy had a couple hundred
members like the b U f Atars tens of thousand strong,
you know, like Moseley in a moment of you know again,
like in in a moment of charitable impulse, like offered him,
you know, uh, a chance that it kind of cloud
and respectability, and of course, like what would he do,
like Lee's turns it down owing to some delusion that
you know, he was actually a relevant person. Just but
but lease, like I said, the reason why like he
uh when when Yaqui went to Europe, you know, and
Yaki famously approached Mosley himself and they they didn't get
along at all, and and mostly very much was a
cold warrior by that point, And I think there was
some degree of jealousy and of Yaki and his intellect,
but also resentment at the fact that you know, we think,
who the hell is American trying to dictate, you know,
the European scene, how how we should do things and
conceptualize you know, theory and and policy and praxis. But
you know, lese uh Lease was still kind of like
floating around the fringes of of the you know, of
of the right wing resistance. You know, because even even then,
you know, like uh, some of these marginal figures could
kind of carve out some sort of niche and that's
exactly what he did. But getting the Mosely the kind
of the fortunes of the Moseley family, it began with
Nicholas Mosey. Really he was born in or near Manchester,
that's not clear, but Manchester became the like the ancestral
home of the Mosleys, like when they when they acquired
their their aristocratic cedigree. O' getting too how that developed
in a moment. But Nicholas Moseley was born on fifteen
twenty seven, and uh for a brief period he was
a Lord Mayor of London, which is different than the
Mayor of London. Like the Lord Mayor, it still exists,
although now it's large like a ceremonial office. The Lord
Mayor of the City of London is like the administrator
like of you know what's now the financial district of
you know, the city of London. In those days, it
had a directly military obligation and Nicholas Moseley h during
that time, Britain's main adversary was Spain, and this was
kind of the beginning of the Mosely Fan Emily's involvement
with the affairs revolving around the security of the British Isles,
and this endured for centuries and in eighteen one of
the reasons why the left hated Oswald Mosey so much
during eighteenth during the Chartist riots in eighteen forty eight,
his great grandfather and his great grandfather's brother, they'd organized
the these strike breaking attacks like on the Chartists and
on like the eighteen forty eight revolutionaries, you know, like
the Mosey family. They like literally like way went back
centuries of them like crushing like left wing radicals. You know,
it's became like their role, you know, and that started
really with Nicholas Mosey's role as Lord Mayor, you know.
And again in those days, this wasn't just a ceremonial
office Lord Mayor of London, you know, he based he
was responsible for planning and organizing you know, what amount
of like a civil defense a civil defense schema in
anticipation of you know, possible like invasion from the continet. Okay,
the Moseleys became very very rich. Manchester was a center
of uh the world trade and manufacture. Nicholas Moseley became
a very wealthy merchant, and UH he became a member
of the Worshipful Company of Cloth Workers, which was basically
like a guild and like a corporatist UH firm that
UH set prices and established standards for the industry. You know.
So he was very much like like he was very
much like a self made capitalist, Okay. And what he
did with some of that money is for thirty five
hundred pounds in fifteen ninety six he purchased a lordship
and scenery of Manchester. And this was easy to come
by if he greased the right poems because Manchester it
was basically an unimportant market town. I mean it was
important became important economically because I'm monopoly on the wool trade,
but in terms of the way aristocrats and this was
still this was before the reform acts that you know,
kind of transformed the House of Commons into like a
normal parliament like in those days. This was the this
was these are the days where you still had like
you had like literally empty burrows where like you know,
some aristocrat like you know, dating back to like the
eleven hundreds or something like, he was able to monopolize,
you know, an entire voting block and the House of
Commons you know, like based on some like ancient charter
of some like then worthless land. So I mean there
was no relationship between you know, the the productivity of
of a territory and its representation in Parliament. So if
a guy like Nicholas Mosley, who's like just like some
rich guy, is like, yeah, I want to buy like
a lordship in Manchester, like a house, the lord to
be like go ahead, you know, like whatever turns you want,
you know. Butlins movie was smart a lot of the things,
like with this great wealthy to accumulated. Not only did
he like basically buy himself into a lordship, he hired
Intego Jones, who was at the time like the top
architect in England, and uh he hired him to build
and design and build his is a manor house which
is hawk End Hall. Okay, now I think it's an
art museum. It still exists, Okay, but that was like
that was like Mosley Manner essentially Intego Jones. He was
the first. Uh he was. He wasn't just like this
the top architect in England, but he was the first.
He was the first architect of the modern era to
like employ uh the conventions of Classical Roman and Italian
Renaissance architecture like in Britain. You know, since it was
a big deal and it was no small matter to
like have him design your manor house, you know, like
this this conferred a lot of clout for context. The uh.
The Queen's House, well, you see one of the royal residences.
It's in Greenwich, London. It's been repurposed a bunch of times,
and it's obviously historic building and like it's it's no
longer like a royal residence, but at the time it was,
and he designed that, Okay, So I mean this was
this is a big deal. The uh. He also he'd
been involved in like designing stuff for the stage, and
he was buddied with Ben Jonson and Johnson was uh.
He's considered basically the most significant playwright other than Shakespeare
probably his most notable war are every Man in his
humor the alchemist Bartholomew Bartholomew Fair. So you know this,
this is a kind of company that Nicholas Moseley was keeping,
you know, and not I mean very deliberately too. Like
when Nicholas Mosey got married, he got married in the
City of London. You know, he was obviously trying to
like establish some kind of you know, familial presence there.
It didn't take because the Moles ended up basically after
his sinecure, like the Moses were once again like relegated
in Manchester. But you know, the aside, like their great wealth,
the family managed to kind of skate and the cloud
captured by the you know, the great patriarch Nicholas for
a very long time. The uh and yeah he uh.
Owing to his uh service as Lord Mayor, he was
knighted by Queen Elizabeth the First and subsequent to his
knighthood he was the High Sheriff of Lancashire. So he
was an accomplished guy. And there's a significant too, because
again this dude was an upstart capitalist, you know, he
wasn't really a noble and like that didn't really happen
in those days. You know, he was one of the
first to essentially like make that jump. So again when
you read uh, when he when he read some of
these like left wing histories that deal with Mosley produced
in the UK, I mean like they talk about him
like he's basically some like lesser version of King Charles
or something. Who oh, he became a fascist because he
lost his noble type. That like that's nonsense, Like it's
not what he was at all. And frankly it's a
man like that, like such as the caricature is painted,
like wouldn't have been attracted to fascism in the first place.
I don't think like it wouldn't it wouldn't track with anything.
But uh, the uh, like I mentioned uh a minute ago,
the the the Chartist and the Peterloo massac the Chartist Rise,
the Peterloo massacre, these were and aren't gonna held outs
like the great sins like the Moseley family, the Peuli massacre.
On August sixteenth, eighteen nineteen, there was a this mass demonstration, uh,
demanding parliamentary representation. Okay, it was basically a precursor to
like the Chartist movement, that kind of peaked in eighteen thirties,
and it's and it's kind of final. It's kind of final.
Zenith was eighteen forty eight. But there's this crowd of
UH like tens of thousands of people. Obviously the UH,
the crown was terrified to some kind of some kind
of Jacob and style revolt. Cavalry assembled as well as UH,
you know, chartered men under arms. This armed element assaulted
the crowd, including like a calvary charge like dead into
the center of it. A couple of dozen people died,
several hundred were injured. The Moseley family played a direct
role in organizing the forces that suppressed this mass protest
and even into the UH, like, even into the late
nineteen fifties when Moseley was staging his comeback. You know,
this was UH Moss mostly is the descendant of you know,
the brutes of the Peter Low massacre. It's it's really strange,
but that's UH, I mean that that's that's kind of
the way the UK is. The UH. The Mosleys started
to lose, interestingly, they started to lose their UH influence
in Manchester after the UH, after the reform of Parliament
really from like eighteen thirty two to like the eighteen fifties.
You know, the Moseley family was in a strange positions
and the one hand they made their fortune through industry,
but uh, they purchased noble title. So in Manchester, local
merchants and industrialists they had to pay what was called
the tolladge to the Mosley estate and a kind of
tax not just on goods enter the municipality, but if
you want to make use of a stall or a
market space like you you you had you would literally
like pay rent to the House of Mosley, you know.
Leading the charge against this system were with a contingent
of Jewish merchants in Manchester. Mosley's grandfather very much. This
kind of like very very hostile situation developed between like
the House of and the Manchester Jewish community, which is
really interesting, you know, and that that that endured, you
know it uh and because the Moslees weren't and when
they appealed to when they when they appealed to the
House of Lords. You know again until uh, until the
mid nineteenth century, Manchester didn't even have representation in the
House of Commons. And then after it did, you know,
basically like the true aristocracy. Their their view was like
we don't care about you, Like what what is the Manchester?
Who are the Mosleys? You know, so they couldn't count
any support from London. Their fellow industrialists resented them because
to them locally they were like this aristocratic clan that
tacked people. So the Mosleys basically their allies became the
Church of England and like the local military contingent. Yeah,
which again completely tracks with how you know Oswald Mosley
viewed the world. You know, this is like a constantly
like middle class problem. You know, it doesn't matter that
there's like a kind of the near of like nobility
like hung on it, you know. And uh, I'm not
somebody who resourced the class analyses to describe fascism, but uh,
there is an aspect of that, you know, particularly in
a place like England, you know, that can't be denied.
So it's kind of like this perfect storm of shit,
you know, kind of like conspiring to design like how
the life of Oswald Mosey would develop, you know, particularly
when you consider that you know he was born uh
he was of the Lost generation who fought World War One.
You know, he he didn't live in in in real
poverty in the Inner War years. But he wasn't exactly
well off. He was like suffering like everybody else was.
You know. His family quite literally like had like this
running vendetta and vice versa with like the local Jewish community.
I mean it's it's like multiple like faded like take
the path that he did, you know. And there's something
I uh and the big fan to see Us Lewis,
Like I'm not into like total kind and stuff like that,
Like I like Somerset mom, and I like see Us
Lewis and not to go too of train, but something
both of them write about, you know, reading between the lines.
It's about how like if you're English, like specifically English,
you know like these these kinds of like liminal and uh,
historical phenomena like dictate your life and like you can't
like escape from it. And I think that's really true,
you know, like it's not really like that in America.
I mean yeah, like you can't like familiar tragedies of
a way of like reaching out across generations and the
past is the way of insinuating itself into the present,
like especially if you're from like a prestigious family. But
it's not quite the same, you know, like in like
in England. So like the whole issue with Mosley and uh,
going back literally centuries, his family's reputation as kind of
like enforcers of the ancient regime, like people in the
twentieth century. To them, that might have been yesterday, and
they're like, you know, look at this son of a bitch.
He's you know, he's he's he's responsible for the purely
massacre those two centuries ago. It doesn't matter only it
might have a little been yesterday. And other societies, even
you know, even even other like ancient European culture is
like they're not like that. You know, there's something there's
something peculiar about England and that that that really can't
be denied, you know, I don't think, but that uh
mostly was uh you know, and so this was they
like the family kind of became this uh, they came
very committed to kind of like traditional like English sensibilities,
you know, like they were cut off like despite despite
being this family that made their fortune an industry, like
they were in this weird like market town, they weren't
in like industrial London or something. You know. They and
again like the the true aristocrats at Westminster, like wanted
nothing to do with them. You know, in three hundred
years only two Mosleys were elected to Parliament. You know
they they didn't contribute anybody from their ranks to academia,
like they weren't any Moseles who were like artists or architects.
Like basically they they were a family of uh of soldiers,
of parsons, of you know, businessman, a hustle and we've
been at making money. You know, this very much like
the middle class like backbone of England. You know it's
uh Moseley himself. That's not good, okay. Mosey was born
in November sixteenth, eighteen ninety six. His mom was twenty
one year old Catherine Heathcote, known as Maud. It was
a very difficult birth. It was eighteen hours and it
almost killed as it almost killed Maud his mother. His
dad was Oswald Ernald Moseley. He was basically a functioning alcoholic.
He was a cad He was a gambler, a womanizer.
He was known for having a filthy mouth and in
something of a hooligan like even even in the middle Age,
like he'd get in trouble for brawling and just for
you know, kind of crazy annex you know, that you'd
associate with some kind of unhinged frat boy. When Oswald
Mosley was born, his father telegrammed basically everybody he knew,
you know, and you know, he seemed to be incredibly
proud of the fact his wife had borne him his son.
And in Maud's diary she expressed with relief, you know
that it was a boy, because obviously the kind of
the purpose of the of the pregnancy it was to
produce in error. But other than the fact that Wald
Moseley was happy that he had a son, he's he's
seem basically uninterested in his family, you know. And like
Oswald Moseley later he talked about his family, I mean
not so much an idealized terms, but he'd insisted that
he had this like happy home life, which it seemed
to be anything but the case. You know, like he
like his mom doted on him by all accounts, but
you know, he had this his parents from this like
loveless marriage. His dad again was like this cattish kind
of mean guy who like didn't really have any interest
in his kids, you know it. His father has been
a boxer too like he uh, he was an accomplished
the featherweight boxer, you know, reputation is kind of a bully,
you know, like not not a happy upbring. Mostly he
was known as Tom or Tommy by his whole family,
presumably to distinguish himself from his father. Eventually, the uh
the parents separated without uh formula again the formally seeking divorce.
And it was understood pretty much by everybody that it
was it was Wald Moseley's compulsive promiscuity that led to it.
I guess Wald Molesey, like any recentably attractive woman, like
under a certain age, like he tried to nail her,
you know, I mean that uh you know, like I
said it, it seems it seems like a very unhappy
uh home. And Oswald Moseley himself, he was something of
a compulsive woman ezer too, uh I mental even inherent
inherit the sins of the father. Moseley's kids liked him.
Oswald Moseley's kids and and and he seemed to be
like an engaged father. But it unlike his dad. But
he he he had similar problems with you know, improperly
you know, pursuing these kinds of extra marital affairs, you know,
and this uh, like MOSE's mom, whatever her shortcomings, she
did like live by kind of like the values of
the family. Like she was she was very much like
a church goer, very much a believer, you know, uh,
very much kind of discussed by the infidelities of her
h of her husband that that had to be a
weird environment to grow up in. I mean, frankly, I mean,
I mean that that kind of that kind of infidelity
is gonna is gonna be hard on kids anyway. But frankly,
like most most guys who grew up with with a
father like that, like the mother just kind of tolerates it,
you know, and doesn't really care that much because you know,
she's somebody like Lady Bird Johnson was, and it's like,
well that you know, I've got mine, so what do
I care? Like, you know, I got a good life,
and I got a I got a husband with a
prestigious role. Like it's got to be very strange to
have a father who's a true cat or a mom
who's like, you know, like a church going basically like modest,
you know, proper lady like i I'm sure that what
to some Scruy Psychological Vagaries. But where are we at? Yeah,
I really don't like going fifteen minutes, but I'm not
feeling great. And before I get into most of these
wars service and stuff like, I kind of want to
say that for the second episode. Again, I'm sorry to
be abrupt. I'm just I'm not feeling well today.
Speaker 1: No problem, not a problem at all. Yeah, let's uh
do some plugs and we'll get out of here.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, no again, forgive me man, No problem. Yeah,
I I'm I'm in the process of the recording, uh
content for season three of the Mind Phaser Pod, which
I'm very excited about. I had to postpone a couple
of days because of my hull hasn't been great, but uh,
that's underway this weekend, and you can find the pod
at the sub stack, as well as some of my
longer form writing. It's real Thomas seven seven seven dot
subsec dot com. I'm removing season one and two from
behind the paywall, and there's so there's about there's about
fifteen episodes of season one and about ten of season
two as of now you can access for free, and
every day or two I'm I'm uploading like five or
six episodes from behind the paywall, so be aware of that.
You can find me on social media at Capital R
E A L underscore number seven each one seven seven
seven dot com. I've got a website that's kind of
a one stop for my content. It's a number seven
h O M A S seven seven seven dot com.
And yeah, my instagram on telegram, just seeking you.
Speaker 1: She'll find all right, pick it up in a few days.
Thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's great again. I'm sorry than man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to welcome everyone back to the Peaking
Yana Show. Thomas is back part two of the life
and the thought of was it was he sir? Did
he ever become sir Oswald Mosley?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we'll get in. Yeah, this is his okay
because claiming nobility was complicated. We got into some of
that in the first episode. I'll get into that and
the conclusion, which, among other things, al hy blue sense
relating to his biographical data.
Speaker 1: So where are we gonna? Where are we jumping off today?
Speaker 2: The key to understanding Mosey's political trajectory is World War One.
His experience was more like that of Adolph Hitler than
people will acknowledge. His time under fire was a lot
more brief, and unsurprisingly there's this really insipid tendency of
English historians to try and throw shade on Moseley's war record,
which is ridiculous, you know, But I'll get into. Mosley
witnessed from the air as an aerial observer with the
Royal Flying Corps the first chemical weapons assault of the
war at Yprah in nineteen fifteen, and about ten kilometers
from where Moseley was on that day was Adolf Hitler
on the ground, you know, with the opposing element, it's fascinating.
But you know, we talked about in the first episode
Moses mostly lineage. The people that they captured as allies
over generations tended to be military officers and Church of
England clergy people and adjacent elements, you know, which I
made the point that the consummately middle class resume in
the in the UK sense, not in the American sense.
And Mosley himself, Mosey was mostly self educated, you know,
and for an aristocrat, even one who had kind of
an unusual petty agree like he did, that was pretty unusual.
And he essentially educated himself in politics when he was convalescing.
You know, he didn't. He didn't have a discretely identifiable
political psychology prior to really the conclusion of the of
the Warriors. And why he was this young prodigy of
parliamentarian and how he got who encouraged in that direction
is interesting because it was one of Churchill's cronies, not
because Churchill and the organization around him like looked favorably
upon Mosley. It was it very much owed a Machiavelian
policy ticket, and they wanted they wanted him to run
on the Liberal ticket, hoping that the Lib Dems could
split what was it burgaining consensus among labor, you know,
And and the Labor Party had a lot of momentum
then the immediate aftermath of the Great War. But that's
what upset the scope. But we're gonna get into Moses
early adolescence in early adulthood here because that's essential and
I think Moses an important personage and should be for anybody.
It's philosophically oriented towards the right, you know, and people
should become competent in the biographies of these people and
what sorts of ideological tendencies they represent, and they're the
standard bearers of so I spend more time in that
kind of thing than some historians. But uh, you know,
Moseley grew up without a father. Really, his father was
not a good man, and Moseley unfortunately emulated a lot
of his vices. Mosey really liked violence as a young guy,
and he wasnrinated his military education that was very much encouraged,
you know, like militarism. It's like the scare word, you know,
like militarism, and that if people talk about the culture
of the Kaiser right like, oh, it was steeped in
this kind of like toxic militarism. That's the way it
was everywhere on the continent as well as the UK,
you know. And part of this really, you know, from
after Disraeli's tenure onward, a lot of this was kind
of cultivated, like we talked about another series, owing it
part to the udderlessness of the of the empire and
the need for kind of a coherent polestar around which
the orient policy. But it's also it's just kind of
like violence at scale and martial impulses were just in
the zeitgeist, you know, and Moses weren't swept up in that,
but I think he was probably uniquely susceptible. And I'm
not trying to play you know, dollar store psychologists, but
you know, Mosley's the marriage man. His parents had essentially
been breaking down from the time Mosley came out of
the shoot. You know, his father was literally absent when
he was born. He sent out a bunch of telegrams,
you know, like effusively, you know, gutshing over the fact
that his wife had given birth to an airybody. He
didn't really have any interest in the actual you know,
an investment required to be a parent, you know, psychically
or emotionally. He was. He was a degenerative womanizer, like gambler, brawler,
you know. And by and Moseley's mom, maud, she was
this really stately looking woman. She was about five ten.
I mean it was just still like very tall for
a lady. But in those days, you know, that was
highly unusual. She was a very pious believer, you know. Uh,
she she took the her faith seriously. You know, she
she very much held the family together. And uh, Mosley's grandfather,
his paternal grandfather, was kind of like his surrogate dad.
And Walde Mosey's own father like his Waldy's own father
U like like thought very poorly of him and the
way he treated his family. So Mosy's grandfather kind of
stepped in, uh as much as he could to be
his father figure, you know. And by nineteen oh one,
when Moseley himself was fire and Maud was very pregnant
with Moseley's younger brother, Edward, I know Edward was already
born by anteen oh one. Yeah, I think he was
about two years old, so like Toddler Edward who was
born in eighteen ninety nine. But uh, Maud finally left,
you know, like enough was enough and the the you know,
the gossip in those days around uh a philandering husband,
especially for somebody who's you know, admittedly the Moseleys were
we're not conventional aristocrats, but they had a enough of
a public profile that this was a gross embarrassment, you know,
so it uh, you know, Maud separated when when Moseley
was a very small boy, you know, in this uh,
even with you know, a maternal influence in his life,
like especially that generation and especially considering their station this
head have had a profound effect on Mosley and that
I've found in my own life. I mean, this is
anecdotal but I mean all the life is anecdotal. Like
men who developed under similar conditions with an absentee father
like that, they tend to be very uncompromising I've noticed, okay,
but uh, you know, Mostly was very devoted to his mom,
but not in like a not not in a contentable way,
but you know, in a way that was probably somewhat
unusual for Anglophone people, like we Anglo Protestant people, you know,
Germanic sppecifically, you know, Anglos were a very patriarchal culture,
and that's something that I think a lot of people
don't really understand from without. And that's one of the
reasons for the tenor at discourse, like cultural discourse of
a punitive nature in America. That's so, I mean, Mostly
was something of an outlier like I. And why do
I emphasize this not just because it's I enjoyed speculating
on people's psychology, Y're not just because it's it's trivia.
But Mostly's detractors and even some people should know better.
They cast him as kind of like, oh, he was
this lesser aristocrat who, owing to declining fortunes when he
reached the age of majority, became a fascist. It's like
lazy thinging for all kind of all kinds of reasons.
And I don't really think it tracks even with more
traditional personages, but a more conventional personages. But in Mosey's case,
he he was very much an outlier, you know, and
the uh owing to Moses's grandfather being his substitute parent.
Though especially during his like trails and formative years, he
was a very uncompromising guy. Morals, tradition, the kind of
martial ethos. You know, you're a you're a nobleman, you
know what, however alienated we might be from London and
from the house to lords, you're a nobleman. Where the
vanguard we're the ones who you know, quashed the the
the worrying class traders and forty eight. You know, we're
the ones who are like the guardians of the race
and the faith of the empire, you know. And that's
something mostly internalized very much, you know, and being raised
by grandparents always, especially in the twentieth and twenty first centuries,
when there's you know, generational divisions or a real thing
that that'll put you. I think in some ways that
puts men like in better stead to understand their historical
situated in this, you know, if they're people who are
thoughtful in that regard. But it also it's it's it's
very much indicates a different formative experience between a child
and their parent figure, particularly their father figure. They're like there,
their values are going to be out of step with
most of their peers. Okay, And uh, that was very
much the case with mostly you know, it wasn't he
was a natural leader and people were attracted to him,
but he didn't. He didn't fit in with boys his
own age, even of his own even if who had
class and station in common with him, you know. And
I think all these things kind of conspired for that,
you know, in the this kind of atmosphere of uh,
this kind of atmosphere of strife within the family, within
the paternal lineage, that had to have they had to
have brought an intolerance for certain kinds of behaviors and dispositions,
and most even I know it did. How could it not.
And despite mostly his own problems with like sexuality and
like womanizing and stuff he had, he had very very
little tolerance for what he perceived his weakness in the
ranks of his own men. Okay, And and in a
way that was above and beyond what a political soldier
should you know, adopt as as a as a standing doctrine.
Mostly he uh, he attended what was considered then about
the best English prep school, West Downs. It was run
by a guy named Lionel Helbert. I mean that's that's
not like a schoolmaster name, like I don't know, I
don't know what is. But he he was at West
Downs with the Sun, the Scions and a bunch of
military families. Uh. One of his classmates was John Sinclair,
who went on to be the chief at I six Mosy.
Was remembered by people his classmates, including Sinclair, as being
incredibly bright. But you know, I had basically know in
for some schoolwork, you know. He uh, he was interested
in his own kind of fascinations again like very much
that get off Hitler, you know, who also had uh
an incredibly contentious relationship with his father, who is a
real bully, you know in the pure sense. And of
course Hitler uh the parish priest and uh one of
his history teachers at his elementary school kind of took
him under their wing, as you know, his kind of
stand in eternal figures. But them you know what. An
early indicator of Mosley's trajectory was he the estab's reputation
as being about the best debater in the school, you know,
and he he could basically wrongfoot anybody in uh these
kinds of discursive exercises and make them look stupid, you know.
And in the UK, the reason why question time remains
a thing, even as deteriorated as the culture is across
the pond, is UH being competent in in in letters
and being competent in that kind of you know, combat
of verbal advocacy. I mean, that's that's something like every
every Englishman of of any station is supposed to accel at,
you know, and UH mostly was second to none. I've
told people that they should watch there's a lot of Moseley,
and a lot of it's been restored and it's pretty
easy to find, Unlike unlike some uh unlike some footage
from the era, and unlike you know, a lot of
footage that's you know, owing to the kind of hegemony
of the cloud of proverbially speaking, you know, a lot
of this stuff is kind of being censored and just
by being like redacted. But there's there remains this day
a lot of Moseley's stuff, and you know, Mosley he was, Uh,
I think he was about out of the entire coterie
of of kind of of radicals, you know, both on
the right and the left. I think he was about
the best public speaker that includes that OFLF Hitler. I
mean Hitler's uh, Hitler's energy and is like messianic, uh
sort of mystique gave Hitler kind of gravitas that mostly
didn't have what you're talking about in terms of like
pure command of the language and a man who's kind
of like a pure politician and kind of like the
great or Roman sense, you know, I don't I don't
mean in the pejorative sense. You know that that's mostly
you know, and there's a there's a profundity and an
exciting energy to mostly speeches that don't resort to like
idiotic soaring language and a lot of these things that
everything else. I mean, it's not of the fact that
stuff comes off as stupid and puerile. It's just it's
just not suited to the English languages, doesn't suited to that,
you know. And mostly some mostly speeches are better than others,
but none are are subpart you know, so I I
strongly suggests people taking as much of that as they can. Helbert,
the headmaster, he was very much he very much sought
to inundate the the student body with a kind of
strong communitarian tradition, and he like bordered on like blood
and soil kind of stuff, you know. Ralph Gardiner, who
later became an like an English National Socialist, he recalled
that Helbert was like a hero to him and a
lot of the boys at the school, you know. And
he he without directly saying it, it was clear he
was kind of suggesting that Helbert very much kind of
inundated the boys with the values that later, you know,
made himself a national socialist. He said, Helbert wanted every
he felt that every man and woman, you know, had
to abide what was their own peculiar destiny according to
the laws of you know, not just character and spirit,
you know, about according to their you know, kind of
like racial destinyan things and historical situated in this, you know.
And he he tried to he tried to inundate the
boys with a kind of like patriotic fervor, you know,
but not in some superficial way, you know. It was
bound up with being an Englishman, being of a certain
class and station, having certain responsibilities, you know, viewing yourself
and like your races as you know the best, but
also that containing certain moral obligations to other people, you know,
within you know, the folk community, but also just in
generally you know, uh a kind of noblest age for
for a population providing over an empire, you know. And
uh Molesey later in life he mostly was like a
huge prankster, like he do mean spirited stuff to his ops,
but like to his friends and comrades and the men
under his command, you know. He one of the reasons
people liked him is because like he'd break up uh
somber moments by doing like funny ship. And apparently that
was like Headmaster Helbert. Apparently that was like something that
according to a gardener like that that was something that
Mosley had gotten from him, you know, which I find
that gotta thing interesting that just because it's humanizing, but
that that tells you something about the person, like stuff
uh like a great man's sense of humor, like what
kind of women he liked? Like that's it's it's not
just trivia, you know, I mean I realized I probably
got a a stronger fascination with this than people who
are engaged in you know, kind of like an obsessive,
obsessive study of history. But I maintain it's important. Mostly
secondary school Uh was a Winchester It'd have been founded
uh initially as a monastic institution in the fourteenth century.
It uh by the twentieth century particularly, you know, this
was kind of the this kind of the peak of
the progressive era, like a tail end in the UK
like public secondary school, and it be kind of coomes
this like revered idea, you know. And it was part
of that was despite uh, you know, from the Disraeli
from Disraeli's tenure on or Disraeli himself wasn't particularly Germanophobic,
but from that period onward, there was this tendency to
talk about you know, the Kaiser right, like it was
lacking in every way compared to the UK in cultural terms.
You know, there was a suggestion it was actually culturally impoverished. Well,
I mean that that that that came from a basic
a place of basic anxiety, Okay, and like the Bismarckian
like public education system in some ways the British were
trying to emulate that you know, but with but while
insinuating their own kind of like characteristics into it, and
obviously like very much including stuff suggestive of of you know,
what they viewed as their you know, kind of imperial mandate,
which of course, uh you know, had a had a
had a had a providential origin according to the whole
kind of pastiche of influences that made up the late
British Umpires mythologies. But the uh Eton, Harrow and Winchester,
they were considered it be like the top like public schools. Okay,
the curriculum was loyalty, honor, chivalry, uh, faith in Christ, patriotism,
sportsmanship and competence and physical pursuits and above all, you know,
like leadership, particularly owing to the era with an eye
for military command. You know, because again not only was
this not the exclusive domain of continental and specifically Teutonic people,
but this was truly a global phenomenon. Okay, there was uh,
there was war and rumors of war on the mines
and lips of men from east to west and quite
literally in the air. Okay. Mosley also in the fifties,
especially when he was staging his comeback, and he obviously
this was like the nascent era of television and one
of the favorite ways to try and rook then, you know,
elderly Moseley was of these like left wing you knows,
you know, to say like, well, obviously you know at
these at these institutions that you know, we now know
we're inundating people with the wrong ideas. This is where
you learned anti Semitism, you know, and something mostly would
be kind of flippant about it, you know, and he
said one time, well, there's a whimsical brutality in the
English character, you know, ha ha ha, And uh, there's
probably not so different from the way I answer questions
related to the same topic, because it's a stupid question
and it's something that no self respecting man like lets
himself be checkmated by. But there wasn't a counterpart of
Julius Striker. There's Thermer type, uh, anti Jewish media or
kind of subcultural sentiment in the UK. But there is
this there's a basic understanding in before uh, you know,
Churchill's tru ascendency that uh, you know, Disraeli was an
outlier like no Jew is truly an Englishman, you know,
and that should be that should be obvious to anybody
who knows the culture. But UH, this idea that Moseley
somehow developed this like unique hostility to Jews and Jewry
doesn't really track and Uh, in fact, Moseley he was
laying ambassed by a lot of people on the right
as being you know, soft on the question you know lately.
When I say lately, I mean past like thirty years. Okay,
I'm coming an historical time, you know how the English
maybe you don't know. I didn't know that until I
went there, like years and years back, speaking of ancient history.
There's these like little circular plaques. They almost look like
plates or something. They're like these like un obtrusive like markers.
And in the UK they put him on historical sites,
you know, like I'll be like, oh, this was you know,
Benjamin Disraeli's like childhood school or on this spot, you know,
like this happened. They've got one that I think went
up in the late nineties commemorating the quote Battle of
Cable Street. That was the buf March where they brawled
with uh, a constellation of of enemies including uh, you know,
a mob of uh. I think we were under the
banner of the Jewish War veterans or something, because uh,
that was a traditionally Jewish section of London. And so
this is like held out as you know, all these
Nazi brutes went to like pogram, you know, the Jews
of London. But you know, they got they got fucked.
They were they were beaten back by this kind of
rainbow coalition of of people who realized that's not an
international character. Like that's a weird way to come at
the b UF, because they really weren't like, don't get
me wrong, the b UF absolutely was was you know,
favorable to the German Reich, and and they certainly viewed
they certainly viewed Jews as the enemies of the Empire
and put a terms like mostly he didn't have some
like racial eves view of Jews. But like holding Mosey
in the BUF out is kind of like the mortal
enemy of English jewelry is kind of strange. But I
think it owes more to the illiteracy of you know,
the body politic as well as the you know, I mean,
the the academ has been nakedly politicized in the UK,
just like hear, you know, since since the New Deal
slash Churchill era. But I I think it's also it's
like a basic ignorance. But you know that uh that
was forgiving me. That was too tangential. But uh, the
uh Mosley was very much a Christian uh during this period,
and this is significant. I'm gonna get into what I
mean by this in a minute. Mostly, Uh, he became
very interested in spiritualism and theosophy and even some aerosofty
when he was convalescing, he he read a lot of
the stuff that came to like inform people like Subvitri
DeBie later on, and things mostly openly acknowledged that he
felt caught between like a pious belief and you know, uh,
the kind of Anglophone interpretation of the faith and legitimate paganism,
and this kind of like liminal phenomenon in the Carl
Jasper's and Youngie incidents of being caught between historical imperatives
and the ancient past informing the present in critical ways,
and this kind of weakening of the barrier of reason
between what is actual historical memory, what is myth? What
is a matter of faith? What is a historical you
know occurrence? Nowhere is this greater felt than in England
and C. S. Lewis wrote about this, Okay, mostly embodied
the tendency.
Speaker 1: To a t.
Speaker 2: And if you want to understand true English fascism, it
comes from a different place than German national socialism or
like Spanish cynicalism, or you know, Italian fascism, you know,
I mean, in the case of the German Reich. Yes,
it very much, very much came from what no be
called fear of practical transcendence, and that has a liminal implication,
but it's not it's not really the same thing, okay.
And I make this point not to say respect mostly
and in a lot of ways I modeled myself on him,
but because this is key and uh, it mostly did
not gravitate to fascism along to some like fattishness. Like
nor Dierd, he view it as some sort of skin
one takes on metaphorically speaking, you know, for pragmatic reasons
or to combat you know, the opposing tendency of communism
or anything like that. This is very like, this is
a very much like autopathigh is like mode of fascism
that mostly developed, you know. And that's why that's something
that owes to his staying power in the public mind.
Because guys who like third or eight guys who tried
to bandwagon on the right, you know, and model themselves
on Adolf Hitler or something. Those guys were a diamond,
doesn't and like nobody followed them, and nobody thought that
they were serious people, and nobody even remembers them, you know,
Like what says Mosley apart, you know, it's that Mosley
wasn't prime Minister. I mean, Moley didn't you know it
for a man who I mean, yeah, he was a
significant plaitable figure, but like so is Ramsey McDonald, Okay,
And like there's not like volumes written on Ramsey McDonald
who was Prime minister. I think the point stands, you know,
But Mosley during this time, you know, Moseley's mom and
a single mother. Moseley's father, who was still quite wealthy,
but was basically, you know, he absent in every sense,
including in terms of you know, any any inclination of
our material assistance. Mosy's mom was struggling to meet the
tuition demands, you know, just like the expenses of you know,
of Moses's education. His grandfather set up a trust fund
for the boys. Mosley and his brother Edward Mosley something
that helped him was, uh, he took up boxing, and
he became a very good boxer. You know, at fifteen,
he was fraudible enough that he was beating guys you know,
two and three years older than him. You know, he
had a he had a he had a strong mentor
and uh influence and his commitment to training in his
UH boxing coach, a man named Sergeant Ryan, like sergeant
was his first name, it's not at rank. Mostly won
the lightweight championship during this time as an amateur boxer,
and this helped he owing to his prowess obviously, you know,
like he was given a parcel. His family was given
a parcel break on on his tuition and things. You know,
he later transitioned to fencing and UH, it's believed a
combination of his grandfather as well as UH the influences
some of these some of these aristocratic types that he
came into contact with were like the fathers and uncles
and and brothers of his schoolmates who said basically like,
look like, you know, trouble is your family. Maybe you
are a nobleman, and that's great. You know how to fight,
because everybody needs know how to fight. But no women
aren't champion boxers, they're fencers. So Mosey took up fencing,
and he became a fencing prodigy, you know, which is
pretty remarkable because uh yeah, I mean the kind of
Kinnis thesis that lends himself to boxing and the kind
of mental toughness that translates somewhat to fencing but not.
But they're very, very very different pursuits. But Mosey basically
excelled and everything he took on. You know, it's uh,
the headmaster at Westminster, doctor Rendell, he uh, he'd gone
as far as to try and forbid h mostly entering
the public schools boxing championship, you know, saying that this
is this is just like distasteful for like a man
of your station. Like that's how extreme it was, you know,
And there was kind of a there was like a
disconnect too because the military training at the time, even
for officers, and if you wanted to be an officer
then unless you were unless in time of war, you
were like a mud stang and CEO who got promoted
owing to the fact that you basically pulled some Audie
Murphy ship. Like he wanted to be an officer in
the British Army, you know, you had to have the
right pedigree and military training and the entire culture. Just
before World War One, the British Army, it was very
very savage, like almost lawish, you know. And the way
mostly described it and the way other guys have like
in their like war diaries and things, you know, it's, uh,
it's almost like clock Recorne or something. You know, like
going out, you know, these these these officer candidates who
are like the sons of a nobleman, you know, going
into London on the weekend on leave and like getting it,
getting into like razor blade brawls with uh, with like
working class yobs or like sailors, like just just for
the hell of it, you know what I mean. Like
that's not really what you associate with the with the
British Army, you know, the officer corps, you know. I mean,
this isn't the US Marines, like it's the British Army,
you know, But that it was a you know, it
owed like I said, like the kind of zeitgeist of violence,
but just the same. I mean, the kind of that
kind of pretentious overlay that's obsessed with kind of certain
modalities of the quorum remained, and it's say, well, you know, gentlemen,
gentlemen know how to fight, no, how to defend themselves.
Gentlemen like violence, but they don't box, you know. That's
for that's something that poor men do. But just before
we move ahead, just bring it back what I meant
by liminal figures. Let me clarify that, because I think
this is important that I don't think it's just a
silly tangent. I really really like C. S. Lewis, and
he kind of speaks to me like I think racially
owing to my own heritage. I've seen us Lewis as
a Catholic, uh convert, but he was very very English
and it's a the English character better than almost anybody game.
My favorite bug of his is that Hideous Strength. It's
the final chapter. It's the sequel to Out of the
Silent Planet, you know, and it's part of like his
Space series, and it follows some of the same characters,
but it doesn't have to do with with space, although
some of like the some of the deities and things
that feature in the earlier books of the Space trilogy
feature in it. But like briefly, it's about this young
academic and like literally, as World War two's ending, he's
a senior fellow in sociology at this fictional university. Okay,
as the war is ending, this this kind of mysterious
administrator of body emerges that starts kind of absorbing everything
of a political or police and military or academic sociological
character like within its per number. It's a it's called
nice like nice, which obviously is a riff, you know,
it's both to represent this kind of like superficially benign institution,
but it's an acronym for the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments.
And it turns out that this thing is staffed by
these like occultists. Okay, but they've got this weird transhumanist
view of things, and they think that spiritual matters and
like occult energy and like the summoning of old gods
and malevolent deities. They believe it's like a scientific basis
for this or at least like this can be reduced
to things is like analyzing disturbances and atoms or like
you know, the manipulation a temporal phenomena around like these
these entities when they emerge or something and that and
that'll like reveal through principles and material science like what
they are. But it turns out that the reason why
Nice has co opted this university is because it's adjacent
to this, uh, this land called Braggden Woods and this guy,
this sociology fella discovers that in Bragdon Woods that's the
resting place of Merlin, who's a real guy. And this
isn't like wide be known in the story, but it's
like people in the know, like know that Merlin was
real and that he's either in repose or his body
is here. But this is like a Bragdon Woods. It's
powerful and it's clear if you like disturb Merlin's corpse
or you know, person and suspended animation, like something terrible
will happen, you know. So it basically as it develops
like this guy Merlin's eventually revived. It's not clear what
the implications that are going to be, but something apocalyptic
is emergent, and as the story goes out, it becomes
clear like, well, this is something unique to England, you know,
like what history is and what mythology is in certain
institutions and certain partterns of thought, in certain belief structures.
These two things collapse into one another, okay. And if
you're not indoctrinated into that or initiated into that in
some way, like you don't really understand what it is
to be English and you're not really part of that
cultural milu, you know. And there's tremendous power in being
able to access this kind of liminal memory. But there's
also tremendous perils that are involved there too, okay. And
mostly not only was a believer in these kinds of things,
but he somehow I embodied the characteristics culturally and psychologically
that you have rise to that kind of paradigm, Okay,
And that's the key to English fascism. You know, there's, uh,
there's an aspect of historical memory that is uh, that's
something different than the kind of phenomenological aspects of national socialism.
But that's what I meant. I wanted to clarify that
the uh. Yeah, but I'll let me see what kind
of time ago. Yeah, I'll pick up the pace a
little bit. By January nineteen fourteen, you know, young Moseley
obviously was coming to the end of his public school studies.
He saw it it mad. He had no idea what
he was going to do for a profession. But you know, again,
even though even though World War One hadn't broken out yet,
you know, something not quite but precedent to war fevers
seemed to be in the air. Mostly under he took
the test for the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He
was accepted. For the next nine months he trained as
the cavalrymen and the dragoon dragoons and lancers. For clarity,
lancers are basically force reconnaissance like they still exist. They're
still like designated uh lancer elements like in the British
Army to day and on the twenty and the twenty
percentry battlefield. They do what like force reconnaissance would do,
like in an American military organization, dragoons are mounted and
dismounted into cavalry. Heavy dragoons basically ride to the battle
space or in like the Napoleonic era, they'd like ride
to the front, dismount information and then unload heavy weapons
that they'd like manhandle as like infantry. But they were
basically uh pre mechanize mobile infantry. Is the way you
think of him in like World War One context, mostly
would been had been an avid horseman his whole life.
That's another thing that you know, his grandfather had kind
of insinuated into him, so uh militarily like what he
wanted to do, Like he wanted you know, he wanted
to do something with cavalry, you know. As a as
the war uh broke out, Mosey intended, as I said it,
joined the seventeenth Lancers. Their commander was a man named
Vivianne Lockett. Vivianne Lockett was a cousin of Mosley's, okay,
and he was also like a leading like polo player,
so he was like he was a stud. But Moseley,
Moseley had more personal social capital than he did money
or or business connections. And this is something throughout his
life that kind of helped him get ahead, you know.
But he was persuaded to make the switch to the
sixteenth Light Dragoons by a friend of his mom's family.
So lovely stammer, but it was basically the same element.
At seventeen, he was built into the sixteenth Lancers. In
October one, nineteen fourteen, he's commissioned as the second lieutenant.
He reported the kerrah Um Barracks in County Killed are
twenty miles south of Dublin that was like the home
base for sixteen Lancers who are attached to the third
Cavalry Brigade, which had been reinforced anticipation a trouble because
uh Prime Minister Asketh Home Rule Act, and there was
great concern that there was a gonna be some sort
of coup stage in Northern Ireland by like Ulster born
officers or you know, an event of a breakout of
general hostilities in uh in Ireland that uh, like the
ulstermen among the officers would simply dessert and like go
to defend Ulster, you know. And this this obviously this
is outside the Scobar discussion on on Osbald Mosley. But
one of the reasons why the Irish situation like developed
the way it did after the Easter Rising is obviously
because you know, the British were engaged in essentially like
you know, total war on the continent. But this was
a Mosley was the youngest man. Uh he was the
youngest officer in the regiment, you know, and this must
have been this constellation of fact there was like knowing
you're going to deploy to the continent and it was
turning into a meat grinder. You're in Ulster. There's this
fear of a you know, like a thirty year officers
who are like native sons deserting. You know. You there's
also a concern of a you know, there's some sort
of general war with the you know, with with the
the UH, with with some Irish Republican element. I mean,
this this family wasn't necessemily, wasn't a posting for guys
that didn't didn't have didn't have balls. You know, That's
why it was that resent. People run to brocheade on
Mosey's service record. I mean, that's ridiculous anyway. But the UH,
just before Christmas, Mosey's regiment UH had embarked for France.
Mosey was expected to be sent right into action. It
quickly became clear there was no need for conventional cavalry,
so he realized he was gonna find himself like leading
an anthanty platoon, which he was you know, he's fine with,
but he there was an appeal sent out because there's
a desperate need for aerial observers in the Royal Flying
Corps and UH at that time. This is a very
dangerous job for all kinds of reasons and the Germans.
One of the reasons why Rick Toffen and Ernst Oudette
and Young Gearing and the rest of the you know,
the rick Toff and flying circus as well as a
bunch of these other Kaiser right air aces. They they
were ahead of the game. The Germans were in tactical
versatility of aircraft and they were really chewing the UK
and the French to pieces in the air for about
the first twelve to eighteen months of hostilities. So this
is not like light duty. Also, there was no U
there was no ejection and no parachutes in these World
War One aircraft. So when the when the aircraft went down,
you just embraced yourself and you craft with it, you know.
I mean it was definitely a man's job. But volunteered
for the Royal Flying Corps and no small measure because
that's where aristocrats went, you know, especially when you know
the absence of a true roll for the cavalry element,
you know it. Uh So that's where he made his
home and you know, in his deployment to France. It
was also something of anna lead fraternity the Royal Flying Corps.
As of nineteen fourteen, it had fewer than one thousand men.
It was made up of two wings and sixty four aircraft.
The number one wing, it was literally wing number one.
Wing number two is commanded by Hugh Trenchard. Mosey was
posted to wing too, you know, again as an observer.
He hadn't qualified to fly yet as a solo flyer,
which is was and when he did that, ironically, is
one of the things that conspired to take him out
of action from an elief in a combat role, I mean,
but two weeks subsequent he joined a number two wing,
number six Squadron, which had been established on the coast
at Dunkirk. I was deployed to protect was deployed to
assist in the relief of Antwerp, and UH observers played
in a key role because they'd spot for indirect fire,
you know, just for context, the UH, these these these
spotting flights usually took three hours. Obviously they were behind
enemy lines because they were essentially sighting in you know,
counter force artillery, you know, so they have to spot for,
you know, where German guns were situated, and the heavy
artillery element you know, was sometimes you know, seventy eighty
miles behind the lines. So you're basically surveying German defenses
in a slow flying prop plane that with the maximum
stealing of six thousand feet or so. You know, you're
you're sitting duck for ground fire as well as UH
you know, for for enemy fighters, which again we're a
lot more versatile at this time. Then then World Flying
Corps aircraft, you know. And then top speed is you know,
seventy to eighty miles an hour in a strong wind.
If you're carrying ordinance, if it's a bombing ran there's
a recon run, your speed might slow to thirty to
forty million miles per hour, you know. I mean again,
this the the ony casualties from just like ground fire
including small arms was it's it's absurd by you know,
contemporary metrics. But the uh Mosley's UH Mosey's pilot that
he was assigned to. He and Mosey were both shot
I mean, they're they're playing was shot down during a
low flying run where at lowest altitude they were only
five hundred feet above ground for UH. For the mission,
uh MOS's pilot received the Distinguished Service Order. Mostly uh
injured his knee and the uh suffered a concussion. This
was the first and many injuries he got, you know,
directly owing to hostile action. You know, like I said,
Moses was in He was in comic about seventy five days,
all told, before he was injured catastrophically and taken out
of action. Ironically, he was injured when he was qualifying
as a solo pilot, which he probably had no business
being in the air. Like going to these previous injuries
he sustained. But you know that, uh, for those seventy
five days, he was basically in constant, constant action, you know,
the uh mostly uh, he said. Uh. He wrote a
letter to his mother when he was flying these recontorties.
He said she should not grieve if he's killed in action,
because he was sure he would find death quote a
most interesting experience. He said that.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: He said being under fire was terrifying, but it was
also exhilarating and very exciting. He said. It was a
quote peculiar ecstasy which sooner were off, after which time
one had to resist a uh, a profound depression. But
he uh. He wrote a lot, both to his mom
and some of his friends and a lady he was
trying to court about this weird dichotomy because he said,
compared to the infantry. He's like, you know, we live well,
you know, He's like, uh, we live in nice quarters.
You know. He's like a lot of the guys are gormands,
so we eat a lot of good food, you know.
But then he's like, every day, like more of us die,
you know, so it's like there's less and less of
us at dinner, you know. And he's like he's like
he's like when you're on the ground, he's like he's like,
I'm sure to the infantry, death seems very much organic
because it's all around you. You know. He's like, we're
kind of like a gentleman's like flying society. But then
like every day some of us like get blown to hell.
You know. There's something like there's something very funny about that,
and I get it was way but uh yeah, let's
see what the Okay, I'll wrap thisself on a second,
but the uh yeah, So the Mosley's a squadron. In
April ninety fifteen became a bombing squadron, and this involved
literally dropping hammer and age from a thousand feet or
like strapping like one hundred pound bomb to the fuselage
of the plane and then cutting it loose, you know,
like dropping it a approximately over the target on UH.
On the eighteenth of April, Moseley and his pilot, we're
dropping bombs on his zeppelin shed at the Connolly. This
is what earned UH. This is a mission that that
earned mostly uh uh disting with service order of his own.
But and there's an interesting dynamic to between uh the
soldiers kind of in this first early phase of World
War One, like Lloyd George became like a really hero
to the men at the front, including mostly and this
was his uh inspiration to become a parliamentarian, which we'll
have to get into in the next episode. This my quo.
Does Mike get straight out of the four episode? I
hope that's not a problem or humbersome. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'll argrogate it because I don't want to screw up
the schedule. But Mosley's uh reverence for Lloyd George, which
seems but I'm sure it seems ironic or peculiar to
people who you know, think of the b u F
as it ultimately was constituted as being the kind of
the ultimate like anti establishment element, and in some ways
it was. But I'll get into why Lloyd George became
this like iconic figure too, like uh, the British combat
element at the front in the next episode. But yeah,
and we'll we'll get into the meat of the b
u F in the next episode. I promise that I
think this stuff is findamentally important and I figure if
it wasn't holding Egle's attention, they'd complain. But the feedback
as far seems to be effusive. Then it's praise, and
that's great. I'm very honored by it. Yeah, we we
can wrap up, man, and I'll i'll uh, I'll cover
more ground and les's time next episode.
Speaker 1: I promise, no problem, very good, very good. Two plugs please.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, I'm retooling my website. Really, my dear friend
he's doing all that work because I don't I don't
really know how to do that stuff. But the uh
you can find me at at Thomas seven seven seven
dot com like number seven h O A S seven
seven seven dot com. On social media at Capital r
E e A L underscore number seven h O MA
S seven seven seven best place to always substack. That's
where long form stuff is in my podcast. I'm watching
season three of the pod. By February twenty eighth, but
I don't have an example date yet. It's real Thomas
seven seven seven. That's subsect dot com. You should search
for me just under my alt or under my government name,
which is Thomas Sr. And you'll find my stuff.
Speaker 1: Man, Thank you, thank you. I appreciate it. And yeah,
all the feedback we've gotten on the first episode is great,
and I'm sure this is gonna be no different.
Speaker 2: No, it's awesome. Yeah, you're welcome man, thanks for hosting me.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Peking Show.
Thomas is here for part three talking about mister Oswald Mosley.
Speaker 2: Are you doing, Thomas, I'm doing well, thank you. So,
I'm that's important to understand. There's a few things and
they're all related in terms of something of significance Daly
other than shouldn't fein MP, who is a boy cutting
the House of Commons. He was the youngest member of
Parliament and he was viewed as this prodigy and Churchill
viewed him as something of a rival. Okay, And in
those days, the Tories weren't really the ruling party. I mean,
they weren't at all like the coalition that ultimately kind
of morphed into the Tories was but really the only
thing they had in common was legacy membership and a
kind of class consciousness that they'd inherited. The coalition that
Moseley ultimately joined when he went to the House of
Commons it was the Liberal Party, not the Liberal Democrats,
the Liberal Party which was defuncts by the eighties, okay.
And the Liberal Party had a split between unionists who
refused to accept home rule and Ireland as the Civil
War was raging, and guys who had a more moderate
perspective on it. And these guys were more in coalition
with the Conservatives contra Labor and those days Labor was
a revolutionary party, like they weren't communists, but they were close,
you know. And mostly his big thing was that there
could never be another war like the Great War. And
despite the way that he's slandered by court historians, he
was then heavy action as an aviator. He was catastrophically wounded, admittedly,
like you know, during a training maneuver, but he'd been
wounded in action before that, although not critically, you know,
like I said, he was at Epra where you know,
young Lonzo Adolph Hitler was an action I mean Mosey
was literally witnessing that with a bird's eye view, like
he saw the first poison gas assault, you know, and
a bunch of men in his squadron like went down
in combat, you know, Like he was thrown to Gellow's
humor about this. So he wanted to salvage the League
of Nations, but as a collective security kind of arrangement.
Even when Wilson threw his hands up and subsequently, you know,
the US Congress refused to ratify it outright, Moseley said,
look like we need some kind of collective security arrangement,
you know. And despite being despite backing the imperialist position,
which wasn't a dirty word, then you know, he said,
we've got these manufacturers, and if we want to continue
to be a great power, you know, our competitive manufacturer,
he needs a destination in needs destination markets, and saying
we're gonna like perpetually be at war with the Germans
to fight over those that's not liable, you know. And
he's like, if half the planet can't purchase our manufacturers,
where we're done. You know. So he was a free
trader with qualifications and in those days, like free trade
didn't mean we're gonna throw the borders open and we're
going to socially engineer identitarian things out of existence. Like
Mosey made the point, he was a huge immigration restrictionist,
you know. He said, like, this is going to become
a problem. You know. And because he was an aviator,
not only did he have a very deep understanding of
the technological curve and how future shock impacted things sociologically
at scale, but he understood this mention the mobility of
human populations. He understood also like you combine that with
mass literacy, with the kinds of things that Smangler discussed
and man in technics and the our decision. You know.
Moseley was like something of a racialist, I mean, like
like I am, but he didn't have ideas that like,
oh the colored world are stupid, or they're a bunch
of monkeys or they He's like, look, these people are
going to master technology and some of them are are
as capable of managing it as a white man, you know,
you're gonna have to deal with that reality, you know.
And one of the things that we're gonna have to
be aware of is that our store are gonna be
swarmed kind of like with the world's wretched and poor,
like not even by design, although that would you know,
although he acknowledge like that was part of something that
was in the in the cards. But he's like, you know,
just the there's gonna be masters of people who can't
adjust to the future, which is arriving with punctuated rapidity,
you know, and they're they're going to be attracted to,
as Hitler said, the works and structures of superior men.
You know. So he was a complicated guy, okay, and
would ultimately caused his defection to the Labor Party and
then his founding of a Fascist party. Was these values
that I'm talking about, you know, it wasn't some opportunist thing,
and mostly wasn't this like marginal figure or this aristocrat,
this lesser aristocrat who was out bad with the establishment
who struck a protest pos Like I think some people
look at like the Roder Expode caricature and they confuse
that like with the man. It'd be like if people
like took like the Charlie Chaplin movie and we're like, yeah,
that that's Adolf Hitler. He was really like that. I mean,
I think there's some degree of that, but Hitler kind
of features. It's too much of a sinister figure in
people's minds, like these a Moseley like people don't realize
like he he really was. He was almost like Kennedy
was like John F. Kennedy and like his early career
he was like this war hero and he was a
big womanizer because like you know, ladies all liked him.
He looked like a matinee idol. He cultivated this kind
of incredible aptitude at rhetoric, you know, and when he
was basically not much more than a teenager, you know,
you had you had parliamentarians like guy's a real pedigree
and in the UK that shit matters to this day,
like stepping over themselves to draft him on to their
front bench. You know, he was. He was a very
serious guy, you know. One of the things that drew
a wedge. He he was branded a class trader and
he was out bad with and I'll get into this
in a minute, with the men who'd basically vouched for
him and its coalition. He led these liberal Unionists in
coalition with the you know these these uh these kind
of neo Whig Tories. Mostly was a friend of the
Irish in a big way. And when the Black and Tans,
who were a bunch of Great War veterans and most
of them were ulstermen, they started putting huge hurt on uh,
not just Fanians, but I'm like regular Catholic people, like
it's not propaganda. At the front bench, we're getting a
little hut of ourselves just to be I want to
get this, put this out front, the original Bloody Sunday,
which was November eleventh, nineteen twenty one. I'm sure one
of the Irish guys, your girls will correct me if
I'm wrong. That's when a bunch of a bunch of
UH British Intelligence Service U officers were murdered by the IRA.
So the Black and Tans UH they started uh resorting
to retaliation against the general Catholic population. And the front
and bench of unions in Parliament said, fuck him. You
know that's our policy. You know you would you would
you would you attack? Uh, you attacked the agents of
the crown like we're we're gonna kill your people, and
mostly said that's barbaric, Like you can't do that, you know.
He's like, I can't, I can't co sign this. You
can't murder regular Catholic people because because our our guys
are going down in theater, you know, and he's like,
I don't care what the what the IRA those you
can't do that, you know. Uh So obviously the Alston
man like, uh a corp of them looking at them like, well,
what do you like tags or something, you know, race trader,
class trader, you know like it. Uh So, this is
where he was at. And in the sixties one of
the inter one of the when he was doing his
kind of like round of interviews late in life. He
popped up a lot on British media in the sixties
and early seventies, and one of these typical uh BBC
types was was, you know, trying to put him on
the spot a matter's of race and stuff. And this
especially too, because this is one like you know, Powell
was at the peak of his of his clout and
Moldy said, look, you know, he's like, you know what
happened to me. He's like, he's like the he's like
my own former comrade has wanted to be dead because
I took the side of the Irish you know in
a sense, you know, like he said that Alston needs
to be partitioned and get part of the UK. But
he's like, let let let the republic go. Don't try
and force him into some kind of in the into
some kind kind of a you know, like like treat
them as men, you know, don't and don't try and
force them into into some kind of lesser dominion status
as the price of a home rule. But he said,
he's like, look, he's like, I was in the same
position as people on the right were who opposed the
Vietnam War. He's like, I couldn't cotton what was going
on here? You know. He's like, you think I did that?
He's like, how did that help my life? You know?
Did that? Did that win me friends? Did it win
me influence? You know? It's like I became a pariah,
like among my own people, you know. And he's like,
I what what did I get out of that? You know?
And like he and he had a point because mostly
regardless of what the court of public opinion, regardless of
the tenor of it, you know, he did what he
did according to principle. And apparently he was right on
basically all counts. I part ways of them, on the
on the issue of on the issue of Ireland. In
some respects qualifiedly. But you know, I as we get
some distance between, you know, as living memory of the warriors,
uh fades into the rear view mirror, and the bully
pulpit is no more. You know, people actually can speak
on the twentieth century and objective terms, like you can't
say like mostly was wrong, Okay, what the UK is
a better society now they're doing great, you know. I
mean it's I it's not going to be able to
perpetuate itself beyond another generation like like that doesn't mean
like the white rays in the UK is going to
go extinct or something, but it's not in a good place,
you know. But this is key And I'm giving Moldy
more time than probably some historical others a revisionist would,
because he's fundamentally important, you know. And I don't think
he's granted enough ink or enough content. But you know,
this was a big deal, like the courses his career
took as a parliamentarian. I can't remember got into this
last time or not, and correct me if I'm repeating myself,
and I'll jump ahead. But you know, Lloyd George one
of the things, one of the main catalysts or Mosey
wanting to pursue a parliamentarian's career, was to give his
hero worship of Lloyd George and okay, known as the
Shell Scandal, when George was the Armaments Minister and he
insinumented himself under that role because owing to what was
called the shell crisis in nineteen fifteen, you know, there
was there was a cash outic shortage of shells for
her heavy guns. So the British Expeditionary Force they basically
had no capability to bring in direct fire to bear
on on on the enemy, you know, and they, uh,
they got they got slaughtered. And Lloyd George he became
he became a hero to the front line soldiers, you know,
airman as well as uh as well as as the
ground element in the infantry and uh, you know not
not just because George stood up to these kinds of
stalesman inturts. And George had an aristocratic background, but he
didn't really have any clout with with with big business
and and in the industrial concern. Okay. But but mostly
turning on George, George is almost kind of like his
father figure too, you know, because like we talked about,
mostly had a very unhappy family life, despite the fact
that he'd minimized that nag like he had this great
upbringing like he didn't. He was very close to his mom,
but his father was what was a real bully and
and and just like a shitty guy. And unfortunately moy
Mosely never had his is gambling and drinking vices, but
he certainly had his He certainly had his pussy hunting
advice with me and crass and that that was definitely
not admirable. And it led to some really ugly incidents
in Mosty's personal life, and it alienated him from his
friends and all kinds of other things. But you know,
the so what Mosey lost by basically defecting from kind
of liberal union slash Tory coalition, I mean that they
said a cadis droving effect on his personal life. You know,
it can't be said to have been some dolculated decision.
But to take us back a bit, how Mosley got
to this point where a house a common see, it
was a real ability. July nineteen eighteen, that's when he
was rendered declared quote permanently unfit. That's the equipment of
being you know, totally disabled under like via criteria. And
around this time he was hanging around a lady named
Maxine Elliott. Maxine Elliott. She was kind of like some
of the Yacki's female patrons. She was like an older lady.
She'd been a silent film actress who have some repute,
and she owned her own studio. And there was only
a handful of like actual movie studios in those days,
you know, like nineteen teens, like let alone, like some
lady and some actress like owning one like that was
a big deal, especially consider that the stuff was all
run by by gangsters. You know. This was this was
like the cusp of Silver age Hollywood. But Maxid Elliott
was American, but she'd she'd relocated to the to the UK.
Her kind of common law husband. I can't remem if
they were actually married or not. He was a younger guy.
He was a Pommie. He was like an Englishman but
who had Australian citizenship. He was a younger guy because
Maxy and Elliott was still she still had her feminine
wiles in the Middle Age. And he answered the call
to go fight in World War One, and like within
days of being deployed to the front, he got killed,
so she was really heartbroken, and she dedicated herself to
these kinds of charitable relief efforts, you know, for like
civilians impacted by the war, but in like a real way,
not in like a lame like bono way, like look
at me, I'm so great, you know, Like she was
a little key about it, but you know she threw
her substantial fortune at it, like relief for like displaced
persons and stuff like that. But she also she she
she liked, you know, she was into soldiers. And there's
no evidence that Moseley and her like were had like
a romantic relationship. And by that point, I mean he
was with the kid. He was like nineteen twenty years old,
and she was, you know, she was she was like
in her fifties or something, so that that probably was
not on the table. But you know, she these kinds
of uh she had a lot of like right wing studs,
as we'd think about it, kind of like in her orbit,
and she like she like guy's hanging around to her state,
and a lot of Churchill's cronies that kind of call
honor to you know, try and sort of like win
her favor. Because Churchill was always sort of money, you know,
and and and obviously like they were snoozing around for money.
And uh the uh Freddie guest. If that's not like
a Limey name, I don't know what is. But he was.
He was. He was the chief whip of Lloyd George's, uh,
the Lloyd George Liberals in the Coalition government. And he
was actually a cousin and like a crony at Churchill.
Like he he was always hanging around and uh because
of Moseley's, because of Max and Elliot, it's like an
affinity for Moseley just opened a lot of doors for
him in part okay, and I guess uh, she and
some of her male friends, they really encouraged Moseley and
told him like, look, like you've got to represent the
war generation in Parliament because like we don't have a voice,
you know, like the front fighters don't have a voice
in the House of Commons. And even like Lloyd George
is a good man and he helped us when we
were under fire, literally, but he even he doesn't really understand,
you know. So the guy really stepped in. It's got
a Mosey's patron was Sir Harold Nicholson, who was a
really crazy guy, like like literally Mosey had met him
when Sandhurst initially had expelled him Sanders Military Academy, when
Mosey was a cadet, he had a rivalry with some
other upper classmen. This is this is when Moses was
still you know, a polo player before he transitioned to
boxing and then fencing. But uh, this guy was some
upper classmen polo star and Mosey straight up and knocked
him out I think in the dining hall and obviously
like much as uh, Sanders cultivated and kind of control
the loudishness, like chin shaking upper class man like that's
not how we do things in the British army. But Nicholson,
who knew Moseley, and Nicholson was pretty obviously gay. He
like he had a wife who who left him for
a time for another woman, like very decadent aristocrat stuff.
But uh, Nicholson, Uh, I think he I think it's
clear like he was he was like literally attracted to
Mosley and that was not reciprocated in sexual terms. But
Nicholson intervened and he basically pulled strings, like look, give
given Mosey another chance. You know, it's important to me
and you know, you you you you want my cloud
to approve my money so that that goes away if
Mosey doesn't, you know, get get a second chance. But uh,
Nicholson was an interesting guy, I mean aside for him,
like whatever the generate habits he had in his personal life.
He'd been born in Tehran, you know, when when Tehran
was the capital of Persia, like properly Persia. He was
the youngest son uh the Baron of Karnak one, Arthur Nicholson.
So he spent his childhood like all over the world.
You know, He's been posted at Saint Peter's or his
fat like his family posted at Saint Petersburg, to Madrid,
the Bulgaria, to uh the Tangiers or Tangier thinking like Casino.
But uh he you know, he uh he staked out
a career in the Foreign Office by the time uh,
you know Moseley, he made Moses acquaintance. And so when
Moseley got you know permanently uh like discharged in the army,
Nicholson got him a job with the Foreign Office and uh,
you know made sure that he had what he needed,
you know it. And Nicholson had a had a heterodox perspective. Yeah,
he's very much. He was very much part of the
war party, you know, once hostilities got underway, but he
had no truck with the you know, the the kind
of incessant war mongering that you know towards the Germans
that emerged from some quarters. You know, like we talked
about in some of our previous series, this wasn't just
demented people like like vance Attart. I mean, obviously people
like him led the charge in critical ways, but the
empire was really rutnerless, and as we see in America,
you know, since nineteen eighty nine and especially in the
twenty first century, you know, last twenty five years in
earnest you know whether I mean, there aren't empire's original
sense anymore. But you know, if you're talking about an
empire or superpower, or you're talking about any political structure
at scale, if it doesn't have a dedicated oppositional actor
towards which the kind of orient policy and can like
can figure the literal architecture of the state, this causes
real problems. You know. So there was this kind of
need to keep Germany and the figurative in literal gun sights,
you know, to a lot of these kinds of government careers.
But Nicolson really wasn't like that. And that's one of
the reasons why if there's something that exonerates or validates
the claim that you need traditional aristocracy in government as
like a moderating tendency, and that's kind of what under
lies a lot of would people like cons from an
hop advocate, like if you read between the lines, I
don't I don't particularly shut that perspective, but it's it's
a serious perspective. And in the story of a record,
I'd say guys like Nicholson kind of represent the tendency.
But uh, Nicholson also he'd been close to Sir Eric Drummond, who,
like he worked as a private secretary Nicholson did, and
Drummond was the first Secretary General of the League of Nations. Okay,
So I think a lot of a lot of Moses
early ideas on Okay, we can take a League of
Nations and look forget the utopian uh you know, kind
of uh flourish around it when it's discussed in chambers
as well as public wise. We can we can transform
this into a collective security apparatus, you know, which is
desperately needed, you know, and I speculate that came directly
from Nicholson, and that's uh, you know that this is
remotely derived uh this stuff. Nicholson gross the offended, uh
General Raise A Khan, Raise a Coon deposed uh the
last shot and instaned himself under the peacock throne. It
Uh Nicholson said that Raisa Khan was quote a bullet
headed man with the voice of a sickly child. That
probably sounds a lot more devastating if you if you
put like the gloss of an estuary accent on it.
But this made this made uh, this made Raise A
Kon really upset, and it made like all the Iranians
really upset, and so it made the Foreign Office upset
as the consequence of that, and uh, Nicholson kind of
got was like out bad from then on. But uh,
you know, he but by that point, you know, he'd
he'd already kind of helped nudge Mosey along in the
ways that he needed. But the uh, sorry let me
call my outline here. Yeah, mostly when he finally uh,
the constituency that finally adopted him was a hero, which
is no longer a constituency in the House of Commons.
I I'm all bore the subs with the kind of
finer points of like UK remandering. But uh, it was
you know, mostly kind of seemed like a good fit
because if not in terms of true geography or class
or character or vocation of the constituents, it was very
much kind of like in spirit, like a Middle England
constituency and you know, having a guy who wasn't a
traditional aristocrat, but he had some of that pedigree and
it was a war hero and basically had a marshall
bearing like it's it was like a natural fit, you know.
And that's uh where he found himself. It's uh, you know,
and it's significant too because obviously like a patriotic guy
like Mosley, especially like a young guy, you know, he'd
he'd intended, uh when he first entertained the possibility of
going into politics, you know, to enter as a Conservative
member of parliament, you know. And uh, he had no
university education because he'd been in the service. You know,
he was driven basically by you know, a kind of
passionate like English patriotism and like a belief in the
Empire and you know, the Church of England and the
British army and the fact that uh, I mean, don't
get me wrong, like the Liberal unions were an essential
part of that coalition, but they were something different, you know.
And this also, this is why he was in demand.
You know, both conservatives and labor we're trying to poach
him for to fill their vacancies, you know, for the
reasons we just talked about. And the fact that he
got taken in by the unionist waging of the Liberals
and then upon becoming privy to what was actually going
on as regards the Crown's response to Finian guerrilla activity,
you know, he basically defected. I mean that that's kind
of a pure crisis of conscience. We can't look inside
of the mind of any man or woman, and even
if you know somebody intimately, there remain idiosyncrasies that render
judgments like that pig. But so so we can derive
or speculate on the motives of any man in public
life with any semblance of accuracy. I don't think there's
any case that is more kind of clear cut than
that of Moseley and is change age of heart as
it were. But yeah, the U interestingly two, but it
tracks with the epoch. Well, it was an early cheamsy
and disciple and I believe that in part when you
look at like what the BUF program was in terms
of how it broke down uh management of labor and
capital into these publicly managed corporations quite literally, and you know,
key industry was subsidized, well at the same time abandoning
a protectionist regime of tariffs. That's one hundred percent key,
you know. And uh, I'm very much I'm very much
an American and I'm a diet in the little supply sider,
you know. I mean, Keynes is garbage, and I know
something about economics, but you've got to put this in context.
There were no supply siders in the nineteen twenties. Okay.
The idea was industrial capitalism. Not only does it lead
to intolerably catastrophic outcomes to the working classes, like you know,
a true trafty of the commons, a global scale, but
pre information age and even pre digital age, when you
literally had accountants dealing with corporations that in some cases
were global in scale and they were keeping the books
with an abacus. Okay, you understand how people would think, like, well,
the only way to eliminate uncertainties leading to catastrophe, and
the only way to manage critical shortfalls in you know,
the ability of a capitalistic structure to provide for human
needs is if we basically like plan you know, from inception,
you know, like what our production schema is as much
as possible without killing the golden goose. Like that's where
a lot of this came from. Okay, and then obviously
after ninety twenty nine it was it was just like
an absolute you know, that's just this is the way
things are. There was no countervailing tendency. That's why people,
I mean, some of these people it's dishonest. I'm talking
about like academic types or like oh, you know Hitler
was a socialist who didn't really believe in capitalism, or oh,
you know, Moseley was just another labor right you know,
but you know he was also a racist. That's not
that that's that's completely off, just in brass tacks terms.
You know. If people want more complete treatment of that,
Reid Murray Rothbard's hifty The Great Depression, or read what
read what James Burnham wrote about macroeconomics, and he wrote
more than one might think. It was most in the
form of submissions to periodicals and essays. But you know,
the there there was no really until the seventies. This
is just the way people thought, you know, at least
in the quarters that mattered. I cite Shumpeter all the time,
because Schumpeter really was Uh. Shelter's two value magnum ope
is business cycles. It's an incredibly difficult read, but I
consider it to be the most important statement on economics
of the twentieth century. And I'll die in that hill.
But beyond that, it's also it's a director of buttal
two keys. Okay, but that's that's viewed as very heterodotx
these days, unfortunately. But uh, but when mostly entered politics,
the uh, the war was still raging in nineteen eighteen.
You know, the degree to which an entire generation of
of of British youth got blown to hell in France
and Belgium, they can't really be overstated. Like one of
the things this is on my mind. And forgive you
this too tangential or or people think it's a corny
thing to invoke this symbolic precedent. But I mean, let's know,
a lot of Pink Floyd lately. I I really liked
their last record, The Division Bell, and obviously that's the
Gilmore era. But uh, I was rewatching the Wall while
I was like working on some long form stuff and uh,
you know there's two uh you know the segment where
Hank's obviously Roger Waters. He's like this little kid and
he's at the park and like nobody nobody's a father.
It's much like women and old men and little kids.
And obviously Water's dad died in the war. You know
that That's the way it was. It's like there was
just like this missing generation. You know. The UK recovered somewhat,
Germany bounced back demographically. France never recovered, and that's one
of the things that took them down as a great power.
But in any events, at nineteen seventeen became nineteen eighteen,
there basically was no more manpower. So there was a
bunch of like raw teenage conscripts who were like taking
the place in these uh line companies that had suffered
catastrot like one hundred and fifty percent attrition, you know,
so there was there was no enthusiasm to continue this conflict.
You know, it was like it was a bunch of
there was a bunch of high school age boys like
being like ripped off the farm or like ripped out
of the factory, and they're like mom and Dad's house
and like sent to the slaughter and nobody was coming home,
you know. So the end of the war, when the
armistice finally arrived, there was just like tremendous kind of
like outpouring of emotion, no less from you know, Molesey himself,
who who who'd been there, you know, and when the
armistice was signed. It's interesting. Mosey's oldest son, Nicholas Moseley,
he said that he never saw his dad. He said,
he said his dad was like impassioned and like emotional
in the sense that he'd get very fervent and angry.
But he said he never saw he never saw him
get emotional in terms of, you know, losing control of
his of his feelings, other than when he discussed the war.
And Nicholas Mosey said, he said, anytime World War One
came up, his father like he'd speak like with a
genuine sense of horror, you know. And uh, Nicholas said
a few times he saw like cures well up in
his eyes, just with people in casually bring up the
war and like Mosey would like recuse himself like that,
this wasn't an act, you know, and so like the
enormity of his experience it kind of caused him like
re examined things, you know. And he he made this
statement later in life after the BUF days after World
War Two, but before he began uh pushing uh the
the revitalized uh europe a nation concept, Like he said that, uh,
you know. The reason why, like providence or fate, I
think is what he assigned as the causal agent had
like brought into politics, was you know, because he had
he had he had he had to represent like all
the men who paid the ultimate price, you know, and
he had he had to stand up for Britain say
that it could survive, but he had to see to
it that this never ever happened again, you know. And
that probably sounds messianic to people who don't really understand
what sort of experiences like that are like. And I mean, yeah,
there's got to be like a strong component of ecocentrism
if you're gonna nominate yourself for that kind of ambition.
But you know, it's it's not it's not a matter
of commoning cloud or prestige, you know. And the life
of Moseley didn't, it didn't go the way of like
the life of church Llor, the life of Tony Blair,
like at every key juncture, mostly made a decision that
put him at odds with powerful people and with interest
that are becoming entrenched and you know, the new establishment.
You know, it can't be said that any man would
pursue this course in order to somehow enrich himself or
to guarantee his own posterity by you know, situating himself
on the side that would be favorably documented by court history.
But the uh, the key kind of event too, like
post Armistice was well, I mean the first kind of
the fall of Asketh as uh as prime minister previously,
which facilitated Lord George's Lord Lloyd George's ascendency. That's what it's.
That's what it split the Liberal Party into the Union's
faction and and you know, I guess it would be
the Moderates. But it was the end of the war
and the issue of Ireland that uh really brought down
the Coalition and Moseley and again him basically citing not
with the Fenians but with Ireland. The Irish is are people. Uh.
That was an that that wasn't like the sole approximate
cause obviously, but it was an essential cause, you know,
and some of the so there's that too and it
I uh, I think that that speaks for itself. But
the they find a place here. Sorry. It was this
other big thing too that put him somewhat uh at
odds with kind of everybody not just on the front
bench of the coalition but also the moderate labor ights
were willing to reach across the aisle. He'd opposed the
public education structure as it existed for the same reasons
that some of these utopian progressives had, and that being
that he basically viewed it as taxing the commons the
kind of put forth at an education that was determined
by the Church of England, which meant that like nonconformists,
you know, dissenters would have really like no option and
they'd be kind of like mandated into a you know,
a h an educational paradigmad odds with their culture and
devised by you know, their class betters. But he also
said that you know, the model has to be that
the educational model has to be that of the Prussian
system or you know, the American system, you know, and
again he was looking he was looking basically towards you know,
although obviously people didn't think in terms of this vocabulary
literally or conceptually he was. He was looking forward and
saying like, we're going to have to become a superpower
and change the way that we do things from the
ground up, you know, from our the way we approach
you know, labor and management relations, you know, to UH.
This idea that you know, we can we can tailor
our production schema, you know, based on you know, guarding
UH markets for all time against competitor imports. And you know,
well if the if you know, if the if the
Huns UH start UH start getting too greedy and in
terms of markets they stake out in Africa, we can
just go to war with them again like that. You know.
His idea was like, oh, that had to stop. And
you know, if you the only way that the Empire
can manage those demands is, you know, you need a
population that is basically competent in technics, you know, and
then and there has to be the focus of you know,
the of the educational system. And this was quite revolutionary
at the time, you know. And again in those days too,
state centric models were like a forelong conclusion in part
by necessity. And uh, public education wasn't this thing that
decades obsolete like today, like it actually had a purpose.
I mean, you've gotta this was literally a century ago,
you know. I can't emphasize that enough. And nothing bothers
me more than when people should know better try and
project contemporary biases. Uh ont pest uh And he said too,
like he he grew upon these the kind of a
lot of these, like a lot of these utopian progressives
among them Field Marshall Edmund Ironside, who commanded uh not
just troops on the Western Front, but he'd uh served
in northern Russia with the White Army and Allied elements.
Like he Uh, he was very much an imperialist and
very much a British patriot. Those are very much a
socialist and most even the point again and again, like
look like being an imperialist and being like a socialist
and and and and and viewing you know, like the
the races that make up the UK, like you know,
the the the indigenous elements. You know, he's like, you know,
viewing and integral socialism, it's essential to our posterity. Those
things aren't somehow mutually exclusive like Norley in conflict, you know,
and that that as a point he came back to
again and again as the b UF got established, is
that the paradigmic class conflict, it runs far deeper in
the UK than on the continent. And he acknowledged that.
But you know that it it was very much exploited
for cidical reasons by you know, by the UH. And
there then there's perverse incentives to sustain those kinds of tensions,
the forced political outcomes, and to build coalitions and other things.
You know. It's which was absolutely true, you know, but
I I wanted to deep dive into a lot of
this stuff today because that's that's really the context the
b u F. And it's uh, you know, and like
I said, it much as Mosley was like a qualified
racialist like he you know, he he had a very
equitable view for a man of his station and and
cast it's complicated, the uh, well he decided Joseph Chamberlain
a lot it was a Chamberlain was a was it
was he was related to Neville Chamberlain, and he was
a liberal unionist. He was pretty extreme in his opposition
to home rule. But he also he was among the
founders of what was called the Birmingham Education League. Birmingham
was his home constituency, and he UH, he was an
advocate of UH like secular, patriotic and mass education on
the Prussian model, and a lot of a lot of
Chamberlain's ideas if you dig into like what he said
on the floor of the Commons and things, a lot
of that is like basically like Moseley like lifted almost
word for word downs that tunitively. I mean, there's but
that's that's the source of a lot of it. There was,
you know that. I mean Mosey obviously wasn't any kind
of arch unionist like the contrary, but you know, this
idea that Mosey was appropriating some continental tenancy that had
no President of the UK, you know, but trying to
create this kind of pastige of a socialist imperatives and
and you know kind of like imperialists, uh fervor like that.
There's nothing in Congress about that. In terms of the UH.
It was the political culture which was then like still
very much extrat the UH and mostly too like you
thought he was taken in by this idea that you know, well, okay,
you know these reforms, especially the post heating forty eight reforms,
which Moseley's family didn't look too highly upon. The Silver
lying that Mosley was that, well, you know this, this
this creates new potentialities. And he thought that like, you know,
there there could be some kind of like there could
be some kind of not like national pelagenesis, but but
kind of like revival of the political culture, you know,
through parliamentary means. And he very quickly became like disabused
of those ideas, you know, Like he he gave a
long speech, uh in support of the uh it was
his maiden speech and support of what was called the
aerial navigation build. It was it was, it was, you know,
it proposed like kind of token funding and stuff for like,
you know, civil aviations, and mostly said like no, he's like, look,
the key to any other cutting edge technology there is
us mastering you know, like uh, a national culture of
a civil and military aviation you know. And having been
a fighter pilot, Mosely had obviously a lot of credibility
to speak on this, you know, and he said the
fact that a lot a lot of these parliamentarians. They
were really dismissive of him as just you know, some
kind of young professional soldier who wanted to build himself up.
I appeal to you know, a romantic subject matter, or
they said, no understanding what he was talking about. You know,
he realized, you know, like my god, we're in real
trouble here, you know, especially UH looking to America and
you know, even Germany, which was in a catastrophic state
at the time. You know, they people UH in both
respective states, you know, they had they had a far
greater understanding of kind of the the velocity and the
kind of trajectory of technology as it was, you know,
as it was at that moment, you know, the British
were really lagging, you know, which UH is one of
the things that did the men. You know, I believe
it was. It wasn't inevitable, but it was definitely a
necessary cause. One of many this UH.
Speaker 1: And his UH.
Speaker 2: A second speech he gave out aviation. He called for
UH basically the elimination of UH the kind of military
bureaucracy as it existed, like the military and diplomatic bureaucracy,
which was more integrated in the UK than in America
except for maybe peak Cold War. You know, there was
a he said, like, why why is aviation civil and military?
You know, why is it under personal control the Secretary
of State from War and Air? You know, why why
is there a parliamentary committee devoted to it? You know,
there has no accell expertise over the matter. You know,
he said there should be one single air chief almost
like a joint chief's or a or or like the
staff system that existed in in Prussia and then the
kaiser Reich, you know, but obviously not devised for the
exclusive purpose of military command. And took notice of this
and started to kind of like mimic what Mosey was
the kind of facts and concepts that he was relaying
about aviation. And then you know, Churchill let his cadres
and his cronies like later claims that were totally getting fabulated.
You know, about suppose the supposed German UH build up
an air power and you know, there are the ability
of a non existent German bombers to strike at the
heart of the UK such that you know, he he
was in those claims presenting actual aviation concepts. Some of
the stuff has directly lifted from like Moses early aviation speeches,
which is really interesting but unsurprising and very much in
character of Churchill. But uh, because around this time too,
like nineteen twenty one twenty two, you know, an immediate
aftermath of him completely falling out with the Liberal Union
front bench, he started speaking of the current the then
current epoch is the you know, the twilight of the gods.
You know, He's like, we're living in a period where
you know, we're like like the passing of the great race,
you know, is is uh is upon us and like
we're that great race and we're we're watching ourselves essentially
march into oblivion figuratively and literally. And this, uh his
model of aviation management and development at national scale. It attracted, uh,
it attracted a lot of guys to his corporatist model,
which at that point, uh, he was he becomes something
of a gadfly in the commons, but you know, he
was he was viewed as a guy who had very
serious ideas, at least in terms of you know, things
that were that were within his wheelhouse. And he attracted
a lot of prestige personalities to his ideas, specifically with
you know what he was proposing about about aviation and
uh adjacent technologies. It was really interesting and that David
Irving makes that point a lot, not specifically about Moseley,
but his book The Rise and Filled the Luffaff, which
is essentially like them it all but name. It's it's
like the memoirs of Erhard Milch. You know. Erhard Milch
was was incredibly important to the way the Third Right
developed and and it was into being like a great uh,
a great general of the air arm you know, in
a war hero. He was also uh he was the
first uh like CEO of a commercial airline, you know,
and this uh you know, and Lindberg is a counterpart
of this type in America. You know. This was this
was essential if if the UK had been kind of
less dysfunctional, like even if even if Mosey's ideas hadn't
been a resident in the way that he intended. And
you know, even if even if the fascist tendency that
have given the standard bureau of like never toally get
off the ground, if the UK hadn't totally committed suicide,
like Mosey would have been assimilated into the in into
the ruling apparatus, and his talents would have been you know,
directed in constructive ways. There's kind of waste of human capital.
It's something, uh that it's so clear and it's so
clearly catastrophic in not just in the UK the era,
but it's it's kind of the seminal example in my opinion.
And I mean that that's apparent today like in America,
but there's there's there's less of an obvious pool of
talent to draw upon or willing to dedicate their time
and waivers to the business and government. Then I guess
back then, obviously that wasn't that wasn't the case. You know,
there was there was a rememberably deep pool of incredibly
talented men. I think, uh, I'm gonna wrap up for
now and uh oh yeah, right about an hour anyway,
But yeah, well, I promise I'll get into more like
exciting and sexy stuff with the actual thought of that
buf and I'll conclude with part four. We might need
to go for like an hour fifteen or an hour
and a half though, but if that's okay with you,
it's fine with me.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: One question, one question before we go.
Speaker 1: You you mentioned the spanglearean term their technics. Yeah, can
you just tell everybody what technic, how you describe technics.
Speaker 2: It's all of those words in German that doesn't truly
translate because of the nuance it It refers to like
actual technology, like the physical stuff of technology and like machinery,
but it also refers to like a conceptual paradigm like
technological thinking. So like when when Spangler says technics, or
when you know, any any kind of German plotical philosopher
or sociologist like says technics, like he means that this
entire kind of paradigm, like the actual stuff of technology,
the the modality of thinking that incorporates it into you know,
political life, that the thought process that historically contextualizes it.
You know, the moral implications that derive from it, the
kind of sociological disturbances and benefits that that that stem
from it. It's kind of like it's it's it's like
a Zeitgeist word as well as like a word that
describes like a physical thing like that. That's what it means.
Speaker 1: Cool, all right, two plugs real quick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm having to report I have a lot of
exciting things going on. If you visit the sub Stack,
that's where the Book of my work product is in
terms of the podcast and like long form writing, it's
real Thomas, seven and seven and seven that STA dot com.
If you'll include my social media in the description, that'd
be great. My social media all is at Capital ri
A L underscore number seven h M A S seven
seven seven and I think, yeah, that's all I got.
Speaker 1: All right until part four. Thank you so much, Thomas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're welcome.
Speaker 1: Take care. I want to welcome everyone back to the
Pekenona Show. Thomas is here and we're going to continue
the series on mister Oswald mosly. How you doing, Thomas,
I'm going well. Thanks for having me. Is always.
Speaker 2: There's a critical aspect of British fascism that tends to
be neglected in the UK and Japan both. Interestingly, there
was in the later show era Japan's the Japanese Empire's
economic profile. It wasn't the internal situation wasn't configured anything
like the UK, despite I mean supervisial parallels between like
monarchy or something, if you want to draw such conclusions
like some of these, like midwid Court historians do. But
their financial system proved more robust than some, but it's
still there was still some pretty catastrophic effects. So like
in nineteen twenty nine, the UK didn't end up like Germany,
and their structural unemployment wasn't as bad as the United States,
but there were some pretty catastrophic problems and people forget
the UK went off the gold standard. There was this mutiny,
like an out and out Royal Navy mutiny, because both
officers and enlisted saw their pay cut by something like
twenty five percent in real terms, Okay, And it was
explained that well, these were austerity measures and the the
leadership element of UH, of the Royal Navy, I mean
obviously the direct line to not just to the Crown,
but you know, but to the Prime Minister, and they
were trying to get all these assurances, but you know,
to no avail. And that kind of thing is the
way of catching fire proverbial lee. I mean, that's what
in in in the I mean, that's that's what happened
in the final age of the Great War and the
German Empire. Okay, and UH, the Royal Navy had outsized
clout for obvious reasons. The people who know the culture
of the UK, so this was pretty catastrovic. Mostly the
way he came to fascism. You know, we talked a
lot about his class origins being discreetly congruous with that
sort of trajectory, you know, And I make that point
a lot in my own work product and stuff, because
this idea that it was opportunistic or cynical is acid iron,
because nobody would have taken on that kind of rogues,
you know, position if he didn't believe in it and
plan on seeing it through despite the consequences. But you know,
Mosley also he was a genuine friend of the working man,
and he had like he had an integralist view of
of what you know, of what progressive politics should look like.
And something else to keep in mind too. One of
the reasons why, especially in the UK, like everybody was
a Kingsian like right and left and everything in between.
The reason people were susceptible to that error is because
the entire global financial system Nassen does it may have
been in comparative and absolute terms, had completely collapsed and
these uncertainties couldn't just be allowed to resolve themselves over
then that's a decade or two decades there would have
been you would have been just capitulating to revolutionary conditions.
And had they not been an out and out communist revolution,
there would have been like a total collapse of state
institutions such that the commutants of the body politic would
have would have evaporated, and people would have resorted to
self help in ways that would have culminated in literal anarchy.
And even guys like Schumpeter, who was you know, I
believe that Shrumpeter's business siteles is like the academic rebuddally Keynes.
Schumpeter was no kind of demand cider okay, like at all,
quite the contrary. But even he favored one time shock therapy,
you know, because he was he was commissioned to try
and help resolve the American situation early on before he
became persona on Grado with the New Dealers, you know,
and he favored, you know, like an infusion of about
five million dollars, which I can't give you the exact
figure adjusting for inflation, but that was a tremendous amount
of money in nineteen twenty nine. He favored like a
shock therapy flooding of a of a currency markets with
public funding, as like a one time event that would
try and that would sort of stop or at least
mitigate the deflationary spiral. Okay, so everybody there was not
a single person who had like a lazy fair review
at this point, and you really couldn't. And in Schumpeter's view,
he said, look like you know, the yes, there will
be corrective structural features in coming decades, but the political
system won't abide that. So it doesn't matter if that's
you know, incorrect in terms of pure macroeconomics. That was
a bit of a digression, but it was a sense
and will understand the political situation in the UK. So
what in real terms of what this led to was
the emergence of the national government in the United Kingdom.
And this was basically unprecedented, you know. And again the
the economic slump, while not it's catastrophic in the UK,
it was the most severe it had ever been in history.
A key figure that kind of compromised confidence in the
government in the immediate aftermath of in the immediate aftermath
of the nineteen twenty nine crash, Philip Snowden, first Viscount Snowden.
He was the he was the Minister of the Exchequer
and which for all practical purpose, like a that's like
a cross between like a cabinet position at the at
the head of the Treasury as well as being like
the chairman of the Federal Reserve, if such things existed,
then you know, he was based like the chief like
financial officer of the crown, you know. And he'd uh
he he was uniquely like like Labor interested a unique
sympathy for him, okay, because he he tended. He kind
of built his uh reputation as a rhetorician as and
and sort of a dynamic figure with these denunciations of
capitalism and a kind of encyclopedic knowledge of monetary theory
and things. You know. Uh, the problem was like there
was no real substance theory. It was just that it was.
It was it was knowledge of elaborate trivia. And he
was the first Chancellor of the ex Chequer who represent
you know, who represented the Labor Party. But he broke
with what was official Labor policy in nineteen thirty one
visa the austerity measures, and he got expelled from the party.
And then later that year Labor was crushed by the
National Government coalition and he was succeeded as a Chancellor
of the ex Checker by Neville Chamberlain. Interestingly, I mean,
I think I think Chamberlain would have eventually become Prime
Minister anyway, but it was the crisis situation that really
sort of a leap frog Chamberlain into the role. But
at the helm of the Nation Government coalition was McDonald,
James McDonald, James Ramsey McDonald. We went by Ramsey McDonald.
He's kind of a forgotten prime minister and that's that's
a major blind spot even of a lot of revision.
It's not just court historians, because he was fundamentally important.
McDonald had been one of the founders of the Labor
Party along with Keiir Hardy and Arthur Henderson, and he uh,
he'd been a staunch opponent of the Great War, and
he never wavered from from that perspective. And he basically
he's the one he was able to break ranks with
Labor in doc frintal terms in the wake of the
Invergarden mutiny, which is what I just referenced at the
obset of this discussion. But h you know, and he
he formed uh in this and he also he was
able to court the Tory the Tories who defected to
the National Coalition because uh, he promised to uh carry
out austerity measures that would defend and protect the gold
standards so it would survive as like the basis of
monetary policy, which failed, and that's one of the things
that took down A. Ramsey's government. But the phraseology that
he employed in nineteen thirty one and calling for a
general election was he said, I needed, I need to
quote doctor's mandate to fix this economy, you know, and
again like people are going to look at that, Oh,
that's just typical like interventionist kinsy and socialism, Like, yeah
it is, But you can't consider this, you know in
like nineteen sixties or seventies or eighties terms or today's terms.
You know. I think I think McDonald would have advocated
that anyway, just because of his understanding of economics or
like misunderstanding, if you will. But to say there was
a fertile ground for those kinds of proposed administrative remedies
to macroeconomic trailies that it doesn't even begin to describe it.
It was a totally irring world. And information awareness and
the ability to manage data at scale in real time
that has totally completely changed everything in terms of fiscal policy,
economic planning, consumer confidence, that traject three of money, the
way people approached stocks and capital investments, like everything. Okay,
it's it's like comparing mathematics by advocates to mathematics by
like a nineteen sixty supercomputer, if you'll allow an imperfect metaphor.
But this was the backdrop that Moseley was dealing with,
you know. And he, you know, he was about the
youngest parliamentarian save a Fanian candidate who was boycotting the Commons.
You know, when he began, when Mosey began his his
political career, you know, he he was kind of perfectly Mosey.
I mean, he was kind of perfectly situated to represent
like a revolutionary tendency that was at the same time patriotic.
You know. Well, as he started talking right around this time,
he had a more than casual front of the H. G. Wells,
and he started talking about corporatism, and he said, look,
the only chance of successful progress in this country, and
really the only the only way we're going to salvage
the United Kingdom, salvage Britain, not just as uh, a
society that's not racked by class war and that retains
an integral culture and moral consensus. But like the only
way that that Britain is going to endure is a
world power, you know, is we we've got to find
a way to cooperate with you know, the the kind
of top intelligency of big business wells uh. Interestingly, one
of his lesser known works these days, it's a it
was like a novella. You'd probably describe it in terms
of length and and and sort of narrative structure. It's
called The Autocracy of Mister Pelham, and it's basically it's
sort of like the like like an Anglo Saxon version
of Citizen Kane, but it's about this fascist political leader.
He's kind of like an Anglophone Mussolini. And it's really
it's interesting, you know, and this is gonna become significant
in a moment in terms in terms of what we
described as far as it's like temporal snapshot of Mosey's
career as those of the European situation. Musoleni at this
point was viewed as a heroic individual and people like them,
you know. That's why some years later the Four Powers Packed,
which when ultimately like the signatories put pen to paper,
figuredly literally the substance of it had been gutted by redaction,
but Mussolini was viewed as this like dynamic savior of
Italy and a man who was like on the cusp
of a you know, like the new political theory and praxis,
and Italy was an important country then you know, like
I'm not I'm not trashing Italy yet. I think Italians
are great, and I think Italy is an awesome culture.
But Italy had they were far more significant, not just
power political terms, but in cultural terms. You know, like
a lot of a lot of trends like emerged from there,
kind of like the way kind of like the way
people looked at the UK in the sixties, you know,
it was kind of like the last Gas but like
the UK is like cultural relevancy on the world stage, okay,
like in political terms, Like that's kind of people view
to Italy. And this was augmented by the fact that
on the continent, but especially in Italy, like the arts
and cultural product had this outsized impact on politics and
vice versa. You know, so the fact that these like
died in the wall, like Anglos as well as as
well as some of these on the other side, some
of these Irish Catholic and Fenian types like look at
Mussolini as as as like a heroic like man, you know,
like a man's man, and and the and the kind
of the kind of the kind of revolutionary you you
can reconcile. You know, the the the class were prisis.
You know that that wasn't like most, that that wasn't
just like a she Wells and uh and Moseley being
a couple of eccentrics that was that was a not
uncommon thought or sentiment. And uh, George Bernard Shaw was
another figure in this kind of early Mosey milieu. And
I made the point a lot. And the guy who
wrote there's this interesting academic I think he was at
University of Vermont. He's the guy who wrote this really
good biography of William Pierce that Peers collaborated on it.
It was called Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds. I
believe the guy's name is Robert Griffin. But Griffin wrote
a really good book about British fascism, and he talked
about how George Bernard Shaw was an essential cultural figure
and then and he was, and people totally misunderstand this.
I don't know if it's deliberate because they don't want
to credit an important literary giant with having anything to
do with fascism. I don't know if it's ignorance, but
you know, like Man and Superman, which we'll get into
in a moment, like the stage play, that's both like
anchean terrible, but it it also is like a political
metaphor and defensive fascism. Okay. And Shaw was h Shaw
directly behooed young Moseley. He said, look, you've got to
you've got to break with labor. You've got to break
with the Labor Party, and you've got to start. You've
got to start a new movement, you know it. And
he's like, you can't. You've got to avoid the You've
got to you've got to avoid the impulse to moderate
or to compromise like McDonald did you know? And he
and this was a McDonald's on his way out. He's
like that that didn't That didn't save the prime minister.
It's not gonna save you either. But also obviously, like Shaw,
a sensibility was one of extreme vitalism and historical situated
in this so we you know, he's like, we this
is something that's that transcends like parliamentarism and anything like that.
Shaw later stepped back from involvement in party politics or
bleak or otherwise. But I I see no evidence that
he ever changed his mind, you know. And but that's
that's a that's an essential influence, even more so than
some of these uh what's that?
Speaker 1: Can I interrupt them? Most people would relate Shaw and
Wells more to the Fabian society, I mean four volume set.
I read his four volume set on the History of
Man and it's very it's it's almost like a progressive Bible.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and well Wells wasn't any kind of fascist,
and it's a but I think Shaw basically was, you know.
But the one of the reasons why the communists were
always saying that fascism is just like a crisis modality
of capitalism, and that's why it's so insidious and it's
hijacking the waver movement and poisoning the minds of the proletariat.
There there there's a reason why they that was if
a graver concerned and why it like stirred their hostilities
so much, because fascism was what a lot of people
in part probably subconsciously wanted to see develop but they
didn't have the conceptual vocabulary yet to describe it, but
they could identify it when they saw it. And especially
in the UK, the roots of this kind of like
toxic secularism, it was already like well underway. So you know,
if you were if you were part of like polite
society and you're going to look abide bourgeois convention about
what's morally appropriate, Well you're any any any kind of
radical or dynamic ideas you have, you're gonna you're gonna
suggest that those energies be mitigated by appeals to utopian
socialism and garbage like that. But Wells, I don't think
Wells was particularly political. I think wellsous he read a
lot of Carlisle and he he had a belief in
messianic personages and in history, and he thought hero worship
was a good thing. And he liked Mussolini and a
lot of left wingers like Mussolini. But I mean some
of them for half baked reasons and and for a thing,
you know, for ill understood and ill understood you know,
concepts and incomplete understandings. But a lot of them who
were sophisticated, like Mussolini for reasons that aren't inconsistent with
you know, they're the core of that ideological culture. That's
important to keep in mind. And UH already at this
time mostly's enemies. We were talking about him as like
the the English Hitler, you know, which was something of
a backhanded compliment, because Hitler at this point was what
was killing it, you know. Nineteen twenty nine was the
real breakthrough, you know. But uh, you know, so Mosley,
this all, this is this culminated and Moseley establishing the
New Party, like literally called it the New Party. Mosley
and his first wife, who also by that time was
a member of Parliament, and they were joined by a
cadre of UH labor rights who defected and UH mostly
was able to support their loyalty by the dissemination of
a canay known as the Moseley Memo. Okay, it was
basically capitalizing how we talked about a minute ago, this
enthusiasm for Mussolini that was born of a you know,
a belief in the need for like an interventionist restructuring
of the economy and a belief that at a nascent
globalized economy, you know it, variables could not be left
to uncertainty, awaiting structural correction because it would lead to
one tragedy that commons after another. You know, the people
like the Nunzio and ft Maria and Nettie among British
society and like literary circles, they were respected like like
literate people them and admired their output. You know, Shaw
himself around this time he said that Mussolini exemplified true
socialism more than any British labor right. I mean, part
of that was probably he liked to be an iconoclass,
but he wasn't wrong. I mean, if as it should
be clear to anybody who is familiar with the irrelevant
law and source material. And there was also there there
was this kind of just like fixation on Caesarism at
the time in the UK. There's a whole bunch of
like pop history books that came out about the Roman Empire.
There's this one popular historian named George P. Baker. He
wrote this book called Sulla the Fortunate, the Great Dictator.
There was another book, uh, he wrote un Hannibal. There
was a bunch of popular biographies that Julius Caesar, you know,
and they they virtually all of them contained these sorts
of uh polemic about the contemporary relevance of you know,
of Caesarism and how like dictatorship is not this evil thing,
you know, and how history, particularly crisis modalities they're in
you know, they they select for you know, heroic personages
like rising to the occasion, you know, and you know
they you can't just like one of the problems, you know,
the part of the malaise as well as part of
the callousness that's let the class war in the UK
is just kind of like writing off the suffering of
the of the laboring classes as well. That's that, that's
just you know, the tragic history. You know that that's
just you know, the creative struction, you know, where that's
just you know, corrective mechanisms mean that some people are
gonna entire classes or of humans are gonna proverbially drown,
you know, while others you know, swim and fry. You know.
So there was a much more organic kind of foundation
the emergency of a British fascism of like a true sort,
because like we talked about last time, kind of the
early iterations of like British fascism, it was basically these
like out of touch Tories who they liked the anti
communism of Mussolini and the fascists, and they liked the
pageantry and optics, but they didn't really know what the
hell they were talking about, you know, or they were
like symbolton like uh, white racialists like Arnold Leese, who
were trying to extrapolate, you know, like Darwinian reductionist nonsense
to you know, to power political affairs. You know that,
but that that that kind of that kind of bullshit
had largely been swept away by you know, the climate
of post nineteen twenty nine for reasons like what I
just enumerated or elucidated rather so the new party it was,
it's a sentence. He was brief and kind of meteoric,
and the foundations of what became the British Union of
Fascists were absolutely laid during this kind of nascent phase.
Is December sixth ninety and thirty that mostly he published
like an expanded and probably probably annotated version of of
the mostly memorandum, which mostly Uh and his wife, who
was also a member of Parliament, Like I said, Lady
Cynthia and Uh, fifteen of these defecting labor MPs signed
off on it was February ninety thirty one, mostly formally
resigned from labor. He wants a new party the following day,
March first, nineteen thirty one. Excuse me, and most of
these guys, most of these defecting labor rights sat in
the House of Comments as independence. A couple resigned because
there's will become player. In hindsight, this early kind of
cadre that mostly built around himself, with some exceptions, some
of these people weren't really committed. And even if they were,
they they didn't. They didn't really They kind of viewed
Moldy trying to insinuate himself into like a king maker
role and a spoiler element and if that makes any sense.
And they figured that, you know, we'll be able to
like reconstitute the government like within you know, the parameters
of what's feasible, you know, according to the the political situation,
you know, according to like what we want to accomplish
in terms of, you know, repealing these austerity measures and
and and and creating some kind of corporative structure that
we'll have permanent legs. That that was not realistic for
a lot of reasons. That's also not what Mosley was
trying to do. You all get what I mean in
a minute. What Moseley was was able to do. He
started being able to attract money, particularly from some of
the lesser nobility, and most significantly from UH, this guy
Lord Newfield, who was trying to carve out a presence
in print media, and Moseley what he always coveted. He
knew that William Randolph Hurst wasn't admirer of Mussolini. I
even know, but I'm getting a little ahead of myself.
But Moseley's objective was to capture a patreon like a Hearst.
But what he got was about fifty thousand pounds sterling
from Newfield, which he utilized to launch a magazine called Action,
which later kind of morphed into the British Union of
Fascists newspaper. But as the New Party got underway, there
was an information blackout from the establishment, so this was
especially imperative. The New Party produced UH a film a UH.
It was like one half propaganda film, like one half
statement of their like platform and court principles. It was
edited by Harold Nicholson, who was UH who was uh?
He had he had his he had his hands in
print media and in the newspaper and publishing industry as
well as in you know, like the nascent film industry.
You know, he was uh in the early days that
you could kind of view him as the new party
information Minister. And this film was actually very professionally done,
but uh, it was the the censors bandit on grounds
that it would quote bring Parliament into disrepute. And there
was one it was the film was interspersed with like
dramatic reconstructions and uh, you know, staged scenarios with actual footage,
and there was some films some parliamentarians literally sleeping while
comments was in session, and that's what they focused on.
And they're like, this is a Slanders you know, this
is this is this is a hit piece on the Commons.
You know, it's trying to is trying to bring the
government to disrepute, you know, which was obviously nonsense and
basically without president other than during wartime, you know, most importantly,
what Mosey did at this time he established a direct
action militia. Later they became the Black Shirts cloaqu really
they were called the Biff Boys. The captain of this
militia was this English rugby star named Peter Howard and
Moseley's notion was, you know, we've got I mean, Moseley
was kind of a rough neck character anyway. You know
at Sanders, you know, he was known for brawling and
stuff like just for ships and kicks as well as
the defend matters of honor. You know, he'd been a
boxer until some of his uh superiors and uh sort
of mentors like advised him, you know, you you should
take up a gentleman's sport like fencing. That's what he did.
But you know, well he really did have like a
thug element to him, you know, and uh so, I
mean he he enjoyed that kind of stuff, but also
it was essential and he saw the writing on the wall.
And even at this time he'd been watching what the
Hitler government was was doing or when the National so
he was watching like what the National Souls had been
doing when they broke through to the to the Reichs.
This is before this was just before Hitler was made
Chancellor Reichs Kosler. But you know, he realized that you know,
the least are problems are gonna be the fact that
you know, our movies aren't aren't shown in the cinema,
and there's a blackout on on our affairs and our
successes and in in in print media. You know where
we're We're gonna have to fight it out in the
street if if we're gonna break through like the National
Socialists did and and like the Fascists did, and uh,
like I said, although most of what the New Party,
most of its sociological kind of infrastructure was shed by
the time they rebranded as the b UF, but the
New Party, the New Party youth militia, you know, which
became the black Shirts like that that remained. The first
electoral contest was that, uh, it was for There was
a by election for Ashton under Lynn Line because the
MP had died in office. Ellen Young, who was an
early Mosley acolyte, stood against William Risdon and there the
New Party had only a threadbare organization on the ground.
Young polled fifteen or sixteen percent, which effectively did split
the labor vote and allowed a consertive MP to return
to the Commons, which could be viewed as a mission accomplished,
because I mean that did force people to take the
mostly organizations seriously. But again, even even at this early stage,
mostly wasn't trying to position himself as spoiler, and he
wasn't the permise. The New Party wasn't like the Dixie
Kratz or something who were you know, had in mind
what Wallace was trying to accomplish, not like the I mean,
what Wallace accomplished was was remarkable when I in the
American system. That was kind of a stroke and genius.
But I'm not suggesting something punitive about that. But that's
simply now what Mosey was trying to accomplish. The kind
of critical the kind of critical event or juncture was
when Moseley, in a delegation of a new Party types
went to Rome. Mosey went to Rome twice. He went
in ninety thirty two and ninety thirty three, and uh,
the both of these were instrumental in uh the fortunes
of ah of what became the b u F as
well as in Moseley's kind of personal development as a
as a fascist. And at this time too, Moseley issued
a statement and he said that, uh, he said that
class war and particularly the situation of the communists and
some of the affiliated trade union movements. He said that
that he said, uh, this this was both to be
an internal memo, but it was, it was leaked. I
think people speculate it might have been deliberately leaked by
Mosley himself. I don't believe that, but I I there
might have been some like Legered Maine on the side
of the New Party that just it's kind to bring
attention to the organization. But uh well, he was accused
of welcoming revolutionary conditions because he said that he said
that we need, we need some sort of class war,
at least the threat of it, to facilitate what he
called a provocative rather than tranquilizing effect. And he directly
referred to the situation in Vaimar and in Italy. And
he was savaged in the mainstream press. You know, he
was called an anarchist, he was called a communist. He
was accused and in an open session of the Commons
of quote cynically welcoming disorder as a way of publicizing
his readiness to deal with red disruption and the quote.
Malsey's rebuttal was he said, our long term purpose and
needs a quote to be to take control of a
revolutionary situation, which is absolutely correct. But this made headlines
quite literally, not just in the UK, but also on
the continent. And this is also when he began openly
within his inner circle, and particularly in the way he
addressed the the new Party militia. He started pulling out
the National Socialist Movement, it's the model organization. In June
nineteen thirty one, he actually sent to emissaries Major Thompson
and Leslie Cummings to Germany to liaise with National Socialists
and to talk to ESA cadres and gal Lighters and
whoever else to get an audience with about you know,
the the director action methods employed you know, in the
revolutionary conditions, and they actually visited, uh, the brown House
in Munich, you know, National Socialist headquarters. And this very
much came from Moseley. The party had more of a
a committee structure. There wasn't the kind of furre prin
zip or equivalent, but Moseley controlled h the party's funds,
and UH ultimately, i mean policy emanated from from him
and his pen you know. So the it's not as
if he fell into the influence of UH like at
the time, like UH, some of his like well intentioned
but misguided friends and then and this kind of mythology endured,
like for decades for people thinking that this was like
you know, they were helping Mosley or his memory like
oh he just fell into the influence of fascists. You
know that this Mosely was was was misled. I mean
that that's not a sense. I mean, for all kinds
of that should be obvious. But but he wasn't. He
he didn't go into the sway of some like Nazi
cadre or whatever like or you know what whatever whatever whatever,
some of these Tory types like admired and admire Mosley
like like to claim. But that's also the effect that
like Alan Young, you know who who stood for who
stood you know who challenged the by election and the
new party ticket. You know, he he he left the
party immediately when it became clear that you know, they
were moving towards over at fishism. Beaverbrook uh said, correctly,
he said not, he said, any party that's going to
Ellene the establishment for for the loyalty of the body politic,
but especially you know, like a fascistic element would require
He meant sums of money, but also like a base
of true journalistic support, you know, and in Mosley's view,
you know, raising money, money is always a problem. But
that's but it's a problem to be remedied overcoming what
he called, not incorrectly, the conspiracy of silence in media
was was the real issue. And so I mean the branding,
I mean, not gonna be wrong was a He was
a doctrinaire fascist and kind of the pure purest sense,
but he he knew that uh ran off Hers, for example,
had invested over a million dollars in uh Mussolini's cause
early on, just for the sake of a disseminating you know,
the fascist position and and facilitating the psychological effect of
it being you know, like a truly ubiquitous movement, you know,
and in those days, like print media was really the
only game in town, and like day to day like
poral terms, you know, I mean, like yeah, you visual
media nascent as it was, it had a huge impact,
but that was expensive, It was infrequent, and you know,
you needed uh, you needed uh you basically needed like
a newspaper that was already established that would carry the
your Propagandanese, you know. And the way the National Socialist
accomplished accomplished that was somewhat unusual. But it was a
very different media culture on the continent. And especially in
especially in Germany. And also it was uh, I mean
not this isn't a discussion of the the German situation,
but it doesn't need to be noted. You know, Hitler's
barnstorming was something that made up for a lot of
the you know, a lot of these a lot of
these kind of shortfalls in and in an active propaganda sector,
you know. But like that wasn't that wasn't feasible in
the United Kingdom for a few different reasons. And also
like the UK, it was only the first true kind
of like newspaper culture in my opinion, you know, like
way more so than the United States, although the United
States it was even more so than on the continent.
But that's that's kind of a subject for its own
dedicated God. But when uh, when mod the actually when
he visited Rome for the first time in januaryety thirty two,
he justified it to uh, the party cadre as uh,
you know, we need we need to study you know,
the modern fascist movement wherever it lives, you know, and
he all he intended on visiting, he intended on visiting
the Soviet Union too. Well, that never came to fruition
because knowing against he did that. Uh, you know, Mussolini
spent a lot of time studying Leninist political warfare the
Soviet Union as a Stalin who was truly kind of
consolidating the critical infrastructure. It wasn't it wasn't really clear
what the internal situation was in the Soviet Union, like
oh oh, but what was clear was that, you know,
against all expectations and against all probabilities, you know, a
revolutionary cadre structure without real support on that body politic
at scale, was able to conquer the largest country on
this planet. You know, just for context. But in In
and plus two, like Lenin had that there'd been a
weird uh kind of conceptual discourse with In the communists
and Mussolini. Like before uh, in Mussolini's revolutionary socialist days,
Lenin had viewed him as, uh like, the most potentially
if you, Lenin viewed him as the revolutionary on the
content with the most potential Mussolini, and interestingly Lenin. Lenin
believed that Mussolini had been corrupted by his experience at
the front and that the the option of the Fascist
Party platform was both cynical and pragmatic, and you know,
owing to communist epistemic assumptions. You know, well, you know,
Mussolini was co opted by capitalists, you know, because this
is this is this is just you know, a crisis
modality of capitalism, and it's it's drawing upon symbolic psychology
to you know, to convince people that it represents a
different tendency when it's it's really it's it's really just
you know, crisis mode industrial capitalism under like a different
apparently fresh guys. But Moti was treated like a celebrity
in Italy, which is which is interesting because Mussolini notoriously
was not welcoming of people who were you know, propractical
purposes like making Hodge the fascist Italy to you know,
pay homage, to tell duce or to try and glean
some some some esoteric knowledge of of of of revolutionary
ambition or something or political soldiery. You know. It's but uh,
the Italians I think had a certain The Italians and
the English traditionally kind of respected each other. Each respects
the other for what they're not, for what they themselves
are not. I think that's part of it. But you know,
it's also the key to justice. Hitler recognized, you know, uh,
most leading was more of early ecumenical in ideological terms.
I mean, Hitler was no German nationalists, quite the opposite.
I mean we've discussed that before. However, Hitler didn't view
national socialism as some ideological paradigm that was you know,
universally applicable to you know, world historical processes. You know.
That's why, with the exception of the independent State of Croatia,
Hitler really didn't back you know, like national socialist movements
like out outside of the core of the Reich. Mussolini
believed in a fascist international quite literally, and there actually
was like a Fascist International conference, which I think is
a really fancying topic in nineteen thirty five, I think,
but because it may like despite somebody congruously like Musolini
was notorious for snubbing you know, fascist cadres and and
their leadership elopment when they got to visit, but Mussolini
was uh was treated uh or Mosey was treated like uh,
you know, like a like a celebrity in Italy. And
they interestingly too and one of uh like Musolani's or
uh MOS's biographies tend to fall back. They they didn't
have fallen one side or the other of this issue,
some people claim that Mosei wasn't at all anti Semitic.
I mean, I don't like that term, but just for
the sake of you know, intelligibility, Fascist Italy in the
they there were race laws that were basically reflected the
Nuremberg laws that were passed later on in part owing
to a I think the brutalizing effect of the war
as well as the increasing influence of the Reich on
their internal situation. So there wasn't there wasn't this like
a hard and fast like racialism in Italy. But to
say like they weren't like anti Jewish in political terms,
I think it's naive, eve and just like incorrect. You know,
Mosley had some prominent Jews in his inner circle, at
least in the New Party days. You know, Mosey being
like an avid boxing aficionado throughout his whole life. There's
a weltaorweight Champigne saw mendel Off. He fought under the
name kid Lewis. You know, he was like an ethnic
Jew and he and he'd he'd do security with them,
you know, with what became the black Shirts, you know,
and uh, he seemed very much to be on board
with the program. He wasn't just doing it for money
or nothing. On the head order mostly Uh never shied
from the Jewish question later on, but he he also
never talked about it in biologically racialist terms. I think
that owes the internal situation of the UK. I don't.
I don't. I think it owes any emulation in Mussolini
is as some sort of moral arbiter of a fascist
ethics or something. But I just put that out there
because I know it's gonna come up either in the
comments or you know, people are gonna want to discuss it,
which is fine. I'm not saying they shouldn't, but it
was that was Uh, that was the true turning point,
in my opinion. I think by nineteen thirty one mostly
was a fascist and in all but name, but after
after the return from Italy, and obviously it was you know,
it was mere months not years later that the BUF
was was consolidated, essentially by assimilating all the fascist elements
that exhibited any viability and gameness. And in England and Scotland, interestingly,
you know, one of the things that caused UH most
the initial falling out with with his National Liberal fellows
was on the Irish issue and what he viewed as their,
you know, adject callousness towards the Irish. In Scotland, many
if not most, of the fascists of any significance fascist
cadres they were, They were arch loyalists. They were very sectarian.
And Billy Fullerton he was the He was a gangster
and he was the original, the original Billy Boys mob.
You know, they were like a they were a sectarian
uh gang and uh he was a b UF partisan.
So that that led to kind of a delicate situation,
which I think what it caused, uh a real rift
had the b U f had had to I mean,
the b UF fortunes ultimately became an extrictly bound up
with that of the access in the German Reich for
obvious reasons, and the Kingdom of Italy. Had UH, had
fascism endured in a counterfactual historical scenario, it's an interesting
question like how the matter of Ireland and sectarian hostility
would have played out. But that's probably too kind of
speculative and abstract. But I think we're coming up in
about an hour. I promise will wrap it up in
the next episode. I hope this was informative and entertaining
to all the subs and not just dry and trivial.
But like I said, this is a subject near and
dear to my heart in addition to being you know
very much in my very you know very much kind
of at the center of my research interest. So yeah,
we'll reconvene in a few days. I'm going on vacation
this weekend. I know you know that, but I think
I deserve a Thomas cation. Like I travel a lot,
but you know not, probably seems like I don't do
much like on these traveling johnts like I just saw.
We just saw each other in Atlanta, yeah, man, which
was great. Yeah. But I'll be back Sunday night, and
I I'll be crossing paths with a bunch of the
OGC guys, so I'll give them your best course. Yeah.
But yeah, well, we'll reconvene as soon as I get back. Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think anybody, any of the subs are
going to complain about five episodes on mister Mosley. So
do you quick plugs?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: The best place to seek out my content is this
substick is real Thomas seven seven seven at subsec dot com.
I Uh, I'm a good count of with my friend Rake,
who who edited our movie. When I get back from Arkansas,
we're gonna release the movie and I'm gonna release steel
Storm too, and not steel Storm two. I mean in addition, also,
I've got plenty of mind Piacer season three content that
is on schedule to be released bi weekly moving forward.
But uh, I know there's been some delay. He's in
steel Storm, and I want to keep people posted on
the movie. But as soon as I get back, I'm
going to decide the best way to upload it, like
in terms of what platforms. And I'm very excited and
I think people will really enjoy it. But I'm on
social media. My alt is at Capital r e A
L Underscore number seven h m as seven seven seven.
You can always visit. My website is Thomas seven seven
seven dot com, but it's it's it's under construction. I mean,
you can still access it and stuff, but it needs work.
And I've got a lot of my play right now.
But that's gonna get resolved too, I promise. But yeah,
that's that's uh, that's what I got, and that's all
not feeling great, So forgive me if I I forgive me,
if this was less cogent than it should have been.
Speaker 1: I don't think any I don't think anything. I don't
think anybody will be able to tell you we're sick.
This was this was, this was great.
Speaker 2: Okay, No, thank you. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Until until episode five, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome here for one back to the
Pecamano show. Thomas is here and we will continue talking
about mister Oswald Mosley. How are you doing, Thomas.
Speaker 2: I'm doing well, so I think that's There's two things
that I think are very interesting about the period of
about nineteen thirty one nineteen thirty three, you know, not
just because that was the national Socialist descendancy and that
changed things globally quite literally, but especially it changed the
perception of fascism, but not not in ways that people
might think in that early on, okay. And also I
made mention before that most considered himself an accolade of Kenes,
and Keenes actually thought highly of Moseley, and he endorsed
his economic model, you know, and like later, like like,
the British establishment had a strange relationship with Keenes on
account of this. You know, they'd held him out as
kind of like the savior of of the global economy,
the nacent global economy, so it was not anybody's interest
to slander him or try and sideline him on ground
that he was some sort of unpatriotic fascist sympathizer. But
they stopped trusting him after that. And you know, I'll
get into this too, but like the British Home Office,
when it became clear MOSIC actual support, they issued the
statement that was deliberately leaked about how, oh, the British
Union of Fascists, it's populated by criminals and men who
find themselves in trouble with the law. And it's you know,
and and and and commoners and servants, you know, and
and men who don't have the skills to make it
in the industrial economy. That was completely at odds of reality.
You had a bunch of guys, the kinds of guys
who ended up settling Rhodesia. You had a bunch of
like really game n CEOs for war heroes. You had
a bunch of young guys who kind of had a
resume like oral did. They'd been to Burma, they'd been
to it, they'd been to India, they'd been to Africa. Like,
these guys were adventure hungry, like very like you know,
kind of marshall oriented like like very tough people, and
they were kind of the backbone of the late British Empire.
They were the kinds of guys who joined like the
Black and Tans. Like I'm not saying that's like a
good thing to do, but like these were very aggressive
people who believed in in you know, in Britain. Like
there's the kinds of guys who you know, uh joined
the the uh answer to the call and Ulster, you know,
the thirty six Ulted Division and got creamed at the Somme.
There are the guys, the guys who he signed up
to be constabulate police and Burma Like that's one of
the reasons why they were dangerous the establishment. See this
is this is like the myth about like fascists, and
it's like, on the one hand, it's like, oh, fascists
are a bunch of no account losers who live with
their mom and can't stay out of jail. But then
on the other hand, it's supposed to the most dangerous
people anywhere. It's like, which is it, you know, so
that this this mythology very much. Uh. You know that
that was kind of like the founding narrative because early
on Chamberlain's ascendency after MacDonald and when Churchill was kind
of on the outset, everybody, you know, the the the
British street didn't particularly like Hitler, but they viewed him
like they did Mussolini, Like they viewed him as as
an incredibly important figure and a consummantly serious guy. You
know this like like you know, and if for nonother
if for no other reason, you know, people forget that
the prospect of a communist revolution in the UK and
specifically in England, that was a very real possibility. That
wasn't that That wasn't like nonsense, That wasn't like air nonsense.
You know, uh, where these like Bircher types of bandy
that like the Communists are gonna take over Iowa. There's
a reason why Mark said that in his mind, you know,
a Marxist letn this revolution was gonna happen in the UK,
and it'd be staved off for a time in Germany
because Germany had already moved towards state socialism. But you know,
this is a very real danger and even a lot
of even a lot of polite society types who who
thought that the BUF for bully boys and thought that
Molesey was kind of a dangerous, sinister person. They were like,
I'm glad that these guys are are stomping communists, you know,
I'm glad that if push came to shove, you know,
we we'd have this like vanguard of of of men
to deal with it, you know. And I'm getting a
old bit ahead of myself, but you know, one of
the things that happened the National Socialist descendancy in uh
in March nineteen thirty three, the National Socialists, they pulled
forty three point nine percent in the rights February twenty
eighth of nineteen thirty three was the reichsteg Fire Decree,
which for all practical purposes banned the Communist Party and
Ernst Tolloman got arrested. Like how the different like how
they constituent elements of of of the former German Empire
dealt with the reichsteg Fire Decree varied because there was
still something of a devult federalism at play. That was
that was all done by by nineteen thirty five thirty
six but even even in gues and you know, territories
that were friendly to the National Socialists or at least
like not unfriendly, Hitler and Hindenburg weren't issuing Dick Todds.
And this is how you must handle. This is how
he must implement the reichschdeg decree. So the Communists still
has some breathing rooms some places, but for all practical purpose,
but their leadership had been arrested. The storm up to
them was was was was stomping the ship out of them.
You know, they had the entire state apparatus turning on them.
And the most important thing is the KPD can no
longer send delegates to the Reichstag. So for all practical purposes,
in political terms, the National Soldists had a super majority,
and like parliamentary terms, you know, although not in like yeah,
sweet population terms. Why the Communists responded to that was
the Communists declared, like a united front, and they're like
from now on, like, we're not gonna we're not gonna
antagonize labor parties, We're not gonna antagonize Democratic socialists. We've
like we got to present a united front to fight
the fascists, you know, and Uh, this had real implications
on the British street because up until then, one of
the things that early on before the BUF of the
b UF when it was under the banner of the
New Party, the Independent Labor Rights mostly advantaged to poach
a lot of those guys, including his original head of security,
which later became like the direct action element, like the
Fascist Action Force, which was basically like the b UFS
like stir upped along. I'll get it at a minute.
But the reason why the Independent Labor Rights gravit hated
to the fascists like it wasn't just because a lot
of these guys are basically patriotic, even though they were
you know, like left wing, but the communists were attacking
their meetings and and and uh and stopping them out
because basically it was like, you're not, no, nobody's gonna
ride under the red banner unless they're communists, you know,
when they stopped doing that because basically wanted to put
bodies in the street and and and smash the the fascists.
And this really alarmed people, as it should have because
revolutionary conditions were brewing, and in Moseley's view, moy moy
got a pretty nuanced view of this. You know, he
was not by any means as symboled in on political matters,
Like nobody would have said he was dumb in absolute terms,
but he was actually very sophisticated in practice and theory
of politics. And his view was, I don't think the
Communists can win here. But he's like, politics have become
starkly binary, you know, and there is no position anymore
other than that of a fascist or that of of
of the Bolsheviks. You know, that does not there's not
like a discursive space outside of that, you know, And
how Churchill and the focus hijacked policy, that owe to
the fact that things had things had abated in a
large part, especially after the Communists lost in Spain and
they lost in Germany. You know, people got to understand
that the Communists were winning at this point. You know,
this was still three years before the Spanish were even
kicked off. You know, they definitely had momentum on their side.
And that's I mean, I think, wellse he was a
fascist anyway, and if you read what he wrote, especially
when he was outlining the corporatist model, and that was
its first real long form political testament, was the coming
corporate state and then attracted again not only the praise
at Keenes, but guys like George Bernard Shaw. And Shaw
was still addressing Fabian society meetings, but he was talking
like a ash just you know. And even in the
twentieth century, I mean even even in the Inner Warriors,
a lot of people still who weren't particularly sympathetic to
communism or particularly left wing in their colleagues. That's just
where the animating energy was in political life as they
gravitated to. I mean, obviously after ninety forty five, that's
where anybody with any radical inclination was funneled due because
the Zech guys wouldn't permit anything else, because anything else
would have been a fool's Errand but the fastest perspective
in the UK, I'm not going to continent was a
minority perspective, you know, not as much of one as
the Home Office wanted to do allege, but it wasn't.
It was a minority perspective, and only certain kinds of
men found a home there. And uh so that's important
to that's important to understand. I think some people who
don't understand the history, they've got a tendency to consider
Moseley in some because they watched bullshit like Peaky Blinders,
and they had they had this character in their mind
of Moseley as being as being like George Lokt rock Well,
but with a lamey accent or something that's completely off base,
you know, Like I said, that's one of the reasons
why despite what I view of as some of his
blind spots in the post warriors and moss a hero
of mine, he was a great man. And you know,
in part I consider on those terms because he he
was a sophisticated political theorist, and as was Mussolini in
his own right, and most Lene was kind of the
kind of like the right wing Lenin. You know, Mosey
wasn't just a tad lest sophisticated guy and like a
tough individually every sophisticated view of politics, and a lot
of that ode I believe to you know, his familial
lineage and things. But it was October nineteen thirty one
that's been mostly formally broke with conventional politics, and in part,
like I just mentioned, that was because of what he
observed as the experience of the Independent Labor Party, and
for clarity, the Independent Labor Party broke with the mainstream
labor rights because they viewed them as basically like a
stop gap was either like a they view people like
McDonald is kind of like trying to force a stop
gap solution whereby you know, a parliamentary so because you know,
where were some concessions would be granted to the laboring classes,
but essentially the system would remain as it is. Or
they viewed it as a you know, a mechanism of
active sabotage of revolutionary ambitions. Okay. And as the Independent
Labor Party developed, you know, a direct action capability at
a presence on the street, like the communists began not
first they began disrupting them, and then when they didn't
quit what they were doing in the communis started violently
assaulting them. Like it got so violent that the ILP
they couldn't carry on the business of electioneering, you know.
And Mose was looking at this, and Molesey's like, okay,
if this, if this is the way that, if this
way the left is treating one of their own sectarian tendencies.
You know, we're we're we're we're tripping over our own
feet proverb speaking, and thinking that you know, some kind
of some kind of patriotic alternative to the Tories or
the you know, or the National Unity Party as it
was called, is viable, you know. And one of the uh,
John Beckett, who uh himself had been one of the
main organizers of the i LP before they before they disbanded.
For all practical purposes, he'd set up his own defense force,
you know, like like stir them up to long type
element because he'd been a boxer, you know. And he
ultimately clicked up with Mosley when Moseley set up the
New Party and this kind of became the background of
the British This kind of became the backbone of the
British Union of Fascists, you know, like guys like this,
you know. And uh, this is also when the seed
was planted in his mind of cultivating a direct action
element like a party militia which preceded the British Union
of Fascists, you know it uh, the like like the
the New Party youth movement.
Speaker 1: Was uh.
Speaker 2: What was was mostly called them the shock Troops as
well as the security et Schalona the New Party and
this became a lot more formalized obviously as the b
UF became the British Union a Fascists and they were
the first guys to wear the UH where the you know,
the the flash in the circle. You know, it represents
action within unity, but originally it was it was the UH.
It was the direct to action element, the you know,
the youth cores that that wore those. And then because
initially the British Union of Fascist their symbol is a
fascion's just like the Italians, that's all. But surely it
developed its own aesthetic. And incidentally, you know, Mosley had
been a champion fencer and he kept it up like
even into his political career. The British Unit of Fascist
black uniform. It looks like a futurist kind of thing,
and and it is. But the tunic is a fencing tunic,
like painted or dyed black, you know, in part because
it's it was it's like a primitive form of body armor.
But also UH, it was supposed to represent UH like
UH kind of like the dialectical collision and resolution of
you know, like the past and like things like swordsmanship
with like the future, you know, which I think is
really cool. But and it was also distinctive from both
the National Socialists and and and UH the National Fascist
Party in Italy. But it was in October of thirty
one that Uh, it's kind of that, that's like the
seminal date that you know, like Mosley abandoned normal parliamentarism,
but the Mosie also he held something in common with Kadrianu.
He didn't know Kadrianu. I think he probably knew i
On Mota, and I'll get into why I think that
as we proceed. I On Mota was the right hand
man of Codrianu. He fell fighting the Communists in Spain,
and he was very much martyred. Vasil Martine who is
his comrade, another Iron Guard guy. They're about Kia and
this was like this was like a rallying point for
fascists when when they were killed. And Mota had an
internationalist few of fascism, which I find which is important
to our discussion. But those are just interesting on its own,
interesting on on its own terms. But the UH, interestingly
to the UH, the new Party UH youth militia. These
guys at first were surreptitiously attending Communist meetings to kind
of see what their ops were doing, but they ended
up actually poaching a fair number of communist members to
their ranks, which is interesting. And these guys moved in
a lot of similar social circles and mostly did them
very deliberately. Like the reason I made that drew the
analogy to Quadrianna in the early Iron Guard. Most he
believed very much. He said, we got to concentrate on
like a cell structure, and you've got to do stuff
like insinuating, you know, our peoples into athletic clubs and
like social clubs. But where people are serious, you know,
it's like, what do we need to poach the youngsters,
you know, for for the UH, for the youth militia
you know from like boxing and fencing clubs. You know,
we need we need to poach older guys, you know,
from like the Fabian Society. And some of these guys
who you know are are you know, bright intellectual lights
in the communist movement, but who obviously don't really belong
in their own to their patriotic bona fides, which was
which might seem like a foreund conclusion, but the UK
is not America and like it's not the same thing.
You know. That that was actually pretty radical thinking and
not particularly easy to accomplish. But one of the things
about Mosley being a lesser aristocrat and his like unique
background and his family's heritage literally of crushing radical elements
and his ability to kind of like move in different circles,
as well as the fact he was a genuine man
of action, this like allowed him to kind of jump
the the class and cast barriers which to this day
remain quite rigid in the UK for like a developed country.
It's it's anachronistic, you know. But uh, and what's most
and what I think I I mean, I think it's
I think it's someone indisputable, you know, Moseley, despite Diana
Mosley's personal friendship with Adolf Hitler, which was a very
real thing. That's not Home Office propaganda and it's not
creative license like court historians. It was. It was very real.
But aside mold of that and the superficial commonalities between
the National Socialists and the buf MO was it was
first and foremost the fascist, you know, and his view
of fascism was distinct. It wasn't merely derivative. But I'll
get into such as the Italians developed a fascist and
called it a Fascist International, which had some success and
I'll get into that because it's important. One of the
reasons they liked Moseley. It wasn't just because he liaised
with them personally and that made Mussolini feel important and
the obviously had a genuine rapport, but also mostly didn't
abide National Socialist race doctrine. You know, he just didn't
like That's not to say it was something egalitarian. He
was very anti Jewish, though not not in like racialist terms.
He was very pro white visa via the white dominions
of the UK and what do you imagine the future
of them being. But you know, he didn't have any
time for this kind of stuff that guys like Arnold
Lease did you know, who spend his days kind of
pouring over stuff that Julius Striker published, or you know,
this kind of a Darwinian racialist stuff and is a
model for for a political doctrine, you know, And and
the Italians approved of it. I don't think a lot
of the National Socialist leadership cast didn't go for that either,
but a lot did. And Germany, like the United States,
that's something people just accepted. They thought that that's they
thought that that was the essence of racial persona if
you will. My friend Giles was nice enough to publish
a an article I wrote on that I guess more
of an essay really, but.
Speaker 1: You know the.
Speaker 2: Ninety thirty one also, I mean this is when Keenes
is openly this when King was openly banning mostly as
a progressive thinker and an important man. You know, Keenes
that sympathized with the national government when he viewed it
as viable, and that wasn't unusual. I actually have some
respect for Ramsey McDonald, like we talked about last time,
and I think the time before, I think Donald was
in an impossible situation and as a head of government
and a parliamentary system. Okay, I mean you take the
fall for the failure of that government or coalition, okay,
But you know, Kings. I think Keings was is essentially
worthless as an economist in terms of you know, true
economic theory. But I understand the limitations of the time,
and frankly, that's why everybody became a Kensian. This idea
that you know, it's a kind of embrace of anarchism
to just put the nuances of of of of a
rapidly integrating global economy just you know, be like left
to left to fate or chance, you know, the the
inability to to code data correctly and to identify what
variables must be coded, and most importantly, the inability to
register information in real time, which we didn't acquire until
the two thousands. Really, you know, I made the point
again and again that some you know, some of even
something like the crash of eighty seven, like wouldn't happen
or couldn't happen again, like structurally it's precluded, but you
know it. It's the equivalent of it's like talking about
it'd be like, uh, throwing shade on pythagorasts. This is
probably imperfect analogy because I'm not a math a math
guy at all. It'd be like throwing shade a pathagorists
because to him, like the theoretical math was restricted by
you know, like available instruments like an amicus. Okay, The
technology is just positive in these things, especially when you're
talking about systems where you know variables and the ability
to corral, identify them, corral them, and calculate them or
is entirely contingent upon high tech, you know. And this
is exacerbated in economics because time is of the essence
in a way is not and other endeavors except for
maybe warfare. I'm sure Marxis would have something to say
about that. That's a truce. But uh, I think the
Soubs understand what I mean, you know, and the Kens
also accepted. Uh. He basically accepted Moses's paradigm of politics
moving forward, that it was going to become very binary.
And one of the few things Shumpeter is always putting
out and Kens that agreed on was that a communist
revolution is probably inevitable. You know. Schumpeter thought this could
be staved off by concessions of the body politique and
by you know, a prosperity aready having a you know,
as corrective functions set in in the globalizing economy that
would have an effect of kind of neutralizing the most
radical elements. But Keeens was looking at this as basically
a neutral arbiter and he's like, okay, you know, if
if you want to preclude a Soviet style nightmare here,
there's got to be some kind of planned economy. And
the corporate state was basically it was basically kind of
like a demand sider's dream. And I would argue that
the strange as it might seem as a model of
administrative efficiency. I think that the British system in the
nineteen twenties and thirties, like the inter war system, I
think it was uniquely situated to administer something like the
corporate the corporate is model it was. It would not
have led to long term prosperity. There would have been
terrible problems. But in terms of mitigating the initial crisis
and facilitating short term development in a punctuated way, which
in turn would have generated real capital, I think it
probably would have worked very well. Okay. I don't want
somebody to cut that out of contact and then say
I'm some kind of fuck had Keenesian, because I'm not
at all, Okay, so please don't do that. I mean,
it's funny sometimes when people do that, but that's that
wouldn't be funny. I mean it would be you know
what I mean. In the event, January ninety and thirty
two is when that's when Moldly made it second visit
the room, and that the MOSI truly became a fascist, Okay,
and Mossoleny very much kind of cultivated this. I mean,
I don't I don't think I don't I don't think
Mosley was some kind of simpleton and it was taken
in by the the kind of hero cult of a
little duche. I mean, I'm sure he was somewhat. I mean,
anybody would be like like Mussolini was an impressive man,
and he was a man's man and just a remarkable guy.
But i you know, mo Mosley was young, but he'd
you know, he was a combat veteran, he he was
a he was an aristocrat. He was a natural leader
like he he he wasn't somebody who was snowed or
by this kind of thing. You know, Why did why
did Mussolini cultivate Mosley so much? I mean, I think
especially when initially there's mutual respect, but there was a
coldness that mostly in the exhibited towards Hitler. In contrast, okay,
like you has a few things. You know, the Italians,
despite what they might say then or now, they they
want the approval of the British, you know, I mean
the British kind of cult, not kind of the British
do kind of covet the aspects of their own kind
of racial and national character that are lacking and that
are expressed with great vitality and in continental people and
specifically you know, people as in passion as the Italians.
But you know, there's a there was a huge prestige
in those days to the British Empire, and it's like
some vestige of that indoors today, albeit a shadow of
its former self. But so there is that. But also,
you know, contra the National Socialists and Hitler specifically, this
caused some tension with Hitler in the SS. That's way
too much of a tangent, you know, other than the
independent State of Croatia, which was a totally unique case,
and the relationship of the Croats is that people of
the Germans is unique. The only thing comparable really is
like the Serbs are to the to the Russians. But
the Hitler government went out of their way to disabuse
anybody of you know, including their staunch allies, of any
sense that we're going to try and model our government
on the national social estate. The fascists are trying to
cultivate something very different. Now people forget this. It's kind
of been lost to history, kind of like the Four
Powers packed in part because I think it it conflicts
with the sort of simple minded narrative of what fascism
represented Mussolini had I can't read or pronounce Italian, It's
not even gonna try. Mussolini convened this uh office within
the party and within the government. It translated to the
Action Committee for the Universality of Rome. That's kind of
a bastardized translation like that. Basically like like the colloquially
it translates to, you know, like office for like the
promotion of the Roman culture or you know, like or
the Roman political education. It was basically like it's basically
common form became later okay for the Soviet Union, and
its purpose was to i identified fascist tendencies and friendly
states as well as movements behind enemy lines that could
be cultivated and brought into you know, second internationalist political tendency.
This has culminated in the nineteen thirty four Montru Fascist
Conference in Switzerland, also known not incorrectly and not as
colloquially as the Fascist International, the first Fascist International Congress.
It was held in December nineteen thirty four. In the
sixteenth and seventeenth and there was a There was representatives
of what had been identified by the Action Committee for
the Universality of Rome as a bona fide fascist movements
in something like over thirty countries, but such that it was.
The delegates came from thirteen different states, including ion Mota
from Romania, you know, the Iron Guard Quizzling was there,
the Greek National Socialists and a delegation one of the
Falangists UH deputies came, but the Falangists UH like command Element,
refused to endorse it because they claimed the Falange are
not fascists. The Irish Blue Shirts sent a delegation the
movement Front Ciste, which was not affiliated with Charles and
Morass's movement. They identified explicitly as fish. And what became
of them, I think a lot of them ended up
being folded into various militias because they kind of disappear
from the historical record by nineteen thirty seven thirty eight.
So that's part of the problem is I can't I
can't even read like passable French, like I mean, I
can read passable German. But there was a Baltic contingent Salazar,
some representative of Salazar's movement, you know, you get the idea,
you know, there was a some of the some of
the Austrian national Catholic types. Belgium had sent a contingent,
So did the Danes, the Netherlands. You know, you get
the idea and there's an indigenous like Swiss element. Obviously,
notably absent was any delegation the Third Reich. There weren't
any of the Austrian National Socialist present. But at that
time there was a delicate minuet going on between them
and Mussolini, especially because they were waging an insurgency campaigning
as Dolphus and they actually ended up murdering him. I mean,
which is there would which to say the least caused
some real consternation between old Duce and the fear. But
that uh and Mussolini there weren't that. There was obviously
like Italians, elements of the Italian government Fascist government were
facilitating organizing it, but there weren't any like there weren't
any like ideological commissars there from like the Fascist Party,
because mostly he wanted to he didn't want he said,
he wanted to get like an accurate rendering without you know,
people trying to jockey for like favoritism, money, geostrategic benefit
you know, from from the party. It was basically put
these put these men in a room and like see
what they do and see what their priorities are, and
you know, see if we can properly call them constituent
representative of constituent elements of an international tendency. Mosley did
not attend, and he did that for very specific reasons
because by this point, as I just mentioned, I mean,
this was this was late nineteen thirty four. Not only
was Hitler reichs Consler, but the Reichsteig Fire Decree had
been passed. There was a state of emergency. The National
Socialists were also like busy passing laws like disenfranchising Jews politically,
so all over the British press, most these opts are saying,
mostly is a Nazi. Mosley is a an agent of
the Kingdom of Italy. You know, Mosley is this anti
Semite who has been insinuated into our mist because owing
to failing political fortunes, he looked abroad and he's basically
like a paid asset, you know. And this man, this
man should be behind bars, you know. And if we
can't put him behind bars, you know, we we we
we we need to shame him and and you know,
expose him as is this is this genocidal, biological racialist
or whatever but first and four. First and four hist
concern was to deprive the enemy in the domestic press,
and these this element that became the focus later deprived
them of the ammunition to claim that Mosey with some
kind of foreign agent or foreign asset, you know, and
that was that was wise. But you know, I emphasized
that because, I mean for a few reasons, not just
because it's essential to understanding kind of the various iterations
of the revolutionary right in the Inner War years, but
you know, the the fascists, like the capital f fascists,
whether you're talking about whether you're talking about Mostly, whether
you're talking about Mussolini, whether you're talking about Ion Mota,
and uh, some of these Iron Guard partisans, these guys
are basically adjusting for cultural discrete cultural tendencies and animating elements.
These guys were basically the ideological project of George Sorell.
You know, they they viewed themselves as arguably you know,
they believed that they believed in a total kind of
regeneration of the race and the national community and a
new conceptualization of of of man in the twentieth century.
But at the end of the day, you know, they
they came. They were emergent from you know, not just
the spiritual crisis of the Western world, but the radicalism
of the labor movement. You know, when something had to change.
What was imperative was not to allow, not not to
allow the communists and in their estimation, you know, the Jews,
to subvert this historical momentum, you know, to destroy the
national community or the racial community or like a rip
man out of historical existence. But that's very different than
the way the National Socialists approached things, you know, like
like Hitler wasn't a fascist, you know. And I'm not
being I'm not being obtuse and saying, oh, because he
was a National Socialist. I mean that goes without saying.
But Hitler was something very different, as were the men
in his inner circle, as were the control group of
the of the NSDAP, who were somewhere to Hitler had
something of a contentious relationship with despite the fur of
Prinsip and everything else. But even but even even the
National Socialists who found themselves kind of at odds with
Hitler doc trinally, they represented something very different, you know,
And and that's important. And I think that because you know,
Shorthand for Marcis Lennon is shorthand for all their enemies
basically is fascist. And that's something I think because I
think because people in America generally are kind of intellectually
impoverished in matters of politics, the kind of simpleton like
liberal laughs sort of like appropriated that vocabulary, you know,
and there's an unfortunate tendency of people to kind of
accept these things as colloquialisms, which is a very deleterious
effect on the ability the conceptualize stuff accurately. But I
think that's a lot of this misunderstanding comes from it's like, oh, anybody,
anybody who the left uses their ops and anybody who's
European then you know, right wing but not a conservative,
Oh they're fascists. Like that's not that's not constructive, and
it's it's it's it's particularly inaccurate in the case of
the National Socialists. I highly recommend Durance Nolty's Three Faces
of Fascism. That was his first major work translated into English,
and he backed away from some of the some of
the UH epistemological claims containing their in and some of
the conclusions. But I I I I don't find any
substantial flaw with its methodology or its conceptual paradigm. If
you want to understand what I'm talking about here, that's
a very good starting point. But let me check for
my mind to see how long of them going. Okay, Yeah,
were definitely to like wrap it up in a a
in another episode before you're telling me that's okay, I
just didn't. I don't want to monopolate that. I don't
want to monopolize your time or be too long winded
on this topic if it was making people bored or
they wanted to move on.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't think anyone. I don't think anyone
is bored and wants to move on.
Speaker 2: So yeah, no, No, I get I probably get so
conscious in ways that I shouldn't. I think it's a
whole over from when I was young and I used
to worry a lot about that kind of stuff. No feedback,
I mean, obviously you can more direct feedback on this
than I because it's your show. But it's been uniformly positive.
But I I still worry about it sometimes, man, and
especially when somebody's kind of to, you know, gift me
with a platform and discuss stuff with me. But I'm
the Uh. One of the things it was right around
It was March nineteen thirty two, so I mean right
around a lot of these critical events. But before the
before the Fascist International Tolerance when mostly been back from
Italy for a couple of months, the b UF was,
you know, formally kind of being launched in uh, politically
in the Political Quarterly, which was kind of like Foreign
Affairs magazine is here, but like more widely circulated, like
basically everybody read it. It was politically engaged, you know,
like regardless of their ideological Struke Mosey kind of laid
out the case for fascism, but he did so from
like a very in a very Hegelian way. He said, look,
we are in the UK specifically, is in the midst
of a crisis. You know. He's like, materially like obviously
the Germans were hit harder than us, but politically our
system wasn't is in greater crisis than any other, you know.
And he said this crisis has produced new parties, new
types of men, in new forces. And he said that
the only way this crisis can be met, let alone mitigated,
is by men who quote turn their backs on the
old world and on the old political system. He said
that communism it won't just supersede social democrats and labor rights,
it will smash them, you know. He said, Conservatives think
that they can bring these people, that they can you know,
kind of gel these people or cut them off with
the knees by bringing them into the coalition. He's like,
they that's not possible, you know, because he's like they're
operating on the assumptions that were just enumerated, you know,
like they are that vanguard of new men. And he
said only the corporate state can defeat the Bolsheviks, because
he says, not only does the corporate state present a
model for you know, economic planning that on the one
hand doesn't leave you know, macroeconomic decision making to chance,
but it also doesn't strangle the golden goose, and it
like allows private capital, you know, to to reap the
benefit of its bargain and incentivizes you know, investment in
the nation. But he said also like out of this structure,
you know, will comes like a defense mechanism of like
men who are like mobilized in service to the nation already,
you know, and who have a stake in the corporatest
enterprise and contain they're in is you know, a very
kind of brass tax political education that draws very rapily
the distinction between you know, friend and enemy with respect
to the internal situation. You know. So he said that
this is imperative, you know, to basically not not just
to guard the empire and guard the racial community and
to protect Britain's political system from you know, destruction and
subversion from within, but he said it's also necessary to
create and generate basically basically an apparatus that they can
inculcate you know, men with the necessary political doctrine. You know,
He's like, basically like, by creating the structure which will
then force a direct confrontation with the communists, it will
become very very clear like who is the friends are
of the working man and who is not, And those
that would seek to subvert it will quickly be exposed
as people who you know want to destroy any patriotic
impulse which they view as vestigil and reactionary, you know,
in englishmen specifically. So you know, he was making his
case not just for political economy of the Keynesian stripe,
but like with teeth, but he was also suggesting that
this is the only structure that can facilitate you know,
national salvation and like the basic defense of life in capital.
And he wasn't wrong about the condition is emergent, you know.
And I don't think people realize that in this country.
I think they have they have some idea that the
UK is kind of like America Light or something, or
just like a smaller version. They don't like, they don't
understand the degree to which revolutionary communism had had momentum there.
You know, it's not an accent and you know it's
not an accent that Cambridge five were these like society
type guys, you know, like it wasn't it wasn't just
like shop stewards and like angry, uh you know, kind
of middle class types who who and in the British
sense that means something very different than here, you know,
who who realized that, you know, they're kind of saddled
with diminishing returns and in the industrial system kind of
found themselves in the role of like underpaid overseer. You know.
The these these were guys like Kim Philby and his friends.
These guys were like the best and the brightest, you know,
I mean, and that they weren't outliers and UH, the
in the in the British system, guys like that were
groomed for certain roles within the within the empire. You know.
You you can't just chalk it up like, oh, that's
just limousine liberalism, or that's oh, that's just rich people
being you know, commedies. It's it's you can't explain it
away like that. It's something very different the UH. But
it was that October nineteen thirty two, right around the
time that mostly turned thirty six years of age, that uh,
the British Union of Fascists was officially formed with the
thirty two founding members who kind of became the alt comfort.
One of the most important UH figures personages rather in
the party was Raven Thompson. And I probably enough time
to fully flesh that out in this hour, but but yeah,
the the degree which too, the kind of uh, the
kind of internal mythology the b u F you know,
like what what Mosey and the members and and and
men like Raven Thompson who was the propaganda officer. These
guys are very it's very much Uhanism through the ends
of Bernard Shaw. And make no mistake like Shaw was
very much and Echian and I'm kind of fascinated by
he was writing about the tragedy of the Commons and
I can't remember the name of the essay, and he famously, uh,
he famously said that Jack the Ripper was uh was
a great eugenicist and he was like performing an invaluable
service and he was serious about that. He was serious
about that kind of stuff, Like he wasn't just being
he wasn't just being like an eccentric limey who likes
to make taste as jokes about like cutting up hookers
or something. I mean, yeah, there was some element of
that too, But you know, this in consolation of ideological
and uh and kind of conceptual tendencies from like George
George Bernard Shaw to uh to you know, the Fabians
that he associated with and in Keenes and Mussolini, and
the kind of direct influence that early on he uh
he wielded uh intentionally or not or Moseley. This was
a very unusual constellation of aspects, but it was very genuine.
It wasn't just this kind of grab bag of rationalizations
or something, you know, And it was a very it
was a very British and specifically English fashion, like there's
a heavy Scottish contingent in the b u F and
Ulster guys like interestingly Billy Fullerton. The Billy Boys UH
of sectarian lore H were founded by Billy Fullerton and
he was a b UF. He was either a day
one UH like b u F Street flighter, which seems
peculiar on its face in some ways if because Moldley
was you know, quite sympathetic to the Irish. But it
but there's something very there's something very English and in
some way Scottish as well, at least in some aspects
of the party that you know, it can't just be
understood as UH as a kind of like a racialist
or right wing tendency that oh wrote under a fascist
banner owing to some derivative impulse or something like that.
It was very much its own thing. But we're coming
up on an hour, so yeah, let's UH. I will
finish up on Moseley and and the the Epoch in
question next time, and I'll talk about the I'll talk
about the British Free Corps, which of course is UH
the Britishers who joined the SS, some of whom were
British Union of Fascist veterans, but I think that would
be very good man.
Speaker 1: Alrighty two plugs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very excited to announce that the movie, the
documentary that my dear friend Reake and I made, it's
finally finished. So I'm gonna spend this like the editing
is finished and stuff. I plan to spend this weekend
figuring out the best way to upload it so that
people can see it. I haven't decided where I'm gonna Ideally,
I'm want to upload it the substack. I don't know
if it's possible yet. I might have to upload it
the gum road. But believe me, everybody will shout it
out on all my social media. It won't be hard
to find. My substack is a real Thomas seven seven
seven dot substack dot com. I'm also on Instagram, I'm
on x I'm like many many places. My social media
alts is at number seven H O M A S
seven seven seven dot com. That's what I've got all.
Speaker 1: Right until part six, Thank you, Tom's. I want to
welcome everyone back to the Peaking Yana Show. Thomas is
here and I think we're going to close out to
talk about Sir Oswald Mosley aren't we.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can continue for one more episode to discuss
the British Free Corps if you want. I'm going I'll
discuss some of it today, but it's up to you
in the subs. Yeah, we'll play it by your that's fine.
The that's imperative to understand is a lot of what
happened to Oswald Mosley, you know. And he was interned
under Defense Regulation eighteen B, which allowed for the internment
of anybody who was actively sympathizing with enemy states during wartime.
This was so loosely defined it could entail pretty much anything,
including mere statements. And as Lady Diana Mosley pointed out,
you know, Mosley scrupulously obeyed the law, and he there
was precedent for this in terms of his personal as
well as political conduct. When the police ordered him to
do something, he refused to provide information on his comrades
or members the BUF or anything like that. But if
they ordered him to disperse, he did it, you know.
And if he was threatened with a charge of a pray,
he'd stand his people down, you know. And there was
a substantial in relative terms, number of BUF members you know,
who were in the British army or with the police,
and he told them don't don't disobey your superiors, don't
undermine the chain of command, don't ever do that. You know,
He's like, try and try and encourage your felt you know,
white Christian and Scottish and Welsh and sympathetic Irish men
and women to see our point of view. But this
idea that he was some dangerous revolutionary or that he
was trying to subvert the crown by way of espionage,
that's laughable. Now. There was a weird precedent though, as
the kind of what gave rise this paranoia. Like, don't
get me wrong, the Churchill government and particularly Cretans like
Van Sattart, they wanted to harm mostly for personal reasons,
as most political ones. But there was odd intrigues that
you know, led to Chamberlain adopting some very draconian policies,
including the Treason Act, which made it very very easy
to convict people of treason and under the common law
as well as under the previous Act defining Treason in
the United Kingdom, which dated to the sixteen nineties. Not coincidentally,
there had to be two witnesses accusing the defendant of
the acts alleged in the indictment, and somebody could only
be charged with treason by indictment, and the discreete and
specific acts had to be witnessed the trees in act.
Get did it away with all of this? Okay, you
could be convicted by the same standard of evidence as
any other felony. And it was a mandatory death penalty.
There's only one penalty, and it was death, which is
quite completely insane. Okay. But why this came about? Then,
this is important. I'm not I don't want to derail us.
But in the World War two series, we talked about
how the New Dealers, and specifically Roosevelt he quite literally
sent Joe Kennedy away to the UK. He did it
for a couple of reasons. The American establishment in the
Bridge didn't particularly like each other, that this was not
some like close cozy relationship at all. And Roosevelt didn't
Rose about didn't like church all, he had contempt for him.
Roosevelt didn't like Chamberlain. He thought he was an a
feat snob and a jerk. You know. The US government
didn't like the Crown, you know, so sending America first
Irish Joe Kennedy over there. They did two things. It
subtly antagonized the British and prevented some kind of sympathetic
ear being offered to them from the Department of State.
It got rid of Joe care Kennedy, who's a thorn
in the side of the New Dealers. But it also,
you know, one of the things that people like vance
it's hard and typical kind of conspiratorial British fashion. One
of the things they used the presidence of people like
Kennedy therefore, is they wanted to see like who he
was making contact with, Like they wanted to see who
in like a wider cultural milieu between the UK and
America was stoking exis sympathy. And this this, this led
to a very very strange case. Let me just call
my outline real quick. I want to see what I
for get me. It was the case of uh, it
was the Kent affair, Okay, And this is relevant to
some of the other things we talk about, Like Tyler
Gatewood Kent. He was a diplomat, like he'd been born
in Manchuria and his father was the consular, the US consul. Okay,
he developed a fluency in Russian because he was something
of a polymath, okay, and he literally just like studied Russian,
you know. He went to the University of Madrid for
a time through his father's connections, you know. Then he
joined the State Department. He was the first American ambassador
to the Soviet Union under William Bullet. But then weird
stuff started happening. On the eve of the war in
nineteen thirty nine, some of his colleagues began to suspect
that he was a Soviet sympathizer, and they went as
far as suspecting that he was spying for the Soviet
Union and he had knowledge of cipher pads and things,
you know, Like a lot of State Department officials, especially
in those days, he was basically an intelligence man. They
were under like light diplomatic cover. But basically what some
of his colleagues were sympathetic to say the least to
the Roosevelt New Deal program we're saying, was look, just
so you know, he's a Soviet agent. And Oss later
insisted on the same thing. The British were convinced he
was a fascist. And this is where this gets interesting,
because he got removed from his posting in the Soviet Union.
But obviously Roosevelt was cultivating deep independence with the Soviets
even amiss the non aggression packed. So when Kent arrived
in London, where he got sent, you know, in part
because so his superiors could keep an eye on him
when he got When he got there, he immediately made
contact with a guy named Ludwig Matthias. And Matthias was
almost certainly an advert agent, and he was under investigation
by Special branch Okay. Then Kent was seen hanging around, uh,
this kind of haunt for in South Kensington that Russians
were known to frequent, you know, both you know, Emmigray's
from the White Army, you know, who fought the Communists
and uh like died in the old Soviet types. And
he met this Russian woman kind of like uh, lesser
society type woman who'd been married to this uh, this
rich British merchant, and he started having an affair with her,
you know, and they started going back and forth between
the UK and the Soviet Union. Now through uh, through
a lady named Anna Volkov, who was another kind of
society person, he met Archibald Ramsey. Now Ramsey had been
an associate of Oswald Mosley and he founded what was
called the Right Club. He defected from the Conservative Party
and then from the Scottish Unions that found the Right Club.
And the Right Club was basically like an anti Jewish pack, okay,
and it had his ability to kind of attract like
society people, you know. And this made this made Special
Branch really upset, and I mean Chamberlain really upset. And
when Churchill ascended to the Prime ministership, he basically resigned
to destroy it. And this is another thing that regulation
at and B was tailored the crush. But it's the
interesting aside. It beg's the question like what was Kent's deal?
And Kent he was ultimately brought up on charges for
his associations with people engaged with the Right Club, as
well as him acting as an intermediary between various pro
axis elements. And he probably knew Lord haha, William Joyce personally. Yeah,
he definitely delivered coded cipher messages to him, okay. And
we'll get into like who Joyce was in a minute,
but m I five. Essentially, they approached Joe Kennedy in
May nineteen forty and said, look, if you don't waive
Kent's diplomatic immunity. We're going to assume you're in cahoots
with him, and we're gonna charge you too. This was
like the implied threat. Okay, So two days later Kent's
home got rated by I five and they found almost
two thousand official documents as well as messages between Churchill
and Special Branch, which begged the question how the hell
did he get hold of that kind of data. But
they also found he made copies to the code room
at the US Embassy. Him and Anna Volkov were both
charged with violating the Official Secrets Act. And he's lucky
because he probably could have been executed despite being a
foreign national, had like the Treason ad come down and
been tested and well, obviously he couldn't have been tried
for treason. It would have set a precedent killing people
who were viewed as acts as agents and had been
insinuated into sensitive roles. He was tried at Old Bailey
in a secret trial. No witnesses were permitted. The only
ones permitted were from m I five is that they
could document like what exactly he had and what he knew.
M I five and m I six were there. But uh,
Ramsey Archibald Ramsey actually testified against him, which was grimy.
But Ramsey's supporters or apologists in the present day would
suggest that he was convinced that the man was a Communist,
which doesn't make a difference to me, because like, you
don't rant people out and lie on them. I don't
care what they are. You know, if there's some kind
of horrible person, I'm like a child molestor Okay, deal
with them extra judicially and give him some justice. You know,
you don't testify on people. Okay. So Ramsey kind of
showed his true colors as a coward. But that's that's
actually a credit to Mosley. Is the reason why he
didn't associate with people like the Right Club. But he
was sent in the seven years. He was eventually released
after as the war was coming to a close. Okay,
he immediately left the UK upon release was understandable. He
went down to Texas nearly fifties and he married this
like wealthy airis down there and he immediately joined this
organization that was probably an undercover like clan outfit, like
KKK outfit, and he started publishing this pro segregation like
a tabloid and he started railing against Kennedy, saying Kennedy
as a communist. Now, the FBI investigated him as being
a KGBS set, but they can ever show up enough
of a case to charge him formally. They just made
his like miserable and they couldn't conclusively figure out what
his angle was. I mean, to me, it's pretty clear
he was like a Francis Yackey type, you know. And
he started making Soviet contacts after the after the Non
Aggression Pact was signed, and then he saw the writing
on the wall and realized, I'm gonna do everything I
can to kind of swing the strategic balance and favor
the Soviets because they're definitely gonna win this war, and
I want to do everything I can to undermine the
Anglo American Zionist alliance. That's very clear to me, okay.
But it makes sense that the FBI and m I
five couldn't figure this out. Okay. But Kent really really
upset the whole incident, really really upset British intelligence, and
it's specifically upset the focus, okay. And as it became
clear that war was inevitable between UH the Axis in
the UK because UH Chamberlain had been totally compromised, in
part by his own you know, by checkmating himself with
the War Guarantee, to the to the Polish hunt, but
also because the focus and and and the War Party
was just gaining too much power. I mean, it should
have been clear that Chamberlain's days were numbered anyway. And
and politically he was he was, he was dying. But often,
especially in a system like the UK's, in a parliamentary system,
the prime minister he developed, is insinuated, is insulated by
something of an echo chamber, and the information he's privy
to is na truly insinuated into what the opposition is thinking.
It's not like America. Okay, there's this blind spots kind
of built into the executive. But as as it became
clear that the British were not going to come to
terms no matter what, Henry Williamson approached Mosley. And Williamson
wasn't a fascist, but he was very much like enamored
with Teutonic stuff then with Germany, and he had, you know,
he had kind of a long view of what was underway,
and he said, quote, if I could see Hitler, you know,
a fellow common soldier of nineteen fourteen. You know, I
might not be able to give him the German common soldier,
the enmity he so desired from England, you know, to
be fair, in those days, like people weren't really privy
to a broad conceptual horizon in terms of policy as
it was developing. I mean, Williamson was like a society
type and a novelist. He he probably was naive, but
you know, it wasn't clear that the fix was in
no matter what the crown was going to war, that
was the whole point. But he sought out Moseley, He
sent him a letter and then when Mosey like asking
if Moseley could arrange somehow, william started to get an
audience with Hitler, which was very naive because like despite
I mean, Hitler very had was very fond of the
Midford sisters, and Gebels in particular respected Moseley himself, like
as a man and also like as a political soldier.
But this idea you could just like get an audience
with the fear that's that's somewhat ridiculous. But Williamson went
to visit Mosley on August twenty sixth, you know, days
before ninety to thirty nine, you know, days before the
onset of war, and Moseley was totally resigned, and it's like, look,
I read your letter. I I I understand you're upset.
I sympathize, but this is pointless and we're probably all
gonna be in turned if we keep doing what we're doing.
But I'm gonna see this through. And so Williamson left
like thinking Mosley was some kind of like maniac, but
of course he was absolutely correct. You know what, really
what really kind of changed things from you know, rumblings
by people like Van Sittart and the War Party talking
about you know, like locking up traders and whatever it was.
When the Germans overran the Low countries, and you know,
it became clear that you know, this this entire enterprise
of drawing Germany into some attrition war on the Belgian
frontier and then either humiliating them in the battlefield or
trying to force terms that they would undoubtedly find uncomfortable,
whereby you know, the Wehrmacht would overthrow Hitler or whatever
these I six types were thinking. I mean, it became
clear that that was like a ridiculous fantasy. So as
the battlefield situation turned for the worst. As the British
Expeditionary Force or the allt Expeditionary Force was wing in
terror at Dunkirk. The establishment became obsessed with this idea
of we're gonna be subverted from within, and there's some
fifth column leaking information to Berlin and Mosley and his
supporters are agents to the ab there, which is laughable,
especially considered the ad there and was like the fifth
column in Germany. But the degree to which people advance
at Tart believed this or not, and whether they believed
some like the Lyon assault I the Wehrmacht and the
kriegs Marine was going to happen, it's hard to say.
I mean, to me, that seems incredible anybody would believe that.
But uh, Hitler, did you know he assigned von Runstedt
to actually, in fact engineer and operational program for Sea Lion,
going as far as the outfit uh civilian barges with
literal aircraft engines to pilot them across the English Channel,
having Frankenstein them into landing craft. I mean, Hitler did
that as a strategic ruse, you know, for the not
to frighten the British. But you know, to essentially spoof
like Stalin's intelligence apparatus. And I mean Hitler wasn't a fool,
you know, in terms of his ability to empathize with
others and their likely perceptions. But it's one thing to
convince the Soviet Union of something. It's another thing to
convince the British now, because the Soviets are dumb and
the British are smart. But this cultural and linguistic barriers there,
and there was this physical distance in those days where
you couldn't have like an electric eye on something eight
hundred miles west. So this was kind of a perfect
storm of conditions whereby the War Party could begin treating
Moseley and anybody else they decided was insufficiently enthusiastic about
the war effort, as you know, traders and enemies of
the state. And this was exacerbated by the fact that
Edward the eighth, the former King, Edward the eighth, he'd
only reigned from January twentieth, nineteen thirty six until December
of the year. What he abdicated to Mary Wallace Simpson,
you know, the American divorce, A kind of flapper party girl.
She's a woman. She was like her only thirties, but
you know, Edward the eighth was a known anti war partisan,
and Van Sittart began insisting that, you know, obviously we
can't place the Duke of Windsor under arrest, but you know,
him coming out publicly in favor of the Peace Party
could sabotage the war effort, which is already becoming desperate
in strategic terms. And this basically was when the fix
was in Okay for Defense Regulation eighteen B and when
Moseley was arrested.
Speaker 1: To be.
Speaker 2: Clear, at peak there was only sixty five or so internees,
and a lot of these people were there, like a
lot of these people were Right Club members, some of
them were Imperial Fascist League holdovers. But it was basically tailored,
like a lot of that was cosmetic, it was it
was very clearly tailored to incarcerate Moseley and you know
Ruin is uh without making him a martyr. I think
by then they realized even if they had the even
if they had the nominal legal authority to execute him,
that that would have been disastrous for reasons I'll get into.
But at and B was the was like the Imprisoned
Moseley Act, and all but name okay, the uh immediately
before or in the year in like the six to
twelve months before he was incarcerated. In the days after
the UK's war declaration is Germany, Moseley went on a
tear But he framed this very skillfully, like I don't
mean any think cynical, like he believed everything he said.
But he again he he was he was sticking to
his ammunition to people to scrupulously abide the law and
not to try to undermine the war effort, although you
know obviously like he admonished people and not doing anything
to help it. He started characterizing the Peace Party cause
like what it becoming kind of the Peace Party de
facto as you know, leave that leave fourn elements on
the content to fight out through him quarrels. You know,
He's like, we, uh, we've gotta we've got to curate
the empire and what what remains of the empire, you know,
because at that point there was h the Irish situation,
you know, there was real talk and the Arlamanda letting
India go. I mean, this was this was a this
was a critical juncture in historical terms, you know, and
he said that we've got to we've got to carry
the empire. We've got to shore up, you know, this
vast capital that we do still possess. We've got to
transition somehow into a post imperial condition without sacrificing our power,
projection ability and our our truly global capital, you know.
And this made a lot of sense, not just a fascists,
and you know, people were disgusted with the War Party
and the Focus, but it made a lot of sense,
even the Tories, you know, like those who hadn't been
totally compromised by uh, you know, by the Focus and
and and adjacent element. And Moseley was saying something that
was on people's minds but was not supposed to be said.
You know, he said, like war, even if we win
this war, it will lead to the disaster of defeat.
It will lead to the triumph communism. In planetary terms,
it will be the end of the British Empire. You know,
the only winners will be international Jewish finance. You know,
his word's not mine. I'd agree with that, but just
to be clear, America, in the Soviet Union and world Communism,
this is a suicidal effort. You know, they're Germans are
not our enemies, but even if you hate them, we
can't win this war, you know. And a certain energy
started developing behind that, you know, like Uh, Diana Moseley
Uh made the point like years on and that October
ninety thirty nine at the Stoll Theater, just under three
thousand people turned out and uh mostly started openly condemning
Jewish capitalists, you know, American Jewish capitalists and and radical
radical elements. Uh, you know, who who have who have
a Zionist cause in mind, who are or driving us
towards war when Britain's have no interest in this war.
And she said that people were going nuts, like effusively.
They were like throwing romans at him and stuff. You know.
This at the New Hippodrome it was the same thing.
It was a two thousand or so people, you know,
almost all of whom were like throwing romans to loots
like it was like a mini like Nuremberg rally, you know,
and obviously special branches on the ground watching this stuff.
And hostile media, I mean, other than the Daily Mail,
the entirety of national media was against Mosley. But you know,
just by word of mouth and just by you know,
getting FaceTime with regular people in all these districts where
there might be fertile ground for his message. And of
course too, these are the guys and the parents and
sweethearts and wives of guys we're gonna get who're gonna
get drafted, you know, living in these places. There was
a real momentum there. And this was London also in
large measure, okay, And I mean that's huge, and especially
in the UK. It's like eldy one thing. If Moseley
was uh was only raising mobs of this of this
numerical magnitude you know, in the sticks are in you know,
kind of far flung constituencies, I mean, like his own Frankly,
that'd be one thing, but I mean this was this
was in London. He was doing this, you know, and
the mostly rallying cry at this point, just before internament
was like raise your arm for peace, meaning like you know,
hail victory, but you know for peace.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: When that that really really really upset Van Sittart, Vancaitar
took to going around handing out I mean, what what
what what a petty piece of ship? This guy was
hestead of going around druing a list of people he
wanted to see shot for treason, Like what what kind
of a like like, what kind of an adult man?
Presumably you know, sound mind goes around drawing up a
list of people he wants dead. I mean, you can't,
you can't make this up. But these these are the
kinds of people who were you know, in UH in
the true seat of power, which speaks for itself. But
another thing, that kind of UH not just sealed Mosley's
fate in terms of UH, the focused regime, but also
raised his profile and made him indisputably the UH that
like the the the leader of British fascism and national socialism.
It was the matter of William Joyce as I think
of it. And also Gebels openly praising Mosley, and Gebels
didn't really praise anybody outside of the Greater German Reich
as a part of that was political. Part of that
was because Gebels was it just wasn't really in his
nature to be that charitable, you know. But William Joyce
was executed in a gross miscarriage of justice. And I'll
get into what it is. Who is William Joyce. William
Joyce join the British Union of fascists in nineteen thirty two,
so he could be considered an alt confirm it. Became
a leading speaker. He was an Irishman. He was Protestant,
but he was an irishman. Like I don't mean he
was an ulsterman. I mean he was Irish Irish, but
well I'll get into his family's loyalism and his mother's
confessional heritage. But he, uh, he was a typical kind
of or not typical. Is nothing typical about this, but
he was kind of like a cliched like great kind
of like Irish order and like partisan. You know. Uh,
he was just like very thin, almost kind of almost
kind of spectral looking man, like very pale, but super intense.
You know, he wasn't conventionally handsome, but like women really
liked him and and like and like guys looked up
to him, and you know he there was like this
kind of dynamic like really really forceful, angry tenor to
his delivery that never seemed like theatrically ridiculous. Like the
guy he just seemed like stone, like a stone cold
partisan who also I had like a gift of like
beautiful flourish that was never obnoxious and soaring in its quality.
But uh, he became the BUF director of propaganda. He
replaced Wilfred Risden and later became arguably the like like
the closest man after the closest man to Mosley, like
in in the leadership element. He also like as another
like cliched Irish character is he was a brawler. Like
he he'd go, he'd go toe to toe with any man.
He had no fear and despite like not being physically strong,
he was incredibly tough and people were afraid of him.
He was like a legit like street fighter. But uh,
what's significant though, is he he'd been born in Brooklyn,
New York City, USA. His parents, uh were from the
West of Ireland. His mother was a this devout like Anglican,
like Church of Ireland Anglican. His dad was a Catholic,
but his mom definitely ruled the roost, and when he
was still an infant, his parents moved back to Ireland.
You know. But he his citizenship was American and Irish.
He was not a British citizen. And this becomes significant
not just for academic reasons, but for reasons of due
process on other things. But his big, his big contribution
in part he spearheaded the effort to First of all,
he was instrumental in changing the name that bufter the
British Union of Fascists and National Socialists. He identified as
a national socialist, first last and always. Okay, he had
no time. I mean, he was obviously pro white, like
all national socialists are. They had no time for the
bullshit racialism of people like our lease. You know, he said,
our enemies first last and always are the Jews. You know,
if if we're not going to attack Jewish power and
identified Jews as is like the enemies of of of
of the European race, then we're not serious, you know.
And the transition of the party platform away from this
kind of like in ideological terms, that kind of secular corporatism,
and away from this kind of like bullshit racialism towards
you know, a real kind of national socialist disposition that
was very, very focused on combating when they perceived as
the Jewish enemy. This this was this was because of Joyce. Okay.
He was ultimately sacked by Moseley, and he went on
to establish his own National Socialist firm, which wasn't the
massive membership organization that thinks the question is to whether Joyce,
despite is brilliance for oratory and political soldiery in partisan terms.
I speculate he might have thought that a Sea Lion
assault was coming and he was trying to form a cadre.
But because it may him and Mosey's falling out, Mosey
refused to condemn him or speak against him. It was
pretty clear it was personal or Joyce maybe we'll have
had designs on on on leadership, and that's something you
can't tolerate. It doesn't make you an egomaniac or somebody
who's in the game for clout. You can't. You can't
have people who are like intriguing to like replace you
in the ranks. But one of the reasons I believe
that Joyce thought Sea Lion was gonna be a reality,
Joyce said to his intimates and confidence openly he was
really outraged by the Government of India bill which was
passed in nineteen thirty five. I mean outraged at the
government because that basically was a plan for like a
kind of devolved federalism or devolved administration in India, similar
to what had gone gone on in Ireland, with eventually
obviously like letting India, go, Joyce said, you know, I'm
gonna be the Viceroy of India someday when we win
meaning the access powers. You know, who who is there
going to be under arms as a cadre, you know,
but but us and and and the BUF you know,
a national socialists who've proven themselves by fighting the communists
in the street. I'm paraphrasing, you know, and and Edward
the Eighth is gonna he's gonna, you know, he's he's
gonna reclaim his rightful place again, you know, on the throne.
And I'm gonna become the Viceroy of India. You know.
He's like mostly told me that. Whether mostly told him
that or not, who knows. But obviously as late as
late as a ninety forty one or so, there's nothing
he believed that this is like actually gonna happen. And
don't get me wrong, everybody thought that Germany was was
going to realize n sig That's what I'm talking about.
He literally thought that, like there's gonna be like a
national socialist United Kingdom like under German hegemony, and the
Empire was gonna, you know, become like the fascist guardian
of the Sea. Or something which seems pretty fantastical. But
again I've noticed that in my own life as well
as in my studies of the historical record, a lot
of guys who make the best partisans, you know, and
in the way that Joyce was, they don't really understand
Blake conceptual geopolitics and in Zeitgeist things. Okay, so I'm
not gonna sit here and make fun of Joys for
being like an Irish and angry Irish romangic who you know,
was was at base like a political soldier. But Joyce
uh realized the way things were going when the Second
World War broke out, and that he realized, okay, I'm
probably eminently going to be arrested, you know. So Joyce
and his wife emigrated to Germany. He he'd been tipped
off probably that uh, he was going to be detained somehow,
even for a even before Defense Rag eighteen D came down,
especially because he wasn't the British citizen, you know, if
they wanted to really play perfect is hardball, they could say, well,
you're an enemy alien, aren't you. You know. And in
nineteen forty he became a naturalized German citizen and upon
owing to his own kind of gumption in charisma, as
well as the fact that again he and Mosey had
are falling out, but Mosey never condemned the man or
anything of the sort. Joyce had. He had a chance
of meeting with a lady named Dorothy Eckersley who'd also
emigrated to Berlin, and she'd been uh in the in
the women's division into the BUF and uh she got
him an interview or at least to sit down at
the room funk house, the broadcasting house. Okay, that is
how Lord Hahawk came to exist. Okay, because Gerbels, who
was always looking for people who could propagandis fluently, you know,
in languages that would be impactful in key constituencies. You know,
I can't remember his names on my head, but there
was there was this Iraqi guy who became buddies with
Gebels and he broadcasts you know, Arabic language pro axis
propaganda to Iraq, the Levant you know, Palestine, and I
mean that's fascinating too. But uh, Joyce's first broadcast, uh
he read the news out in English on September sixth,
nineteen thirty nine, just three days after the onset of
hostilities and they were so impressed. And he had he
had he had perfect diction, you know, which he was
an educated guy, and again he had a cosmopolitan upbringing
despite you don't think of like an Irish street fighter
as having that sort of intellectual resume, but he did.
And he uh he became the exclusive English and newsreader
of the Propaganda Ministry. He got his name, uh a
guy named Jonah Barrington, a Daily Express radio critic. He
referred to him as a man quote moaning periodically from
Ziesen who speaks English of the hahawd, damn it out
of my way variety. So uh, Joyce decided to lean
into that ship instead of identifying himself as Lord Hawhaw,
which is actually pretty funny. But it what's ironic though,
is later there was this guy, uh who's a comedian
who was also on uh on on on on Berlin
radio then named Wolf Miler and uh he was a
comedian and a journalist, and he'd affect this like almost
flawless English accent that sounded deliberately moronic, almost kind of
like a Monty Python his caricature, you know, and I
just like say, like ridiculous bullshit and it's it's it's
believed Barrington might even though he said that it was
Joyce that he heard, he might have heard uh Midler,
which makes it even like more funny. But uh, you know,
like uh as on the side, I mean adddlely like uh,
I've I've got uh I've got kind of a stray
in sense of humor. But uh, if you know what
to look for and you understand the context, like adjusting
for historical uh nuances. Uh, like a lot, a lot
of a lot of the stuff that came out of
Germany of like that was deliberately comedic was actually like
really funny. Like it's not like Germans are just like
a funny people, you know, like uh figuratively and like
literally and in terms of their comedic chops. But this,
I mean, this whole thing kind of seems like like
like something you'd see in like a comedic satire movie.
Like it isn't weird, but I mean, like everything everything
that happens with respect to the British at wards, everything
involving the British at wartime is weird. But the uh,
the combination of Lord Haja suddenly appearing like whoever Barrington heard,
like haha, was like a real guy. Yet he was
broadcasting on the daily and that and British Intelligence you know,
which was and they were very good and they still
are in imperative terms them coming to understand that Gerbels
thought highly the b u F and he basically never
mentioned like any other like national Socialist element abroad m
I six uh secret intelligence service. They were laid back to, Uh,
they were laid back to the war cabinet. Look. Gebels
considers the BUF to be like the National Socialist cadre
in in in the United Kingdom. That's literally what they said.
And that's when the fix was in finally, you know,
I mean it was I think it was an Now
most of it was going to be in cars rated regardless.
But that was when even even accounting for the deliberately
loose language statutory language devised uh for Regulation eighteen B,
now they had what was, you know, concrete evidence that
Mosley was a clear and present threat to national security
and that uh, that was that what became a joyce.
This is important and just a horrible joyce was captured
at Flindersberg, which is near the German border with Denmark,
which of course was where like the last play. It
was near me like the last with a on its
government was you know, Joyce got captured. The British Army
intelligence obviously they took a very strong interest in what
was going on in that operational area. They spotted this
disheveled looking guy gathering firewood, you know, so they confronted him.
The German jew who's adopted uh name was Jeffrey Perry
even born Horst Penschever or Pinshever Pinschever. Uh, like a
lot of a lot of German Jewry, German and Polish
Jews had found their way to the UK and the USA,
and they were very deep and military intelligence. And of course, uh.
One of them men who testified, uh interrogated and then
testified on Piper and leipstend Art was Pearl, who later
came out wash was uh what was a torture, you know?
His his his old thing was enhanced interrogation, you know,
which is really really grotesque in all kinds of ways.
But I have no idea if if Perry a ka Pinsh,
I have ever tortured anybody. But he was an intelligence
man and he engaged joys and conversation, and he was
about to let him go, and he said, uh, you've
got a really interesting diction. You know, have you ever
have you ever been west? Have you ever been you know,
to the United States and the United Kingdom? And I
guess uh Joyce answered him in English, and they carried
on for a moment, you know, Joyce kind of carefully
guarding his identity, and one of the other men in
Pinschever's details said, that's Lord Hawhaw. I recognized that voice,
and Joyce had a really like deep register that was distinct,
you know, and if you hear somebody on the radio
all the time, and especially intelligence types who I'm sure
we're studying these broadcasts. Pinschever then detained him and after
a while, you know, Joyce is like, look, I'm not
I'm not gonna pretend I'm I'm William Joyce, I'm Lord
haw you know. He was driven to a border post
and then he was handed over to the MP. He's
he was taken to London and he was tried on
charges of high treason because again the trees in law,
the only punishment was death, you know, and uh, he
pled not guilty on a theory of I'm not a
citizen of the United Kingdom. I can't be a trader,
you know. And a lady named Rebecca West wrote a
book called the Meaning of Treason, and this kind of
brought the case to kind of greater awareness. Like people,
I think people did employ realize, especially because about propaganda
as they were, as well as the lack of availability
of information that we take for granted today, take for
granted today. I think they just assumed that you've been
tried for you know, some some kind of propaganda related
war crime or something, you know, and didn't really think
about it, you know. And of course Julius Striker had
been executed for quite literally publishing a magazine or a
newspaper that was in bad taste, you know, I mean so,
but he was literally tried and executed for treason, you know. Uh.
And uh A J. P. Taylor, who's a not he's
a revisionist in a sense. He's a great historian. I
highly recommend him. Norman Davies was a disciple at Taylor.
Taylor wrote in his History of England technically quote technically,
Joyce was hanged from making a false statement when applying
for a passport, the usual penalty of which is a
small fine, which is kind of this literal gallows humor,
but it also happens to be true the statement just
for clarity, and I'm sure the subs are probably interested
the statement. The literal statement that was attributed to Gebels
regarding the matter of Oswald Moseley and the BUF was
this is submitted by Special Intelligence Service. They claimed Gebels
was on a record as saying, quote, Moseley is making
his presence felt if he goes ahead skillfully, he will
have several opportunities. That seems weirdly cryptic and scripted. I mean,
I've read a lot of what Gebels wrote. I don't
want to get into some debate about like what is
authentic and what is not to take my words what
I've written a lot of what Gebels. I've read a
lot of what Gebels has written that doesn't sound like
his writing, and it's just what does they mean, Like,
you know, this guy will have any opportunities like that
seems tailored to kind of substantiate a charge of some
kind of subversive activity in the role of proxy of
an enemy element. Maybe I'm looking too much into this,
but I don't find it hard to believe that Gerbels
praised mostly he probably did directly in the presence of
somebody who then availed this hearsay to some British agents
or you know, it was recorded on some document that
was then appropriated and delivered to a you know, the
Home Office and intelligence branch or whatever. And this is
just kind of like what the way they decided to
paraphrase it and cross their verbal teas and dot their eyes.
But yeah, let me see what the time it is. Yeah,
I'll rap up.
Speaker 1: I think we're looking. I think we're looking at another episode.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll wrap it up here in
a minute, and the next episode will deal with like
the British Free Court, because that's actually important. Then it's
like a good addendum to this. And but it's just cool,
like Britishers being it's just cool. I mean, I think
it's cool, but I'm sure people who were inclined to
listen will too. But there's also been a theory and
I don't know where David Irving fell on this. I
I tried to find it, but his God love Irving
as well as anybody in his orbit. But the uh,
other than his bookseller website for focal point publications. The
David Irving archive is like a mess. It's become like
a non navigable mess, which sucks. I really, if anybody
close to mister Irving is watching this, please salvage that
stuff and make it accessible in a coherent way. Because
God forbid mister Irving passes away, we're not gonna be
able to access that stuff, and it's gonna be wiped
from the cloud. But I digress. I think Gebels may
very well have been talking about Albert Arthur Albert Tester.
Arthur Albert Tester, he's referred to in a lot of
I five and six memorandum is doctor Tester. Tester was
the son of a British Foreign Office guy, a diplomat,
and he married a German woman, and his father was
the long serving console in Stuttgart, where Tester spent like
his early childhood and because that's where he learned to
speak both English and German. For the rest of his
life he spoke English with like a slate German accent. Okay.
When the First World War broke out, Tester was interned
in Germany as a British citizen. After that his life
kind of goes dark. But he was chased out of
France under suspicion of espionage for Germany. Then he ended
up in the UK in the thirties. He moved into
this like luxury penthouse apartment in London. He also had uh,
this like stately mansion on the sea, and like nobody
had any idea like where this guy got his money.
You know, it's like there's some pristige to like being
a diplomat like his father was. But those guys didn't
have money, you know. So early on Tester joined the
BUF and kind of before Joyce really became a force
within the British Union, Tester was advocating national socialism, you know,
he uh and he was basically he was translating a
lot of national socialist literature into English. His significance isn't
really clear. He claimed that like he was the mind
behind it. He said, yeah, Mosy was like a hard
man and a charismatic man, but I was the brains
behind the BUF, Like I wrote their propaganda. I was
the aid de camp of Moseley. I was the one
on the ground at Cable Street who rallied everybody. I mean,
the guy was like an egomaniac. Okay, so a lot
of this was probably cap and bullshit, but he did
play some role, and because he was rich as fuck
for reasons nobody could explain, you know, Suddenly when he
joined that's when like Mosley stopped being desperate for money
all the time. It's like obviously like he was throwing
a lot of his wealth into a buf Coffers and
Tester was also he was the only direct link to
the in in terms of a chain of money or information.
Early liaison with the German Reich, he founded uh, what
he called the European Press Agency, which was uh. He
held himself out as I'm just like an independent newspaperman,
but this was like a Reich propaganda apparatus. Like that's
not that, that's not pejorative that, but this is what
it was, Okay, and it's believed by a lot of
people like uh, you know, like revisionists and others that Okay, Yes,
Gebels made this statement, but he was talking about Tester,
you know, Like why why would Goebels just like randomly
mentioned Oswald Mosley, you conveniently when there's a need to
like identify some statement that can you know, kind of
sew up a charge under eighteen B. So take that
for what it's worth. I I accept that perspective. I
think Tester was the subject of the statement. But yeah, yeah,
I hope people are continuing to enjoy the series. And
we'll go one final episode in the British Free Corps
and that'll be a change of pace, but it's important
and it bears directly on on the fortunes of Mosley
for the remainder of his life.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, that's what I got, right, cool plugs place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the best place to find my work product is
on substack. It's a real Thomas seven seven seven at
substack dot com. At long last, I'm gonna upload the
movie that my dear friend Rake and I made this weekend.
I'm just sussing out the right platform. But regardless, even
if I got to put it on gum Road or something,
you'll be able to like link it from there or
I'll always tell you where it's at. My all on
social media is at Capital R E A L Underscore
number seven h O M A S seven seven seven
dot com and you can also search me into my
government name. I'm Thomas Sear and seeking you shall find. Yeah,
that's all I got.
Speaker 1: All right until episode seven. I want to welcome everyone
back to the Panana Show. Thomas is here and he's
going to finish up the series on Sir Oswald Mosely.
Speaker 2: So how are you doing, Thomas, I knowing, well, thanks
for hosting me, I if memory serves, and I reviewed
the brief outline I made last time to repress my recollection.
I think I ended talking about Lord Hahaw William Joyce
and his fate, his grim fate, and Oswald Mosley and
Lady Moseley being detained incidents of Defense Regulation eighteen B,
which Mosley could have made that into something of a
propagandic coup because there was sympathy for him, you know,
beyond the nine or ten thousand member cadre that were
sort of the hard core of the British Union of
fest I said peak they had about forty thousand members,
but about a quarter or a third of that was
kind of like the core vanguard. But and uh the uh,
there were a lot of people made a show of
demanding Moseley be detained. You know, like I said, there
was only about sixty five people who were detained under
Defense Regulation eighteen B. It was basically to target Mosey
as well as some of these society types because there
was there was grave concern and we'll get into this today,
and it's oblique to the main thrust of the subject
made their own a cover. There's grave concern, especially after
Edward the eighth and you know his uh friendly disposition
towards the German Reich and uh the Duke of Hamilton,
you know, who has had gone to visit I mean
I didn't. I was trying to be flippant. That's how
Monty python like when mister Hurst went to visit him,
the man has wanted to make contact with during his
ill fated flight to try and you know, reach a
peace concord with with the with the Anglo establishment. Hamilton
wasn't like a national solist or a fascist, but he'd
known Hess and he was an interesting guy. He was
an independent thinker. Like it made sense. I think has
had kind of had his head in the clouds. Okay,
I mean we got into that in our series on him.
But the point being it made sense that Hamilton would
be the man he wanted to make contact with. Long
sence of me had been. But there was concern that Hamilton,
Hamilton himself had been some compromised, which like his life
wasn't ruined or something, but I you know, these kinds
are rumors followed him and you know that that that
has ugly implications considering the the climate in the UK
as a whether it was a strategic ruse or not.
And I will die on that hill at one hundred
percent was a strategic ruse, the fact that Sea Lion
wasn't uh going to be a reality, and Hitler had
devised this elaborate you know, Ledgard Maine essentially to the
Steve Stalin. It had very little to do with you know,
what the British thought about it. Whether Churchill was exploiting that,
you know, to solidify as war mandate or you know,
in purely cynical terms, or if he believed that was
a possibility a scenario that would come to pass, I
don't know, but there's definitely some people in the War
Party who believed it absolutely and this stoke out of paranoia,
so they were trying there, They were instantly trying to
seek out people who they believed had been compromised and
an event of a massive German assault, these people supposedly
were going to collaborate with what was to become, you know,
a facist government and things. It all became kind of surreal.
You know. The old showed Dad's Army. For those familiar
with it, it's kind of a silly old show, but
it was actually pretty funny. But the subtext of it,
I think, and like you know, and ranted there, there's
kind of an opaque character to a lot of what
the to a lot of what the English should do.
But I don't think I'm reading sub sexual things into
it that aren't there or weren't there. But it kind
of casts the entire It kind of casts the entire
domestic climate is preposterous. You know. It's almost like the
old movie nineteen forty one, which is about the Battle
of Los Angeles. It's kind of in the same vein,
you know. So I think there was among people who
weren't taken in by the the propaganda, you know, I
think that there was a lot of people realize this
is ridiculous, but there was plenty that didn't. And plus
there's other people who absurd as any of you the
entire narrative, they just hate it as well. Mostley and
thought he was a bastard and wanted bad things to
happen to him. And the capacity for shout and freud
of the English is basically bottomless, you know. And that
had a lot to do with it, because it may though,
an important subtext to the entire story of British fascism
and uh kind of the last gasp of the the
Reich executive trying to cultivate some sort of concord with
at least some element of the British establishment was the
attempt to uh, the the the attempt to you know,
poach British Army volunteers from the ranks of POWs, you know.
And as people will remember, rib And Troup when he
was the ambassador of the United Kingdom, he considered it
his mission and a lot of this, you know, was
on the direct orders of the fure. But also Rivon
Tropp was very much a believing national socialist, and the
national socialist ambition was that there must be an alliance
with the United Kingdom, you know. And if you read
Hitler's second book, that becomes clear, and Brendan Simms books
on Hitler are the best other than John Tolin's biography.
There's a in terms of like pure biographical information and
kind of a glimpse into the subjective sort of psychic
tendencies of Hitler. You know, there's a there's guys like
a Just Sophie and like David Irving who who wrote
about Hitler as is warlord and that's fundamentally important. But
just in terms of kind of general biographical treatments, sims
of stuff is great and he gets into some of
that too. But you know, as a as a situation
deteriorated at the front, you know, uh, something Hitler spoke
of a lot and also elements within the Wehrmacht was
you know, our are the Western allies going to simply
let the Red Army overrun Europe? You know, that doesn't
seem like any that doesn't seem like something that would
gain any attraction with reasonable men either in the you
know what remains of you know, the patriotic element of
the American established man or the military, and a particular concern,
you know, if if if the Soviets reached Berlin, I mean,
the United Kingdom had a serious problem. I mean they
had a they had a serious problem anyway, because they
they essentially committed suicide in bargaining away the empire to
wage the war. So, you know, the reasoning in Berlin,
especially after Kursk, was well, there's got to be a
substantial portion of the body politic and the United Kingdom
that you know, is gravely concerned about the fact that
Communist victory seems imminent, you know. And so that wasn't
totally off base. So the idea was that these guys
who were to constitute what became the British Free Corps,
you know, the British national element of the vafan SS,
they would absolutely you know, they'd be guaranteed all these
men would receive a guarantee they would not be deployed
to fight against their own countrymen, you know, they'd be
deployed exclusively to the Eastern Front, and they'd sign an
oath that was an English you know, pledging their fealty
to Europe and Adolf Hitler but also to the UKA
to like resist the bullshitvism as like a European patriot,
you know. And the idea was like, well, you know,
if we can get even like a thousand or fifteen
hundred men, you know, and we can propagandize this extensively
of these Englishmen and Scots and Irish guys and Ulster
guys and Welshmen, you know, going into action against the Communists,
you know, under the swastika. You know, people back home
in the UK O, well have to wait a minute,
Like we're fighting the German when our boys are fighting
the Communists, we are trying to overrun Europe and would
probably slaughter us like they like they did the you know,
a quarter of the Russian population, you know, like I so,
I mean that it did. There was an internal logic
to it, you know, And this is really kind of
a brainshell too of a Gottlibburger. Gott lip Berger was
a really interesting guy, and he was actually the man
who intervened, uh when crazy old Oscar der Levanger was
you know, getting into all kinds of shit, I kind
of his alcoholism and you know, uh, it's just isn't
aside because there's a lot of people including that I
can't even remember his name. It's like this hysterical limey
who's always dropping third right content. But he goes into
these like he goes into these like history onic diet
tribes about how evil like the subjects of his like
little content tidbits are and he loves talking about how
like der Levanger was a quote child molister and a rapist.
Derla Vanger like a lot of military guys who can't
grow up like teenage. He liked teenage girls a lot,
so he'd carry on with fifteen, sixteen, seventeen year old
girls and he'd get caught doing it, and angry father
is a demand to go to jail, and finally the
Reich's like, you know what, we're tired of this shit.
I think you need to go to a concentration camp
for a while and think about like keeping it in
your pants. That's what happened. He doesn't hang around schoolyards
touching little kids. And I'm sorry, are you a creep
if you're like forty and you like kick it with
teenage girls? Yeah, Derlavanger was a creep. Okay, he was
not a child molester. That's retarded. But in any event,
Berger was his was his day one comrade from the
Great War, so he intervened to get him sprung from
the concentration camp. He basically convinced the Chance the right Chancery,
the party chancery, to like, look like, deploy der Levanger
to Spain, you know, let him lead part of the
ground element. If the bay if if like if the
krusty horny bastard survives, you know, he doesn't drink himself
to death or get blown away, like consider him redeemed.
So like that's exactly what happened in derla Wanger. Like
the guy the guy had like the guy had brass balls,
and so he then say he like led from the front.
He had he had like incredible incredible aptitude as as
like an infantry commander, like even when he became the
even when he became a standard fear you know, he
was still doing the same thing. And that's one of
the reasons why I comproup therle of Anger. Like you know,
these are very rough a men, to say the least.
The only reasons they respected him. But any event, gottlab Berger,
when he wasn't trying to get his uh his brind's
out of prison for their uh indiscretions, he's the guy
who really pushed hard with him. They're like, look, you've
gotta you've got to give up this sort of like
racial purity nonsense. Respective of He's like, yeah, we're not,
we're not gonna let you know, non Germanics enjoy the
full status of uh, of the Praetorian Guard, you know,
like our own people do. But like this idea that
we we can't have like non Europeans in our ranks
so long as they're not you know, our enemy, so
long as they're not Poles. So it's not Russians we'll
get into at some point, like the Russian elements and
the Ukrainian elements, because that's complicated. But it was Berger,
for example, who brought the the AxMan divisions in. It
was him who like advocated for the Moslem vaf and
SS troopers, and it was him who said, you've got
to try and get these British peod f used in
the vaf SS, you know. And at least his view
was at least some of them will go for it,
that's all we need. And the British army also had
a rep for professionalism. And obviously the guys the approach
with this were like combat soldiers. They weren't pogues, and
like pogues wouldn't have been in a position to get
captured anyway. But that's gottleib Berger's who, uh, it was
his brainschild, interestingly, and some person just from the Foreign
Ministry too, but I'll gay into that in a minute.
But the there was a and interestingly in the UK,
there was a there was rumors until after the war,
oh there being h like company sized elements and larger
like English POWs or British peows fighting in the vaf ss.
Uh that's not uh that, that's not the case. And
it never numbered more than you know, a few dozen
men at one time. But uh, initially the name for it,
it was floated, was uh, the British Legion, but there
was a there's a veterans organization in the UK. You know,
it's a counterpart to the American Legion called the British Legion.
Then the idea was floated to call it the Legion
of Saint George, but that was drops because it didn't
really resonate with the national socialist ideological culture. And you
know the Greeks, the Greek Orthodox in the Russian Orthodox,
they have the same patron saint. They would cause confusion
that they wanted something that had like a unique identitarian
significance to to Great Britain. Okay, so it was decided,
you know, to call it the British Free Corps, the
British Free Corps, you know, and for the first time
and in the r s H a documentation of it.
The name British Free Corps appears for the first time
in November nineteen forty three, and again it was in UH.
It was around May that the idea was first floated,
you know, and then again and the after we had
the curse it it became something that was promoted in
earnest And so first there was a there was a
special detachment under the authority of the SD specifically UH,
specifically charged with attempting to increase the recruitment of officers.
That was largely a failure. They were only able to
poach about six volunteers. And I mean this is essential
to the s. S said, these men have to be volunteers.
We can't press these guys into service. First of all,
we're probably just gonna get guys who are going to
try and food out of the program, and that's why
they're you know, because they're going to resent this. Secondly,
we actually want this to be a combat effective formation,
you know. And finally, the propaganda aspect was paramount. So
these guys had to be volunteers. And you know, looking forward,
obviously the idea was they'd allow their testimony to be
recorded in broadcast as you know, I'm a you know,
I'm an Englishman, or I'm a welsh Man, or I'm
a Scotsman, or I'm I'm an Ulsterman, and I you know,
I'm a patriot, but you know I also stand with
you know, the European race and again against Bolshevism. You know,
there's another dedicated detachment that was formed and charged with
the recruiting potential volunteers. It was Special Attachment five seventeen
and they identified around three hundred British pure wws who
were viewed to have like the physical and psychic and
aptitude you know, for for a combat role with the
VAF and SS, and who were viewed to have, you know,
either the political disposition that would compliment service there in
or you know, guys who were malleable enough or at
least open to the idea such that you know, they
they could be persuaded the UH as it's starting to
take shape, a kind of a kind of command structure
developed with Special Attachment five seventeen of British volunteers. There
was a handful of British Army and Royal Air Force
NCOs at about twenty enlisted men who kind of were
the first cadre of what was to become the British
Free Core as by the summer Narity forty three, as
this kind of core of original membership was identified and
and kind of corralled into this formal structure, you know,
they were they were given SS identification booklets and they
were put under the uh authority of the s S.
Help m D one department D one for context helped them.
Speaker 1: D one was.
Speaker 2: Uh. They were also responsible for the Germanic SS. These
are the guys who formed uh, the Algamine s S
in places like Denmark, Norway, the not Lands, you know,
any uh, any any Germanic country as per uh, you know,
cultural commonality and as well as you know, according to
the Nuremberg laws that defined uh who was an aryan
you know, that's that's what the Germanic SS was. And
from the Germanic SS, a lot of the national legions
you know, from these same countries. Uh, that's who they
That was the original population they drew upon for volunteers.
You know, by nineteen forty four, like right after the
New Year, you know, January nineteen forty four, the British
Free Corps, they were fully integrated into the ss like
they became like an official, you know, like SSAF element.
And at that point they were given they were given
field gray uniforms, you know, Comma fatigues, and they received
the the shield patch, you know, the the national insignia
that all like foreign volunteers got their's had the Union
jack you know, yeah, it's on my shirt here. The uh,
the national shield patch always went on the left arm,
and uh, their collar patch with a nod to Saint George.
It was three lions, you know, which is like the
standard of Saint George. By the end of the war,
when they were finally deployed, Uh, they also had a
they had a cuff title which uh it said it
right in German and English and British Free Corps, British
Free Corps and then British Free Corps, which is interesting.
Those are really hard to find. If if you're somebody
who seeks out authentic like Third Reich Militaria, if you
can find one of those and validated is authentic, like
you're you're very lucky and or you've got like very
good investigative shops because they're highly coved just because the
British Free Corps is cool and if you don't think so,
like I you're kind of lame. But the uh it's
and and some people make a lot of the fact too,
like the British Free Corps did have like really keeno uniforms.
There was other like national legions where it was like
more subdued, but who are really combat effective. So like
the claim is like, oh, this was just a propaganda
attempt at a propaganda coup, Like yeah, it was, but
that wasn't all it was. And the fact that didn't
make an impact on the battlefield, oh to kind of
like a conspiracy of circumstances. It wasn't because uh Dot
lob Berger and the SD and and Himmler himself and
and Carl Wolf. It's not because like they didn't have
some intention for it to be, you know, a combat
capable formation. The absolutely did. Like the fact they didn't
have the fact that it didn't happen, well, I mean
that you know, nobody denies that a large catalysts or
imminus for its creation was was propaganda. I mean that
goes out saying but there was there was any considerations
with respect to the UK and mayor was a prestige
that didn't exists elsewhere. And I mean for people thinks
it was like some returned pipe dream or something. I
don't know. Oh, okay, I mean it was. The final
defenders of Berlin were thirty third SS. They were a
much a Frenchman, Okay, I mean like this was not
SS was a Pan European army. And there were people
who whose nations were de facto or de juri at
war with the Reich, who you know, literally fought to
the last man to defend the German Reich. It was.
It's more complicated than court historians allow. I mentioned a
moment ago about the oath that British Free Corps volunteers signed.
The relevant language is quote, I you know the name
of the subject or volunteer, being a British subject, consider
it my duty to offer my services in the common
European struggle against communism, and hereby apply to enlist in
the British pre Corps, which is what I believe was
in the minds of most of these guys, you know,
I mean, it wasn't Being a prisoner and losing your
liberty is awful no matter what but British Army prisoners
and American POTWs until and until really night, you know,
end of forty four started forty five when the terror
bombing really took its toll and and people started lynching
down airman, British and American peodas were treated very well.
They were treated, uh, in line with the demands that
Geneva convention. You know. That's why. I mean obviously stuff
like Logan's hero was goofy, but I know the com
of refrain is people these days getting mad at that
show and can't believe it aired on prime time, or
they act like the Great Escape with some kind of
softball treatment. If you were if you were a Royal
Air Force uh pow, or like a US Army or
US Army ergo or pew, you weren't being tortured every day.
You weren't being thrown in doacaut like you weren't being
like whipped with a cat of nine tails like you
were being treated like POWs were always treated and according
to the you know, was Failian consensus. You know, so
like that wasn't weird that those kinds of settings that
you depicted in the light hearted stuff, you know, it
that's UH, that's important. The UH, the British Free Corps,
it had a kind of confused existence in terms of
what command it properly belonged to in part of the
because the situation was getting very critical. You know, this
was sixteen months before the Day of Defeat that it
finally was you know, validated, if you will, as as
a SS legion at there were some commanders and especially
later in the war, despite you know, the party and
the SS asserting itself against the Wehrmacht after the attempt
on Hitler's life, you had a lot of power if
you were the equivalent of a colonel or higher in
the Wehrmacht. You know, in the field, you were kind
of a law into yourself within reason. So when the
British Free Corps showed up UH and some of these
UH and some of these pans are element UH generals
or SS uh commanders were said like, okay, like you know,
these these British POWs are joining your command. Now. They
weren't handing it, you know, they were like, look like, uh,
this is gonna cause problems. And in the back of
their mind it was like, if we're gonna try and
negotiate some kind of peace with the Allies before the
Red Army burns it all down. If if it looks
like I'm ordering Englishmen to to go into combat, I
how how am I gonna explain that? You know? Uh, which,
on the one hand, uh, you could say is kind
of fucked up. But on the other hand, it's like, well,
any uh, any general officer who is commanding men in combat,
his job is to keep those men alive, you know,
and within reason, make sure as many of them get
to go home as possible. You know, that doesn't mean
you forfeit victory conditions to prioritize that humanistic aspect. But
if the war is lost anyway, and you know, accepting
these British puot fews into your command is going to
screw up the odds of you know, the collective fate
of the unit. You've got to consider that very seriously.
So there's that there's unsubstantiated rumors that have endured, and
some of this I believe to be true of after
the British Free Corps is all was for all practical
purposes disbanded individual members. There's people who claim that they
fought with them at Berlin, you know, like they were
attached at thirty third SS because they like showed up there,
or they were fighting with volks Therm, or they were
you know, you know some like older Englishmen, like older
I mean like of proper military age, was like leading
some hitler Ugen kids that try and help them break out.
I think at least some of that is true, because
some of these guys were never accounted for. And uh
if the Soviet I guarantee, if the Soviets had captured
or killed these guys, and the Soviets were obsessed with
documenting things, they would have made a big deal about it.
They would have been like, you know, oh, they the
capitalist English are turning against us now, you know, look
look at this, or you know, it would have it
would have really upset the Western allies. I mean not
for not not for moral reasons necessarily, but I mean
like it it would have caused uh consternation. You know,
uh if they if they'd come across these guys before
the Battle of Berlin and they'd been kia or captured,
this would have been kept a secret. And I mean
nobody was getting id'd that when Berlin got overrun, so
like who would have known after that? You know like
for decades after there was roles and roles at m
I A for zoom dead and like most a goodly
number of these people have never been identified. So that's
definitely not impossible. Okay, the numbers were talking about are
a few, but they there are some unaccounted for the UH.
This bring the case that John Amory and UH he
was executed by hanging expeditiously several months after the war
in the summer twenty ninth. And Amory we'll get into
who Amory wasn't a minute, because he plays a significant
role in UH, how this came to pass and the
entire enterprise of the British Free Corps. But such that
the documentation I could find about other British subjects, I
thought like, I'm not from the not not not from
the Empire. I mean, you know, like actual Britain's in
the When the Battle of France was underway, there were
seven British subjec said to be serving in UH various
units of the Totenkov Vimond, including in what became third
s S Totenkov. This is before the waff SS existed.
It's believed it's at least a handful who served in
leip Standart Adolf Hitler first s S and UH the
the UH the Propaganda and War Correspondent Unit uh Standart
Kurt Eggers. It's that's where James Manti served, you know,
the American defactor who joined the vaf S S. It's
also believed that there was two guys who might have
been deserters who UH served in the flat detachment of
LEIF Standard Adolf Hitler, both of whom are apparently awarded
the Iron Cross second Class. There's a book that hasn't
been translated about LEAP Standard, specifically the flat Detachment, that
apparently deals with these guys. I haven't had time to
dig that out yet and work on translating it as
much as I can to interpret what it actually says.
But the original FIX and British Free Corps cruise and
the guys most known to to the public. The guys
who achieved the most prominent I guess like infamy were
a guy named Thomas Haller Cooper and Frank McLarney. And
both of these guys were British Union of Fascist veterans
who apparently immediately upon you know, being offered opportunity to
join the British Free Corps did it, and they became
important in the effort to recruit more. And this really
came back to haunt Mosey because even though it's not
like there was a great number of uh British Union
veterans who joined up, there was enough that the narrative became, oh, well,
these guys were all a bunch of mosly Heites, and
look now they're not, you know, now now they're trying
to join the Third Reich. You know, this is one
of the things that really are on Moley's post war
political fortunes. I mean, I don't think I think Moseley's
moment kind of passed by then anyway. And uh, there's
a really good treatment of this. The seminal biography of
Francis Jacki is by Carrie Bolton. That was not saying.
But there's another biography from the late nineties which is
actually great in its own right. The end notes alone
or a treasure trove of valuable information for researchers. I
include myself in that category. It's by this guy named
Kevin Coogan, who was kind of this left wing anarchist
type guy from the Pacific Northwest. But the book was
remarkably balanced, and H. Keith Thompson contributed his testimony. Elsa DeWitt,
who is Yacki's longtime mistress, A bunch of guys who
knew James Hartung Medle, some contemporaries at George Sylvester Virick.
It's a fantastic book. It's called Dreamer of the Day.
But he gets into the rivalry between Yacki and Mos
and Mosey's efforts to sabotage Jacky's efforts, and the continents
in the aftermath of you know, the Day of Defeat,
and it doesn't cast Moseley in a particularly flattering light.
I mean, the historical record doesn't. It's not Hoogan's conceptual
predutice or something, but such that the British Free Corps
did see active service in March nineteen forty five, you know,
just weeks before the capitulation. There's an attachment of British
Free Corps volunteers who deployed with eleventh that says, which
was Nordland, which consisted primarily a Scandinavian volunteers. They were
attached to third S s. Pans Er Corps, which was
under Felix Steiner. Steiner was the commander of Viking fifth
s S and Nordland. There's a lot of membership in
common in terms of the ethnographic makeup, you know, Norwegian, Swedes, Danes,
some Finns, some folks to which these guys were. The
records such that they can be cobbled together and the
movements of these men identified with any clarity. They were
specifically sent to the reconnaissance battalion there was, which was
under the command of a Swede, Hans lost the Parson.
Their squad leader was an SS software Douglas Martin. His
alias was Hodge Richard W. Landvier, who is a great
documentarian of the VASS. He was involved with a lot
of veterans organizations into the nineties. You know who We're
producing a lot of material as a kind of counterweight
to what port historians were producing and whatever you think
of Richard Landvi, he had unpresidented access to veterans testimony
as well as records, personnel records, personal records of the
VAF and SS and and other things. He claims in
his book on the British Free Corps that the Britons
that were attached to the recon Battalion of eleventh a sash.
They ended up in the village at Schoenberg, which is
on the west bank of the Oder River. And presumably
these guys went into action against the Soviets because if
they were there, I mean they were coming under heavy assault. Okay.
In April, the entire Panzer Corps was moved Templon as UH,
you know, the long retreat continued. They were then assigned
to the Transport Company of UH Steiner's headquarters staff and
when Nordland Division left for Berlin, you know, the final
retreat to the capitol. As Berlin became a frontline city
as the Fear called it, the transport company went to Berlin,
and you know, British Free Corps elements included Steiner. By
April twenty ninth broke contact with the enemy. What remained
of UH, what remained of third Panzer was UH was
engaged UH contra the Red Army, and he did that
with the intention to try and surrender, know to the
to the Americans and or the English. Thomas hell Or
Cooper and Fred Croft, who are two members of the
British Free Corps with Steiner's transport company, they surrendered on
the second and May to the one hundred and twenty
first Imagery Regiment, the rest of them. It's entirely possible
these guys died fighting in Berlin, you know, because the
record puts them there for context of what I mentioned
earlier about these reports of some of these guys you know,
being in Berlin, you know, in the final days and hours. Okay,
we still got a few minutes. Kind of the roots
of this ultimately, you know, like I said, this was
the longest standing. This is derived out of a long
standing desire or recognition of the need or probably perhaps
of the fure his staff, the Foreign Ministry, elements of
the military and the SS you know, who understood that
there needs to be some kind of conquer with the
United Kingdom otherwise this grand ambition of national socialism is
not going to be realized. So early on, the Reich
Foreign Ministry, around nineteen forty two, they set up in Berlin,
they set up this kind of study group to try
and cultivate contact and build relations with dissident elements in
the UK or at least sympathetic elements to the Reich
against the Soviet Union and against the War Party then
led by Churchill, and specifically they wanted to cultivate guys
and women who were part of the establishment and preferably
part of the nobility. Some funds were given to the
Duke of Bedford, Edward Godfrey. He set up he and
he proceeded to set up the original British National Party,
which later you know, the B and P. As we know,
it was like John Tyndall's outfit, and then later like
Nick Griffin, who I think it's kind of a con man,
you know, became hancho that Obviously they were evoking the
legacy of the original BNP, but this had nothing to
do with them. This is this is something totally different,
This British National Party. They they gave this pressure group
demanding a settlement with Hitler, like a negotiated peace and
the War Party and specifically the Home Office. They they
they really freaked out. They're like, this is a revival
of the British Union of Fascists. This is a fifth column,
you know, these people are trying to overthrow the government.
And but it garnered for what it was, It garnered
a chorus sympathy beyond what people might think was possible,
especially consider that you know eighteen B as well as
the reformed trees in law which provided for, you know,
a mandatory death penalty for a very kind of loosely
defined range of conduct that it could be demonstrated that
provided aid and comfort to the enemy. You know. Obviously,
the hope of the Foreign Ministry and the s D
was that, you know, kind of like the nine or
ten thousand core members, that the US who were presumably
still active, would flock to this British National Party, you know,
and as Britain's fortunes continued to decline on the battlefield,
you know, this this would be sufficient the kind of
plant the seed that would ultimately bring down the War Party.
At it seems like a long shot, but you know,
like I said this, this actually did gain some traction,
much as it was blown out of proportion by the
Home Office. These guys also the British National Party they started,
they started a newspaper called The Patriot, which made headlines
by setting up a fund, an eighteen b Detainees Aid Fund,
you know, and this was in those days there was
still a pretty strong tradition and particularly among society types
of respecting civil liberties and stuff. A lot of people
were appalled at Mosley and some of these other guys
and women had been you know, in ceremon want to
sy locked up. They went amounted to a h you
know and what I'm on into a concentration camp for
indefinite duration. This was intended to become the nucleus of UH,
you know, a political movement. The Home Secretary in the
Wartime Coalition was Herbert Stanley Morrison, and he really agitated,
UH about the purported threat posed by this. He issued
a report that UH that December that UH claimed that
fascism in London was resurgent. You know that there's gonna
be imminent programs against Jews, that the threat of Sea
Lion has never abated. You know that there's a an
active fifth column within that's in direct contact with the enemy,
and they have social pedigree and that renders them untouchable
and we're all in grave danger. You know. In this
this environment really continued until until around nineteen forty four,
you know, when in a rare moment of clarity through
the haze of delusion and alcoholism and cynicism, Churchill basically said,
you've got to scale back on this, on this kind
of proppingando because it's gonna stoke sympathy for these people,
which was entirely correct the uh you know, and for
clarity too, because not a lots written about this by
the time the war was well underway. After the Wehrmacht
was halted at the Gates of Moscow, after America joined
the war in earnest Hitler in ninety forty two, he
met with Paul Otto Schmith, who had a lot of
cloud at the Foreign Ministry. He was an interpreter. He'd
been at one of the first World Economic Forums, I
think in nineteen thirty three, and he was fluent in French.
When Hitler had to talk to Antonescu, who ironic they were.
They were close friends and and anton Escu was Hitler's
best all I like, he wasn't as personally close to
him as he was the Mussolini, but Antonescu was definitely
Hitler's best military ali and they had a great mutual respect.
But Hitler didn't speak Romania and Antonescu didn't speak German,
but Uh Antonescu spoke French, so like Hitler would Uh
Schmidt would translate. And Schmid didn't speak Romanian either, but
he was fluent in French and English as well as
the slew of other languages, so Paul out of Schmidt
would interpret for the Furre and then relay in French
to Antonescu, who then answer in French. Then Schmid would
really back in German. But uh, Schmidt uh headed up
the the England Committee, you know, to try and as
as I mentioned a minute ago, to try and cultivate
you know, and a in a lie, it's with a
sympathetic cadre among British society types. And you know Hitler's uh,
you know, and what Hitler said, and Hitler privately told Borman,
you know, like kind of unpleasant of a character as
Borman was. There's a reason why, you know, he he
took on Hess's role as essentially party secretary and gatekeeper
of access to the fear, and Hitler confided them a
fair amount. And uh, you know, Hitler said in early
nineteen forty two, he said it, you know, he said,
it's definitely possible that Churchill will fall, and he's we
need to do everything we can to facilitate that. But he's,
you know, he said, it's not going to accomplish anything
unless you know, we have quote men like Moseley in
reserve and a cadre around them. Hitler said, quote, when
I think that Mosley and more than nine thousand his supporters,
including some belong to the Best Families, are facing prison
because they didn't want this war, you know, he said
that that's unconsfortable, but also we can use that in
our favor, you know. But he said, it's essential that
we cultivate this cadre. It's not enough to just kind of,
you know, for some sort of return of veterans from
the McDonald, the Ramsey McDonald government and the National Coalition,
you know, bringing down Churchill because the war is a disaster,
you know, we because there's no guarantee there, like we
need an alliance, you know, we need people are ideologically committed,
which was absolutely correct, you know, in terms of what
the Rey had to pull off, I mean, which, yes,
that was a complete long shot. And Hitler made manch
and he said that like we need a Cromwell, which
is really interesting and uh, I mean Hitler obviously had
read his Carlisle, but that was uh, that was the
climate and yeah, that's uh, I guess I could stop there. Yeah,
all of that was a new scatter shot. That's essentially
the story of the British Free Corps. It's it's hard
to piece together. Like I said, I think i'm I
think I got better research shops than many men. But uh,
it's an esoteric topic. Uh there's a lot of like
kind of lurid stuff written about it in the seventies.
Like there's this paperback on the seventy seven called Hitler's
Jackals I got in somewhere here. It's just like crazy,
there's like no citations. It's this crazy stuff. It's you know,
it's like something out of uh some grindhouse Nazi spolitation movie.
And don't gonna be wrong, I like that kind of stuff,
but it does not help if we're trying to identify
you know, Fax and the historical record. So this is
what I could put together, because this topic is like
a pet kind of obsession of mine, like many esoteric things.
So yeah, I unless people are really truly thirsty for
more Oswald Mosley or I have like questions they want
me to cover or clarify, I think we can move
on from Oswald Movesley and the British Free Corps.
Speaker 1: Question about the American and the British press, how much
were they how much during the war were they reporting
on the how international the German army was.
Speaker 2: It's hard to say everything in the United States, anything, uh,
that the press wanted to cover relating to the war,
it had to go through the o w Y the
opposite of war information, you know, and they had you know,
they they wouldn't allow photographs and dead Americans to be shown.
And when somebody, when somebody snuck some through, that was
a huge deal. And uh, it was odd like what
they objected to and what they didn't, but the consistent,
uh got the consistent pattern the way they cast the Germans.
And part of this ode part of this to the
delegate situation of like having to negotiate with Darlan and
like North Africa, who wasn't actually who was a fascist?
They kind of had to pretend that this is the
German army, you know, and yeah, there's some turncoat volunteers
helping the SS, but these are the Hans just oppressing everybody.
You know. There was kind of without the omissions of
the fact that this was a there was a million
non Germans under arms. Like the omission of that from
what was being reported kind of speaks for itself, you know,
Like in the case of in the case of UK propaganda,
it's a bit more nuanced, but I mean a lot
of there's prejudices in Britain against you know, like during
World War One, despite the fact that like Bismarcky in Germany,
which Veilhelm in Germany was very much the legacy of
and Velhelm's wife wouldn't even like Catholics in their house.
But they're trying to kind of cast like the Hans
in World War One is like these retro grade, like
Catholic brutes, you know, who are you know, they they
they're they're they're not in the modern age like like
civilized people are. And there was some aspect of that,
you know, kind of caricaturing, like the fun is sort
of like the stand in for like European barbarism. But
uh yeah, and stuff that went to the O W Y.
You never saw like any statement of like you know, yeah,
there's like a bunch of you know, there's there's there's
a bunch of Kazakhs and Romanians and Italians and Frenchmen
and Norwegians, you know, like engaging the US army right now.
Speaker 1: There was like none of that, Not to mention the
French that were the first to engage the the American forces.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on avation tours. Yeah, exactly, they were just like
Nazi forces.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, if people want to do a Q
and A, we'll see what kind of questions. I'll throw
it out there for people to let questions roll in
and if there's enough, if there's enough, we can get
Q and A. But yeah, otherwise we'll move on from
this as I think it was a great topic and like,
we didn't expect this to go seven episodes, but uh,
but it Yeah, but it's perfectly fine. I think we
had enough comments of people saying, yeah, I'm glad it
did so, yeah, just do plugs real quick and one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. My substacts real Thomas seven seven seven,
that's substack dot com. That's my main platform. And I
am a long last like uploading the the movie that
my friend and I made the first Thomas TV like
properly episode. You know, it's a couple of hours long.
I had to figure out the best way to monetize it.
I'll explain, and I promise I will upload it this weekend.
There was a couple of delays and I'm dealing with
like identity. The bullshit now like my business bank account.
I shouted this out on a sit rep on substate,
which is nobody's problem but my own, and I'm indemnified.
It will be fine. It's just a hassle. And obviously
because it's my business account, I can't like link anything
to it until it bullshit gets resolved. So but it's common,
I promise. Thanks for being patient. And on social media,
my alt is at Capital Ril Underscore number seven h
oom as seven seven seven, and that's where you can
find me or he concerts me under my garment name
and I will come up.
Speaker 1: Till the next subject. Thank you so much, man, take care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for hosting me. Man