By VennerRoad, 11th Nov 2016
Sir Oswald Mosley was a Fascist; Donald Trump has been called one. But that is where the resemblance ends.
Sir Oswald Mosley.
For those not conversant with this tragic figure, Sir Oswald Mosley was a wealthy land owner who like Donald Trump identified with the working class rather than with the elite into which he was born.
Unlike Trump, he had political ambitions and was impatient to fulfill them. This led to him becoming a Conservative MP and eventually to forming the British Union of Fascists, known colloquially as the BUF (pronounced B-U-F) or the Blackshirts.
Although Mosley is generally regarded as the kingpin of British Fascism, he was far from the first person in the UK to embrace it. The first British Fascist party was the British Fascisti - shortly renamed the British Fascists. Founded by Miss Rotha Beryl Lintorn Lintorn-Orman, it boasted a large number of women members, and a political philosophy that had little in common with the real thing. Then there was Arnold Leese and his Imperial Fascist League.
While its ideological roots date back thousands of years, modern Fascism can be said to have originated with Benito Mussolini, the man who is best remembered for making the trains run on time. Although like most Italians, Mussolini came from a Catholic background, his brand of Fascism was inclusive; his party had Jewish members as did his government. Indeed, in November 1926, the American Hebrew newspaper published an interview with Signora Amalia Besso who claimed to have been a leader of women’s fascism in Italy before Mussolini. Her movement, Fascio Femminile, was founded in 1917.
German Fascism was different though; better known as National Socialism, or Nazism, it had a distinctly racial element to it, specifically it was anti-Jewish. The reasons for this are complex, but it was partly due to the then rising threat of Communism, many of whose leaders and agitators were Jews, racial Jews rather than Torah-true Jews, who are and always have been readily recognisable by their distinctive dress, and who by and large have never shown any real interest in politics except perhaps at a local level.
The well-documented excesses of the Nazis culminating with the expulsion of Jews from the economy and the body politic was a godsend to the Marxist left, and although the horrors they perpetrated far exceed those of the 12 year rule of Hitler, they continue to make capital out of it today. Americans were taught to hate Fascism, and soldiers white and black were sent off to Europe in the Second World War to fight it. The irony was not lost on many blacks who having ostensibly fought and defeated a white supremacist philosophy returned home to their segregated neighbourhoods. In fact, Fascism and segregation had little to do with the white supremacy that was practised by the British and other European powers against colonial peoples.
Returning to Mosley, although he adopted a uniform similar to the Nazis for his party, he stressed that anti-Semitism was to be no part of his movement. In this he was undoubtedly sincere, but others were anti-Jewish, including and especially Arnold Leese. On his founding of the BUF, Mosley issued a statement that was published in the September 30, 1932 edition of the Jewish Chronicle:
“Anti-Semitism is no issue of Fascism, and is, therefore, no part of the policy of the British Union Of Fascists. We attack Jews if they are engaged in subversive activities such as the direction of the Communist Party or equally when they are engaged in international financial transactions such as those which have recently shaken this country. We never attack Jews because they are Jews. Jews who are loyal citizens of Britain and who serve this country rather than its enemies will always have a Square deal from us.”
On September 29 the following year, A. Herman, President of the Oxford University Jewish Society was quoted by the same paper thus:
“At the present time, our greatest supporters in our fight against the Imperial Fascists are the Mosley Fascists themselves.”
This was probably a reference to a notorious incident in which IFL leader Leese was assaulted by BUF members. Alas, this love affair did not last, the main reason being that certain self-styled Jewish and anti-Fascist organisations continued to associate Mosley’s brand of Fascism with Nazism. This resulted in Fascists being attacked and all manner of lies and rumours being spread about them. Later mainstream historians would attempt to sanitise this, but an examination of the historical record points to the Blackshirts being on the receiving end initially.
Unlike Trump, Mosley had received a certain amount of support from the establishment, most notably from the titled publisher of the Daily Mail who in 1934 penned a now infamous headline in the paper: Hurrah for the Blackshirts.
The same year, Mosley held a large rally at London’s Olympia. The social justice warriors of the day attacked this with venom, and Mosley’s stewards gave as good as they got and then some. Predictably the left exhibited their de rigueur cognitive dissonance, and Mosley was branded the instigator. It was all downhill from here, and rightly or wrongly perceiving the hidden hand of Organised Jewry behind it, Mosley began adopting an anti-Jewish stance.
In December 1936, Mosley’s newspaper The Blackshirt reported on the case of two Jewish women who had been fined for stealing soap calling it an “unusual Jewish crime”. Obviously such rhetoric can only alienate ordinary, decent people.
Notice though the parallels between the violence directed against Mosley and the violence orchestrated against Donald Trump. James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas produced video evidence of Democratic campaign agitators hiring people to disrupt Trump meetings and instigate violence hoping to stimulate the same kind of over-reaction that led to the downfall of Mosley. This sinister operation was conducted at a distance from Hillary Clinton, but one way or another her backers were paying for it.
While Mosley was a demagogue, Trump never entertained any political ambitions, certainly he never intended to run for any kind of office even though when he was much younger it was suggested that he should seek the Presidency. Why does a man of nearly seventy decide to run for President or indeed any kind of public office? In his case it was seeing his country, once the greatest and freest nation on Earth, going down the toilet: its infrastructure falling into disrepair, its once great industrial centres being turned to wasteland, people being shot left, right and centre, and widespread poverty. Most of all though it was what he perceived with more than a little justification as powerful politicians aligning themselves with special interests while ordinary people were working harder and longer hours for less, those that had jobs.
President Elect Donald Trump.
Unlike his protagonist and indeed unlike any Presidential candidate before him, Trump’s vast wealth meant that he was his own man, free to offer his own policies to the people, right or wrong. How is the establishment to stop such a man? Principally by a campaign of vilification and slander, but what worked with Mosley would not work with Trump, even though eight decades on there were a lot more epithets that could be thrown at him.
In the 1930s there was basically only anti-Semite, Fascism not yet being a dirty word. The world racism did not appear in print until 1935, but today there is racist, sexist, misogynist, Islamophobe, xenophobe, and a few more. The most ludicrous insult thrown at Trump is that he is a Fascist. How can a man who advocates gun ownership for private citizens, the downsizing of the state, and the upholding of the US Constitution, be a Fascist, seriously?
Unlike Mosley, Trump has never had an issue with Jews, although that hasn’t stopped the Jewish Chronicle from branding him an anti-Semite, but that epithet has long since lost its potency thanks to the excesses of the Israeli Government and the wanton smearing of concerned people across a broad political spectrum.
Likewise racist, what does that even mean? Trump’s attacks on illegal immigrants from Mexico have earned that epithet, but did he really call them all crooks and rapists? Every nation should have the right to protect its own borders, and that includes vetting all potential immigrants. Curiously it is only white or predominantly white nations that are to be denied this right. The reality is that there is an endless stream of people who want for whatever reason to emigrate to America, and that includes undesirables.
One such undesirable was Beatrice Munyenyezi who turned up in New Hampshire in 1998 after she was granted political asylum. In 2013, she was stripped of her citizenship after evidence came to light that she had taken an active part in the Rwandan genocide. Other countries, including Mexico, are glad to see the back of some of their less productive or simply troublesome citizens, and many of these turn up in the US. On the other hand, an American who wants to relocate to Mexico must be able to prove he is financially independent.
If Trump is such a misogynist, why has he been married three times, and why does he and his organisation employ so many women? Calling a nasty woman a nasty woman does not make a man a misogynist.
The one claim that does appear to have some credibility is that Trump is an Islamophobe, but this is due to the wilful misinterpretation of his rhetoric rather than to bigotry on the part of the man himself. It is an undeniable fact that at this moment in time the greatest political problem the world faces is Islamism, which Trump calls radical Islamic terrorism. It makes sense to exclude Moslem immigrants from certain countries until this problem has been dealt with. Trump has said he will work with all nations to combat this scourge, including Islamic ones.
After Hitler invaded the Sudentenland in 1938, it was surely clear to even the most wilfully blind that big trouble was coming in Europe, perhaps even war. Oswald Mosley’s policy was to keep Britain out of that war, and he used the phrase “Mind Britain’s Business” to sum it up. Trump has a similar policy, and it is notable that those so nasty nationalists are forever warning their governments to stay out of foreign ventures while many wonderful anti-racists and social justice warriors have no qualms about intervening in especially the Middle East, which inevitably makes the problem worse.
Trump has proposed creating safe zones in Syria, which would protect refugees without endangering either American troops or American citizens at home, the latter by allowing in potentially dangerous refugees. He also pointed out that since 9/11 the US and the West have spent literally trillions of dollars attempting to reshape the Middle East and Afghanistan, a venture that has only made the problem worse. If instead that wasted money had been spent on rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure and investing in new industries, the US and the world would have been a safer and more prosperous place.
In short. Trump wants to mind America’s business by protecting its borders and building up its armed forces so that it will never be attacked by belligerent nations - peace through strength. Is that really such a bad idea? The only genuine criticism that can be of Trump’s foreign policy is his antagonism towards Iran. Just because Iran or any nation does not conform to Western norms of so-called democracy does not mean it should be ostracised much less boycotted. Iran may have different attitudes towards homosexuality - so-called gay rights, alcohol, the role of women, and even dress codes, but as has been demonstrated within living memory, attempts to impose Western value systems on societies that have deeply held social mores and customs that are vastly different from ours result only in resentment, hatred, and even violence.
The one big question that Trump has not yet addressed is the Federal Reserve. If he really knows what he is doing, he will abolish it. It is the Fed and the entire debt-based money system that is responsible for most of the financial corruption - big and small - that plagues the United States and elsewhere. As the great Major Douglas and others like Carroll Quigley have pointed out, a shortage of purchasing power in the domestic market leads to the export of capital; sooner or later, usually sooner, this leads to intense competition between rival nations for foreign markets, and they end up fighting for control.
While protectionism is never a good idea, Trump’s version of economic nationalism has much to recommend it; if the US can become self-sufficient in energy, why should it be bothered about the Middle East? To create that self-sufficiency though, the US needs to be able to fund vast energy projects, especially renewables, and it can do this only on newly created debt-free money.
Trump has many obstacles in his plan to make America great again, but unlike the ill-fated Mosley he has significant popular support from the working class, the middle class, and even from those elements among the ruling class who realise there is something desperately wrong with the current set up, and that America has been sleepwalking into disaster. Six months from now the protesters will have gone, and most of those who were foolish enough to vote for the corrupt Hillary Clinton will realise they rather than the country made the wrong choice.
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