The Rise of Oswald Mosley & British Fascism 1932-34

0:00 I’m not a Nazi, not a fascist, not a racist, not anything else.

0:03 According to National Geographic: “There’s No Scientific Basis for Race - It’s a Made-Up

0:08 Label.

0:09 It's been used to define and separate people for millennia.

0:11 But the concept of race is not grounded in genetics.”

0:14 So now we have all the racists crying in the comments, let’s get on with the history,

0:20 shall we?

0:22 [Intro]

0:24 Mosley and the British Union of Fascists were the largest British Fascist movement, and

0:28 so we’re going to look at them today.

0:30 But, here’s the thing, they weren’t the first “fascists” - sort of.

0:35 The first National Socialist organisation was “The Britons” or “The Briton’s

0:40 Society” formed in 1919.

0:42 It was anti-Semitic, and kept the now debunked publication of “The Protocols of the Elders

0:48 of Zion” going until the mid-1920s.

0:49 It helped convert a few people to anti-Semitism, but it wasn’t really significant.

0:55 Technically though, the first Third Positionist movement in Britain was a National Socialist

1:00 movement.

1:01 The first British “Fascist” organisation was founded in 1923 - sort of.

1:07 Rotha Lintorn-Orman was concerned that the Socialists were going to destroy private property.

1:13 She therefore founded a Movement that was designed to protect private property, and

1:18 then, knowing nothing about him, she looked at Mussolini in Italy and decided - ‘yep,

1:23 he seems to have smashed the ‘red menace’, so let’s copy him.’

1:27 And she did; she founded the British Fascisti.

1:30 However, apart from the name, and the fact that she had her people wear blueshirts, there

1:36 wasn’t anything Fascist about it.

1:38 And when a lot of real fascists and National Socialists joined the movement (attracted

1:42 by the name) they were disappointed to find out that it wasn’t real fascism.

1:47 Some were even annoyed that it was run by a woman and was full of feminists, which they

1:51 didn’t like.

1:52 Or if they were Nazi, they found it wasn’t anti-Semitic at all.

1:55 But because real fascists were attracted to the name of the British Fascisti, the movement

2:01 started haemorrhaging after peaking in 1925.

2:05 That year, 100 actual fascists broke away and formed the National Fascists, and then

2:11 got into fights with the Labour Party and the Communists.

2:14 And another split occurred in 1926 over the General Strike, because Orman offered her

2:19 Fascisti as workers to the Establishment, causing a split within the movement over whether

2:24 to support the Strike or not.

2:26 Her movement then rapidly declined, not helped by the fact she was an alcoholic and on “medicinal

2:32 substances” (thank you YouTube censorship).

2:35 Her rich mother cut her allowance after getting fed up of the… intimate parties involving

2:40 lots of people kissing each other at her London home.

2:43 So the movement eventually dissolved in 1934.

2:46 However, there was someone from the British Fascisti who later went on to join the British

2:52 Union of Fascists, and I think they’re important.

2:56 Nesta Helen Webster was a gnostic.

2:59 Wikipeida, of course, doesn’t say she was gnostic, because we’ve got to hide the gnosticism.

3:04 But she was.

3:05 She admitted she had mystical experiences with black magic and hypnosis.

3:10 She believed in the downfall of society and Revolution, blaming the “Jewish cabbala”

3:16 and the Freemasons.

3:17 She ended up writing about the occult.

3:19 But how much she actually influenced the British Union of Fascists, I’m not sure; however,

3:24 the connection to Gnosticism is direct, if it wasn’t already clear.

3:29 A group that formed as a result of the downfall of the British Fascisti was the Imperial Fascist

3:34 League.

3:36 These were definitely National Socialist.

3:38 They were the self-proclaimed “Jew wise”: gnostics who were “awoken” (gnosis) to

3:45 the so-called ‘racial issue’.

3:46 I know the Imperial Fascist League has “fascist” in the name, but as I’ve explained before,

3:52 these are different to Fascists.

3:54 Arnold Leese was in command of the IFL, and he believed that Italian Fascism had been

3:59 corrupted by the Jews.

4:01 He therefore said that his movement was modelled after German National Socialism, but then

4:06 called them ‘Fascist’ anyway.

4:08 He also went on about things like the “pure British blood”, the “Nordic blood”,

4:13 and the “white European races” - which you won’t find in Mosley’s literature.

4:18 “More militant than the British Fascists, although even fewer in numbers, were the groups

4:22 who could be seen as closest to the nazis in their thought and inspiration.

4:27 These were the self-proclaimed ‘Jew wise’, an odd mixture of reactionary conservatives

4:34 and racial fascist enthusiasts whose obsession with political anti-semitism was to lead to

4:40 an alternative tradition in British fascism to that provided by Mosley.”

4:46 Obviously, Thurlow has got his Marxist goggles on too tight, because they’re not “reactionaries”

4:52 or “conservatives”.

4:53 However the point is that even Thurlow can see that these were an “alternative tradition”

4:58 to Fascism.

5:00 And the reason why is because Fascism and National Socialism are two separate ideologies,

5:06 something Thurlow finally admits several pages later.

5:10 And the reason I’m telling you all this is because that’s going to be extremely

5:14 important shortly.

5:15 The good news is that the Imperial Fascist League only had about 150 members at its peak,

5:21 fifty of which were the core enthusiasts under Arnold Leese.

5:25 The Nordic League, which was founded in 1937, got maybe 400 people at their meetings - so

5:31 not very many.

5:33 British National Socialism then was, and always has been, tiny.

5:36 The British Union of Fascists (peaking at maybe 50,000 members) were the only significant

5:42 Third Positionist organisation in Britain during the interwar period.

5:46 If you haven’t seen my video on ‘Why Mosley Turned to Fascism’, now is the time to do

5:51 it.

5:52 There I explain the background to the founding of the British Union of Fascists, as well

5:55 as Mosley’s personal struggle with the other parties in Britain, so it’s definitely worth

6:00 checking out.

6:01 The British Union of Fascists - the BUF - was founded in October 1932 at the peak of unemployment

6:07 during the Great Depression.

6:09 So therefore, the first thing Mosley does was release a plan to combat unemployment

6:15 based on his previous actions within the Labour Party.

6:18 This plan was ‘The Greater Britain’.

6:21 Let’s see what Mosley says he’s going to do.

6:24 “The main object of a modern and Fascist movement is to establish the Corporate State.

6:31 In our belief, it is the greatest constructive conception yet devised by the mind of man…

6:37 In psychology it is based on team-work; in organisation it is the rationalised State.”

6:43 “The producer, whether by hand or brain or capital, will be the basis of the nation.

6:49 The forces which assist him in his work of rebuilding the nation will be encouraged;

6:55 the forces which thwart and destroy productive enterprise will be met with the force of national

7:02 authority.

7:03 The incalculable powers of finance will be harnessed in the service of national production…”

7:09 “Class war will be eliminated by permanent machinery of government for reconciling the

7:14 clash of class interests in the equitable distribution of the proceeds of industry.

7:20 Wage questions will not be left to the dog-fight of class war, but will be settled by the impartial

7:26 arbitration of State machinery; existing organisations such as Trade Unions and employers’ federations

7:32 will be woven into the fabric of the Corporate State, and will there find with official standing

7:39 not a lesser but a greater sphere of activity.”

7:43 Mosley didn’t yet believe in the racism he would adopt a couple years down the line,

7:47 and so, as Hitler had pointed out in Mein Kampf; if a national and social Movement fails

7:53 to understand the importance of ‘the race’, then they would do nothing more than compete

7:58 with Marxism on its own ground.

8:01 Mosley realises that all he’s doing is renaming Marxism and giving it a syndicalist coat of

8:06 paint, and so he does his best to distinguish himself from the communists.

8:11 He says that Fascism wants to build, unlike Marxism, which wants to not destroy.

8:17 “In this respect Fascism differs profoundly from its opponent, Communism, which pursues

8:23 class warfare to the destruction of all science, skill and managerial ability; until, when

8:29 it begins to feel its feet, it has to buy these same qualities at enormous cost from

8:35 foreign nations.

8:37 This precisely describes the course of events in Russia.

8:40 The first task of Leninism was to destroy, to root up every tree in the garden - whether

8:46 good or bad - merely because it had been planted by the enemy.

8:50 Then, when destruction had brought chaos on the heels of famine, there came a five-year

8:56 plan of American conception, implemented by a nucleus of German and American technicians

9:03 hired at immense expense.

9:05 Such is not the method of Fascism, its achievement is revolution, but not destruction.”

9:12 The problem was that the British workers were already in the Communist or Labour Movements.

9:17 And as we all know, once you’re in the wizard’s circle, it’s really hard to break them out

9:23 of that.

9:24 You know, once they start reading the Guardian, that’s it, they’re lost.

9:28 You may as well pack up and go home at that point, and that’s what Mosley came up against.

9:32 They didn’t know what Fascism was, but they hated it anyway thinking that it was something

9:37 that it wasn’t, when in reality it was no different from the Communist or Labour Movements,

9:43 which the people who hated the fascists loved.

9:47 So the “workers” were already hostile to Fascism, none of them would listen, and

9:53 Mosley couldn’t get any support from the very people that his movement was designed

9:57 to help.

9:58 “Mosley envisaged his movement as a progressive, modernising one capable of attracting working

10:04 men and ex-Socialists by its social programme.”

10:08 But he failed to do this.

10:10 It would be no different if the Communists couldn’t find recruits from the so-called

10:15 “working-class”.

10:16 Their movement is designed to attract the “workers”, so a Communist movement without

10:22 worker support is what?

10:25 Nothing.

10:26 And that’s exactly what happened to Mosley’s Fascism.

10:30 Mosley was competing on the same ground as the Communists, and failed to do so.

10:35 And just like the Communists of today have failed to retain “worker” support, and

10:40 are now disingenuously turning to “gender” and “race” as a means to find artificial

10:45 support for their so-called “worker” socialism, well that’s exactly what Mosley was ultimately

10:51 forced to do with British Fascism.

10:52 But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

10:55 Part of the reason why Mosley failed to recruit from the workers was because unemployment

11:00 peaked in the summer of 1932.

11:02 It then slowly went down, which reduced the appeal of Fascism, Communism and Labour Socialism

11:08 altogether.

11:09 Well, the British Union of Fascists was only created on the 3rd of October of 1932, which

11:14 was after the peak in unemployment during the summer.

11:18 So right from the beginning, the support base for Fascism and Communism (which isn’t the

11:23 “workers” - it’s the unemployed), was continuously shrinking, meaning that Mosley

11:28 was constantly swimming against the flow of the water.

11:32 Another reason was because, even though his Movement was called the British Union of Fascists,

11:37 he failed to unite the other fascist movements in Britain.

11:39 Some of them did join, but a lot of them did not.

11:43 Despite negotiations, a merger with the British Fascisti was vetoed by Rotha Lintorn Orman,

11:49 who saw Mosley as a Communist.

11:51 A few members did come from the British Fascisti though, after which the British Union of Fascists,

11:57 and the British Fascisti, ended up in violent conflict with each other.

12:01 “During the Jewish protest demonstrations against the nazis in Hyde Park on 23 July

12:07 1933 a small lorry carrying British [Fascisti] in a counter-demonstration shouted abuse at

12:15 BUF headquarters.

12:17 In retaliation for this, and fearful that they might be blamed for any fascist hostility

12:22 towards the Jews, between fifty and sixty BUF members wrecked the BF’s headquarters.”

12:29 So the British Fascisti were out in a counter-demonstration against the Jews, and shouted at the British

12:37 Union of Fascists, who then, fearful that they would be branded as anti-Semites (because

12:43 they weren’t at this point), smashed up the British Fascisti headquarters…?

12:49 Well, clearly, things are more nuanced than the “all fascists are nazis” narrative.

12:55 Yeah, that’s a gross misinterpretation.

12:58 Mosley had not yet developed his anti-Semitism, which brought him and his British Union of

13:03 Fascists into conflict with the British Fascisti, who were anti-semitic, but not real Fascists.

13:10 And then Mosley put financial pressure on Orman’s fascists in 1934, causing them to

13:14 go bankrupt.

13:15 So these are rival factions, and the situation is far more complicated than the simple narrative

13:21 we often hear.

13:23 Historian Thurlow, says that Mosley tried to merge Arnold Leese’s Imperial Fascist

13:28 League into his own faction in the April of 1932.

13:31 But the Imperial Fascist League was National Socialist, not Fascist, even though it had

13:36 Fascism in the name.

13:37 And so, they just couldn’t do it.

13:39 “As there was no quarrel with Jewry, there were Jewish members.

13:44 Kid Lewis, the boxer, who was a Jew, was one of the earliest Blackshirts…

13:49 The anti-Semitism of the German Movement was then regarded with distaste by most British

13:56 fascists, and our disagreement with it was expressed in our early literature.

14:01 It was felt it was a purely German manifestation, and no business of ours; nor we let it influence

14:08 our own tolerant attitude to British Jews.”

14:11 “...relations rapidly deteriorated [with the Imperial Fascist League].

14:15 Leese saw Mosley as an unprincipled opportunist and argued that his fascism was not based

14:21 on racial nationalism.

14:23 He was also extremely suspicious of Mosley’s first wife, Cynthia Curson, accusing her of

14:29 having Jewish blood in her veins.

14:31 To Leese, Mosley was a ‘kosher fascist’, a Jewish agent planted to discredit the whole

14:37 concept of fascism in Britain; to Mosley, Leese was no more than an anti-semitic crank.”

14:43 Mosley’s fascists went in with rubber truncheons and knuckledusters, and beat up the IFL members,

14:50 including Arnold Leese (who had his trousers torn off and thrown into the street as a way

14:54 to humiliate him), effectively rendering the IFL impotent.

14:59 So, Mosley’s fascists were beating up Nazis!

15:02 The British Union of Fascists also smashed up the headquarters of the British United

15:08 Fascists in 1933, and then in 1936 did the same to the Social Credit Greenshirts (which

15:13 I don’t know enough about, but I think were also fascist), before moving on to attack

15:18 the National Socialist League in 1937.

15:21 So again, this wasn’t a united front.

15:24 And part of the reason they weren’t able to gain much ground in the grand scheme of

15:28 things is because they failed to unite.

15:31 “I myself met Mussolini about half a dozen times, and Hitler twice; neither of them after

15:37 1936.

15:39 In those critical years I was much too busy at home to go abroad at all.

15:44 Our fault was not union, but division.

15:48 Yet it arose from the natural cause that we were different in our policies and outlook,

15:53 by reason of the national characters of our movements.”

15:58 Mosley goes on to describe how the British Union of Fascists tried to hold meetings and

16:02 give speeches, but hecklers and protestors were there to disrupt the proceedings, which

16:08 would often end in violence.

16:10 He gives an example of Churchill having to deal with the same thing in 1922 - years earlier.

16:15 (And, in case you were wondering, Churchill never joined the Fascist Movement.)

16:20 Another Conservative MP said the same thing had happened to him at several previous elections.

16:26 So Mosley correctly points out that he didn’t invent the violence in British politics, it

16:31 was already there.

16:33 “Force was used against us, and we used force in return.

16:36 I hate force, I had more than enough of force for fighting in air and trench in the first

16:40 war.

16:41 But when my meetings were attacked.

16:43 I either had to close down, or defend them, and I organised that defence and we won.

16:49 We had orderly meetings, and that was our “offence”.”

16:52 “They used violence against us, and they used violence in return.

16:56 But I don’t like it, I hate it.”

16:58 Incidentally, the interviewer from that video, which you can find on YouTube, is completely

17:03 stumped by what Mosley says at this point, as well as at other points in the video.

17:08 So they cut to the next part where the interviewer has his head down, trying to understand what

17:13 had been said, and come up with another question.

17:15 (If you blink, you might miss it.)

17:18 The interviewer clearly had a preconceived notion of what Fascism is, and Mosley flummoxed

17:24 him by coming out with the complete opposite - another reason why we need to understand

17:29 this topic properly.

17:31 And let’s be clear here: even without the anti-Semitism, Fascism and National Socialism

17:37 are stupid ideologies (along with Communism and Socialism in general).

17:41 Economically and socially, they don’t work, and they actually hurt the workers or whoever

17:46 they pretend to support, not help them.

17:49 If you read Mises’ “Socialism”, which is free online, you’ll find out why.

17:54 So I’m not sympathetic to fascism or any of these gnostic religions at all.

17:59 However, even approaching this from a non-fascist point of view, I’m compelled by the evidence

18:04 to concede that Mosley’s fascists may have been largely on the defensive against the

18:10 ‘reds’.

18:11 Yes, they used violence in defence (and they did launch their own attacks - they’re not

18:15 innocent), but they appear to be mainly on the defence.

18:19 And the other parties were equally, if not more, violent.

18:23 And I actually have a source for that.

18:26 Thurlow (who is a Marxist) says that the Communists and Socialists were as, if not more, violent

18:32 than the British Union of Fascists.

18:35 In addition, it’s absolutely clear to me that most people don’t know what Fascism

18:39 is; they just know they hate it.

18:42 And that’s what Mosley found out.

18:44 He discovered that, even though his movement was built for the workers and the unemployed

18:48 (at least, in theory), the workers and the unemployed hated him.

18:53 “We were a new movement and we were entirely dependent upon the spoken word at public meetings

18:59 to find the support which did not yet exist.

19:02 It was perfectly clear that we were to be denied by organised violence this sole opportunity

19:08 for political progress.

19:10 What were we to do?

19:11 - Pack up and go home?

19:12 - Or organise ourselves to defend our meetings?

19:15 A few of my valued associates chose the first alternative, I chose the second.”

19:20 I spoke about this in the previous video.

19:22 Mosley’s British Union of Fascists had to react to what he called “red violence”.

19:28 And we can cry about this, or deny it, but the evidence is clear: the violence associated

19:34 with British Fascism was largely a reaction to “red violence”.

19:39 And yet, only the fascists are seen as violent thugs.

19:43 Well, the Labour and Communist Movements should be viewed the exact same way because they

19:49 are equally as violent.

19:51 So Mosley used stewarts to kick out “hecklers” and “protestors” from their meetings,

19:57 many of whom were armed with various weapons, like razors, knuckle-dusters, and iron bars

20:03 (meaning that they weren’t hecklers or protestors).

20:07 The fascists even made a little museum to showcase all the weapons they had collected

20:12 from fighting with their enemies.

20:13 And what’s worse is that we have evidence of deliberate police bias in favour of the

20:20 Marxists.

20:21 “At a meeting at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in March 1933, where fighting had broken

20:27 out between interrupters using chairs and fascists wielding rubber truncheons, the police

20:32 had intervened to exclude the stewards.

20:36 Since then Mosley had consistently refused to allow the police into his meetings.”

20:41 This historian, Martin Pugh, goes on to ask if Mosley had an ulterior motive for not allowing

20:47 the police into his meetings due to the fact that the violence helped the Fascists gain

20:52 popularity?

20:53 Well, that might be a subsidiary reason, but I think the fact that the police were on the

20:58 side of the Marxists might be the primary concern.

21:02 And we’re got to ask: why were the police only removing the stewards?

21:08 Removing Mosley’s defences would have only encouraged the Marxists to be more violent,

21:13 and the fascists to be defenceless against such violence.

21:17 The logical reason why was because this would discourage the Fascists from conducting meetings

21:23 in the first place, thus removing them from the political scene.

21:26 So, it’s no wonder Mosley didn’t trust the British police.

21:30 Thurlow says that, in 1933 and 1934, Communists and “militant Jewish youth” were assaulting

21:37 Blackshirts who were selling newspapers.

21:40 Therefore, anti-semitism was growing within the ranks of the British Fascists, who had

21:45 largely not been anti-Semitic before this point.

21:47 Now, I want to make this clear: the Jews were seeing what was happening in Germany with

21:52 the National Socialists, and were reacting accordingly.

21:56 And their reaction to the Nazi issue is understandable.

22:00 The problem was that Fascism and National Socialism are two separate things.

22:04 But the Jews and many others in Britain at the time, and still to this day, do not understand

22:10 that there is a difference.

22:12 People mistakenly believe that fascism and nazism are the same thing - in fact, I would

22:18 say Arnold Leese didn’t realise this either, which is why he put Fascism in the name of

22:22 the IFL, even though it was national socialist.

22:26 So from what I can tell via the sources (which are admittingly problematic), the Jews were

22:33 attacking the British Union of Fascists, thinking they were National Socialists, and the Fascists

22:38 reacted to those attacks by becoming more anti-Semitic.

22:44 If this is indeed what happened, then this is why it’s important to understand the

22:49 misunderstanding.

22:51 This is also why Mosley protested his innocence so often about the Jews, in his books, and

22:56 in his interviews.

22:57 “I never wanted to persecute Jews myself.

23:01 I simply defended my meetings from Jewish attacks.”

23:04 Now, he could be lying.

23:07 It could be part of his propaganda effort or whatever.

23:11 However, from the sources I have, plus the knowledge of the ideological difference between

23:16 fascism and National Socialism (which I’m knee-deep in the argument over on this channel),

23:21 I don’t think he is lying.

23:23 He and his followers seem to be very consistent on this issue.

23:27 And other sources seem to back them up on this.

23:31 It could genuinely be the case that the popular Marxist world-view falsely put Fascism and

23:37 National Socialism together, and everybody just believed it.

23:41 But Mosley only turned against the Jews in July or October of 1934 (possibly a bit earlier).

23:48 And even then, as Mosley and the historians say, it wasn’t on racial lines.

23:52 It was on national lines.

23:54 “Now let us be absolutely clear about this question.

23:57 I was never anti-semitic and I’ll define anti-semitic.

24:00 By that I mean someone who attacks Jews on account of race or on account of religion.

24:06 I had a quarrel not with some Jews [misspoke] - not with all Jews, but with some Jews about

24:11 one subject; whether there should be a Second World War or not.

24:15 Now coming back from the First World War, after that time in the air and in the trenches

24:21 and in the loss of all my friends, I was very strongly against another war.

24:26 And it seemed to me, rightly or wrongly (that’s a question we can debate) that certain Jews

24:32 were trying to provoke a second world war because their compatriots or co-religionists

24:38 were admittingly having a very bad time in Germany.

24:41 Now I do not think that a minority in this country should pursue a policy contrary to

24:47 the national interest which can (and in fact, which did) result in the loss of fifty million

24:53 lives.

24:54 That gave rise to a very bitter quarrel of the period in which harsh things were said,

25:00 and harsh things done, because they attacked our meetings.

25:03 But I was not before that, and I have not been since, or even at the time, was not anti-semitic

25:09 because not all Jews were involved; but only some.”

25:13 Your interpretation might be different, and that’s fine.

25:16 But if you notice, he defined anti-Semitism as attacks against Jews on account of their

25:22 race or religion.

25:23 He did not define attacks on Jews on account of their nationality as anti-Semitism.

25:30 So the question is: do we define anti-Semitism on race and religion only, or do we define

25:35 it as race, religion and nationality?

25:37 According to Merriam-Webster, antisemitism is defined as: hostility toward or discrimination

25:43 against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group.

25:48 Well, that’s not national or patriotic.

25:51 Other sites say it’s just a general hostility towards Jews.

25:55 However, Mosley also said that he was only hostile to some Jews, not all.

26:00 If this is the case (and it’s obviously debatable) - but let’s just assume for a

26:04 second he’s telling the truth because there is evidence to support this idea in the literature

26:09 - then how does that work?

26:11 Does hostility towards some Jews but not others count as anti-Semitism?

26:16 Personally, I think he became anti-Semitic, but would have tolerated Jews living in Britain

26:21 had they conformed to the British standards of the Fascist State he was going to construct,

26:27 because that is precisely what he said in the late 1930s.

26:31 “The British Union of Fascists, when it comes to power will treat Jews and Gentile

26:36 on their merits.

26:37 Both will be under the same law, and both will be called upon to put the welfare of

26:42 the nation before any sectional or racial interest.”

26:47 So there is a debate over this.

26:49 However, regardless whether you think Mosley was or wasn’t anti-Semitic, in 1933, Mosley

26:55 still hadn’t adopted the anti-Semitism he would later be accused of.

26:59 And that’s perhaps why, when the first major BUF march occurred in June 1933 and a thousand

27:06 Blackshirts marched through London, they were completely ignored by their opponents.

27:11 There’s no reason to stop them.

27:14 But when the anti-Semitism started to ramp up, in the November of 1933, the British Government

27:20 decided to start monitoring the fascists.

27:23 Lord Rothermere was also persuaded by Mussolini to support Mosley in 1934, and his newspapers

27:29 (especially the Daily Mail) provided a massive boost to BUF membership figures.

27:35 Mosley attempted to win over more intellectual circles as well, forming the January Club

27:40 on the 1st of January 1934 to discuss political issues with MPs, lords, and even a Brigadier-General.

27:48 Perhaps 350 people attended the club, which was operated in expensive hotels over dinner,

27:54 going against the idea that they were just thugs who liked violence.

27:57 However, it’s been suggested that the roots of the Movement were weak, which is why Mussolini

28:02 was financing Mosley; if he hadn’t done this, then the Movement probably would have

28:07 collapsed.

28:08 The British State realised that the Fascists only had weak support from the British people,

28:12 and thus weren’t a serious threat - which goes against the woke-left narrative that

28:17 British society has been and is inherently “fascist”.

28:22 No, the evidence doesn’t support that conclusion.

28:25 The British were militantly anti-fascists in the 1930s and 40s.

28:30 Now it’s debated, but historians have said that support for the British Fascists peaked

28:35 in mid-1934, stating that the violence at the Olympia meeting on the 7th of June turned

28:41 people away from Mosley.

28:43 12,000 people were at that event (including 150 MPs - nearly a quarter of all the MPs),

28:51 and the Communists decided to disrupt the meeting.

28:54 1,000 “anti-fascists” attended what the propaganda later referred to as the “counter-demonstration”,

29:01 which is ridiculous, it wasn’t a “demonstration” at all.

29:06 These “mostly peaceful protestors” were armed with knuckle dusters and razors.

29:11 So when the hecklers and protestors were carted off by the Blackshirts, fights broke out in

29:16 the foyer.

29:17 Up to 70 people ended up in hospital, with two of the five people staying overnight being

29:24 Blackshirts.

29:25 Inevitably, because of all the Marxist and Establishment propaganda (both are on the

29:32 same side) the fascists got blamed for all of this…

29:34 But, why attend the meeting if you’re not a fascist?

29:38 You’re only there to disrupt it, which means, the anti-Fascists were the cause of the violence.

29:43 They were the attackers.

29:45 No anti-fascists, no violence.

29:48 But nonetheless, historian Thurlow rallies behind his Marxist friends and says the fascists

29:54 “deliberately overreacted” to the Marxist attacks.

29:57 What, they overreacted to knuckledusters and razor blades?

30:03 “The “counter-demonstrators” were not relying either on their vocal cords or their

30:07 fists to stop the meeting, as was evidenced by the nature of the wounds and injuries sustained

30:12 that evening by our stewards and supporters; and by the candid confession of participants

30:17 on their side, such as Philip Toynbee, a product of Rugby School who became an active communist,

30:24 in his reminisces of buying knuckle-dusters and attacking a steward.”

30:28 According to Wikipedia, this communist, Philip Toynbee, was the grandson of the Hegelian,

30:34 Arnold Toynbee, that I mentioned in the previous video about Mosley.

30:39 Just thought I’d point that out.

30:42 I wonder if he ever got arrested for assault?

30:43 “We collected a strange assortment of weapons from the “gentle hecklers” during the

30:48 course of the evening.

30:50 Apart from coshes, iron bars, knuckle-dusters, and razors usually wielded by reds, and prised

30:57 from them after sanguinary struggles with the stewards, this time could be included

31:01 a cobbler’s awl, a short-handled chopper and a curry-bomb (anyone with stable experience

31:08 can appreciate this as a weapon).”

31:11 Mosley says they organised a dressing-station at Olympia because they knew in advance that

31:16 they were going to be attacked.

31:19 Seven Special Branch members were in the audience (probably in plain clothes), but nobody else.

31:25 The British police knew that the Communists were going to attend (the ‘reds’ had announced

31:30 it numerous times in their newspapers) and the police knew there was going to be violence.

31:37 But Thurlow says the British police deliberately stood back and let it happen.

31:43 Now yes, Mosley had refused to allow the police to attend his meetings after the police previously

31:49 sided with the attackers, but surely they could have insisted on attending, or just

31:53 shut it down before it even began?

31:56 Yet they didn’t.

31:57 The Official British Union of Fascists quotes from a Conservative MP (who may be sympathetic

32:03 to Mosley’s cause), but nonetheless, he states:

32:08 “To describe as certain sections of the press have done, organised gangs of hooligans

32:14 as ‘hecklers’ or ‘genuine interrupters’, who attempting to elicit further information

32:19 were brutally assaulted and forcibly ejected, is to give a wholly erroneous impression of

32:25 what actually occurred…

32:27 The fact is that many of the Communists were armed with razors, stockings filled with broken

32:33 glass, knuckle-dusters and iron bars: that they had marched from the East End, the police

32:38 kindly escorting, with the avowed purpose of wrecking the meeting.

32:43 A friend of mine saw a woman Fascist with a razor cut across her face, and with my own

32:48 eyes I witnessed gangs of Communists resisting ejection with the utmost violence.”

32:54 Regardless Thurlow blames the fascists for the attacks, even though they were quite clearly

33:00 on the defence in this instance, as Special Branch and historian Martin Pugh also conclude.

33:08 Surely the attackers should be the ones to be blamed?

33:11 And I’m not saying the Fascists shouldn’t have been opposed; yes, they should be peacefully

33:15 opposed.

33:16 But I’m disheartened to report that what we have here is a significant bias in the

33:22 sources.

33:23 I mean, wouldn’t you “deliberately overreact” to being attacked with razors and other weaponry?

33:29 Especially since it was effectively sanctioned by the British police.

33:33 [Pause.]

33:35 Mosley quotes from a nurse:

33:36 “[A] girl Fascist with a scratch, commencing under her eye and running down her cheek and

33:41 neck and finishing on her back, between her shoulder blades.

33:45 I do not think this scratch could have been done with a finger nail, but that some sharp

33:50 instrument must have been used.

33:52 While treating this case, another girl Fascist was brought in; she had been struck by a man

33:57 and her glasses smashed in her face.

34:00 She was bleeding from the region of the left eye.”

34:04 Historian Martin Pugh concludes that the MPs in attendance were from other parties, and

34:09 they wanted to discredit Mosley and the Fascists as much as possible, since Mosley was gaining

34:15 support at their loss.

34:19 Could we then not surmise that the British police did not intervene until the later stages

34:24 because the Establishment wanted the violence to occur, so that they could conduct a massive

34:29 propaganda campaign to convince the public that it was, indeed, Mosley’s fault?

34:34 And before I get accused of ‘conspiracy theorising’: 150 MPs were in attendance,

34:40 the media were all over the show, the Communists were armed and well organised (despite supposedly

34:45 being poor workers and unemployed), the police stood back and did nothing, and there were

34:52 7 Special Branch members in the audience.

34:55 You know, is it a stretch to say that this was a setup?

35:00 The sarcasm in the official history of the British Union of Fascists is certainly warranted

35:05 on this occasion.

35:06 “Next day Britain resounded to indignant voices denouncing the fascist atrocities.

35:13 Apparently Mosley planned to attain power by booking large halls, inviting the public

35:17 to enter them, and then unleashing his black shirted thugs to beat up his helpless audiences

35:23 so savagely that they would be sure to vote for his candidates at the next election.”

35:29 Historians have interpreted the outcome of Olympia in different ways.

35:32 Some say that it was the turning point of Mosley’s Movement.

35:37 The argument goes that opinion shifted away from Mosley after all the propaganda that

35:42 followed Olympia.

35:43 The problem with this narrative is that we have evidence that violence in every other

35:49 instance actually helped to gain Mosley support, not take it away.

35:53 So for example, at the Battle of Cable Street which happens later, the violence caused membership

36:00 of both the Communists and Fascists to rise.

36:04 So why would violence at Cable Street and elsewhere cause an influx of support, but

36:11 violence at Olympia specifically somehow causes a decline?

36:14 There’s a contradiction there in the overall narrative.

36:19 Also, as Pugh points out, opinion was actually mixed, with some members of Parliament in

36:24 favour of the violence and the use of stewards to defend their own meetings (which every

36:28 party was doing anyway).

36:31 Readers of certain newspapers came to the conclusion that the fascists were the victims.

36:36 Pugh also notes that Special Branch concluded that the event spurred an “unprecedented

36:43 fillip to recruitment” (“fillip” meaning “stimulus”).

36:46 “The truth is that while the violence alienated some people, it also added to the appeal of

36:52 the BUF among the young and militant anti-Communists, with the result that the organisation experienced

36:57 a major turnover of membership during 1934-5.”

37:02 We could get into the nitty gritty here over this, but it’s not worth doing that today.

37:06 In a nutshell, my interpretation currently is that Olympia might have been the high point,

37:12 but wasn’t the turning point in the fortunes of Mosley and the BUF.

37:18 The reasons why Fascism in Britain failed are different, and I’ll come back to discuss

37:24 that in a future video.

37:25 For now, it’s clear that Mosley gained a few extra members after the Olympia meeting,

37:32 and membership of the BUF probably peaked in late 1934 at somewhere between 40,000 and

37:39 50,000 people.

37:41 (I must point out though that that number is a guess from a problematic source, and

37:46 is probably an exaggeration.)

37:48 So what are our conclusions?

37:51 Well I think the first thing is that “red violence” probably helped the BUF, and gave

37:57 it support.

37:58 Shocking, I know, but punching a Nazi or a Fascist is only going to help their cause.

38:04 It’s only going to strengthen them and confirm to them that they’re right.

38:09 Violence will persuade neutrals that Fascists and Nazis are being persecuted, providing

38:14 them with sympathy (which is perhaps how this video will now come across because the ‘reds’

38:20 were absolutely in the wrong in this instance).

38:23 So as tempting as it might be to a Marxist to “punch a Nazi”, you might want to consider

38:29 the consequences of your actions.

38:32 (And by the way, it’s the same for anyone considering reacting to the woke mob.

38:36 The best thing to do is ignore them.

38:38 Don’t give them what they want.

38:41 If you react, they win.)

38:43 If there was little to no anti-Semitism in the British Union of Fascists from 1932 to

38:48 mid-1934, then why were the ‘reds’ attacking them in the first place?

38:53 And the answer is because they were fighting for the same ground - for the unemployed,

38:59 the workers and the socialists in general.

39:02 Marxists (and the Establishment) don’t want competition, and so they attacked the Fascists

39:07 with all their might… and propaganda, pretending that fascism was the ‘end stage of capitalism’.

39:13 The attacks on Mosley during the early 1930s exposes the lie in the popular Marxist narrative.

39:21 There was no anti-Semitism.

39:24 Only later did the anti-Semitism come about, which the Socialists and Communists then hid

39:28 behind to justify their actions.

39:29 But in reality, they were violently against Fascism because it was a direct competitor

39:35 to their own brand of gnostic statism.

39:38 It’s also clear that the historians that I’ve read (not many, admittingly) are approaching

39:43 this from a Marxist perspective, which is problematic to say the least.

39:47 Both Pugh and Thurlow are trying to paint Mosley’s British Union of Fascists as “conservatives”.

39:53 They’re so far off the mark, they need to go to the opticians, which I don’t recommend

39:59 they go alone because they’re that blind they won’t be able to find it.

40:03 So their interpretation of the events leaves a lot to be desired, and it’s clear that

40:09 they’re not questioning the narrative that they’ve bought into.

40:12 As a result, I’m reluctant to recommend their books.

40:16 There might be some historians out there that I haven’t read that are better, but currently

40:21 I’m at a loss as to what to recommend.

40:25 And obviously the primary sources are also largely biased, and I’m not sure I can recommend

40:31 them either.

40:32 Ideally, I’d rather you start with a secondary source that’s decent enough so you’re

40:36 prepared against the propaganda inherent within the primary sources.

40:40 But the secondary sources are so skewed to the other side, I can’t do it.

40:47 So we’re left with the propaganda of the primary sources.

40:51 Mosley probably is lying to some extent, or downplaying certain factors, as are his Fascists.

40:56 However, I’m currently of the view that he’s correct on the “red violence” issue.

41:02 I also think he did fight against Nazis and other fascists who were his competitors, and

41:07 then turned anti-Semitic in 1934 (arguably) as a result of an understandable Jewish reaction

41:14 to German National Socialism.

41:16 If this is the case (and again, there’s always a doubt), then this does highlight

41:20 the general misunderstanding of what fascism is compared to National Socialism, and why

41:26 it’s important to learn from history so that we don’t repeat it, and don’t push

41:31 people into the Third Positionist camp.

41:34 If you don’t know the differences between Fascism and National Socialism, here are some

41:39 videos that will help you with that.

41:41 Thanks for watching, bye for now.