They’ve done it again. The man behind the extreme right-wing vlog and group, Correct, Not Political, held another livestream this week. And once again they gave an indication of their true political colours by prefacing it with black and white newsreel footage of Mosley marching with his BUF storm troopers, all to weeping string music, of course. The group go around staging counter-protests against Drag Queen Story Hour, gay pride, environmentalists, pro-immigrant groups, and people they class as ‘socialists and commies’. They were out today at the ‘Solidarity with Postal Workers’ demonstrations, which they declared to be ‘commies’. Now to be fair to them, they aren’t violent and just try to catch their victims out with awkward questions. They are less fascist in that way than antifa and the militant trans rights protesters, who do threaten violence, scream abuse and hurl smoke bombs around as well as making death threats. But I wonder how well they understand or agree with Mosley’s ideology. For example, at one point their main man said he was a ‘free speech absolutist’. In that case, why support a monster like Mosley? He didn’t, and he tells you over and again he didn’t. It’s in his autobiography, My Life, where at one point he says that free speech is worthless if you’re starving on a park bench. If, God help us! – Mosley had actually got into power and become dictator, the only free speech he would have permitted is the freedom to agree wholeheartedly with whatever nonsense he was spouting that day. If you watch the Channel 4 series about him, there’s one scene at a political meeting where Mosley is expounding his fascist views. And the other politicians condemn it as an attack on traditional British liberties. He denies this, and says it is just marshalling all the forces of the state. But his opponents knew far better.
I also have doubts about their education and intellect. In one of their videos, they urge people to boycott Selfridges, Bella Freud and other stores, whose goods are well out of the price range of ordinary people. Their reason for doing so is because they’re selling branded goods supporting Allen Ginsburg. Ginsburg was a beat poet, and a friend of William S. Burroughs of Naked Lunch infamy and Jack Kerouac, the author of On The Road, a classic of mid-20th century American literature. Except their guy couldn’t pronounce ‘Kerouac’. He got as far as ‘Ker-, Kerw-‘, before giving up. In fact their attack on Ginsburg is actually quite reasonable. They didn’t like him anyway, ’cause he was a Commie, who kept getting thrown out of Communist countries for supporting gay rights. But he was also a paedophile, and the play a recording of him talking about his attitude to people enquiring about NAMBLA, the main American paedophile organisation. Ginsburg didn’t want members to reply, in case it was an attempt to entrap them. If that’s true, then Ginsburg isn’t someone to be celebrated. But I also wondered if lurking behind this boycott there wasn’t a bit of anti-Semitism as well. I don’t know, perhaps there isn’t, but it’s too much like the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses.
But back to Mosley. Fascism is a weird mixture of the radical left and capitalist, pro-private enterprise right. Mussolini believed, if the opportunist believed anything, that Italy should be governed as a corporate state. Industry was to be organised into corporations, in this case the successors to the medieval guilds, in which trade unions, management and proprietors represented their industries in a ‘council of fasces and corporations’ which replaced parliament. Mosley initially believed the same, before he rejected it as ‘too bureaucratic’. Under him, the House of Lords would be abolished and replaced with a similar industrial chamber. It’s an interesting idea, but if it was like Mussolini’s Italy, it wouldn’t have done anything except cheered and clapped Mosley and automatically pass every piece of legislation he proposed. But it’s a good question to ask Correct, Not Political. Would they want to replace the House of Lords with a similar industrial chamber following the theories of the corporate state. My guess is that they’d be horrified by the idea, because trade unions = commies. When one of the rival fascist groups wanted to ally themselves with Mosley, he asked them what their views on the corporate state were. They immediately denounced it as Communism. At which Mosley left them. My guess is Correct, Not Political have the same views.
Ditto Mosley’s views on Europe. After the War he turned up, promoting ‘national syndicalism’, his term for his version of the corporate state and calling for the formation of a united Europe, again along fascist lines, against the Communist threat. I think he later claimed to be a pioneer of the idea of the EU, which I’ve no doubt would have horrified the real founders. So, are Correct, Not Political also for the idea of a united Europe against the threat of plutocratic capitalism and Communism? As I’m sure they’re all Brexiteers of the racist stripe, that’s probably another one which would cause them difficulties.
I may well be misjudging them. Perhaps they do have a strong grasp of Mosley’s ideas, and could provide well-informed answers to those awkward questions. But perhaps not.
Tags: Abuse, Allen Ginsburg, anti-semitism, Antifa, Benito Mussolini, Boycotts, British Union of Fascists, Capitalism, Chamber of Fasces and Corporations, Channel 4, Child Abuse, Corporate State, Correct Not Political, Death Threats, Drag Queen Story Hour, Freedom of Speech, Gay Rights, Gays, House of Lords, Immigration, Jews, Management, My Life, Oswald Mosley, Parliament, Postal Workers, Pride Marches, Selfridges, Transgendered People, Violence
December 10, 2022 at 4:03 pm |
Mosley was a political opportunist. When he couldn’t bend the Labour Party to his will, he formed the New Party, and when that flopped, he formed the British Union of Fascists, which initially drew it’s inspiration from Musso’s Italian Fascists. Like Musso, Mosley did not, initially, preach anti-Semitism, and the BUF welcomed Jewish members. Pro-nazis sneered at the BUF as “kosher fascists”, and, finding nazi Germany a more fruitful source of funding, Mosley stepped up the anti-Semitism with his provocative East End marches. Quite rightly interned in the Tower for the duration of the war, he emerged a confirmed nazi, and resumed his rabble-rousing meetings in venues adorned with portraits of Hitler. To combat this, Jewish war veterans and other anti-nazis formed The 43 Group, which made it their mission to smash up BUF meetings. Police officers, many of whom had served in the war, tended to turn a blind eye. Most archive footagte of Mosley shows him ranting, hitler-style, but I saw him debating at the Oxford Union on South Africa with Jeremy Thorpe, and he was a spellbinder. He was also a very wily debater, and tricked Thorpe into denouncing a statement by Asquith as “typical of a fascist dictator”!
December 10, 2022 at 6:08 pm |
That’s sound like a fair assessment of Mosley. Apparently, Skidelsky, Mosley’s biographer until the publication of ‘Blackshirt’, whose author currently escapes me, thought that Mosley was genuinely bewildered by the opposition he got from the Jews, and so handed the question over to his subordinates, who were confirmed anti-Semites. But there’s also evidence Mosley had anti-Semitic views, or was at least considering them, well before then.
I Knew he changed the name of the BUF to ‘the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists’ as he jumped on the Hitler bandwagon after Mussolini’s star began to wane. I didn’t realise that he went around after the War waving a portrait of Hitler. I did come across a book on the ’43 Group in one of the remaindered bookshops in Cheltenham. One of their members was Vidal Sassoon. It’s a bit bizarre thinking of a hairdresser beating up fascists in the streets, but obviously he was a fighting man doing his duty to defend his people.
As for the cops turning a blind eye to Mosley’s antics, there was a peace in Lobster a few years ago about how they routinely ignored fascist street preachers after the War. One of the Nazis’ tricks was drinking a toast, ‘P.J.’ for ‘Pereat Judah’ or ‘Perish the Jews’. Except that they used to drink a glass of water for that part of the toast, and then say ‘P.J.’ afterwards so they weren’t technically saying it. Or so they argued.
December 10, 2022 at 6:22 pm |
Hasn’t our favourite right-wing historian also basically put up a video idolising Mosley recently? I’m not sure even Nigel Farage is right-wing enough for him, but I’m also not convinced he’d endorse “For Britain”/BF (he is, ironically, *not* Islamophobic).
December 10, 2022 at 8:34 pm |
I honestly don’t know. I don’t think so, but that’s not to say he hasn’t. But you’re right – he isn’t islamopobic and he’s not anti-Semitic, which drives some of his readers out of their minds.
December 11, 2022 at 12:12 pm |
“our favourite right-wing historian”
Remember, in his own words, he is not a historian.
December 11, 2022 at 12:24 pm
I’d very much like to see the sources for some of the things he’s said. Sometimes he cites them so you can check, other times he doesn’t so you don’t know whether it’s true or false.