Posted by Laura on Sun, 22 Sep 2019 13:50 | #

The BBC’s False Villain // Peaky Blinders

Posted by mancinblack on Mon, 23 Sep 2019 16:01 | #

Sir Oswald Mosley had long been the subject of satire.During the 1930’s PG Wodehouse had based his character Roderick Spode, the 7th Earl of Sidcup and leader of fascist party ‘The Saviours of Britain,  nicknamed ‘the Black Shorts’, on Mosley. Spode appeared in a number of the writer’s “Jeeves” novels but then, people who take themselves too seriously are basically asking for it.

Some quotes about Mosley….

According to Robert Skidelsky in his biography of Mosley (1975) Sir Oswald’s detractors on the Right referred to him as the ‘kosher fascist’. Long before he became fashy, the young Sir Oswald visited the home of Lord Curzon to ask for his daughter Cynthia’s hand in marriage. Lord Curzon recorded his first impressions in his diary entry for 21st March 1920.

The young man Mosley came to see me yesterday evening…Very young, tall, slim, dark, rather a big nose, little black moustache, rather a Jewish appearance..

‘The aristocracy have learned how to talk but not how to work’?

He was born with a golden spoon in his mouth - it cost £100 in doctor’s fees to bring him into this world. He lived on the fat of the land and never did a days work in his life. If he and his wife want to go in for Labour, why don’t they do a bit of work themselves? my son tells the tale that he does this and that but he lives in the height of luxury, If the working class… are going to be taken in by such nonsense - I am sorry for them. How does my son know anything about them?
(Interview with Sir Oswald Mosley Snr, [as part of a campaign against Sir Oswald, by the right wing press, when he was standing for the Labour party in the Smethwick by-election. Mosley won comfortably]. The Daily Express 13th December 1926)

Sir Oswald’s long absent (and divorced) father was a little unfair to his son, who had served in the Royal Flying Corps during WWI and then there was all the work it must have taken to keep up his extra-marital affairs. Still ” If the working class are going to be taken in by such nonsense - I am sorry for them” comes close to how I feel about Cliffedge Corbyn.

Something more complimentary…

A superb political thinker, the best of our age - AJP Taylor

By general assent he could have become the leader of either the Conservative or the Labour party…political genius - Michael Foot

Great talents and strength of character - Harold MacMillan

(from the dust cover of the second edition of “My Life”)

The song ‘Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley” from ‘Not the Nine O’Clock News’ note the obituaries, in particular from The Guardian. A bygone age, really.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPCZvYu0QBA

Most of Mosley’s contemporaries and even handed, later, commentators regarded Mosley’s embrace of fascism as self-destruction. A view I share.

Posted by DanielS on Mon, 23 Sep 2019 18:39 | #

The Mosley quotes that Laura selected are ethnonationalist, and do not necessarily correspond with Hitler’s imperial supremacism.

In her defense, she does say that she will take a step back now, not knowing enough about Mosley to give him full on endorsement. It’s a terrible shame that Mosley became associated with Hitler’s catastrophic imperialist supremacism, off the rails and over the top as it was by way of natural fallacy above and below the correctability of praxis; but since we do have the luxury of 20/20 hindsight, we might work on parsing the distinction now properly as it should be - for the good and inspiring parts of ethnonationalism that Mosley was tapping.

Thank you for your corrective input, Manciblack. That’s the way knowledge formation is supposed to work - in joint construction and correction of specificatory structures.