Robert Evans and Cody Johnson dissect Oswald Mosley, the British fascist who inspired the Christchurch shooter, detailing his anti-Semitic upbringing, WWI plane crash, and 1932 founding of the British Union of Fascists. They analyze how Mosley justified naming his movement "fascism" to rehabilitate its reputation after the Spanish Civil War, contrasting his claimed parliamentary strategy with the Blackshirts' violent escalation during the 1934 Olympia rally. Ultimately, the hosts illustrate how Lord Rothermere's initial support collapsed following unprovoked attacks on Jews and communists, marking Mosley's irreversible shift toward overt hatred that foreshadowed future atrocities. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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On a recent episode of the podcast Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Bajanista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
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If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
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This is my best friend Janet.
Hey.
And we have been joined at the hip since high school.
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Just a little bit bigger hips.
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What's boiling my crabs?
I'm Robert Evans, and this is once again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history.
How'd you guys feel about that intro?
Loved it.
Good, good?
My favorite.
What's boiling my crabs?
What's boiling my crabs?
Let's make that a thing we always say everywhere.
It's going to be my new t-shirt.
I like it more than the last time.
Whatever it was.
I forget what it was.
That was the what's itching my rashes.
Yeah, I know.
That was a rough one.
That was a rough one.
This one's good.
This is palatable.
It belongs on not just a normal shirt, but exclusively on sleeveless shirts.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's just what crabs make me think.
The artwork's going to be key, but this is happening.
Yeah.
As you listening have probably guessed by now, my guests for today's episode are Katie and Cody, Katie Johnson and Cody Johnson with Katie Stoll.
Sorry.
Of the Sum News Network.
How are y'all doing today?
So good.
Honestly, hi.
Hey, are you doing okay?
Yeah, I'm doing good.
Did you say honestly you're high?
I was saying hello.
It was hello.
But I see how that would sound like I was saying.
It does sound like you're doing high right now.
I mean, we're in the city of Los Angeles where conservatively 90% of the city is high at any given time.
100%.
You walk around and there are two predominant smells.
One is marijuana and the other is skunk.
Yeah.
At least in my neighborhood.
It's one or the other.
And they're similar.
They are similar.
They are similar because we have bad drivers, partly because of all of the marijuana.
Today, we are talking about a fellow named Oswald Mosley.
Finally.
You all know about Oswald Mosley?
Ask me again in an hour.
Y'all's about to.
So, let's tear into this submarine sea witch of knowledge.
Let's eat this crab.
Let's eat this crab.
Let's crack this crab open, fish out its delicious butter-drenched meat, cover our table and our shirt in crab goo.
I got my bib on.
Got my bib on, and I always rip the bib at some point.
If you throw out the shirt, it's all oily.
You're having a real good crab feast.
You don't keep those clothing.
I just walk naked out of the crab restaurant, just burn my shirt in their furnace.
And Google the next crab restaurant you can find.
You can only go once to do it again.
That's the key with a good crab restaurant.
You get one shot.
You better do it right, y'all.
But ooh, is it glorious?
It's a great four and a half hours.
The Good Crab Feast00:15:12
All right, let's talk about this fascist.
For slightly shorter than you would spend at a crab restaurant.
Much shorter.
Okay.
We'll do a four-part episode that's just me at a crab restaurant, and that will be the bastard.
So you'll be the bastard.
I am the worst version of myself when I'm eating crab.
Oh, boy, nobody needs any of that.
All right.
Sir Oswald, Ernold Mosley, was born on the 16th of November, 1896.
He was the oldest of three children.
His family was one of those wonky-ass noble families that the British still have for some reason.
So at birth, Oswald Mosley became the sixth baronet of Epdale Hall, Staffordshire.
His mother, Maud, gave birth without the benefit of her husband, Waldy's presence, because he was, quote, a rake gambler and a heavy drinker.
Nevertheless, Waldy bragged to anyone who would hear about the birth of his heir.
Maude wrote in her diary on the day of Oswald's birth, thankful, it's a boy.
Oswald went by Tommy as a little kid.
He was ill often, and as you might have guessed by all the names and titles, he grew up very wealthy.
Tommy.
Tommy.
That's short for Oswald.
Oswald.
Yep.
Everything the British do is wrong.
So I'm going to say something right now, right here.
I've gotten a lot of shit on the Twitter, on the twats, the tweets, for my mispronunciation of British town names and city names.
And I feel like with all of the evil that colonialism did, the one way we can make it right is by forever mispronouncing the names of small towns in the United Kingdom.
I couldn't agree more.
Stuff at Schwinn.
Upon Griffith.
Exactly, exactly.
So that's just how it's going to be this episode.
I always call London Landon.
Landon?
Landon?
Yeah.
Because then it sounds like a sleazy ex-boyfriend and not like the city that ruled the world for 200 years.
Fucking Landon.
Fucking Landon.
That fucking dude.
Oswald's family was so rich that they had an ancestral manor, Apdale Hall.
Their wealth had been built up in the 16th century by his ancestor, Nicholas Mosley, who the book Black Shirt describes as, quote, one of the swindling sheep farmers who at the time were expropriating the common lands of the English people.
So that's where his family money comes from.
Stealing common lands from sheep farmers.
Okay.
Okay.
Adds up wealthy steals from people.
Seems like that's the only way families get involved in the world, yeah.
A reverse Robin Hood, if you're not.
A reverse Robin Hood.
Sheriff of Nottingham.
Yeah, the more successful and more socially accepted.
Yeah, because you know Robin Hood died in a ditch somewhere.
Right.
And the sheriff of Nottingham's descendants now were behind Brexit.
Oswald Mosley's great-grandfather, Sir Oswald, later leased out their property in Manchester for a huge sum of money.
For reasons which are unclear to me, due to my lack of knowledge of 19th century British leasing laws, the Mosleys wound up in a long-running dispute with the Jewish businessmen of Manchester.
According to the book Blackshirt, quote, in the 1880s, although Jews played only a minor role in moneylending, Walter Tomlinson, a local journalist, noted that the identification of Jews with extortionate ursury was extensively believed in.
Mosley's grandfather was at the forefront of the campaign against Jewish emancipation.
So, his granddad was one of the big, I don't want Jews voting, guys.
Right out of the gate.
Right out of the game.
Okay, wealthy, family, wealthy, family.
Okay, okay.
Anyway, here's what they thought about the Jews.
Here's what they thought.
Yeah, four paragraphs in.
Here's what his granddad thought about the Jews.
I don't know why I was surprised.
It took longer than I expected, Cody.
Oswald's grandfather wound up being his chief male influence as a boy.
His dad, Waldy, is generally described as a piece of shit.
Oswald later described his father as a hard-writing, hard-drinking, hard-living Tory squire, much given to expletives.
He will be the most likable person we talk about in this story.
On one memorable occasion, Oswald's father drunkenly drew his pistol and started shooting out electric lights in Piccadilly Square.
Again, seems like a guy I would have gotten along with.
He also cheated on his wife constantly, which is not cool, and she left her husband when Oswald was quite young.
And he's doing this because, you know, he's rich and he can get away with it, too.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, that's what you do.
You shoot out lights.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm down for that.
That sounds like a great night out.
Good for her, though.
That's a power move.
People didn't leave their husbands that often.
Yeah, good for her.
Mosley would later describe his childhood with his mom and grandfather on the family estate as idyllic.
The property was a self-contained economy, as English estates were in this period of time.
There were farmers and servants who all worked to serve the rich people and all bought and sold from each other.
It was essentially a we independent nation.
Mosley later wrote that he and his family had, quote, little need to go outside the closed and charmed circle, and we children never did.
Our time was divided between farms, gardens, and carpenters' shops, where the bearded Pritchard presided over a corps of experts who kept all things going as their forebears had done for generations.
We were very close to nature.
This is fascinating.
Yeah, because I know a little bit about him and what we're going to be talking about.
And like, yeah, all right.
You grow up like that.
You grow up in that insular kind of big community, like you're the center of attention, and you would look at it like, oh, wow, like it's a very small number of people, and they all work together, and it works great, and like, I'm happy.
And there's no social mobility whatsoever.
We should do that everywhere.
This should be the whole world.
Wow.
That's...
Yeah.
I also, I have to say, I think that having an army of servants who exist only to serve your family is maybe not close to nature.
I wouldn't say you're correct on that.
It depends on how you define nature.
It does depend on how you define nature.
It's natural.
But yeah, it's happening.
It is natural.
It happens.
It's natural.
I'm sure your whims being catered to in a beautiful environment does sound idyllic.
Feels natural.
Feels natural.
You grow up that way.
Without any other outside influences or awareness of what the world actually is.
Yes.
Now, young Mosley did not seem to reflect at all upon the fact that this idyllic situation relied entirely upon an incredibly strict social hierarchy with no mobility whatsoever.
Since Oswald grew up without the benefit of his father, his beliefs about masculinity were largely formed by a mix of British pop culture at the time and his grandfather's example.
The book Black Shirt describes this well.
Quote, he thus idealized the male role and appropriated those components of masculinity he feared would otherwise be used against him.
It was tradition that family quarrels should be aired publicly, and each father challenged his son to a boxing match in front of assembled servants.
Boxing, fencing, and hunting were part of an aggressive upbringing in which being the winner was all important.
The combination of this hyper-masculinity, which was a defense against feelings of dependence, and the lack of boundaries which gave little consideration to others' feelings, ensured that Mosley was always in too much of a hurry.
I rushed towards life with arms outstretched to embrace every varied enchantment of a glittering, wonderful world.
A life rush to be consummated.
It was Mosley's writing at the end there.
Life isn't meant to be rushed, man.
It's not.
I have to say, though, father-son boxing matches are a good idea.
Is this like trial by combat?
It's just like, yeah, you disagree with what your dad says.
You got to fight him.
Yeah.
You got to fight your dad.
Yeah, you're wrong until you're tall enough.
Yeah.
That's the way the world is.
Until you're tall enough to be right.
Yeah, are you tough enough to fight your dad and win?
Are you tough enough to be in the middle?
Then you're right.
Then you're right.
You're the man of the house now.
As a young man, Oswald attended West Down School and Winchester College.
He loved fencing, which we will not mock him for, because so do I. By the time he was 14, I don't need that laughter, Sophie.
It's a fair reaction.
By the time he was 14, he was already 6'2, his adult height.
Mosley was described by his contemporaries as extremely good-looking, which caused him some issues at West Down school.
Mosley described public school life as filled with boredom, which was, quote, only relieved by learning and homosexuality, neither of which he was good at.
It was just sort of British private school life.
A lot of young kids fucking each other.
You know, it's what you do.
But he wasn't very good at it?
He was not.
He was not inclined to homosexuality.
I don't think so.
Okay, so that's what he was saying.
Okay.
Because he just wasn't into it.
It was just his way of saying, like, no, thank you to that.
All right.
I wasn't very good at this.
I'm not good at book learning or fucking my fellow students.
These are not my talents.
I tried.
I studied hard.
I just wasn't very good at it.
I just wasn't very good at it.
All right.
Well, I really studied.
Anti-Semitism was a prevalent part of Oswald's childhood, although the evidence suggests this was not much more of a factor in his young life than it would have been in the life of any of his peers.
During World War II, when he was interrogated by the Advisory Committee on Internment, Mosley told his interviewers that his first experiences with anti-Semitism had come, quote, in my youth, where most of one's friends and relations would not have Jews in their houses.
He described this sort of anti-Semitism as, quote, old English growth and, quote, a whimsical brutality that was much kinder than German anti-Semitism.
Oh, that's rough.
Yeah, that's true.
That was pretty nose.
A whimsical brutality.
Those words don't go together.
That is like, man, they really do feel like that.
We just whimsically beat the Jewish men in town with sticks when they come out at night.
It's just the same old.
You just find another way to say it.
Yeah.
No, we'll spend it like this.
No, whistleblowers.
What the Nazis are doing isn't okay.
But when I chucked a brick through that synagogue window, it was with a smile in my heart.
I was whistling.
It was whimsy.
You whistled.
Come on.
I tried to light that Torah on fire the same way Winnie the Pooh would have.
It looks whimsical.
Charmingly so.
Charmingly so.
We're British.
We're British.
That's fine.
I'm from Stratfordshire.
Stratfordshire.
Our accent's much more palatable.
Much more palatable.
That was not a British accent.
No, no, no.
We should not try today.
We're going to just, we're just going to.
That's the accent of Pritchard, the guy who ran the specific part of England.
Yeah.
In January of 1914, Oswald Mosley entered the Royal Military College of Sandhurst.
It was a violent place, and cadets were taught, quote, impeccability on parade and hooliganism off duty, which is something about military life that has not changed.
Free time was spent in London, starting fights and flirting with girls, which is something else about military life that has not changed.
Mosley admitted that the fighting was seen as much more important than the flirting.
He was apparently unpopular and got kicked out due to a violent incident Blackshirt describes this way.
Quote, older cadets decided that an arrogant Mosley needed to be taken down a peg or two and went to his room to punish him for his insolence.
John Masters in Bugle and Tiger created the legend that Mosley, detested by his brother officer cadets, was thrown out of a window.
In fact, in seeking recruits for retaliatory action, he slipped on a ledge and fell, slightly injuring a leg.
Skirmishing continued all weekend, as a result of which, 15 cadets, including Mosley, were packed off to reflect on their ill behavior.
His friend Robert Bruce Lockhart believed Mosley bore a grudge against society because of this incident.
So, so he was unlikable and people didn't like him.
And people didn't like him.
And when he tried to get involved in the fighting at school, he fell off a window.
Yeah.
Yeah, so he's really full of himself and hated Jews.
Yeah, definitely hated Jews.
Although, probably not more than anybody else than the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.
Sure.
That is like one of those things about European history is that pretty much everybody was pretty anti-Semitic.
And then the Holocaust happened, and most people were like, oh, maybe we should peel back on that a little bit.
Yeah, oh boy.
Didn't know the path that that led to.
It's interesting, too.
Just like this.
So many of these stories involve like, oh, yeah, he's like rich and like really, really arrogant and was just a little more racist than everyone around him.
Just a little bit.
Just a little bit.
You wouldn't have noticed.
Right.
And he was like kind of like an ass about it, like an arrogant person about it.
And so he was unlikable.
So people kind of bullied him a little bit.
And then he went, then he did all the stuff.
Then he did everything where Bob talked about it.
Yeah, you fool yourself and then you're bullied and then turn into a monster.
And then you turn into a monster.
When August 1914 came around, Mosley found himself sent back to Sandhurst to finish his training.
August of 1914, of course, is when, you know, the whole World War I thing.
Yeah.
With all the trenches and the World War?
There was.
There was.
What?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The second one was kind of, you know, it was one of those things, like the new Star Wars movie where, you know, you have a perfectly good thing and then they like reboot it with a new cast.
Right.
You know, and this better special effects and stuff.
And everyone talks about that one, but the other one exists.
The other one exists and it was like more groundbreaking.
Right, right.
But you got to up the ante.
But you got to up the ante.
You know, now there's a couple tanks in the first one.
Everybody's got tanks in the second one.
You know, there's pretty big bombs in the first one.
There's the biggest bomb ever in the second one.
You know, it's just a little derivative.
Yeah, I hope they'll make it a trilogy.
I don't know.
I mean, I'll watch it.
I know you won't.
I mean, I want to see what they do.
I know you watch with all the new CGI available.
Absolutely.
I mean, we just got to hope it's like, you know, J.J. Abrams or someone great.
Right, right.
Yeah, not like some Michael Bay boy.
We don't want Michael Bay directing.
Zach Snyder.
I mean, let's be honest, the only one who could really direct World War III would be Paul Verhoeven.
Okay.
I want to see Paul Verhoeven's World War III.
Kind of think we already have.
Okay.
When the war started, Mosley found himself sent back to Sandhurst to finish his training.
He wound up in the 16th Queen's Lancers, a cavalry union.
He saw action on the Western Front and acquitted himself well.
Eventually, he was promoted and transferred to work as an observer for the Royal Flying Corps.
He was one of Britain's first pilots, although he did not distinguish himself with particular competence in this field.
During a training exercise, when his mom and sister were watching, he attempted to impress them and accidentally crashed his plane.
Say, did he slip and fall off a window ledge?
Kind of, with a plane.
Mom, are you looking?
Watch this.
Watch this, mother.
Are you watching, mother?
Mother?
Probably killed like 16 stable boys when he crashed, but they just never wrote it down.
Oh, sure, yeah.
The stable boys.
Yeah.
The amount of stable boys we had.
We'll get more.
Well, we actually have a lot less stable boys for some reason.
Starting in like 1915.
Very few stable boys.
The accident injured him badly.
It left him with a limp he would carry for the rest of his life.
Mosley went back to the Western Front after that, still injured, and eventually passed out from pain at his post during a battle.
After that, he spent the rest of World War I doing a desk job.
Stable Boys and Limps00:04:53
I'm sorry, it's just like everything he does.
It's just like, I'm going to press so many people and he falls on his nest.
Sounds delicate.
But his guy is.
This whole thing.
Yeah.
Delicate point.
So we're going to get to what happens after World War I, which is really where the story starts to pick up.
But first, you know what I want to pick up?
Is a product.
Oh, maybe a service.
Could you recommend some to me?
You know what?
These people will recommend some to you.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Moda.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place to come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him.
I was, hi, dad.
And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk.
This is badass convict.
Right.
Just finished five years.
I'm going to have cookies and milk.
Yeah, mom.
Yeah.
On the Ceno Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience, and redemption.
On a recent episode, I sit down with actor, cultural icon Danny Trail to talk about addiction, transformation, and the power of second chances.
The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with guests like Tiffany Addish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.
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Wow.
This pro.
I'm a guy.
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I feel like it was a little bit unbelievable until I really start making money.
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This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
If I'm outside with my parents and they're seeing all these people come up to me for a picture, it's like, what?
Today now, obviously, it's like 100%.
They believe everything.
But at first, it was just like, you got to go get a real job.
There's an economic component to communities thriving.
If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail.
And what I mean by fail is they don't have money to pay for food.
They cannot feed their kids.
They do not have homes.
Communities don't work unless there's money flowing through them.
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When you listen to podcasts about AI and tech and the future of humanity, the hosts always act like they know what they're talking about and they are experts at everything.
Here at the Nick Dick and Pole Show, we're not afraid to make mistakes.
What Kugler did that I think was so unique?
He's the writer director.
Who do you think he is?
I don't know.
You meet the like the president?
You think English the president?
You think Canada has a president?
You think China has a president?
La Vlois cruisette.
God, I love that thing.
I use it all the time.
I wrap it in a blanket and sing to it.
It's like the old Polish saying, not my monkeys, not my circus.
Yep.
It was a good one.
I like that saying.
It's an actual Polish saying.
It is an actual Polish saying.
Better version of play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Yes.
Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift who said that for the first time.
I actually, I thought it was.
I got that wrong.
Listen to the Nick Dick and Poll Show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
We're back!
Woo!
Oh, thank goodness.
Yes.
You guys land on any products you're going to service yourself?
Nail it.
Yeah, all the services and products.
All the services and products.
I like the ones that were mentioned.
Rise of British Fascism00:14:44
Yeah.
Yeah, those are pretty good.
Those are my favorite of the products.
Yeah, I actually wasn't sure about them, but then after listening to it, I was like, oh, I have been convinced on those products and services.
Do you know what that technique is, Cody?
Advertising.
Katie knows.
I waited till you started to say A before I was like, yeah, I know.
How do you both know that?
I was going to say marketing, but advertising is also.
I think we're both been around a college a couple of times.
Amazing.
Yeah, I popped in and out.
Popped in and out.
Speaking of people who popped in and out, after Oswald Mosley popped out of World War I, and then the war ended.
He married Lady Cynthia Curzon, the daughter of the Viceroy of India.
Yep.
He's that kind of guy.
He was elected to parliament straight away as a conservative MP for the District of Haro, or Harrow.
I don't care because of the Bingle famine.
I just say that.
Yeah.
He was 21 years old when he was first elected because as the scion of a wealthy noble family, political office was basically seen as his due.
Now that he was in politics, Mosley's ideology was quite simple.
Always do my utmost in all circumstances to prevent it, the First World War, ever happening again.
Which is a solid, solid, solid motivation.
Nobody wants a World War.
Nobody wants a world, especially not a guy who saw it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He fell in his ass a couple times in that war.
He did some fighting, too.
Like he was in the trenches.
Like he had friends die.
Yeah, he's 6'2.
Yeah, he didn't.
He didn't.
He was 6'2.
That's a bad height to be in the trenches.
Yeah, you're real tall.
You see everything.
Exactly.
Yeah.
He had seen enough death on the Western Front that he considered it his duty to, quote, conceive a nobler world in memory of those who died.
So that's so far good path.
Let's read the next paragraph.
In 1924, Mosley switched his political allegiance to the Labour Party.
This was, coincidentally, the same year that the Labour Party first came to power in the House of Commons.
From 1926 to 1930, Mosley was the MP of Smethwick.
He developed a reputation as a young brash political wunderkind.
But in 1929, the stock market crashed.
Britain was hit very hard.
Unemployment, which had been at 10% in 1929, shot to 22.2% by 1932, and the British economy looked to be on the verge of collapse.
The great reserves of gold and jewels the empire had spent the better part of two centuries plundering had all been spent to win or sort of win the Great War.
Now England appeared to be staring over the edge of a cliff.
Oswald Mosley had sacrificed for his country, and he had seen many of his friends die for it.
Since he was an ambitious young man with access to political power, he saw it as his duty to save his nation.
And as he looked out into the rest of the world for suggestions on how he might do that, his eyes were invariably drawn towards Italy and the accomplishments of a little dude named Benito Mussolini.
Hell yeah.
You guys heard of this dude?
A little bit.
In passing.
In passing.
Yeah.
He was handsome.
Very good-looking guy.
Hell of a jawline.
Yeah.
Mussolini's Partito Nazionale Fascista had just come to power in 1922.
Nowadays, we think of Mussolini as basically a cheap Italian rip-off of Hitler, faintly ridiculous for all his evil.
But that's purely a view brought on by hindsight.
To people in the early 20s, Mussolini's relatively peaceful rise to power seemed almost miraculous, as did the apparent instant turnaround of the Italian economy.
In England, much coverage of Mussolini and his bold new idea, fascismo, was positive.
On November 18th, 1922, the Times of London called Mussolini a masterful man and credited his program with bearing the stamp of his strong character.
Like most conservatives, the editors of the Times thought Italian fascism was a reasonable reaction to political turmoil.
Quote, the rise of fascismo is the result, the natural result, of the progressive degradation of the representative system as it has been witnessed in Rome.
So, even progressive papers were reticent to entirely condemn the hip new ideology.
The Daily Telegraph's yearly review of major world events in 1922 didn't even mention the fascist coup that had just swept Italy.
Just wasn't seen as that big of a deal.
Italian fascism had inspired British imitators as soon as it appeared.
The British Fascisti Party was formed in 1923.
The National Fascisti split off in 1924, and the Imperial Fascist League kicked off in 1929.
None of these groups gained more than a few dozen members, nor did they manage anything more impressive than some graffiti and a few tiny marches.
In the mid-1920s, it would have seemed preposterous if you'd suggested to anyone that Oswald Mosley, the widely admired young politician, would become a fascist himself.
In 1924, English socialist author Beatrice Webb called him, quote, the most accomplished speaker in the House of Commons.
But after the crash of 1929, Mosley came to believe that radical change was necessary to save Britain from economic collapse.
His first plan was written down in the Mosley Memorandum, a document that suggested hardcore protectionist economic policies in order to protect domestic industry from foreign trade.
During her golden age, England had relied heavily on foreign export.
This had caused the Depression to bite them harder than most because the collapse of their major trading partners essentially wiped out British industry.
While most of the empire's political leaders wanted to essentially write out the Depression until they could get back to selling British goods all over the world, Mosley wanted to reform the entire economy into a state of autarky.
In other words, he wanted British people to only buy and sell from other British people, cutting them out of the world economy to render them immune to the destabilization of its booms and busts.
He wanted England to basically close its borders for the most part.
Definitely didn't want it admitting any people from outside of England.
And he wanted its economy, its agriculture production to be entirely self-sufficient.
Now, this was also, this was a really common idea at the time.
This was like Hitler's big idea, too.
Yeah, just like the basic foundation of nationalism.
Yeah.
Protectionist, and you keep everyone out and you'd do your own thing.
Like maybe how Mr. Mosley grew up.
But bigger.
Yeah, because his life was so perfect.
Everything was protected and insulated.
Yeah, he just wanted to put Britain first.
Maybe he wanted to put it in the first place.
Oh, Cody.
Oh, Cody.
Oh, Cody?
Did he join Britain first?
I bet he did.
Is that where he wanted to put?
Spoilers.
We'll get to that.
Is that what he wanted to put?
Stop jumping ahead.
Spoilers.
It just sounds like.
It just sounds like everything else.
Sounds like every other iteration of this cycle.
But yeah, fascists are all the same four guys.
Yeah, it kind of just seems like maybe they might be all reincarnated.
A bunch of losers with a bunch of loser ideas.
That was a fair way to put it.
Most of Mosley's contemporaries considered his ideas kind of crazy.
But Mosley's other plans were more reasonable.
He wanted to institute a massive public works program, spending £200 million over three years to create thousands of new jobs for England's unemployed masses.
These jobs would include a mobile labor corps to rebuild the nation's slums.
This was actually pretty reasonable.
It's essentially the same thing, you know, as one of the linchpins of FDR's New Deal, the Civilian Conservation Corps, which is why my granddad didn't starve during the Great Depression.
He was building parks and stuff.
Great idea.
So Mosley has some good ideas and some bad ideas, like any politician.
Well, actually, the fact that he had good ideas makes him a little bit unique.
The ideas thing, really.
Mosley saw a decent amount of support for this idea, but his plan for how to make this happen set a lot of people on edge.
I'm going to quote from Brett Rubin's The Death of British Fascism.
Quote, To combat unemployment and to deal with the economic crisis in general, Mosley believed that political power needed to be more centralized.
He argued for the creation of a new cabinet led by the prime minister and other top MPs, which was to be advised by a think tank of economic experts.
This cabinet was to utilize all of the resources of the nation to fight the economic disaster.
Now, that was radical, but not entirely without precedent.
Britain had done something similar during the Great War with Lloyd George's Supreme War Council.
Mosley was basically saying that the nation needed to treat the Great Depression the way they would treat a major war.
It was not a popular idea among parliamentarians, but many British people thought he was right on the money.
So Mosley remained popular with the people, even as Britain's political elite rejected his ideals and sought to heal the nation's export trade and revive the economy that way.
The Labour government sought to balance the budget, which required a massive cut to employment benefits and other entitlements.
You're going to guess how that went for the Labour government?
Yeah.
Mosley was infuriated that the Labour government had basically ignored his ideas, and in the spring of 1930, he resigned from the Labour Party after giving a huge speech in front of Parliament where he said that Britons must, quote, get away from the belief that the only criterion for British prosperity is how many goods we can send abroad for foreigners to consume.
Yeah, there it is.
There it is.
His words were met with raucous cheering, which helped further convince him that what he needed to do was create his own party to solve the nation's problems.
He grew even more popular after this speech and his resignation, and many of his fellow parliamentarians even began to see him as something of a hero.
In 1931, Oswald Mosley announced the formation of a new political party, which he called the New Party, since he was not the most creative man in the world.
He convinced several other members of the Labour Party to resign and join him as well.
Some of these guys got cold feet and jumped ship instantly, but enough people stayed the course that they were able to give the new party a go.
The new party's goals were based around the principles Mosley had already outlined.
He wanted to create a small six-man council who could pass legislation at will in order to make necessary economic changes faster.
What if just six guys had the power?
Oh my God.
We'll just get this done quicker.
Tommy, what are you doing?
The new party advocated strong import controls.
Mosley also created the New Party Youth Club in order to get young men interested in politics, his politics.
At first, a lot of British liberals and progressives joined a party they assumed was meant for them.
In 1931, due partly to the failure of their austerity measures, but largely to the existence of the new party, the Labour Party got fewer votes than the Conservative Party.
This pissed off quite a lot of people.
Quote, from the death of British Fascism.
Following the declaration of the results, an angry mob formed outside the town hall.
They shouted at Mosley, calling him traitor and Judas.
The son of the defeated Labor candidate charged the steps and accused Mosley with ruining his father's chances.
In response, Mosley turned to John Strachey and said, That is the crowd that has prevented anyone from doing anything in England since the war.
One of Mosley's friends would later state his belief that this was the moment British fascism was born.
He's just so angry that people won't let him do exactly what he wants to do.
Yeah, he wants to do the thing.
He has this idea.
He's got to do it.
And people don't agree entirely with it.
They agree with parts of it, but they don't agree with all of it.
They're supposed to agree with the true rich kid.
They need to agree with everything.
I need to agree with everything he has to say.
He's six, too.
He's six.
Come on.
All right.
So, the guy in charge of the Labor Party, a fellow named McDonald, chose to make nice with the Conservatives in order to retain some power for Labor and government.
This meant the new party suffered attacks from both screwing over labor and was cut out of power while labor moved closer to the middle.
As 1932 started, Mosley's party was a miserable failure, and his political career seemed to be near its end.
Before the 31 elections, he promised to resign from public life for a decade if he lost.
But he did not actually do this.
Instead, he decided that the failure of his party in the election left fascism as the only option remaining.
Tough luck.
Just all he's left with.
What else are you going to do?
What else are you going to do?
You lose an election.
You got to go to fascism.
You've given me no choice.
Yeah, no choice.
That's amazing.
Just from the very beginning.
Oh, yeah.
You confidently do a thing and then you lose and then you get a little worse.
And then you get a little worse.
Still learning from it.
Just get a little worse.
Get a little worse.
And then get to where you need to be.
Get to where you need to be, which is where he is in January of 1932 when he visits Italy at Benito Mussolini's explicit request.
The two men both had backgrounds as socialist politicians and were both frustrated with dealing with their nation's tedious political bickering.
Mosley took to Mussolini at once, seeing him as a kindred spirit and a man's man.
This meeting convinced Oswald Mosley, quote, the age of democracy was over.
Yeah, that is.
There we go.
That's where it's at.
That's where it's at.
When he returned to England, Mosley wrote a loving article about Mussolini's regime for the Daily Mail, stating, quote, oh, we're going to be talking about the Daily Mail today.
Stating, quote, no time is wasted in the polite banalities which have so irked the younger generation in Britain when dealing with our elder statesmen.
Mosley wrote that the Italian mind was hard, concentrated, direct, and modern now.
The efficiency of fascism compensated for, quote, the right to blather he believed British politicians love too well.
It's efficient, so why do we need free speech?
What's that going to get us?
It's just going to waste time.
It just wastes.
It's just practical, you guys.
This just makes sense.
Mosley rebuffed multiple opportunities to re-enter the political mainstream, including invitations to work with former Prime Minister David Lloyd George and invitations from Winston Churchill.
He also rejected the decision of many of his new party comrades who joined the Communist Party after the disastrous 1931 elections.
If there was one thing Oswald Mosley hated, it was communism.
He believed that class conflict could only end in violent revolution, and instead felt that fascism would do a better job of providing equality of opportunity.
Communists wanted to destroy capitalism.
Oswald just wanted to reform it.
No, no, buddy, you got it wrong.
It's so sad.
Never change.
Robert, nothing changed.
That is the tagline of this podcast.
Nothing has ever changed or ever will change because people are just kind of dumb a lot of the time.
Petty, lazy, dumb.
Petty, lazy, dumb.
Stubborn.
Scared of not having as many nice things.
Mosley knew that Italian or German fascism wouldn't just work if it was transplanted in England.
He decided that, in order to save his nation, it would be his duty to create a new and uniquely British form of fascism.
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
It's all the same.
What if we just, what if we, I know this got 70 million people killed, but what if we tweak it?
Which is just that.
What are the British flavors?
Yeah, well, sticky toffee pudding.
Sticky toffy pudding.
What if that makes bubblegum?
What if it's peppermint bubble poison?
What if we throw a little bit of lime in that bubble gun?
The poison didn't work because it was lime.
We need to make a lemon.
We need to keep killing all the Jewish people.
What if we tweak the flavor a little bit?
What if we change the uniform slightly?
Oh, now they're killing Muslims.
Sticky Toffee Pudding00:07:49
Okay.
Oh, shoot.
What if, okay, what if, okay.
What if we change it slightly again?
What if we, look at this flag.
This is a nice flag.
I like flags.
This is a different flag than the last time.
I was like devoting things to flags.
Some of us are going to use the same flags.
We use very similar flags.
We might, like, wink at other flags.
Now, part of why Mosley was so drawn to the idea of British fascism was his military background.
During his time in the service, Mosley has developed a love of discipline, even brutal discipline.
One of his friends, Harold Nicholson, said at the time that, quote, Tom cannot keep his mind off shock troops, the arrest of his political enemies, their internment in the Isle of Wight, and the roll of drums around Westminster.
He is a romantic.
That is a great failing.
Can't keep his mind off arresting his enemies.
Such a romantic enemy.
Such a romantic.
Such whimsical brutalism.
Whimsical brutality.
I see the problem here.
You guys think words mean the wrong things.
No, they know that they mean the wrong thing.
The problem is that we think words mean things.
Right, exactly.
We put actual meaning into words and they don't give a shit about anything.
He's a romantic, Cody.
That's his failing.
He was too fascinated.
Yeah, he's too much romantic failing.
He's good for his own good.
Well, because you know what?
When I'm taking a lady out on a nice date and I really want to impress her, of course.
First thing I do, show her my shock troops.
Sure.
Absolutely.
Then I imprison my enemies on the Isle of Wight, and then, you know, a little bit of neckin in the back of the car, you know?
Well, it's an aphrodisiac.
It's an aphrodisiac.
Ladies love seeing the political enemies of a guy get locked up on the Isle of White.
Yeah.
Show her your Isle of Wight.
Since they're all British, it would definitely be an Isle of White.
That's the phrase right now.
Since the 1930s.
In October 1932, Oswald Mosley officially founded the British Union of Fascists, or B-U-F.
He wrote a book a few years later titled Buff.
Yes.
Boof.
He was kind of buff.
I'll give that to him.
He wrote a book a few years later titled Fascism, A Hundred Questions Asked and Answered that explained why he decided to use the same word as the Germans and Italians rather than invent a new term that might have been more palatable to English ears.
Quote, Fascism is the name by which the modern movement has come to be known in the world.
It would have been possible to avoid misrepresentation by calling our movement, which he capitalized the MN, by another name.
But it was more honest to call it fascism and just let everyone know exactly where we stood.
It is up to us to defeat misrepresentation by propaganda and explanation of the real policy and method of fascism as it will operate in Britain.
In the long run, straightforward dealing is not only honest, but also pays the best.
So he was an honest fascist.
Yeah, fascists hate propaganda.
He was a fascist you'd like to have a beer with if you weren't, you know, a Jew.
Then you would not.
No, then you wouldn't.
Then you would deck.
Well, he wouldn't let you in his house.
Right.
But, yeah.
Yeah.
You know what will let you in is this is a bad athlete and that that shouldn't be how we do this.
No, no, that was good.
No, no.
Maybe put like a river of something a little nicer in between.
A little, what do we, what's a product we can advertise for that's on the table right now?
Altoids, curiously cool mints.
I noticed that your altoids, Katie, come in a nice silver container that you could also store your weed in.
Absolutely.
Or some pills of MDMA.
Tapsa acids.
Yes.
I could store a lot of things in this little.
Cops probably aren't going to search your Altoids container.
Yeah.
They're less likely than a jar labeled acid.
Unless they listen to this podcast.
Unless they listen to this podcast.
There are other drugs you can keep in there, though.
There are.
Don't let me.
There's a little bit of alcohol in there.
Cops, if you like this show, don't listen to that.
Most cops love this show.
That's a big part of our listening day.
Same with us.
It's weird.
Yeah, all cops are behind the bastards fans.
Is that belief the phrase?
That's exactly it.
I see that on a lot of t-shirts and punk shows.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They seem like they cross out a lot of the words.
But I know what it means.
It's like how you don't put the of or the the bastards.
All cops are ghosts.
I think we put enough daylight between that anti-Semitism stuff and super credit and services.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Moda.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place to come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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I was, hi, dad.
And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk.
This is badass convict.
Right.
Just finished five.
I'm going to have cookies and milk.
Yeah, mom.
Yeah.
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Economic Roots of Failure00:14:57
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And we're back.
So.
After establishing the British Union of Fascists, Mosley right away published a book called The Greater Britain, which he hoped would polish the bad reputation fascism had gotten over all those deaths from the Spanish Civil War and the bombing of Guernica and all the people that the Nazis had put in concentration camps.
All of that stuff.
You know, in The Greater Britain, he assured the English people that fascism did not necessarily mean totalitarianism or a loss of liberty.
British fascism would be a dictatorship.
Yes.
But one that was moderated and accountable to the people via a legislative assembly.
Who did he want to be the dictator?
I mean, do you think he wanted to be the dictating?
I think he didn't.
Yeah, he wanted Oswald Mosley to be.
Probably Tommy on Tommy up for Tommy being on top.
Yeah, Tommy on top.
Now, Oswald Mosley assured people that his fascism did not require violence to gain power.
If the BUF could just gain enough seats in parliament, they'd implement the changes he suggested in a perfectly legal manner.
What if they could?
What about the queen?
I guess the kicking stuff.
We're not going to talk about that.
Oh, he's got a job for the queen and the king.
It was a king.
Okay, it was a king at this point.
Yeah.
So Mosley tried to convince the people that embracing this idea and adopting it gradually was a smart choice because fascism was the new way of things worldwide and Britain might as well get a head start if they wanted to compete.
This was basically him cribbing a concept from an essay by Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism, which said this, quote, If the 19th century was the century of the individual, liberalism implies individualism, we are free to believe that this is the collective century and therefore the century of the state.
In other words, the 20th century would be the fascist century and there was no sense fighting it.
Given where the global balance of power stood in 1932, it's easy to see how a number of people could have come to this conclusion.
Mosley told his people that both left and right wing had failed them.
The right wing could guarantee stability, but it could not create progress.
The left brought progress, but instability.
A fascist middle was necessary to unite the two.
Like a like there's like there are like two ways.
But what if there was like a more than two way?
A second plus one.
Second plus one way.
Yeah.
Like a almost fourth way.
I think those are the only two ways to describe it.
Okay, I think we got it.
We nailed it.
Quote, fascism is not dictatorship in the old sense of the word, which implies government against the will of the people.
Instead, Mosley believed that fascism rested, quote, on the enthusiastic acceptance of the people and could not endure without their support.
So that's good.
That's also essential.
It's a whimsical fascism.
A whimsical fascism.
You want that support?
You know, it's Winnie the Pooh fascism.
Yeah.
So yeah, if it gets a little bit more.
I get hung up on, so this Britain first, this isolationist kind of idea, but taking so much, like putting Mussolini on a pedestal and like celebrating other places.
Well, you got a problem with Mussolini, Katie?
No, he's hot.
You know, I've only read Italian history up until about 1934, but it seemed like he was a pretty cool guy.
I've only read German history up until about 1929.
So we really stopped.
There were a lot of good speakers around that time.
Really engaging speakers.
Really good to hear.
Good to hear.
I'm excited for what comes next for them.
Yeah, yeah.
No spoilers.
I wonder what else they have to say.
So.
But, well, because also, because that whole what you were saying about how, like, yeah, Britain first, but then you support like Mussolini and all these people.
That's just what they do.
Like, there's later Lydia Hitler quote that's like, yeah, I'm not saying we're better than anybody.
I think we should be like our own thing.
And like, Japan, they do their own thing.
He was like, that's their own thing.
We all just sort of do our own.
I'm not saying we're better.
China does Japan's thing.
Sure, sure.
He was not a fan of China doing its own thing.
I don't believe he said that in that quote, but yes, yes, yes.
It's just so interesting.
We respect what they're doing and we want to steal it, but we want them to be far away from us.
Yeah.
Now, in Mosley's vision of British fascism, his equivalent to the German Fuhrer would be the minister, a single man who would have basically all the power in Britain, but who would be subject to a vote of confidence every five years.
If the people stopped supporting this dictator, the king would be able to appoint a new one who would then have to go about earning the support of the masses so that he could win a confidence vote.
That seems like a lot of checks and balances.
There's one.
That's a lot.
That's a check.
Fascism, yeah.
If you got none, one, that's a lot.
That is a lot.
Five years is a good amount of time for a dictator.
It doesn't seem like a ruler's best interest to have a dictator.
But what if we have another ruler who's like, all right, you don't like that dictator?
What about this?
What about this dictator?
So, you might see how reasonable people, though, could get suckered into the British Union of Fascists, considering this is before that whole World War II thing starts.
Democracy, people are seeing some flaws in it.
I mean, I'm understand that there are people who can fall into movements like this.
It's a little more understandable in 1932 than, say, 2019.
Sure, sure.
I definitely agree with that.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
As moderate as Mosley's new take on fascism may have seemed on the surface, it quickly turned into the battle fascism we all know and hate.
The first signs of this were obvious from the way Mosley and his fellow fascists react to the disruption of their meetings and Mosley's speeches.
The first signs of this were obvious from the way Mosley and his fellow fascists reacted to the disruption of their meetings and Mosley's speeches by people who we'll call, I don't know, not fascism likers.
Yeah, that's a catchy title.
Yeah, fascioposites.
Fashoposites.
Fashion opposites.
Great.
Starting with the announcement of the BUF, party gatherings were often disrupted by hecklers, mostly communists and other assorted fashoposites, who shouted over Mosley until they were ejected from the gathering.
For a little while, Mosley grinned and bore it.
But after a few months of this, he decided to form a paramilitary organization dedicated to stopping these sorts of disruptions.
Whoa, whoa.
Uh-oh.
This is where things go off the rails.
It took a couple of months.
It took a couple of months.
That's enough time.
It's all it takes.
The BUF had established a youth league right away, of course, which initially just encouraged its young members to be athletic and play sports like rugby.
The young men wore no uniform and therefore did not set off any alarm bells as a military force.
Initially, a government study later revealed most Britons viewed Mosley as, quote, a colorful eccentric and fascist occasions as entertaining spectacles.
But as disruptions of fascist events grew more frequent, Mosley reformed the youth auxiliary into something with sharper teeth.
The soon-to-be-infamous black shirts.
Yes.
Hell yes.
Yeah, they wore black shirts.
Yeah.
Good for their teams.
Good for their teams.
Good for their team.
For their technical sports team.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Their sports team.
Yeah, you need union colors for your sports teams.
Exactly.
Here's the death of British fascism.
Quote, Mosley stated that the black shirt stewards originated with his resolve to not succumb to disruptors.
Mosley claimed that as the movement gained momentum, so did its resistors.
Rather than allow his meetings to be shut down by a disruptive, organized minority, Mosley created the London Defense Force to train and recruit more black shirt stewards.
He claimed that the creation of the black shirts was entirely out of defensive necessity, a result of increasing hostility to his movement.
However, there is evidence that this force had an offensive capability as well.
The press accused black shirts of unprovoked attacks on communists and, later, Jews.
The Times testified to black shirts verbally provoking a group of young Jewish men in London in the summer of 1933.
The Daily Worker of January 23rd, 1936, charged Mosley's black shirts with raiding its offices, turning over cars, and causing extensive damage.
Weren't the black shirts also Mussolini's?
Brown shirt.
Oh, wait, Mussolini's.
Shoot, I forget which ones Mussolini had.
It was black shirts.
Black shirts.
It was a black shirt.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brown shirts were Hitler's.
They all got their fucking shirts.
Today it's Fred Perry.
I mean, he could have gotten more a bit more creative.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They all got their in Punisher logos.
Right, right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And their little LARP shields and stuff.
Little LARP shields and stuff.
From 1933 to 1937, Oswald Mosley averaged 200 speeches a year, each of them accompanied by a large group of black shirts.
These young men lived in Chelsea, London, at a barracks called the Black House.
At the height of the BUF, more than a thousand men lived there full-time.
They trained in jiu-jitsu and lived under military discipline.
From 1932 on, they were a constant and very visible presence at rallies.
Now, the black shirts received a major endorsement in the public consciousness in 1934 when Lord Rothmere, a conservative newspaper tycoon, embraced the BUF and its paramilitary auxiliary.
Rothmere ran a little newspaper you may have heard of called the Daily Mail.
There we go.
On January 8th, 1934, the Mail published an article titled, Hurrah for the Black Shirts.
I'd like to read a few quotations from that article, which was written by Lord Rothmere himself.
He's counted as Viscount Rothmere in this, which is a word I know how to pronounce.
Even though it's spelled Viscount, which is dumb.
I always thought it was Vicomte.
That's actually probably right.
I don't know.
I mean, I don't know either.
I don't vice count Rothmere.
There it is.
Yeah.
Yeah, okay, I agree with that.
I know how to pronounce.
Because he's not good enough to be a full one either.
No, he could assist one in certain areas.
Yeah.
Quote from Hurrah for the Black Shirts.
I wonder if the Daily Mail is still a great newspaper.
Anyway, because fascism comes from Italy, short-sighted people in this country think they show a sturdy national spirit by deriding it.
If their ancestors had been equally stupid, Britain would have no banking system, no Roman law, nor even any football, since all of these are of Italian invention.
The Romans invented cool stuff, so Italian fascism, sweet as hell, yo!
I love logic and reason as well.
The socialists, especially who jeer at the principles and uniform of the black shirts as being of a foreign origin, forget that the founder and high priest of their own creed was the German Jew Karl Marx.
Gotta put that Jew right in the front there.
Oh my god.
Though the name and form of fascism originated in Italy, that movement is not now peculiar to any nation.
It stands in every country for the party of youth.
It represents the effort of the youngest generation to put new life into an out-of-date political systems.
That alone is enough to make it a factor of immense value in our national affairs.
Black shirts proclaim a fact which politicians dating from pre-war days were never faced, that the new age requires new methods and new men.
I don't have it all on here.
It's only a chunk of the thing.
Okay, look at this thing.
But we get the idea.
Hurrah!
You get the idea.
I love how there's like an article next to it.
Crazy newsreel.
Crazy newsreel is the next article.
And woman through the ages.
Ooh, boy.
Jiu-Jitsu isn't from Britain, by the way.
No, I know.
Jiu-Jitsu was thinking that too.
No, but you can import things from other countries.
Yeah.
Like Rhodes.
Just not the people.
But not the people.
Not the people.
Not the people.
Under no circumstances, Katie.
Absolutely not.
No.
They're not wearing the right shirt.
Steal the best from other cultures.
Just not any people.
Just not their people.
Well, they're not sending their best.
They're not going to send their best.
Of course not.
Unlike Oswald Mosley, who trains his best at jiu-jitsu so that they can destroy newspaper offices.
Exactly.
Among other great ideas.
He is 6'2.
Among other great ideas, Lord Rothmere declared Mussolini to be the greatest man of the 20th century in another one of his articles.
Did not age well.
God.
Quick jump there.
Oh, by the way, he's the best.
He's the best.
He's the best person that in 1932, I'm confident, will arise in the next 78 years.
I'm curious to see how his position evolves.
I mean, have you read the Daily Mail lately?
The Daily Mail, for reference, after the Christchurch shootings, just provided a free download of the Shooter's Manifesto to anyone who wanted.
I just avoid.
Yeah.
I didn't catch that.
Are there any good publications that are daily like the Daily Zeitgeist?
The Daily Zeitgeist.
That's a solid podcast.
Okay, that was a setup.
The Daily The Daily Caller.
No, no.
The Daily Wire.
It's almost like releasing a bunch of stuff every day on a thing that you can't do any really great analysis.
And maybe the best you can hope for is reporting that's not nonsense.
And even then, a lot of the times people are going to get it wrong.
Wait, so like sensationalist instant reactions to stuff isn't responsible news?
It might be newspapers.
It's not every day.
I just mean I've noticed quite a lot of daily publications that are like, I roll a word.
Oh, yeah, they're all bad.
Except for the Daily Zeitgeist.
Except for the Daily Zeitgeist, of course.
I mean, literally, yeah, Daily Wire, Daily Caller, Daily Mail.
Daily Profit.
The Daily Show.
That would be Harry Potter.
You do not want to be listening to that.
Is that a Harry Potter thing?
Yeah, that was a Harry Potter thing.
The whole thing was a setup for a Harry Potter journey.
We are talking about British people.
Well off the lines.
Yeah.
I'm sure once J.K. Rowling hears this, we'll get a couple of tweets about what Mosley was, his wizarding.
We're waiting while you're at it.
Yeah, Mosley was bad because he was secretly trans or something like that.
Thanks, J.K.
But I want to know her thoughts on the Goblin Bankers.
Anyway, oh boy.
That is something I did not catch as a nine-year-old.
Yeah, it sneaks up on you.
I derailed this enough.
Yeah, it's fine.
It's fine.
In 1930, when the Nazis had gone from 12 to 107 steaks in the Reichstag, Lord Rothmere had pinned an article for the Daily Mail stating, The Nazis represent the rebirth of Germany as a nation, which was not entirely inaccurate, to be fair.
Fun fact, the Daily Mail online is today the world's largest English language newspaper website.
But I'm sure they've gotten a lot better.
I wrote all this before I said the thing.
They're garbage, and don't go there.
Mosley and the Goblin Bankers00:09:34
Well, Mosley's rallies grew more and more violent and the black shirts got better and better at doing violence.
Lord Rothmere continued to praise the British Union of Fascists.
When Mosley was accused of wanting to establish a, quote, system of rulership by means of steel whips and concentration camps, Rothmere called his critics tired alarmists and panic mongers.
The support of Rothmere and the Daily Mail led thousands upon thousands of new Britons to join the BUF.
This meant Mosley gave more speeches to larger crowds, which led to more vicious blackshirt beatings of protesters and disruptive elements.
Early in the BUF's history, Mosley had tried to dispatch his hecklers by making fun of them.
He was a great public speaker.
Some say one of the best in the history of English politics.
So this worked for a while.
But as time went on, the black shirts took more and more of that responsibility and used more and more violence to do it.
According to the death of British Fascism, quote, brutality on both sides of the podium abounded in this period.
Although Mosley claimed he forbade his black shirts to use weapons of any kind, the Constitution of the Blackshirts outlined careful rules for keeping order at BUF meetings.
It stated, Interrupters will be ejected only on the instructions of the speaker when the persistence of an interrupter prevents those in his vicinity from hearing the speech.
Ejection will be carried out with a minimum of force necessary.
In my life, Mosley recalls the slogan he used to inspire his protectors: We never start fights, we only finish them.
Both hecklers and blackshirts regularly carried weapons, from brass knuckles to razor blades.
Mosley was proud that never once was one of his meetings broken up, but this was only possible due to the intense violence deployed by his blackshirts.
Mosley would later write that these devoted young men saved free speech in Britain.
Sure, they did.
I hate how many times you use the word free speech in your podcast.
I know, I know.
Every episode is by the way, they were talking about this.
It's their favorite dog whistle.
I know.
Yeah.
It's frustrating because free speech is good.
It is good, but words don't mean things to them.
Yeah.
The Communist Party was the largest organized opposition to the BUF.
Their newspaper, The Daily Worker, cheered when four blackshirts were hospitalized after an ambush in Edinburgh.
This built and built until a planned BUF rally on June 7th, 1934, in Olympia.
This rally was planned to bring more than 15,000 fascists together.
12,000 of those people were actual audience members.
The remaining 3,000 were black shirts, in and out of uniform, waiting throughout the crowd to break up the communist resistance they knew was coming.
The Communist Party had asked its local leaders to buy as many tickets to the meeting as possible, having their members send in ticket requests along with lurid letters of support for fascism.
The plan was that anti-fascist demonstrators could hide themselves in small groups throughout the mass of audience members.
After Mosley introduced himself, they'd start chanting slogans like, fascism means murder, down with Mosley, until they were physically removed.
Other groups would cut the lighting cables.
These interrupters would all wear black shirts to confuse the fascists, and they'd stagger their disruptions in order to make sure that as soon as the fascists cleared one group out, the next would start up, completely derailing the planned meeting.
This plan worked brilliantly for the first hour or so of the meeting, until the blackshirts managed to ferret out basically all the communists.
They removed 30 people in total.
21 of these people were arrested outside by the police for obstruction, public disturbance, and refusal to cooperate.
In the end, Mosley was able to finish his speech.
He made as much hay as he possibly could out of the demonstrators, showing up that same night on the BBC.
He claimed that communists had attempted to shout down free speech and asked the audience, Now I put it to you, to your sense of fair play, would you have handled these reds very gently when you had seen your men kicked in the stomach and slashed with razors, your women with faces streaming in blood?
Now, there was zero evidence that anything like that had happened.
In fact, one of the other panelists interviewed had been at the speech and denied seeing any weapons in communist hands at all.
Instead, he said that he'd seen interrupters struck in the head in the stomach all over the body with complete absence of restraint.
He called it the worst violence he'd seen short of the war.
To their credit, the BBC would not have Mosley on as a guest again for more than 20 years.
The media sided with the interrupters, widely panning Mosley's blackshirts for their violent response to what amounted to minor acts of disruption.
Jeffrey Lloyd, a conservative MP, attended the rally and later told the Times of London he was, quote, appalled by the brutal conduct of the fascists last night.
Five or six fascists carried out an interrupter by arms and legs.
Several other blackshirts were engaged in kicking and hitting his lifeless body.
Oddly enough, Mosley's biggest supporter in the mainstream was David Lloyd George, a liberal.
Shortly after the meeting, George wrote an editorial and stated, quote, It is difficult to explain why the fury of the champions of free speech should be concentrated so exclusively, not on those who deliberately and resolutely attempted to prevent the public expression of opinions of which they disapproved, but against those who fought, however roughly, for freedom of speech.
Lloyd George believed that people who showed up at a political meeting with the intent of disrupting it have no right to complain if an exasperated audience handles them rudely.
Rudely.
Rude.
Rudely.
Rudely.
With whimsical brutality.
With whimsical brutality.
So much use of the phrase free speech.
None of which were written by me, by the way.
These are all cool.
Oh, I believe you.
Yeah.
I know.
This swing towards greater violence occurred right alongside another event that would further radicalize Mosley's fascist party.
Three weeks after the Olympia rally was the Night of Long Knives, where Hitler's Nazi party consolidated power by murdering at least 85 political rivals.
Many people who had been on the fence about this Hitler fellow and his Nazism leapt right the fuck off that fence after the Night of Long Knives.
But Mosley and the BUF backed their fascist brothers to the hilt.
Blackshirt, the BUF's official newspaper, claimed that the men Hitler murdered were guilty of the greatest fascist crime, disloyalty to the leader.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which can't be a good idea.
But what about free speech, guys?
All the good hits.
Well, not once you're in charge.
Sure.
Free speech until you get in charge.
Right.
And then never again.
Oh, okay.
That's less catchy, though.
Just below it.
Yeah.
Your hand got a lot lower in the middle.
And then, I don't know, violence, I guess.
Man, they love beating people up.
They do love beating people up.
It's a lot of fun.
So, this is the move that finally lost Mosley the support of Lord Rothmere.
He pulled the Daily Mail support of the BOF in the very next issue.
Brave.
Yeah.
Brave man.
Brave.
He only supported him for like a couple of years.
Just a couple of years.
Just a couple of years until all the things that he said became clear that he meant them.
Yeah.
Oh, you meant the things.
Oh, I see.
Oh, I should be taking you literally this whole time.
Mommy.
Mommy, are you watching?
Apologies, British people.
Sorry.
At the time, Mosley claimed Rothmere had only chickened out on his fascism due to pressure from a cabal of Jewish advertisers.
It was one of the first stirrings of public anti-Semitism from Oswald Mosley, who up until this point had walked a fine line of supporting the Nazis and being a fascist without actually blaming the Jews for all the world's wars.
That would change rather dramatically as time went on.
But we'll have to tell that story on Thursday when we come back for part two of Oswald Mosley's life story.
I can't wait.
Good luck, Tommy.
You guys think it's going to end well?
Yeah.
All stories have good endings.
They do.
They do.
I feel like he's going to be a cool guy.
I think he's going to be a cool guy with good opinions who goes about bringing those opinions to fruition in healthy, productive kind ways.
I feel the same way.
I think he's going to get married and settle down.
I do too.
I think he's going to be a little bit more.
Oh, yeah.
That's all part of it.
He's going to find a wife.
Maybe a couple of wives.
Maybe a couple of wives.
Maybe a harem who's legally obligated to never leave the palace.
He seems like that kind of guy.
It does seem like that kind of guy.
I can't tell if you're doing it.
There are so many possibilities.
There are so many possibilities.
Let's plug some pluggables before we pretend to go away until part two.
Yeah.
Yeah, I won't see you for another day or two.
We're going to go and miss you guys.
That's how we do this show.
Yeah, we just keep driving back and forth.
See in a couple of days.
You can check us out online.
We've got a podcast, even more news podcasts.
We've got a Patreon, patreon.com/slash some more news, which our YouTube show is called Some More News.
It's on YouTube.
You can Google it.
Also, Some More News Twitter.
My personal Twitter is Dr. Mr. Cody.
Mine's Katie Stoll.
And I think those are all the things we can plug.
You can plug whatever you want, first off.
Game of Thrones is coming back a couple weeks.
Oh, I don't think a lot of people have heard of that.
Oh, it's a great show.
Yeah, you should catch up on it.
Yeah, you should check that one out.
I don't want to ruin anything, but it's got dragons in it.
Cody.
God damn it.
But to be fair, the dragons are computer generated.
Oh, well.
So, sorry.
This is disappointing.
This is a real bummer.
I thought they were clonery.
Sorry, no, no.
I'm Robert Evans.
You can find me on Twitter at IWriteOK.
You can find this podcast on the internet at behindthebastards.com.
We have shirts, tpublic.com.
Buy a shirt.
Buy two shirts.
Buy three shirts.
Buy four shirts.
Five, six shirts.
Seven, eight, nine.
We don't have that many designs.
You would be buying multiples.
Buy ten shirts.
You don't have an all-copsert behind the bastards shirt.
You got to have a grab bib shirt.
Put a little parentheses in there.
We're working on that one, Cody.
All right, good, I feel like that one's got to go over real well.
Yeah.
People will love it.
All kinds of things.
That'll be my new driving shirt instead of the Save Lives Do Crime shirt.
You're just promoting your podcast, man.
You haven't heard it?
I thought you live it.
That's what the shirt's about, man.
This is the episode.
Go hug your family or some shit.
Buying Multiples for Designs00:02:19
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On a recent episode of the podcast, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Bajanista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never, ever taught.
If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Ernest, what's up?
Look, money is something we all deal with, but financial literacy is what helps turn income into real wealth.
On each episode of the podcast, Earn Your Leisure, we break down the conversations you need to understand money, investing, and entrepreneurship.
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Will Farrell's Big Money Players and iHeart podcast presents soccer moms.
So I'm Leanne.
This is my best friend Janet.
Hey.
And we have been joined at the hip since high school.
Absolutely.
A redacted amount of years later.
We're still joined at the hip.
Just a little bit bigger hips.
This is a podcast.
We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey with all the snacks and drinks.
Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer?
What a hit a BOGO.
Well, then you gotta.
Listen to soccer moms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.