Monday, Feb. 22, 1954

Unser Oswald

A group of belted Aryans in one corner of the dingy auditorium raised their voices manfully in an English version of the Horst Wessel song, but their efforts were drowned in an even more enthusiastic cheer from another quarter: "Two--four--six--eight! Who do we appreciate? Mosley! Mosley! Mosley! Heil! Heil! Heil!" Thus, in an atmosphere boisterous with shouts, clicking heels and Nazi stiff-armed salutes, Britain's Sir Oswald Mosley returned last week to London from three years of self-imposed exile in Ireland for another try at peddling Naziism to his countrymen.

The seedy, 57-year-old fascist had little new to offer his disciples. His old British Union of Fascism was masked under a new name, the European Union Movement. It had some new heroes: West Ger many's disenfranchised neo-Nazi Werner Naumann and U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy ("the only leader in America today showing strength, character and direction"), but the 800 screaming followers who gathered in the school auditorium to greet Mosley might have been waiting there ever since the late 1930s. There were the same blond bully boys, the same zoot-suited spivs, the same middle-aged women, and the same intellectuals ready to follow any leader raucous enough to give strength to their neuroses. On a table in the corner, there were even the same penny pamphlets, now boosted to tuppence by inflation.

Mosley's current solution for the world's ills consists of uniting the Germanic peoples of Britain and Europe, shipping all Jews and Negroes into remote corners of the world ("areas unsuitable for white settlement, anyway") and either disarming or fighting Europe's "barbarians," i.e., Communists, to a finish. Capitalism, according to Mosley, will collapse of its own weight during the next five years. Then the stage will be clear for Armageddon. "God help us and mankind," cried Sir Oswald, "if we fail to prove the strongest." A voice from the audience asked, "How do we feel about monarchy?"

"As always," said Briton Mosley, "we are absolutely loyal to our crown."

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