It is said that as soon as you accuse someone of being like Hitler you have lost the argument. The word ‘fascist’ is thrown around carelessly in political debate and can mean essentially any decision the speaker disagrees with. Nevertheless, a number of heavyweight publications from Der Spiegel to The Atlantic have asked the question ‘is Trump a fascist?’, and one blog this week even compared him to Julius Caesar.
People keep raising the question of whether we are re-living the 1930s, but Donald Trump is no Hitler. He does not possess the malign intelligence nor the single-minded determination that enabled der Fuhrer to inflict so much misery on the world. He’s no militarist and ‘Make America Great Again’ does not involve conquest and subjugation. However, after spending a couple of years reading around the British Fascist movement to research my Room Z thriller series there are some parallels to be drawn with Sir Oswald Mosley.
The trappings of the right wing politician are pretty standard worldwide; use of the national flag, recalling a golden age in the past, resurrecting heroes, repeating inspiring if empty slogans. Parades, rallies and banners are part of the mix, but without the paramilitary uniforms which were favoured in the 1930s none of this looks particularly fascist.
Authoritarian movements revolve around ‘the Leader’ – almost always a man. He can do no wrong in the eyes of his supporters, and any supposed sins have been made up by the opposition. Failures are down to secretive forces opposing us, and this gives us an enemy we must fight. This starts to strike a chord.
One aspect of the 1930s fascists is they were characterised as ‘young men in a hurry’. Mosley was just 35 when he founded the British Union of Fascists, Hitler became Chanceller of Germany at 44. Both confronted the ‘old gang’ of established politicians, civil servants and military leaders. Trump rails against the Washinton establishment and liberal elite in a similar way, but he is still an old, rich, white man who has benefitted from the system.
The establishment will of course fight back with all the legal means at its disposal, exploiting the fine print of the law. The BBC refused to let Mosley speak on air and by mid-1934 the major newspapers also denied him space – he claimed due to pressure from their (Jewish) advertisers. Mosley also needed to fight legal cases, chiefly libel. To dedicated fascists all this must have felt like dirty tricks; more or less the argument put forward by Trump supporters amid his avalanche of civil and criminal law suits.
Although we think of Mosley’s Blackshirts as brutal thugs he was careful not to break the law himself, albeit stretching it, skirting it and turning a blind eye to what his supporters were doing. He claimed to deplore violence and played the victim when his rallies degenerated into disorder. Violence was always initiated by his opponents, although often deliberately provoked as part of a strategy to reinforce his narrative. Capitol riot, anyone?
Not all the British fascist policies were evil. Bringing down unemployment, raising wages, replacing slum housing and improving agricultural prices were all ideals that would sit happily with the Labour Party. However, the British Union of Fascists was openly anti-democratic with no time for free speech or the concept of a loyal opposition. They wanted to rule rather than represent, silence rather than debate. This is a worrying aspect of the MAGA movement in America, which denies the results of the 2020 election and seeks out conspiracies rather than acknowledge the problems that arise from the messy and disjointed US voting system. Shouting down the opposition rather than seeking common ground is a sin of both left and right, magnified now by social media.
The most pernicious feature of the BUF was its slide into antisemitism: pinning the country’s ills on poor immigrants and a conspiracy of international Jewish bankers. In modern times we see ‘populist’ politicians of which Trump is a prime example offer simplistic solutions to complex issues such as immigration and globalisation. Blaming ‘the other’, encouraging hatred and division is a classic fascist tool, and while the message today is rather more subtle the dog whistle can still be heard.
Although rich, Mosley was forever in need of money to push forward his agenda. Raising money became a preoccupation, and he was continuously courting wealthy industrialists, socialites and media barons. He chased money-making schemes for his own benefit as much as for the party, which again echoes the way Trump’s political and business interests merge and mingle.
Perhaps Mosley’s greatest weakness was his lifestyle. Even when married he would chase attractive young women, including the wives of his friends and friends of his wives. He would go on long vacations, generally in the company of a mistress, rather than apply himself to the business of politics. This laid him open to criticism from the downtrodden who he claimed to be working for and distracted his energy from the political struggle. This echoes Trump’s weaknesses, and the self-obsession which his base supporters appear to be blind to. British voters on the other hand, even those with right wing sympathies, saw through Mosley. Once he’d donned the black uniform he never came close to power.
Trump is not a fascist, in the respect that he does not subscribe to an ideology as stark as Mein Kampf, nor strut around in a medal-decked uniform. However, he and his coterie display anti-democratic tendencies, holding intellectuals and experts in contempt. Most worrying is his unashamed adoption of the Big Lie, a common tool of authoritarians from Nazis to Stalinists. The Leader knows what is being said is a lie, and so do the people around him. The Big Lie works because the audience wants it to be true, or they are so used to being lied to that they simply accept it.
Picture the scene. A fascist politician takes to the stage at a political rally in the run-up to an election, when suddenly a shot rings out. The sniper misses the target, but could it be the twitch of a butterfly’s wing that will change history? This is how Blackshirt Masquerade begins - but it could only happen in fiction, right?
Blackshirt Masquerade is available on Amazon worldwide, and its sequel Blackshirt Conspiracy continues the ‘what if’ of Britain slipping under fascist control. Blackshirt Rebellion will be published in September.
