[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The writer of your
article on "Youth and the Poli- ticians," in an attempt to show the great appeal which the party of Sir Oswald Mosley is likely to have to the younger generation today, becomes involved in serious confusions of thought. That the cabinet of the National Government consists mainly of old men, may indeed, if what the author assumes about the attitude of the young to the old in general be true, make youth dissatisfied with the National Govern- ntent. But mere dissatisfaction with the Government will not drive youth in general into the arms of Mosley. There must be deeper, motives for the support of Fascism, and when we look to the article we find that the deeper motives which the writer has indicated are in reality contradictory. On the one band, Fascism is held to appeal to "a vague impatience and discontent with the existing order," on the other hand its supporters "respond to the idea of defending something or other a little undefined . . . from attacks by Communists or the Socialist League." Now the parenthesis I have omitted in quotation says that it is not the existing order of Society which Fascists are ready to defend from these attacks, "for they are anxious to turn that up§ide down themselves "—the contradiction is therefore nominally saved ; but in reality the most acute Fascists know perfectly well what it is which they are defending against the parties of the left, viz., private property in the existing class-ordered society.
Lord Rothermere has made it perfectly clear that he is supporting the blaekshirts against "revolutionary Socialists and predatory Communists" as "a strong party of the Right." The only thing which Fascism wishes to abolish is a weak par- liamentary government which does not offer a sufficient resistance to the advance of the working-class to Socialism. That your contributor does not see the significance of the support which great plutocrats like Lord Rothermere are now giving to Fascism might be guessed when he says that "in Germany the youth of the country—they and no one else— have carried Hitler to power and kept him there." He does not consider the force of Herren Thyssen, Tiets, and other German magnates, besides Sir Henri Deterding and others outside Germany, in carrying Hitler to power and keeping him, up to date, from executing the smallest piece of genuinely socialistic policy.
The appeal of Fascism must in the main be to that section of our youth which sees in the parties of the left, to use Mussolini's phrase, "the advance of Barbarism against Civilization." Let it be admitted, however, that in the ranks
of the blacksbirts will ' be included an element of fuddled sentimentalists Who respond to the most unconvincing derri- agogy, and really believe that they are -out to upset that which is most integral to- the existing order—these will never be the leaders, those ambitions will never be satisfied.—! am,
Previous page
