George Orwell on Oswald Mosley
← Back to George Orwell ProfileIn a 1936 letter to Jack Common, George Orwell expressed disgust at witnessing Oswald Mosley's charismatic ability to manipulate a working-class crowd with his fascist rhetoric.
“I heard Mosley speak here on Sunday. It sickens one to see how easily a man of that type can win over and bamboozle a working class audience.”
Writing in 1941, George Orwell critiques Sir Oswald Mosley's British fascism as an unimaginative, foreign-derived imitation lacking true national understanding.
“One would have had to look a long time to find a man more barren of ideas than Sir Oswald Mosley. He was as hollow as a jug. Even the elementary fact that Fascism must not offend national sentiment had escaped him. His entire movement was imitated slavishly from abroad, the uniform and the party programme from Italy and the salute from Germany, with the Jew-baiting tacked on as an afterthought, Mosley having actually started his movement with Jews among his most prominent followers.”