H-Socialisms Cohen on Richardson, 'British Fascism: A Discourse- Historical Analysis' Review published on Sunday, October 27, 2019 John E. Richardson. British Fascism: A Discourse-Historical Analysis. Explorations of the Far Right Series. Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2017. Illustrations. 307 pp. $45.00 (paper), ISBN 978-3-8382-1031-5. Reviewed by Joshua Cohen (University of Leicester) Published on H-Socialisms (October, 2019) Commissioned by Gary Roth (Rutgers University - Newark) Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=54281 Analyzing British Fascism When Colin Cross wrote "British Fascism ended in May 1940 and has not since been revived under that name," he correctly assessed that Sir Oswald Mosley's Union Movement (UM), formed in 1948, neither hid nor disowned its fascist past. Still, this reference to the past and "ex-fascists" implied acceptance of the UM's claim to have transcended fascism, that it went "beyond both fascism and democracy."[1] The idea of fascism as a historical phenomenon existing mainly in the past was expressed in Stanley Payne's assertion that fascism was "primarily limited to Europe during the era of the two world wars."[2] One of the most important contributions John E. Richardson makes in the excellent British Fascism: A Discourse-Historical Analysis is his repudiation of such analyses by demonstrating the long continuities within British fascism, its survival across the postwar period into the present, and, above all, the grave danger of regarding fascism as "over." He engages both with historiography and the "heuristic blind spot" of some political scientists that makes them reluctant to acknowledge contemporaneous movements as "fascist." For Richardson, this accounts for the continual formation of such myriad terms as "extreme right," "radical right," and "extreme right-wing populist"—he does not say it but "alt-right" suggests itself here too (pp. 20-22). Discourse-historical analysis is apt for proving fascist continuities through a variety of methods, including demonstrating textual appropriations from earlier movements but also the ways fascists recontextualize language and ideas for the new social and political realities in which discursive events take place. Richardson points to the common imagery of blood, spirit, and sacrifice shared between the 1930s British Union of Fascists' (BUF)Marching Song and the "oi/punk" rock band Skrewdriver's song Hail the New Dawn (1984). However, he also shows Skrewdriver's changing of the original lyrics, including substituting the "struggle" of the original BUF lyrics for "battle," a word that speaks to the band's more virulent, militaristic idea of racial conflict, its longed-for racial triumph, and the hoisting of the "white man's emblem" (p. 74). One of Richardson's main arguments and justifications for choice of methodology is that fascism is inherently duplicitous. He explains a key dilemma for British fascism: its mass appeal is directly proportional to the scale of its political deceit. The author makes transnational comparisons to highlight fascists' long tradition of concealing their true intentions, pointing to a subtle change in the Citation: H-Net Reviews. Cohen on Richardson, 'British Fascism: A Discourse-Historical Analysis'. H-Socialisms. 10-27-2019. https://networks.h-net.org/node/11717/reviews/5192282/cohen-richardson-british-fascism-discourse-historical-analysis Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Socialisms lyrics of the National Socialist anthem The Horst Wessel Lied so that the song predicted that the flag of Adolf Hitler would soon flutter over "streets" rather than the "barricades" of the original lyrics, during the period in which the Nazis sought to emphasize their aim of achieving power through constitutional means rather than violent direct action (p. 23). In 1926, as part of this show of moderation, Hitler was not talking about Jews in public speeches, but when he spoke to his "own" audiences in Munich beer halls, almost every speech railed against international Jewry (p. 24). This speaks to the dissonance in fascist discourse between privately understood esoteric ideology, accessible perhaps to a privileged innermost circle, and what is deemed suitable for public utterance. A discourse-historical analysis is vital to unpack the contradictions in fascist discourse and to decode the clues in public rhetoric designed to reassure cadres that core ideology has not really been abandoned. On esoteric versus exoteric ideology, Richardson especially acknowledges his debt to the work of Michael Billig on the British National Front (NF) Fascists:( A Social Psychological View of the National Front [1978]). Billig shows how antisemitic conspiracy theory and violence remained integral to the NF even as its public rhetoric emphasized racial populism and the defense of "white rights." However, Richardson goes well beyond Billig in periodization and in his engagement with the historiographical debate over the definitional minimum of fascism. Richardson engages directly with the argument of Roger Griffin that historians should "treat fascism like any other ideology," in other words, that fascism can be approached and defined as "an ideology inferable from the claims made by its own protagonists."[3] Richardson decodes fascist discourse, providing many examples of the disparity between textual surface and core ideology. Nevertheless, his argument that Griffin and "similarly idealist historians" form their conclusions regarding fascist ideology on the basis of the discourse produced by the fascists themselves is somewhat simplistic (p. 30). Griffin does not mean that fascist claims should be taken at face value but argues that academics are increasingly able to focus on the possibility of a "positive" fascist ideology, where before they had concentrated overmuch on defining the phenomenon through its negations (for example, anti-Marxism) and the style of fascist regimes in power. Socialists will find important reaffirmation and development of left-wing interpretations of fascism in this work. Richardson argues convincingly against the idea of "fascist socialism," which forms one part of Griffin's definitional minimum: the idea that the rebirth of the national or racial community may well be presented as one that will transcend class conflict, tear down traditional hierarchies, and remodel capitalism to be non-exploitative of that community.[4] Richardson uses discourse-historical analysis to demonstrate his counterargument, reaffirming Marxist analyses that fascism is inevitably inegalitarian and aimed at terminating the progressive victories of the labor movement but—to build a mass movement—must hide the fact that it perpetuates capitalist exploitation of the majority. The author shows that even at its most radical, fascism confronts not the essence of capitalism but the current situation in which capitalism is not in harmony with "race nationalism." Richardson highlights an NF leaflet that demanded an end to "capitalism in the form it now exists" but not capitalism in toto (p. 216). The proposed remedy was not to end private ownership or the profit motive but to make capitalism better serve the nation/race, including by expelling its damaging internationalist element. In following the argument that "revolutionary" fascists are fellow travelers or "dreamers" inevitably jettisoned by fascist movements, Richardson has chosen to work with an "orthodox" pro-capitalist discourse, leaving to other authors the task of assessing such dreams to Citation: H-Net Reviews. Cohen on Richardson, 'British Fascism: A Discourse-Historical Analysis'. H-Socialisms. 10-27-2019. https://networks.h-net.org/node/11717/reviews/5192282/cohen-richardson-british-fascism-discourse-historical-analysis Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-Socialisms explore the extent to which they reveal anything approaching a genuinely socialistic vision (p. 37).[5] Fascism has consistently attacked international forms of capitalism and usury, and here Richardson emphasizes the ways this specific and limited "anti-capitalism" fits so neatly with the long continuity of fascist antisemitism. Anti-Jewish prejudice in this work is an exemplary demonstration of an ideological threat that links interwar and postwar fascism in Britain. Discourse-historical analysis decodes antisemitic language, even dating back to a period when the BUF's antisemitism was not overt. Richardson is particularly good at identifying polysemous noun phrases, which have an ostensible meaning and a coded one decipherable to those familiar with esoteric ideology. Thus, even in a publication from 1932, predating "official" BUF antisemitism, Mosley's cadres would have known exactly whom he was referring to when he decried "money power" and "alien interests" (pp. 105-6). Richardson shows how codified antisemitism represents the continuity and evolution of a signal to core supporters, in a post-Holocaust context in which antisemitism is taboo in wider public discourse, and notes that antisemitic conspiracy theory remains essential to the fascist worldview. When fascist parties are more peripheral to democratic politics or reject constitutional means of winning power, the dissonance between their exoteric and esoteric politics narrows. For example, in his 1997 pamphlet Who are the MIND-BENDERS?, the British far-right leader Nick Griffin explicitly and crudely