The Culture of Fascism

Visions of the Far Right in Britain

Julie V. Gottlieb, Thomas P. Linehan, Julie V. Gottlieb, Thomas P. Linehan

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9781860647987
• eBook ISBN: 9780857711854
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The history and ideologies of the Far Right in Britain have been well documented, but there has been little understanding of the movement's cultural foundations. This text explores the cultural history of fascism and the Far Right and mines a seam of intense interest for both academics and students, as well as for the general reader. The book demonstrates that British fascism is essentially not just a political movement, but one that has as its goal the establishment of an all-embracing fascist culture in Britain. The contributions cover film, theatre, music, literature, the visual arts and the mass media. Striking examples of the material that they examine include fascist marching songs, "Aryan music", the creation of Mosley as a "matinee idol", even "fascist science", the cult of the "New Fascist Man" and fascist "masculinity" and "feminity". The authors demonstrate the persistence of the Far Right cultural forms from Mosley's British Union of Fascists within the present National Front and British National Party.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Contributors’ Biographies
• Introduction: Culture and the British Far Right
• Part I: Cultural Perspectives: The British Far Right and Ideologies of Culture
• Women and the Nation: The Right and Projections of Feminized Political Images in Great Britain, 1900–18
• Reactionary Spectatorship: British Fascists and Cinema in Inter-War Britain
• ‘This Fortress Built Against Infection’ The BUF Vision of Britain’s Theatrical and Musical Renaissance
• The Developing British Fascist Interpretation of Race, Culture and Evolution
• Part II: Cultural Representations: Cultural Histories of British Fascism
• Britain’s New Fascist Men: The Aestheticization of Brutality in British Fascist Propaganda
• The Black Shirt in Britain: The Meanings and Functions of Political Uniform
• The Blackshirts at Belle Vue: Fascist Theatre at a North-West Pleasure Ground 1
• Purifying the Nation: Critiques of Cultural Decadence and Decline in British Neo-Fascist Ideology
• Part III: Cultural Confrontations: Foreign Influences and Cultural Exchange
• Anglo-Italian Fascist Solidarity? The Shift from Italophilia to Naziphilia in the BUF
• Another Form of Fascism: The Cultural Impact of the French ‘Radical Right’ in Britain
• The Far Right and the Back-to-the- Land Movement
• Notes
• Index