This is a good lesson in how not to debate the European Union
It’s not every morning you see political extremism of a kind the prime minister often warns about plastered on the front of a newspaper.
Yet this morning’s Telegraph manages to serve up a slogan straight from the 1930s in today’s gripping headline:
‘Britain First’ is not only the name of a neo-fascist group of ex-British National Party types currently filling the market hole provided by that party’s implosion.
It also featured in the masthead of The Blackshirt, a newspaper produced by Oswald Mosely’s Nazi-supporting British Union of Fascists in the 1930s.
The slogan was later nabbed by the America First Committee in the United States, whose spokesman Charles Lindbergh famously accused ‘the Jewish’ of trying to drag America into World War II.
It’s worth noting that the phrase ‘Britain first’ or ‘Time to put Britain first again’ does not appear anywhere in the Telegraph’s story – not in the quotes, nor in the related article by Joe Foster, co-founder of Reebok and funder of the ‘Out’ campaign in the coming EU referendum.
Yet there it is in the Telegraph’s front page headline, in quotation marks.
One hopes the paper was not aware of its sordid historic and present associations.
As the prime minister meets with German chancellor Angela Merkel today to discuss EU reforms, campaigners on all sides should take note:
Recycling a fascist slogan, consciously or otherwise, is the worst possible way to debate membership of the European Union.
And if this is the only way to express your argument, perhaps there is something rotten about it.
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Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
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26 Responses to “‘Britain First’: Telegraph recycles fascist slogan with terrible history”
GhostofJimMorisson
The headline and article in question concerns Britain and the EU. It had nothing to do with fascism, or that bunch of pillocks on Facebook of the same name. You want to talk about being insensitive? How must the families of the victims of IRA murderers feel when Corybn and McDonnell were defending acts of terrorism? How must Britain’s Jews feel when Corbyn refers to Hamas – a group committed to the annihilation of Israel and the extermination of all Jews – as his friends? Pretty bloody insensitive, wouldn’t you say?
Dark_Heart_of_Toryland
Whether it means to not, the Telegraph is undeniably echoing Fascist sentiment – and it is delusional beyond help to deny that. Of course I don’t believe that the Telegraph is a genuinely fascist newspaper – it’s just an obnoxiously right-wing one. However, it’s journalists would have to be singularly ill-educated not to have spotted the connection. After all, it should be familiar to anyone with the slightest acquaintance with British politics in the 1930s – hardly the most outre of subjects.
GhostofJimMorisson
If I was so inclined – if I could really be arsed – I believe I could quite easily find an example of some far-left rag echoing Nazi sentiment; something along the lines of anti-democracy or state ownership. I’m reasonably familiar with British politics in the 1930s, and I know the similarities between fascists and the far left.
Dark_Heart_of_Toryland
So, we don’t need to worry that the Telegraph is ecoing fascist sentiment because you suppose that – if you could be arsed – you could find an example of some far-left rag echoing Nazi sentiment. Oh good, that’s fine then.
Incidntally, good luck finding a far-left rag which enjoys a readership of more than a couple of hundred.
Reconstruct
God, that’s pitiful.