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”
JAMES MCGIBBON
It is the duty of all elected politicians to put their country first and that should include the electorate.
Maybe if Corbyn had spent less time sucking down to islamic fascists and Irish Republicans he would have gained more respect. His past will not go away.
GhostofJimMorisson
Why should we worry? You said it yourself, the Telegraph is not a fascist newspaper. Personally, I’m more concerned about the behaviour of some of the protesters in Manchester last weekend. One Jewish Tory was alleged to have been told to ‘fuck off back to Auswitz’. I accept that Corbyn cannot be held responsible for this dispicable behaviour, though his anti Israel, pro Hamas stance does him no favours in attracting anti-Semites.
Henry Page
But there hasn’t been ONE Labour leader that you lot have not insulted, harassed or conducted a press vendetta against … so I think this sort of comment is biased beyond reason.
Henry Page
Just remember that Churchill’s brainchild, the EU, has seen Europe free of major conflict (within the EU) and if that takes ‘putting the EU first’ then I for one am all for it.
Duckman
This is a ridiculous accusation. This is a fallacious on many accounts. Firstly, it is a fallacy of strawman as it misrepresents the Telegraph’s headlines. Secondly, it is fallacious because it is an assertion that because X said Y; Y was said by F; F was evil therefore X is evil. A similar idea is that because North Korea asserts itself as the democratic people’s republic of Korea it must be because it says so.