Interview Oswald Mosley and the Question of Antisemitism

British Union of Fascists under Oswald Mosley became more of a fringe group in the second half of the 1930s. It had become a minor extremist group attracting social outsiders rather than serious political figures. Between 1935 and 1938, Mosley tried to revive his movement through local campaigns. The BUF’s antisemitism, which became overt after 1934, remains a subject of historical debate. Mosley depicted Jews not through racial theory but as a cultural “nation within a nation” that profited at others’ expense. He later claimed antisemitism was merely a reaction to opposition from Jewish and communist groups, a self-serving explanation that ignored how his own propaganda provoked that resistance.