In the video Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News host and, until the US war in Iran, a long-time ally of Donald Trump, gushes over Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s
Right-wing US TV host Tucker Carlson released a video praising Britain’s most notorious wartime fascist – and attacking Winston Churchill
In the video Carlson, a former Fox News host and, until the US war in Iran, a long-time ally of Donald Trump, gushes over Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s.
Mosley was interned by the British Government for three years along with his wife in the early 40s, over concerns about his Nazi sympathies.
The clip, posted to Twitter overnight, sees Carlson claim Mosley was the “leader of the opposition”, which he was not, and that he was imprisoned for the “entire length of the war”, which he was not.
He was held in HMP Brixton in 1940 before being moved to Holloway where he stayed until 1943. He was released on health grounds two years before the war ended.
In the video, Carlson claims: “Winston Churchill, who I know we’re required to deify, presided over the imprisonment of his opposition party during the entire length of the war — and their families, and their wives! They’re rotting in prison, away from their little kids, in some cases their infants. And their crime was being the opposition party, and being disloyal and unpatriotic. They weren’t. The opposition party was led by a First World War war hero who fought not just as, you know, a pilot in the sky, but and in the trenches, like one of the great war heroes, former member of parliament, the country ever produced.
“And he and his wife and his compatriots and their wives were interned without charges by Winston Churchill for the duration of the war. And that happened in Britain which is like much more humane than a lot of places. FDR interned the Japanese including American citizens. That stuff happens during warm and so I think we should be on guard.”
Mosley was not a member of the “opposition party” – he’d left Parliament nearly a decade earlier to become the leader of the British Union of Fascists.
Neither was he a WWI “hero” – originally a pilot, he was injured in a plane crash while showing off for his mother and sister, and spent the rest of the war in a desk job.
In 1936, he got married in Joseph Goebbels’ home, at a ceremony attended by Adolf Hitler.
Once a stalwart Trump supporter, has drifted to the right in recent years – dabbling further in conspiracy theories.
He remains influential among conservatives, despite being denounced for hosting Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and antisemite, on his podcast last year. During the interview, Fuentes complained about “organized Jewry in America.”
Conservatives are still reckoning with the fallout from Carlson’s interview with Fuentes.
For example, board members and other staff members resigned from the Heritage Foundation after the think tank’s president defended Carlson.
Trump tried to sidestep the issue, declining to criticise Fuentes and praising Carlson for having “said good things about me over the years.” The president previously dined with Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, between his two terms, and Carlson has continued to visit the White House.
Mort Klein, president of the conservative Jewish group the Zionist Organization of America, said Wednesday that he supports Trump but “I’d like him to do more” about antisemitism.
“I want him to be stronger on those issues,” Klein said.
Carlson has said that he is not antisemitic. But he has said that anti-Jewish hate is less pervasive in society than bias against white people and that some Christian politicians who were fervent supporters of Israel were guilty of heresy.
The Iran war is poised to continue fracturing right-wing media.
Ben Shapiro, co-founder of The Daily Wire, called Carlson’s Fuentes interview “an act of moral imbecility” and accused the host of misleading his audience with falsehoods and conspiracy theories.
He’s also feuded with Candace Owens, who has promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories. Dennis Prager, a conservative commentator, wrote in an open letter to Owens that “I cannot think of anyone in public life engendering as much suspicion of Jews, Zionism and Israel as you.”
Megyn Kelly, like Carlson a former Fox News Channel anchor now helming her own independent media empire, said the war was sold to the American people by “Israel firsters, like Mark Levin.” Levin, a radio and Fox personality, has been among Trump’s most fervent supporters of the war.
Levin, for his part, called Kelly an “emotionally unhinged, lewd and petulant wreck.”