When Winston Churchill was an apologist for Fascism. posted by Richard Seymour

Old news, occasioned by the growing veneration of Churchill by American neoconservatives, and also by the recent opening of a museum dedicated to Churchill's life, or rather to eulogising about one of the great bastards in British history.

Richard Burton was banned from the BBC in 1974 for writing, in an article about his experience of starring in a biopic about Churchill, in which he said he virulently hated Churchill and all his kind. He said:

“In the course of preparing myself… I realized afresh that I hate Churchill and all of his kind. I hate them virulently. They have stalked down the corridors of endless power all through history…. What man of sanity would say on hearing of the atrocities committed by the Japanese against British and Anzac prisoners of war, ‘We shall wipe them out, everyone of them, men, women, and children. There shall not be a Japanese left on the face of the earth’? Such simple-minded cravings for revenge leave me with a horrified but reluctant awe for such single-minded and merciless ferocity.”

Burton was onto something, while the BBC merely robbed themselves of a star for Hi-de-hi. Churchill, commenting on the British suppression of Iraqis fighting for independence from the empire, said:

“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes. The moral effect should be good… and it would spread a lively terror…”

And Elliot Abrams was onto something when he compared Ariel Sharon to Churchill, for when Churchill was Colonial Secretary, he authorised the bloody suppression of Palestinians fighting the Mandate. He was also a supporter of eugenics:

"The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate ... I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed."

And, addressing himself to the Palestine Royal Commission in 1937, said:

"I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place."

Writing of Bolshevism and Zionism, (guess which he preferred), he referred to "the schemes of the International Jews", "this sinister confederacy" and said "this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing."

What more could you add to that list? A poisonous racist, a supporter of eugenics, a proponent of mass murder, a vile imperialist and ... an apologist for Fascism? Oh yes. Benito Mussolini had "rendered a service to the whole world", showing "a way to combat subversive forces". Even Hitler received some Churchillian approbation: "One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations."

In fact, it was Churchill who authorised over 200 Nazi troops to join British forces in suppressing the partisans who had liberated much of Greece from Fascist rule, fighting on the side of the reactionary Colonel Grivas.

But surely, you say, Churchill won the war and therefore...? No, Churchill made pretty speeches (among which was one he made to parliament in 1940 describing Mussolini as a "a very great man") and diverted the troops to imperialist subventions in Africa and the Middle East (Persia). Churchill was an obese ruling class pillock, a bilious racist, an imperialist and an apologist for Fascism. One yearns for the day when we will all do to the memory of Churchill what Byron proposed passers-by to upon encountering the grave of Castlereagh:

Posterity will ne'er survey
a Nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveller, and piss!