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This book is a new assessment of the ideology and political program of Britain’s fascist and extreme right-wing community during the interwar period (1919–1940). It examines this group’s belief system as it clustered around three major preoccupations – Modernization, Empire, and War. In doing so, the book identifies many inconsistencies, contradictions, and moral failings, which contributed to the failure of the far-right tendency in the interwar years. The numerous beliefs and policies examined all point to a movement that was determined to return Britain to the levels of global power and international leadership it had once enjoyed – but by means of policies of disengagement and isolation. As such, it provides insight into the resurgence of the extreme right today.
“Not simply relics from a bygone age, Britain’s interwar fascists were at the same time radical vision-aries who imagined a high-modernist future. With ambitions to regenerate Britain into the world’s dominant imperial power, Zander’s study explores how interwar fascists sought to transform Britain into a technologically advanced, powerful, self-sufficient empire. In exposing the modernizing (and contradictory) ambitions behind their frankly dystopian dreams, this book shatters the myth that British fascism was a backward-looking reactionary creed.” — Professor Nigel Copsey, Teesside University, UK
“Can a work focusing on British fascism between the world wars have anything relevant to say about contemporary events? This excellent book answers that query with a resounding and emphatic ‘yes.’ Wisley allowing the fascists to speak for themselves, Zander reveals a movement obsessed with futur-ism and modernization, yet at the same time hoping to preserve the British Empire by what the author terms an ‘exclusive nationalism,’ a xenophobic, racist, and profoundly anti-Semitic program that en-compassed ‘walling off’ Great Britain from foreign entanglements, while at the same time ‘purifying’ the national community within from those very same ‘foreign’ elements. Timely indeed.” — David Redles, Professor of History at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio, and author of Hit-ler’s Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic Belief and the Search for Salvation (2008) and co-author, along with Jackson Spielvogel, of Hitler and Nazi Germany 9th ed. (2020)
“This diligently researched critical evaluation of the nature of fascist ideology in interwar Britain is provocative and highly readable. It is accessible to both specialists and students, and makes important points about the evident tensions and contradictions at the heart of the fascist creed. It also reminds us how an understanding of the fascism of the past can help scholars identify some of those same con-tradictions at work in the current resurgence of the radical right.” — Dr. Steven Woodbridge, Kingston University, London
Introduction; Part One-Modernism; 1-“The Modern Movement”: Britain’s Extreme Right and the Question of Modernity; 2-“Hitler’s Wonderland”: Admiration for Fascist Modernization Abroad; Part Two-Empire; 3-“Making One Great Family”: Britain’s Extreme Right and the Problem of Imperial Consolidation; 4-“The Alien Menace”: Race, Anti-Semitism, and Empire in the Extreme Right Ideology; Part Three-War; 5-“We Need 5,000 War Planes!”: The Extreme Right and the Fight to Re-Arm Britain; 6-“For Peace and People!”: British Fascism as a Peace Movement, 1936–1940; 7-“Fortress Britain”: Britain’s Extreme Right, Insulation, and Exclusive Nationalism; 8-Conclusions; Selected Bibliography; Index