The Pope's no to to the people's yes: The Tide of British History. (8.)

Interesting Times: The England football team give the Nazi salute in Berlin in 1938.

       During World War One, over a million Bulgarian soldiers and labourers contributed to the German War effort. 43,000 Bulgarian soldiers died fighting for the German Empire. Naturally, after the war's end, the idea of Bulgarian independence gained in popularity.      
        On April 13th 1919, a crowd of non-violent protesters assembled at the City Garden in Sofia to protest the recent arrests of two of the independence movement's leaders. The German soldiers present were given orders to shoot directly at the crowd and specifically at the area of possible escape. The soldiers continued shooting for ten minutes, until they were out of ammunition. Possibly 1000 people were massacred, (the authorities, of course were not paying that much attention to the dead.)  The commander in charge of the operation was considered a hero by some parliamentarians back in Germany. Looking back at all this, it is easy to see how fertile an area Germany was for fascism.  
   
         Except none of this happened. At least, not in Bulgaria with German soldiers.
        These events actually took place as described, but it was Indian soldiers dying for the British war effort; and it was soldiers of the British Empire massacring passive Indian civilians at the Jallianwala Bagh garden in Amritsar.
        Here is how it was depicted in the 1982 film Ghandi-

     
      So, if the Empire was capable of actions like this, and the government were ordering footballers to heil Hitler, why didn't Britain take the short path to fully-blown fascism? 
    
      In order to understand anything better, it is necessary to have a clear idea about what exactly we are talking about. The capstone of Bela Lugosi's Pyramid is always the simple question-What is it?  This question must be asked, and the connected explanation (the idea) must be clearly stated for better communication.

Bela Lugosi's Pyramid. Built from the top down.

      Of course, if you are not interested in better communication you can always just shoot people instead.
     

Fascism is derived from the latin wordfasces, which is a bound bundle of sticks, sometimes with an axe emerging. The simple idea is that when together, even if one stick is broken, the group survives.  In ancient Rome it was used as the symbol of a magistrate's power, and it has long been used as a basic symbol of authority.

   If we are talking about fascism then, it seems clear that we are talking about the organisation of a group; especially concerning the ideas of power and authority. The questions that arose in the early 20th Century were very simple, and concerned these basic systems of group organisation: How much power? How much authority?  And how do we organise things to achieve this?
   The basic concept of group organisation as suggested by the fasces is, in fact, not something confined to the likes of Hitler, but much more prosaic.  So much so that the fasces symbol continues to gladden the heart of many a conspiracy theorist by appearing in such places as the seal of the U.S. senate, and also in the senate itself-

The seal of the United States Senate. Proudly displaying Fasces . And Jacques Cousteau's hat.*

Hail Caesar. Obama with fasces to the right and the left.

   The simple idea of what constitutes a strong group, and how to organise it, has evolved over the course of human history. From the nomadic tribe to the village to the city-state to the Nation state and on into modern times with such organisations as the E.U., A.S.E.A.N. and the U.N.
   The ideas within the groups have also evolved, with a general shift towards more equality and less injustice.
    After World War One, with a will to avoid further carnage and a desire for better communication, The League of Nations was established. This was the first international organisation that had, as its stated goal, world peace.
    But this was not the only post-war idea in circulation. Buoyed by the tide of communication precipitated by Darwin's theories, some groups were organising themselves according to the idea that they and not others,  were the fittest for survival.**
    Once this kind of idea is established and making people happy, avenues of communication are methodically closed off. In the 1930s, Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan would all withdraw from the League of Nations.

     Of course, ideas of purity of race and your gang  being the chosen ones had helped to achieve group cohesion for millennia.
    These kinds of ideas had long been circulating in Britain as justification for Empire. British Israelism, for example, insisted that the British Royal Family were descendants of King David by way of one of the lost tribes of Israel. And the simple idea of Dieu et mon droit, or divine right, had long been used as the explanation of choice by the powerful.
     For Britain to have already achieved the greatest Empire in history, a necessary amount of anti-communication had to have been encouraged. To keep the Empire in place, one must keep people in their place. 
     In The Ragged-trousered Philanthropists, the novel about the lives of house-painters in Edwardian Britain, most of the workers are unable to see the nature of their existence even when it is explained to them. Having never been encouraged to use their natural ability to ask or check, they are completely unable to cope with different information. Unable to conceive of that most natural of concepts: something better.
    Traditionally, any strong group had to inhibit communication; the words of God are only for the priests, education is only for the rich and slaves must not be taught to read. It was natural, therefore, for the Nazis to take up the the British propaganda model to even greater heights in their desire to control information and idea.
 
   In 1936, not long after Edward VIII took the crown, the British government requested that the national press not print any stories about the King's romance with the American Wallis Simpson. Simpson was twice-divorced and currently still married, and this produced a number of concerns for British politicians-
   As king, Edward was the leader of the Church of England, and the Church taught that marriage with a divorcee whose previous spouse(s) were still alive was unacceptable.***     
   What title would Simpson receive? Would the British public accept her as Queen?
  
   Before the public knew anything of this situation that had their leaders in a panic, the government and the editors of the national newspapers had conspired to keep this information from the people.
   A compliant press and a populace kept in the dark in order to protect the state.
  

 The former King Edward VIII and his wife get a warm welcome in Berlin in 1937.
"His abdication was a severe loss for us."- Adolph Hitler, as quoted by Albert Speer.

  
       It has also been claimed, with some justification, that Edward VIII was a Nazi sympathiser who wished to have a strong Germany fighting the Red menace of communism. This was not an unusual idea for the time. Britain was in no way keen to go to war with Germany, and when the England football team was ordered by the Foreign Office to give the Nazi salute in Berlin in 1938, they were encouraged to do so with the idea that it might dampen a spark that could otherwise set Europe aflame.
     Britain didn't want war, but eventually it would fight to stop another gang from taking over its territory, muscling in on its power, and for its own survival. In the spin-cycle of history, colours tend not to run but to actually become more clear and primal. We are presented with simple morality plays***: where the baddies are clearly marked by their black hats.****
     One simple reason that fascism didn't fully develop in Britain is that the idea did not easily follow all the information that the communicative tide of British history had steadily deposited over time. For a country that had already had Scottish, Dutch, German, Norman and Danish Kings as well as a Jewish Prime Minister; and that had built its empire on the science of better communication, the modern fascism found it more difficult to grow in Britain than in other places.

   
     It should not be forgotten however, that in order to build an Empire and hold dominion over others, communication must always be inhibited. Any tree of knowledge must be pruned of certain unacceptable branches, trunk and root bent to the will of the state. The questions in the early 20th Century were: which branches? And, how far can we get things to bend? The groups who called themselves fascists took existing methods of Empire and perfected them. Other groups fought them. People came out of this new conflict with more new ideas from the available new information. But no side came out with much credit. 
   
     As the tide of history washed away the blood, it also tossed up the idea that; if you do insist on pruning your tree of knowledge, insisting that it will flourish without questions, that it will grow in darkness, then you will eventually be left with a sick and withered tree that produces only strange and bitter fruit.  

    


 
   

            
* In one sense, it actually is Jacques Cousteau's hat, because it is a Phrygian cap that Jacques was sporting. Used on the Senate seal, as elsewhere, as a symbol of liberty.#

**The term Survival of the fittest was coined by Herbert Spencer after a reading of Darwin's  On the origin of Species. 

*** A passing Martian might be forgiven for wondering how much things had actually changed since the time of Henry VIII.

**** "Hitler didn't snub me, it was FDR who snubbed me. The President didn't even send me a telegram." - Jesse Owens.

***** The Goodies, of course, look like this-



# Although where I see Jacques Cousteau's hat, others see an illuminati symbol. +

+ The Illuminati. Surely the world's worst secret society. ++

++ Depending on your definition of "Illuminati."