[tjwmason]

Mosley may have been a vile man...but he was not a dumb one.

Mosley wasn't the only supporter of European Union at the time, a certain Winston Churchill also spoke in its favour (though he thought that Britain should remain aloof).

For the record, I utterly oppose the E.U. and having studied it for 4 years at university think that if we leave to-morrow it will be several years too late. My problem is that if fruity-loop garbage is spewed forth about the E.U. then people who have an ounce of sense will run a mile away from the real argument. It demeans the anti-European movement to suggest that we are facing the fourth Reich.

[swilhelm73]

You ignore the import I think of something like a Mosley endorsement of a European Union.

Churchill wanted a Union to keep Germany in check and face the Soviet Union. Germany, of course, is if anything overly pacificist now, and while Russia isn't a perfect liberal democracy, it isn't about to rush to the Rhine either.

So why then would one of Europe's premier fascists endorse the idea? Because it was a good vehicle to advance his ideological agenda.

Yes, calling the EU the 4th Reich is hyperbole. But one can easily see an EU in 20 years where most of the political power is held at the supernational level by a tight nit political elite with little to no need to answer to the will of the people.