#America's full tilt run into fascism

[victusinveritas]

[bailesu]

July 4, 1776, 1863, and 2018

Warning:  I hate Trump with a burning atomic fury and what follows is a mixture of my family’s history, America’s history and me damning Trump to burn in Hell for eternity.  If you don’t want to read that, skip the read more and go on.  I totally understand.

This is the America’s day, for good and for ill, for America has been both a great country and a terrible one.  We sent men to the moon and set high ideals of equality and freedom... then failed to live up to them again and again.  I love my country, but sometimes it drives me crazy.  Its past is full of glory and horror, good deeds and terrible deeds, and above all greatness, but greatness can be wonderful or horrible.

On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress issued a document which declared American Independence.  But not just Independence.  It laid out the idea that all men are created equal by God, with inalienable rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.  This high ideal thus became one of the foundation stones of America.

It was written by a man who owned dozens of slaves and had children by one of them, who he continued to own.  Thomas Jefferson managed to embody both our highest ideals and our greatest depravities.  

One in four Americans were slaves in 1776.  Women could not vote and neither could White Men who lacked Property.  Child abuse was the normal way you raised your kids.  Threatening to murder your political rivals was basically normal.  One of our great leaders of the Revolution, Sam Adams, was basically a man who organized riots and lynching.  (Lynching of people who served Britain, rather than Blacks, but lynching is murder, whoever the victim.)

By any modern standard, America in 1776 was a terrible place, a land carved out by killing Native Americans directly to take their land and indirectly by disease.  (Mind you, every nation, including the ones we killed off, has a history of killing neighbors and taking their land; the nations without that history died.)  

But it was also the seedbed of modernity; it became a democracy, if not a very good one, and its ideals still ring across the ages and have provided leverage to every group trying to get fair treatment instead of stomping.  We helped inspire the French Revolution and the rise of Nationalism.  In 1945, when Vietnam declared Independence from France, the first lines of their declaration read:

All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.

America has always struggled with the tension between this high ideal and the deeds our country has done which are not high or noble.  We often fail, but on this day, we have to look again to this ideal and work to make it real.  

My own ancestors were all tangled up in this mess.  Three Quaker Brothers fled to America to escape persecution and the loss of their family’s lands due to the British Civil Wars, settling in Pennsylvania.  One of the brothers, Thomas, eventually went South to North Carolina.  He is my ancestor, and his family soon came to own slaves.  They were never top-tier slaveowners but they prospered.

If you are a White Southerner, your ancestors either owned slaves, supported the slave system without owning slaves, or both, unless they came South very recently.  We all have to deal with that legacy.  Many in the South don’t want to, but if this country is ever to heal the wounds inflicted by over 250 years of slavery, then we have to.

During the Revolution, Thomas’s son, also named Thomas, fought in the Revolution.  By killing Cherokees; they allied with the British to save their lands and they found out the hard way that Britain couldn’t help them.  On this day, 1776, he was sitting in a military camp, but soon they would return and drive the Cherokee out of part of North Carolina and all of South Carolina.  (Ironically, many years later, a member of the Richardson family would marry a Cherokee woman and their later descendant would marry one of Thomas’ descendants.)  He may eventually have fought the British, but we have no record of it.

Thomas’ grandson, William Alexander Christopher Biles, was born on the plantation.  His family made him go pick cotton with the slaves a lot but we don’t know why exactly; it would serve him well later when his family lost everything but we have to assume that he probably hated it at the time.  William’s father was too old to fight (In his 70s!) but William was not.  He fought in a North Carolina regiment and was shot and stabbed repeatedly, including having his skull cut open and a gut wound.  This happened during Pickett’s Charge, so he was left behind in Union hands; a doctor, his name lost, operated and saved his life after initial triage had said he wasn’t worth trying to save.  Whoever he was, he was a miracle worker, because somehow he saved WAC’s life, though he had a plate in his head for the rest of his life.  In fact, he *escaped* from the hospital and returned to duty until the final surrender at Appomatox!  We don’t know his motives for fighting, but it was probably a mixture of wanting to save slavery and loyalty to his state.  It would be nice if I could say he was anti-slavery, but he wasn’t even the Jeffersonian kind of anti-slavery, where you still own slaves, but you do limit slavery’s growth somewhat.  By 1860, your choices were basically either to say ‘SLAVERY IS AWESOME’ or flee to the North, that far South.  (In the border states, you could say ‘I hate black people, so I want to end slavery so I can get rid of them’.  This is not a huge moral step forward.)

His family’s estates unravelled; the Biles clan did not know how to get by without slaves.  He went west to Missouri and worked with his brother a while, then became a farmer; he was not good at either, but his cotton-picking skills enabled him to get by; I can only imagine he found it rather humiliating.  And as a slaveowner, he deserved humiliating.

To be White in America carries the shame of having ancestors who did terrible stuff.  Some of it was so accepted you can’t blame them too much but others *could* have done better and didn’t.  The essential problem of being descended of the winners is that they probably did terrible things to win.  (And the problem of being descended of those who lost is that your ancestors got thrown down the stairs and lost it all.)

I don’t feel guilt for my ancestors, but I do feel responsibility.  I cannot control what they did, but I do benefit from it and part of my response to that has to be to try and make a better America, to help overcome our worst impulses.  And I do that by teaching, so that those coming up will understand our past, why we did terrible things, and how we can do better.  (And how we did awesome things too, because the hardest part of history is that the same people can do wonders and horrors at once.)

Which brings us to the now.  I was describing 1920s and 30s fascism to my students and one said, “So, basically, Trump.”

And it’s certainly way too close.  I am lucky; as a White Man, I am automatically spared much of the worst of Trump and his idiot followers.  This country has always been tilted in my favor.  

Trump embodies pretty much all of America’s past sins, but also is basically the biggest drooling idiot who has ever sat in the White House, making even Harding look like a supergenius.  He knows how to work his audience, but he’s utterly incompetent at governing, to the extent you can call it governing.  He embodies sexism, racism, egomania, and cruelty.  He is a man who instinctively degrades and bullies everyone around him, who has cheated on all of his wives and abused his mistresses, a rapist, a thug, and a cheat.  He is a horrible human being in almost every possible way.  Many people who claim to be Christian flock to him because they have flushed Christ down the toilet long ago, but unfortunately, flushing Christ down the toilet has a long history in American religion.  

If there is a hell, Trump is going to roast in it and if there is not, we’ll have to make one just for him.  I want to see him fall like Lucifer from Heaven, if Lucifer fell into a mixture of broken glass, shards of metal, and lava.  But it’s important to remember, Trump is not some alien aberration; he incarnates real American flaws, mixed with his personal flaws of being a pig-ignorant, aggressively anti-thinking man-baby molester of women with vast wealth he has always abused to shield himself from consequences.  Racism, sexism, greed, and so on all have a long history in this country.  And his supporters voted for him with their eyes wide open.  We cannot expect any better from them.

America has a huge cancer and that cancer often has been driving the national bus, so to speak.  And getting rid of it is going to be a long fight.  But bringing change to this country is always a long, hard fight.

So on this Fourth of July, fuck Trump to hell, along with all his shitty supporters.  We have nearly two more years of this shithole before we can toss him on his ass.  (Impeachment takes 2/3rds in the Senate, so it’s not happening even if we take both houses, I fear).  May we sweep the Republican party, which has devolved from the people who ended slavery to a resting place for all of America’s sins, into the garbage pile in November and again in two years.  Growing up in America means I’ve watched the Republican party gradually mutate into a degenerate, feral hate society run by a mixture of greed, racism, and fake Christianity.  

Fuck the Republican party and all the morons who vote for it, whichever one of the Seven Deadly Sins drives them to spew hatred, abuse immigrants, rob the poor to make the rich richer, and to destroy all our alliances and trade relations.  They chose a feral animal as President, a molester and a bully, and I hope he destroys them all.

May they all eat shit and die.

[flauntpage]

The Jewish Boxing Champion Who Fell in With Britain's Fascists

Ted 'Kid' Lewis could be called a forgotten classic. Though his name is not spoken of in the same breath as the famous fighters who became stars in the era of television, many true aficionados of British boxing rank the East Londoner among the greatest pugilists this island has ever produced. He has the statistics to back this up: Lewis won nine titles during an extensive career, triumphing from the featherweight to middleweight divisions, and was a world champion at welterweight. He was the first British fighter to win a world title in America and became a bona fide celebrity during the twenties.

But his later life saw the former champion become involved with one of twentieth century Britain's most vilified politicians: after his career in the ring was over, Lewis worked with the notorious Oswald Mosley, even standing as a candidate for his party at the 1931 general election.

Like many of British boxing's greatest success stories, Lewis was the child of immigrants. Born Gershon Mendelhoff in October 1893, he was the third of eight children, his Jewish parents having fled persecution in their native Russia. The family lived in a gas-lit tenement on Umberston Street in Whitechapel, forming part of a growing Jewish diaspora in London's East End.

Like much of the area's population, both native and immigrant, the Mendelhoff family was poor. The young Gershon suffered at the hands of local Irish boys who goaded him about his Jewish heritage, and he fought back with his fists. It is said that a local policeman first steered the youngster towards the fight game, spotting the boy in a street brawl and recognising his latent pugilistic ability. Gershon soon joined the Judean Athletic Club and began competing as 'Kid Lewis', supposedly in homage to the great welterweight champion and fellow Jewish fighter Harry Lewis (Ted was not added until years later, when he travelled to America).

Lewis spent much of his early career fighting at the Judean, as well as the newly opened Premierland venue on Whitechapel's Black Church Street. He turned pro aged 14 and competed almost fortnightly throughout 1910 and 1911 as he sought to hone his craft. It was certainly an intensive education in a tough world, but it served him well in the years to come. From a precocious youngster, Lewis grew into a tough man with a surprisingly friendly face, gnarled by his battles in the ring but, as a fighter, much stronger for them.

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By 1913 Lewis had already fought in excess of 130 bouts, making him a veteran of the sport while still a teenager. That year he took his first major honour, winning the British featherweight title by overcoming Alec Lambert at London's National Sporting Club, and in 1914 added the European belt by beating the French fighter Paul Til at Premierland. In doing so, he became Britain's youngest ever featherweight champion.

His career soon took him overseas, with Lewis embarking on the long sea journeys to Australia and then on to America to find fights, his options having become scarce in Britain following the outbreak of World War I.

It was in the U.S. that Lewis found his greatest success and, for a time, became a genuine celebrity. His breakthrough fight came in August 1915, when he headed to Boston to take on the Irish-American fighter Jack Britton, nicknamed 'the Boxing Marvel'. Given Boston's vast Irish community, it's easy to conclude which fighter would have been the crowd favourite that evening.

But, over 12 rounds, Lewis emerged as the victor on points and thus claimed the world welterweight championship. In doing so, he became the first British boxer to win a global title on American soil.

The Britton bout made Lewis' name, but it was just the beginning of a rivalry that, by its conclusion, had become one of the greatest in boxing history. The two men would dispute the title 15 times, though that number could be higher still given the conflicting views on how many of their bouts were proper title contests. Indeed, between 1915 and 1922 they were the only fighters to hold the belt. In an era of eight weight divisions and just one titleholder for each, theirs was a remarkable and dominant rivalry.

Lewis lost the belt for the final time in New Jersey in July 1919. He challenged Britton for the title again in 1921, but was defeated by unanimous decision.

Aside from his boxing success, the time he spent in America also made Lewis famous. He met his future wife Elsie Schneider in New York, and became a close friend of Charlie Chaplin, who would act as godfather to Lewis' son Morton. Lewis also tried his hand in the movies, predominantly tackling boxing pictures. Inevitably, he was typecast: not only was Lewis best known as a fighter, he also looked like one, with many years of punishment having left their mark.

Lewis and Chaplin pull a pose for the cameras // PA Images

When the war ended he returned to Britain and continued to earn success in the ring, moving up through the weight classes as he advanced in years. In June 1922 he became British middleweight champion by beating Frankie Burns at Holland Park Rink in London, then added the European belt five months later.

He even tried his hand at heavyweight. In May 1922, he challenged Georges Carpentier for the world light-heavyweight belt, though a first-round knockout signalled the end of Lewis' tilt at world titles.

He retired from fighting in 1929, but his time in the spotlight was not yet over. In a truly strange turn of events, Lewis was standing for parliament just two years later. Even more bizarrely, he did so for a man who would later become notorious as Britain's leading fascist and anti-Semite.

In the period after World War I, Sir Oswald Mosley was the coming man of British politics. He was first elected as an MP in 1918, winning the Harrow seat for the Conservatives. Something of a political itinerant, Mosley left the party and sat as an independent, then joined the Labour Party in 1924. In that year's election he attempted to unseat Neville Chamberlain, but lost by just 77 votes. In 1926 he returned to the commons by winning Smethwick for Labour, but in 1932 he fell out with the party following a disagreement over unemployment policies. Mosley promptly resigned and formed his own political movement. Though in some respects a highly imaginative man, Mosley deigned to call this the New Party. Among its early advocates was Ted Lewis.

READ MORE: The Day England's Footballers Gave the Nazi Salute

The New Party was seen by its supporters as a break with old politics that had led Britain into a disastrous war and failed to look after the men who fought in it. It was a serious movement, albeit never particularly well organised, and had the backing of some very wealthy individuals. On the ground Mosley gathered a strange mix of supporters, from respected politicians to racist cranks, from members of the aristocracy to retired sportsmen.

Lewis, of course fell into the latter category, along with the former England rugby captain Peter Howard. They were charged with leading and training the 'Biff Boys', a quasi-military group who possessed worrying hints of European fascism. According to Stephen Dorril, a British academic who wrote Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism, the Biff Boys "were a kind of honour guard at Mosley's meetings." Certainly, the synthesis of brain and brawn that Mosley sought to portray – he was a champion fencer and handy boxer – conformed to this.

It should be said that the ideas Mosley and the New Party were putting forward in 1931 were neither fascist nor anti-Semitic, though they had elements of both. "You could see where it might lead," says Dorril. "Whether Lewis saw that at all, I don't know. But I suspect he didn't. He liked Mosley because he was a big figure – literally. He did fencing, he'd boxed at Sandhurst, been in the military. Mosley liked to surround himself with muscular men and there is an element of homoeroticism around it. Certainly, some people around Mosley truly fell in love with him. It was a weird mixture, really."

Mosley at a rally in 1936, after his full conversion to fascism // PA Images

In retrospect, Lewis' support of Mosley does seem extremely unlikely, but at the time he was not alone: "Mosley did initially have Jewish [followers] who were genuine in their support of him," says Dorril.

Nevertheless, Lewis went a step further by standing for election in 1931, when the New Party fielded a total of 23 candidates. They ranged from serious politicians with considerable experience, such as John Pratt and indeed Mosley himself, to less credible candidates such as Lewis, who stood in his local Whitechapel and St Georges constituency.

Exactly why Lewis was selected to run for parliament we cannot be certain. Clearly he was a well-known and popular figure in East London, and while there would have been almost no notion that he could win the seat it must have been hoped that he would attract some positive attention and a decent number of votes. But the party was overstretched, and appear to have put Lewis foreword in something of a last-minute panic. His election slogan was "Rome wasn't built in a day," which while factually correct lacked the kind of big-thinking and positivity that people were after in inter-war Britain.

READ MORE: Death, Tennis and the Nazis: The Man Wimbledon Forgot

Ultimately, Lewis' run for parliament was a disaster. He polled a derisory 154 votes, the fewest of the 23 New Party candidates. (Both Mosley and Sellick Davies won 10,000 votes in their respective constituencies, but ultimately fell well short of earning a seat).

"I think that probably hurt. They put him up because they thought he was popular," says Dorril. Lewis may have been a well-known boxing champion, but this was by no means enough to convince the people of Whitechapel to vote for him in a fiercely contested national poll.

His association with Mosley would not last much longer. "Increasingly, Mosley became embarrassed by the Biff Boys," says Dorril. "Their activities got out of hand. Some of them seemed to enjoy the violence and fisticuffs, they were becoming too visible, and there was a move within the party to get rid of them."

Politically, Mosley also shifted to a position that Lewis must have felt extremely uncomfortable with. After the defeat of 1931, Mosley embraced European-style fascism and founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932. Among other things, this saw him move towards more open anti-Semitism, particularly in Lewis' native East London.

The Battle of Cable Street, in which anti-facist demonstrators fought Mosley's supporters, took place in Lewis' native East London in 1936.

In a biography of his father, Morten Lewis gives his version of how he was taken along to watch the former boxer quit Mosley's movement. It involves Lewis taking on Mosley and a pair of his henchmen at their headquarters, leaving the former reeling on the ground and the other two out cold. Then, after walking down the street, Lewis is said to have returned to the building and knocked out two more guards, without provocation.

It is a fanciful story, but its motivation is understandable. After World War II, Mosley became a pariah of British politics and society. After all, this was a man who had supported Hitler and been married in Goebbels' sitting room. With the full horrors of Nazism becoming clear, Mosley's views became intolerable. That the Lewis family would wish to distance their father from this is entirely understandable. The more likely truth is that Lewis, like many Jewish supporters, simply drifted away when anti-Semitism became a theme of Mosley's politics.

Quite what it was about Mosley that appealed to the former champion is not certain, though this was not his only questionable acquaintance: as an old man during the sixties, Lewis got to know the notorious Kray twins. The boxing-mad gangland bosses brought the old champion to their birthday parties and charity evenings, and they even used him as a decoy when springing a fellow criminal from Dartmoor prison. Again, how much of the real Krays the ageing boxer knew is unclear. There is a sense that he was taken along for the ride by those seeking to use his fame. As an elderly man who had fought hundreds of professional boxing matches, he was perhaps vulnerable to manipulation.

Lewis lived out his final years at Nightingale House, a Jewish retirement home in Clapham, which his son recalled as one of the happiest periods of his father's life. He died in 1970, at the age of 77, and is now little known outside boxing circles. Yet Ted Lewis – or Gershon Mendelhoff – is one of the most interesting champions the sport has seen, not only for his success in the ring but also for the life he lived afterwards.

@Jim_Weeks

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