Comments on: Anti-Semitism in British airpower literature

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:32:14 +0000

Grey was a class act, no doubt about it. Edgerton does specifically mention Grey’s anti-Semitism, and quotes (p. 57) an editorial of his raving about the need for a strong air force for fighting the enemies of the ‘White Race’. Sadly the Aeroplane isn’t available here, or I could immerse myself in more of Grey’s rantings …

Ian:

Hey, we may have sent you Rupert, but that doesn’t mean you had to let him in! Fair point about the Dreyfus affair, but still … the trial and the controversy over it weren’t just symptomatic of French anti-Semitism, were they, but events which nudged French society onto a slightly different path? Maybe not into the open but certainly onto centre-stage. (Britain has also had moments where anti-Semitism was more visible, of course, such as the BUF’s activities in the East End, or some of the ‘Hidden Hand’ stuff in WWI. But nothing like Dreyfus.)

By: Jakob

Jakob — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:10:52 +0000

Everyman’s library have a rather nice edition of Orwell’s collected essays that I dip into from time to time.

I don’t think Edgerton looks at anti-semitism specifically in England and the Aeroplane, but I’m fairly sure it’s mentioned in passing. Personally whenever I see Grey’s name mentioned I mentally preface it with “raving nutcase”…

By: Ian Evans

Ian Evans — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:08:47 +0000

I don’t think you can credit the Dreyfus affair with “bringing things out into the open”. Don’t forget that France had openly antisemitic political parties already, plus the ultramontanes who wanted to move society back at least to prerevolutionary times, if not further - and it was the revolution that gave Jews full citizenship.
I’m glad you like Orwell (doesn’t quite atone for sending us Murdoch though!). There was a fairly complete set (novels excepted) of his writing published in the Seventies, later brought out in paperback, four volumes, by Penguin.
If you are digging into antisemitism and aeronautica, try finding some of C.G.Grey’s bletherings.
Bit short on time at the moment, but I’ll link you quickly to York again. Go back to Clifford’s Tower, the history plate at the bottom of the mound has been reworded since I was a lad. Certainly until the mid-60’s it referred to the burning of the Jews in the Tower as the “Jewish Riots”

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:24:36 +0000

It’s one of those things that just pulls you up short, when a dose of anti-Semitism pops up in an otherwise fairly sensible piece. I think it’s because it was so widespread and normal, it would have been unremarkable at the time. And I suppose that’s why so few airpower writers tried to refute the ’second exodus’ — it was just so normal. France gets a bad rap because of the Dreyfus affair, and so it should, but at least it forced the French to take sides on the issue, to bring it out into the open and debate it. That never happened in Britain. (Still, credit where credit’s due: the first exposure of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion hoax did take place in the Times in 1921. That’s not nothing.)

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 01:25:50 +0000

Fascinating stuff. I spend more time with the Imperial side of British history, and tend to forget the extent to which they shared the French view of Jews….

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 14:20:33 +0000

See, Orwell knows what I’m talking about! (One day I have got to read everything he ever wrote …)

By: Alan Allport

Alan Allport — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 14:13:58 +0000

Orwell, Antisemitism in Britain, 1945:

The common charge that Jews behave in an exceptionally cowardly way during air raids was given a certain amount of colour by the big raids of 1940. As it happened, the Jewish quarter of Whitechapel was one of the first areas to be heavily blitzed, with the natural result that swarms of Jewish refugees distributed themselves all over London. If one judged merely from these war-time phenomena, it would be easy to imagine that antisemitism is a quasi-rational thing, founded on mistaken premises. And naturally the antisemite thinks of himself as a reasonable being. Whenever I have touched on this subject in a newspaper article, I have always had a considerable “come-back”, and invariably some of the letters are from well-balanced, middling people–doctors, for example–with no apparent economic grievance. These people always say (as Hitler says in MEIN KAMPF) that they started out with no anti-Jewish prejudice but were driven into their present position by mere observation of the facts. Yet one of the marks of antisemitism is an ability to believe stories that could not possibly be true. One could see a good example of this in the strange accident that occurred in London in 1942 [sic], when a crowd, frightened by a bomb-burst nearby, fled into the mouth of an Underground station, with the result that something over a hundred people were crushed to death. The very same day it was repeated all over London that “the Jews were responsible.”