Historians will have much to write about when they look back on current political affairs in America, and analysis of the rightwing brand of ‘populist’ politics will be a major aspect of this. When it comes to his desperate desire to move back into the White House, the former U.S. President Donald Trump has made some dangerously deluded claims, including that he is a ‘victim’ of ‘fake news’ put out by his political opponents. He has attacked the MSM (mainstream media) in particular, arguing that it is ‘liberal’ and ‘socialist’ and out to ‘get’ him through ‘political persecution’. His MAGA (‘Ma ..read more

Many moons ago, during the early 1990s, and not long after the surprise collapse of the Berlin Wall and Eastern Bloc Communism, I became increasingly interested in the emergence of far right groups in post-Soviet Russia, and – as a young postgraduate student – I gave a conference paper in London on the topic in July, 1992. The paper was well-received and the subject created much interest, much more so than I had expected. It quickly became clear that many scholars in the West were trying to gain a better understanding of what was happening in Russia at the time, with some suggesting that the ..read more

Marine Le Pen in younger days, with an image of her father in the background The news from the first round of voting in the snap parliamentary elections in France was predictably grim: Marine Le Pen and her ‘National Rally’ (NR) have become more popular than many of the mainstream French political parties. The NR gained an unprecedented 33.15 per cent of the vote, ahead of the leftwing New Popular Front coalition on 27.99 per cent. President Emmanuel Macron’s ‘Ensemble’ came in third on 20.04 per cent, a disastrous result for his centrist party. The results indicated that the NR leader herself ..read more

The subject of fascism and royalty has always been beguiling to historians, myself included. In 2023 the April issue of the monthly BBC History magazine carried a fascinating article on the number of Hitler admirers among the aristocratic circles close to King George VI, and how uncomfortable this had made the Monarch feel while Britain was at war with the Nazi regime. Penned by Alexander Larman, the article, which was entitled ‘George VI’s Nazi Dilemma’, explored how a number of people in the upper tiers of the British establishment held positive, and sometimes highly enthusiastic, views of t ..read more

One Monday evening in December, 1917, the leafy town of Surbiton in Surrey received a visit from Mr. Horatio Bottomley, a figure the wartime Daily Mirror newspaper had called ‘London’s Answer to the Zeps’ because of his powerful oratory at public meetings. This was not the first time Bottomley had visited Surrey. He had addressed a meeting at Guildford in September, 1915, where he was introduced to the audience as ‘England’s War Orator’. The Anglo-Saxon race, he had claimed, was ‘on trial’. His visit to Surbiton in 1917 had the same dramatic flourish. With London now under attack from th ..read more

There has ben a wave of documentaries recently on the major events of the Second World War. More generally, peoples’ fascination with the history of war in all its aspects – political, social and cultural – seems to be greater than ever, especially if it has a ‘local’ dimension. While at the National Archives at Kew recently, I noted that the bookshop was gearing up to commemorate the 80th anniversary of ‘D-Day’ in World War Two i.e. the Allied invasion of Normandy, France, in June, 1944. This brought back memories of some research I conducted on General Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) and h ..read more

In further disturbing evidence of what historians and political scientists have called the ‘mainstreaming’ of the extreme right in Europe, the controversial Dutch far right leader Geert Wilders announced on 16th May, 2024, that he has come to a coalition agreement with three other party leaders, which will take the Netherlands sharply to the right. Wilders said excitedly: ‘We are writing history today’. Wilders’ PVV (‘Party for Freedom’) has also said it wants ‘the strictest-ever asylum regime’ and aims to opt out of European Union migration rules. With characteristic outspoken glee, Wilders ..read more

In a fascinating and provocative article in the Sunday Times (April 28th), Rosamund Urwin discussed the possibility that Anthony Blunt, the ‘fourth man’ in the infamous ‘Cambridge Five’ Soviet spy ring, may have passed secrets to the Nazis in World War Two. Urwin’s article set out and summarised some new findings and a controversial fresh thesis being put forward by Robert Verkaik in his new book The Traitor of Arnhem (published by Headline publishers on May 9th, 2024). Sir Anthony Blunt (1907-1983), of course, was the art historian and very ‘establishment’ man who became Adviser for the Quee ..read more

Just prior to the Covid-19 medical emergency and lockdown, I embarked on the delivery of a module on the role of conspiracy theory in history, and recently had the opportunity to run the module again. The course sought to address the very difficult question of why so many people appear to believe that ‘secret’ forces are at work in the world and allow themselves to be seduced and conned by the claim that there is no such thing as ‘accident’ in history. One of the conspiracy theorists I covered on the module was the former footballer and Green activist David Icke, author of books such as And th ..read more

Some brief exploration of the extent to which crude and racist historical revisionism has moved from the margins into the cultural mainstream of society can be a truly shocking experience. It is no exaggeration to say that conspiracy theory and its ugly child Holocaust Denial have taken on industrial-scale proportions in the early 21st Century. What many people still don’t seem to appreciate is the degree to which British conspiracists played a key role in this, beginning to sow the seeds almost immediately after the end of the War in 1945. Indeed, the early origins of the extremist attempt to ..read more