Political Conversions: Going Fascist

Past Present Future

D&HR Media Ltd

Politics, News, Philosophy, Society & Culture, History

4.7 • 747 Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2026

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s episode is the first in a new series of conversations with political historian David Klemperer about what causes people to switch sides, ideologies and worldviews – stories of political conversion. We begin with converts from socialism to fascism, looking in particular at the notorious case of Oswald Mosley. Why did he wind up in and then give up on the Labour Party? What made him ditch democratic politics for fascist violence? How does his political journey compare to other socialists turned fascists in continental Europe? Did he ever repent? Out now on PPF+: a bonus episode in which David explores the myth of the 1945 general election. Why does this event still exert such a grip on the political imagination of Labour politicians? What do they get wrong about how it really happened and what it really meant? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up to PPF+ now https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus merch, events and full lists of all episodes and PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com Next Time on Political Conversions: Communism – The God That Failed Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:23.0	Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you.
0:27.4	Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Hello, my name's David Rundsman and this is past-present future, the History of Ideas podcast.
0:44.5	Today, it's the start of a new series of conversations. I'm going to be talking to the political historian, David Klemperer, about what we're calling political conversions. The stories of people
0:56.7	who have switched sides, switched ideologies, swapped out one worldview for another. We're going to be
1:04.7	covering the last hundred years, beginning in the 1920s and 1930s, taking the story up to the present. Today, we're talking about the switch
1:14.2	from socialism to fascism, and we're concentrating on one notorious case in particular,
1:20.9	the story of Oswald Mosley.
1:32.9	David, we're going to begin this set of conversations about political conversions, people who switch sides, instances of political vault fast, big turnarounds in people's political
1:38.0	outlook, with a notorious case, Oswald Mosley.
1:41.9	We're going to bring in some other people too.
1:45.7	Mosley is notorious,
1:52.2	and it's easy to sum up the big shift. In 1930, he was a minister in a Labour government.
1:58.4	By 1932, he was leader of an organisation called the British Union of Fascists. He was Britain's leading fascists. And it happened pretty fast. But with
2:02.3	Mosley, one of the complications is that wasn't his only switch in his career. He was quite a
2:08.0	shape-shifting politicians. And one of the questions with Mosley that we're going to talk about is
2:11.9	how much are these really big shifts? How much is there some underlying thread through his story? We should start at the
2:20.2	beginning. How would you characterize the kind of politician that Oswald Mosley was when he first
2:27.5	entered politics, entered parliament, first made a name for himself because one of the things we need to say
	...

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