The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith today charged the US Office of Immigration with negligence in granting a visa to Sir Oswald Mosley, “the founder of British fascism, a personal friend of Adolf Hitler, and a virulent anti-Semite and racist,” and called for an immediate investigation.
According to Dore Schary, honorary chairman of the League, US admissions qualifications should have kept Mosley out on two grounds: his activities are prejudicial to the public interest; he is the founder of, and remains affiliated with, a totalitarian party, the “Union Movement,” originally called “The British Union of Fascists.” Schary said according to law, the only way such a person can be granted a visa is on the special recommendation of the US Secretary of State and the approval of the US Attorney General. “I don’t know how Mosley got in,” Schary said, “but it is clearly against the public interest that he is here.”
Mosley arrived in the United States last week to promote his autobiography, “My Life,” which was first published in England in 1970. The American edition is being published by Arlington House, New Rochelle, N.Y. A spokesman for the publishing firm told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “Mosley was a fascist in the 1930’s” but “not now,” and that the American edition of his book was an effort to “present another approach to the history of the last few decades.” The spokesman also said that Mosley’s schedule in the US includes television interviews with Mike Wallace and David Frost.
TRIES TO WHITEWASH PAST
Describing Mosley’s book as “a denial of the damning facts of history,” Schary said that “nevertheless, respectable radio and television interviewers and the general press are being hoodwinked into helping him peddle it.” He noted that “Mosley now denies he was ever an anti-Semite or an advocate of the Nazi cause, but the record proves otherwise. Mr. Mosley was, and is, a fascist, a racist, and an anti-Semite.”
Schary said that “to accept Mosley’s attempted whitewash would be to ignore his own actions and statements.” A prime goal of Mosley today, Schary said, is “to keep blacks out of England.” Schary said that Mosley engaged in rallies in the 1960’s against continued emigration of black British subjects into England. “Mosley, a past master of twists and turns, is now here to sell Americans his version of history,” Schary said. “His presence is not only against federal law, but is an insult to Jews, blacks and all Americans.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
