Bertrand Russell to Oswald Mosley (1962)
There is a transcription but reading the original letter, typewritten by Bertrand Russell, with all the typing corrections that probably stemmed from some kind of holy anger he must have felt responding to someone like Mosley, was incredibly more pleasurable.
If you’re really interested in his works and correspondence, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario holds the Bertrand Russell archives.
Some stuff is online. Here’s a curated collection of some really interesting letters sent to him:
Anyone wondering what might have prompted his evident change of attitude after already having engaged in a "correspondence" with Mosley should note that this letter was written during Ralph Schoenman's infamous tenure as Russell's secretary.
I always feel funny starting letters with “dear”, but next time that happens I'm going to remember that this one started with “Dear Sir Oswald,”.
I wonder if this was a response to a letter from Mosley. Would love to see more context.
Thanks mods for the title fix.
I can't find a copy of the letter this is in response to which would provide more context. I believe it was an invitation of some sort.
Bertrand Russel was a prominent logician and philosopher, more or less invented types to solve a problem he was having with set theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell
Sir Oswald Mosley founded the British Union of Fascists.
My dad went to a Bertrand Russell lecture at Michigan State University. This would have been around 1960. He can't remember anything BR talked about, though.
In case someone's too lazy to enter the address in Google maps, here you go: https://maps.app.goo.gl/oZ5c8aqH1uJ35VaD8
Feels relevant, thank you for posting. I have so many swirling thoughts and emotions from recent prominent events and this letter provides a compass for that.
I was a politically active liberal all of my life, but if the world forces me to choose between communism and fascism, I'm choosing fascism.
Thing is though, it would be more useful to have such an intellectual actually take apart Mosely's views. For posterity. For all of those people who haven't properly thought things through (which is, I would say, most people)
Thinking completely outside of our post-WWI bubble, history has been far more brutal in the past. This is the anomaly. Taken as a whole, human history has been full of genocide, slavery, brutality.
When somebody misrepresents "survival of the fittest" in the way that the 20th century fascists did, and embark on mass extermination "for the good of the world" (in their warped view), citing the fairly recent Darwinian view of evolution, isn't it better to tackle these views head on, for the benefit of those who haven't the inclination or the ability to think it through themselves?
What I see nowadays is a complete lack of curiosity. Nobody wants to try to understand why people "go bad", they just want to put them in the bin. That only works if those "bad" people are a minority.
Also, when the "good" people stop engaging in debate with the "bad" people, there's a danger of creating a dogmatic society. Looking at Christianity in the middle ages, and extremely confident sense of your own rightness can lead to atrocities too.
Sorry, probably nonsense, boarding a flight, not paying full attention to my post
quite the redditor
What did Mosley write to him?
A tangent..
> Bertrand Russell, one of the great intellectuals of his generation, was known by most as the founder of analytic philosophy
That title is usually attributed to Gottlob Frege (in particular his 1884 book "Grundlagen der Arithmetik", and his 1892 paper "Über Sinn und Bedeutung") who directly influenced Bertrand Russell, Rudolph Carnap, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, who all later became large influences on analytic philosophy themselves. Frege is most known for the invention of modern predicate logic.
A propos
Mosley was an anachronism but his time seems to be coming. Shying away from it isn't the answer. Young men are online a lot and they're seeing an appeal in traditional values and group identity in opposition to individualist and technocratic norms. The left is weak, and these spasms of violence like the Kirk assassination are symptoms of that. Let's hope this right wing energy can be released productively and some of their grievances addressed before it builds further.
Letter written in 1962, when England was 0.72% non-White. When Russell died, that number had only climbed up to 2.3% [1]. Some of those who fought WWII, the "original antifa" as some call them, and lived longer, had this to say [2]:
How do I feel about the country today? My two uncle’s gave their lives for this country, my father’s health was broken from gas in WW1. I did my little bit, my brother did his national service in the Canal Zone in Egypt. What has been our reward? EVERYTHING we fought for has been taken from us and given to foreigners, we are now third rate citizens in our own country.
Our enemies rule us from Brussels and we are being colonized by *** and *** in this country. There is not one political party that is prepared to stand up and fight for our country and indigenous population. The holocaust is now being carried out on us. What are my main regrets? That I didn’t fight for Hitler, at least he was for his own people.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_England#Ethnic...
He was so angry he could hardly contain himself.
Simultaneously polite, peaceful, respectful, diplomatic, and succinct in writing. LLMs have a long way to go.
I gather by the mention of fascism that the correspondent is a bad person. So it makes sense that Russell told him to get bent. But, that is all that he's really saying here.
I can only guess this is noteworthy due to the parties corresponding because it isn't very interesting outside of that.
[flagged]
[dead]
[flagged]
[flagged]
This is the genetic forebear of what we have today, a congenially disguised infection of the essence that has set man against man.
People who vehemently disagree are supposed to and should have open dialogue, not elaborate letters of visceral moral rage. Without dialogue you are left with only force.