A sinister totalitarian organisation seeks world domination. It's us.

[imomus]

As a kid I played -- innocently, guiltily -- in the shadow of the Cold War propaganda of the Bond films. I guided a model Aston Martin DB6 around the carpet and enjoyed pushing the button that activated the deadly weapons that this car, alone amongst my toy cars, possessed. I watched the films, in which the British secret agent quipped and killed his way to inevitable victory over eccentric totalitarians with foreign accents and plans for world domination. It all seemed like innocent fun.



It was only later, as my political and ethical sympathies evolved, that I began to feel the Bond franchise might be infused with toxic values. Not just the values inscribed into the Bond themes and songs -- "he's got a license to kill", "you've got to give the other fellow hell", "live and let die" -- but the stuff I started hearing about Ian Fleming himself. That he was a right-wing xenophobe who talked about "niggers" in his books, or stereotyped Koreans as "the cruelest people on earth", who boasted that he'd killed a man while working for naval intelligence, and claimed to be one of the key figures in the creation of the CIA. It was even annoying that he'd named his villain Auric Goldfinger after the Jewish, Marxist architect Ernő Goldfinger, creator of the Modernist Trellick Tower and architect of the offices of the Daily Worker newspaper and the British Communist Party HQ. And yet every time a new Bond film came out the lifestyle press spouted reams of stuff about how suits and guns and dry martini and British males who killed foreigners were sexy again.



This week a new piece of back story to the Bond saga emerged. A BBC Radio 4 documentary called M is for Maxwell Knight looked into the background of the man on whom Fleming based the character of spymaster M. Some pretty unsavory details emerged; Knight "believed that socialism, and its attack upon the British Empire and commerce, constituted an existential threat to the British way of life and British government". And so Knight joined the British Fascisti Party.

Christopher Andrew, who's writing the official history of MI5, pops up to explain this one: "At the time the only fascists who were around were Italian fascists. And there were a lot of traditional conservatives and right wing radicals who thought that the best thing that had ever happened to Italy was Benito Mussolini coming along and getting the trains to run on time. So we shouldn't confuse the British Fascisti, or the British Fascists, of the mid- and late 1920s with the British Union of Fascists of the late 1930s, still less the further-right Right Club, and still less with the Nazi party." It was at this time that Knight, who'd become the Fascisti's Director of Intelligence, started working for British government intelligence, concentrating mostly on infiltrating left wing organisations. He encouraged fellow Fascisti members to join the Communist Party of Great Britain as spies.

Knight was close with Oswald Mosley and William Joyce, who became Lord Haw Haw when he moved to Berlin to make English-language broadcasts on behalf of the Nazis. Heather Joyce, Lord Haw Haw's daughter, remembers a visit Knight made to her father in the 1930s. "I did see him twice when he was in his uniform, and looking very handsome and impressive. They undid their belts, because they were going to eat, you see, and they sat over in the corner and everybody got up and... gave the fascist salute." Just as I, as a child, was playing with James Bond toys, so Heather and her sister were walking around in black shirts made for them by their parents.

Now, one line of thinking we could legitimately follow when we learn this stuff is that the beloved M from James Bond is an extremely right wing figure, that Fleming's slurs on communist architects and Knight's infiltration of communist organisations come from the same basic worldview, and that the Bond franchise to this day -- including all those style mag features on the sexiness of Anglo-Saxons in suits carrying guns -- has reactionary attitudes deep in its DNA. But Christopher Andrew draws a very different lesson: "British intelligence became world class because it was better at using eccentric and unconventional talents," he says, successfully turning "being a fascist" into "just being terribly British and charming", an argument which clearly cuts both ways and smears a lot of charming British eccentrics with some nasty slime. Andrew has an equally British explanation for Knight's later metamorphosis into a TV presenter of animal programmes on the BBC: "He had an unusual set of social skills," he tells us. "By unusual, I mean that he got on just as well with animals as with human beings. So what he's recognised as is a wonderful British eccentric with a wonderful ability for getting humans and animals to do what he wants them to do."

A sinister totalitarian organisation is seeking world domination. It's us, the British.

Comments

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

I should make an imomus post bingo card. This one would get about half the squares, I think. A+

[autopope.livejournal.com]

You might want to track down a copy of my Bond/H. P. Lovecraft pastiche The Jennifer Morgue (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1841495700/charliesplace-21) purely for the afterword -- in which yr. hmbl. crspndnt. tracks Ernst Stavro Blofeld down to his retirement home to get his side of the story. (Or prod me and I'll email you a copy.)

Yes, there was some really crazy cross-fertilization going on in the British intelligence world prior to 1991 -- and also in the intersection between fascism and the military/imperialist complex. Random example: Major General J. F. C. Fuller -- military spokesperson for Moseley's fascists -- was, during WW1, the chief tactician of the Machine Gun Corps' Heavy Branch, the world's first armoured unit. He pretty much invented the doctrine that later got named Blitzkrieg and associated with the Nazis; he was one of the authors of Plan 1919, the allied combined-arms motorized assault on Berlin planned for spring 1919. Barkingly patriotic, drifted into fascism during the 1930s because he thought the west was doomed, otherwise, to be overrun by non-white persons ... and he was also second string only to Aleister Crowley in the A.A. (http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/A.%27.A.%27.) (before splitting with him acrimoniously in 1913).

Magick, eccentric hyperpatriotic generals, and blitzkrieg: what's not to boggle at?

[(Anonymous)]

Off-topic: I see that Ocky Milk - the only Momus album that was on Spotify - has been pulled. Was that at your request? What do you feel about these streaming services?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It wasn't at my request. Maybe Cherry Red's? Someone gave me a Spotify invite, but when I tried to join it told me the service wasn't available in Germany.

My feeling is that pop music is too easily available, too ubiquitous, and that that's what has devalued it to close-to-zero. Music should become rare and difficult-to-find again. Instead of streaming music, we should be hiding it like Easter eggs or buried treasure.

[(Anonymous)]

Sean Connery vs Pierce Brosnan

[(Anonymous)]

Trouble is, recorded music is not going to become rare and hard-to-find again any time soon, if ever. Perhaps recorded music is over, as Bill Drummond recently suggested.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/jul/25/billdrummond

[(Anonymous)]

Perhaps recorded music is over

Well Spotify seems to think that Momus is over, as it kicks off its Momus blurb thusly: "Momus was the alias of Nick Currie..."

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, Bill Drummond's talent has always been for exaggeration, but I think his basic idea here is right. There aren't even any good moral panics around popular music any more. To get back on-topic, pop music isn't even worth infiltration by spies these days. Some claim that MTV's spread to Europe was instrumental in the fall of the Iron Curtain. But would anyone attempting to damage someone else's social system use pop music today? I think they'd find some other Trojan Horse, wouldn't they? Maybe James Bond films.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

"Momus was the alias of Nick Currie..."

That wording has been around for years -- it originates in a piece someone wrote for AllMusic.com. It's looking as if clunky (http://msmvps.com/blogs/spywaresucks/archive/2007/12/03/1376435.aspx) AllMusic.com will become past tense before Momus does.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Computer games. Specifically, MMOs that reward player behaviour that reflects values inimical to the enemy social system.

[georgesdelatour.livejournal.com]

Presumably, during the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Goldfinger and Maxwell Knight would have been on the same side then.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

To give old Knight his due, during WW2 he also infiltrated fascist organisations in Britain, which Goldfinger would no doubt have been happy about. He was responsible for the imprisonment of his old friend Mosley. But, according to his Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell_Knight), "A notable failing was his entrapment of Ben Greene the pacifist Quaker refugee worker who was interned by the then Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson, as result of false evidence from Knight's agent provocateur Harald Kurtz."

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I watched the recent Casino Royale for the first time recently. I quite enjoyed it. I was peripherally aware of the kind of values you talk about, but they didn't intrude especially on my enjoyment of the film, as they might with other films.

I'm reminded, for some reason, of Judge Dredd. I believe the creator of the character - I forget his name - basically wanted to create the portrait of a fascist. Apparently he was a bit disturbed when everyone loved his character and thought he was a hero.

I don't suppose Ian Fleming was similarly disturbed at people loving James Bond.

I think the attraction is in the coldness of it, somehow.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"Knight "believed that socialism, and its attack upon the British Empire and commerce, constituted an existential threat to the British way of life and British government". And so Knight joined the British Fascisti Party."

This entry is of a similar nature to what Gavin McInnes wrote about Communists (http://streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/blog/commies-arent-cool/) on his website/blog yesterday, except you're denouncing the fascist extreme-right, and he's denouncing the fascist extreme-left.

I think we should just all agree that Fascism and extremes aren't the way to go.

Did you see the latest Bond flick?

[downwithtunes.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

It's absurdly left-wing in message, which gels really weirdly with the generally right-wing attitude of the characters.

Bond fights an evil corporation that topples Latin American democratically-elected governments with the help of the CIA, in order to control the water supply and make money off the indigenous population when global warming arrives. It specifically paints up the pre-coup Haitian government and Evo Morales's government in Bolivia in a positive light.

Some weird shit right there.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, Gavin McInnes. I wonder what a reasonable centrist like him would make of this extremist (http://imomus.livejournal.com/37370.html) I met in a cafe in Nakameguro a few years back?

[(Anonymous)]

"It's us, the British."

I was going to say “you dismiss the long history of a British liberal left in four words. You can’t say Bond is Us”, although I think the two go hand in hand. The ‘good guy’ side of colonialism (charity, the World Service, internationalism as shown on Click Opera) can pave the way, encouraging trust, for ‘bad guy’ to get away with much more.

The key is ‘domination’, and here the problem is compounded. Are good schools, good hospitals, stable governments who don’t dehumanise “the people” domination? Bring it on. That is what we used to believe would happen if Bond helped remove a corrupt system.

But isn’t there a new generation who believe that their government is not only incompetent but actually dangerous? Aren’t they asking why the double benefits their parents had have disappeared (socialised protection in the workplace, capitalist windfalls on the property ladder). One things sure - their spy would be a much richer character..

Re: Did you see the latest Bond flick?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, the collapse of the binary Cold War mindset and the emergence of our own bankers as public enemy number one has thrown the Bond franchise into a guilty turmoil, I'd imagine. So they've started concocting plots where Anglo-Saxons with guns have to undo the damage wrought by other Anglo-Saxons with guns. I suppose it does at least replicate some of the Cold War paranoia -- "This guy talks like a banker -- whose side is he on?"

Re: Did you see the latest Bond flick?

[(Anonymous)]

I think "all plot, no story" sums Quantum of Solace up. A kind of relentless clockwork.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

But if, say, Fidel Castro had heeded this advice (about extremes not being the way to go), then Batista would certainly have continued completely raping Cuba and selling it off to the highest bidder. I'm sorry, but there are shades of difference here. Castro was, by any measure, a better leader than Batista, who tried to sell Cuba off to foreign corporations, and ended up parachuting out with the entire treasury after the revolution. And that revolution would never have occurred without ideological extremity. Of course, you might be inclined to say that the revolution would not have been necessary in a world free of extremes, but that's not a very realistic view, now is it?

extreme right wing in film

[(Anonymous)]

extreme right-winged figures and the extreme glorification of heroe-ness is bashed at: http://www.pink-rabbit.org/

Re: Did you see the latest Bond flick?

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

I saw both of the recent (Daniel Craig-helmed) Bond movies in theaters, and I fell asleep at both of them. I'm not sure why everybody, even serious critics, seem to think they're so great. Perhaps it's because any sign that a mainstream blockbuster action character has been made "complex" is perceived immediately as warranting praise? But I'm not sure exactly how "complex" this Bond really is. It would seem to me that he's actually a lot less complex, since his new shtick consists of killing everybody, regardless of situational morality.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

you dismiss the long history of a British liberal left

Well, I don't, because I mention the Daily Worker, the Communist Party of Great Britain, and Marxist architect Goldfinger in this entry. Or is that the extreme left?

Metonymy is a double-edged sword. Christopher Andrew seeks to exonerate Maxwell Knight's early fascism by linking him to the paradigm of the "wonderful English eccentric". But that also forges a semantic link between Englishness, wonderfulness, and fascism. In the same way, saying that Bond is reactionary, and Bond is a paradigm of Britishness, forges a link between what's British and what's reactionary. I'd rather hear people saying "Of course, Bond is not a very English figure."

But that's a bit like the problem I came up against last year, when it looked as if Obama might lose. "Put it this way," I wrote (http://imomus.livejournal.com/400901.html), "when I think of the parallel world in which McCain and Palin win, it doesn't seem far-fetched or alien. In fact, it's a world which shares the values a lot of Americans have right now. It's who they are. It's the malady, the one they know, the one they like."

That entry was called Punks and mavericks, fuck off forever! (http://imomus.livejournal.com/400901.html) But the thing is that nobody ever fucks off. They just go underground while they're out of power, and plot their return. It may be that the Obama who smiles on abortion and makes gentle overtures to Iran is not representing "the real America", he's just in power. In the same way, the communists and socialists have never represented "the real Britain", certainly not "the real England". They've occasionally been in power, but usually out of it.

I'd like to marginalize James Bond and make him un-metonymic, but I don't expect to succeed. I expect he'll always sum up a stereotypical Englishness better than an image of just about any leftwinger can. The best we can do is suggest that his kind of Englishness might be extremely dubious when looked at more closely. But can we say "A right wing killing machine like Bond shouldn't be allowed to dress in elegant Saville Row clothes, he brings them into disrepute!" But if you look at the history of Saville Row, it's a place that made all sorts of colonial suits with secret pockets for pistols. It's not incommensurate with what Bond is and does. And the chain of associations all the way down the line tends to be the same, until you reach the limits of England. The parallel world in which James Bond is England is not, unfortunately, a very far-fetched one.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

A class of people attempting to engineer conditions by which moral panics about their work might emerge is nothing other than a bad case of impatience. I think you (maybe people of your generation?) are too quick to declare that something is "over" merely because it hasn't happened in a while, or come along in a recognizable shape.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The parallel world in which James Bond is England is not, unfortunately, a very far-fetched one.

Actually, I have to add a big caveat: in its dreams. Because, as we all know, London is now Reykjavic-on-Thames. M will be offering Bond a couple of twigs and an elastic band in the next film.