Speaking in a video interspersed with images of Mosley doing fascist salutes, Carlson said: “The opposition party was led by a First World War war hero who fought not just as you know, a pilot in the sky but and in the trenches. [He was] one of the great war heroes, former member of parliament, the country ever produced. And he and his compatriots and their wives were interned without charges by Winston Churchill for the duration of the war.”
Mosley was not fact the then-leader of the opposition but founder of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), a minor party that never performed well in elections even at its height in the mid 1930s, and never won a seat in Parliament.
Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, being saluted by supporters (Credit: Fox Photos/Getty Images)[Missing Credit]
BUF was estimated to have had, at most, 50,000 members but that number declined sharply following violent clashes at the Olympia rally in 1934 and later the Battle of Cable Street in 1936.
Mosley was indeed imprisoned – but only for three years, not for the entirety of the war – and the BUF was made illegal in May 1940 after the outbreak of the Second World War.
Instead of the forced imprisonment of the opposition party at the time, as claimed by Carlson, the exact opposite happened: Britain formed a wartime coalition government in 1940 that included Labour Party leader Clement Attlee, who served as deputy prime minister under Churchill.
Rather than suppressing political rivals, Churchill worked closely with them across party lines to run the war effort and rally nationwide support by presenting a unified political front.
Oswald Mosley returns salutes at a meeting of the British Union of Fascists in Cable Street, London (Credit: Becker/Fox Photos/Getty Images)[Missing Credit]
Though Oswald’s detention under emergency powers remains controversial, it targeted not mainstream opposition parties but a small number of suspected fascist sympathisers deemed potential security risks.
Mosley famously sought alliances with fascist dictators Benito Mussolini and Hitler. In 1936, he married Diana Mitford at the Berlin home of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, with Hitler attending the ceremony as a guest.
His movement in the UK was associated with systematic street violence and the peddling of antisemitic conspiracies, such as framing Jews as a hostile or subversive force that maintained a disproportionate control over finances, media and politics.
He encouraged a paramilitary culture – including the “black shirt” uniforms – and BUF marches were deliberately routed through heavily Jewish neighbourhoods.
Refuting a clip of Carlson’s comments about Mosley posted to X, the site’s “community notes” feature wrote: “Mosley was not leader of the UK opposition, he was head of the British Union of Fascists, who married his wife at the home of Joseph Goebbels and was later described as a ‘Jew-baiting Nazi apologist’ by the Times of Israel.”
Pushing back against Carlson’s claims, one X user wrote: “For Carlson to portray Mosley - an outspoken, Hitler-admiring fascist - as a war hero (which Tucker exaggerates), and to claim he was persecuted purely for political reasons, is deeply disturbing.
“The question has to be asked: does Tucker Carlson despise Churchill so much that he’s willing to defend a Nazi-aligned fascist like Mosley - or does he genuinely believe a Nazi-aligned fascist like Mosley was a patriot?”
Oswald Mosley acknowledges a salute from female members of the British Union of Fascists at an evening demonstration in Hyde Park, London (Credit: Central Press/Getty Images)[Missing Credit]
It is not the first time that Carlson, a prominent figure on the American right, has amplified controversial narratives about Churchill.
In an interview earlier this year with Piers Morgan, Carlson pushed back on the idea that Churchill was a key defender of western civilisation. In September 2024, Carlson hosted podcaster Darryl Cooper – whom he praised as a highly honest historian – who argued that Churchill was the “chief villain” of the Second World War.
