Bertrand Russell to Oswald Mosley (1962)
36 comments
·September 16, 2025alkyon
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.
interestica
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:
1970-01-01
Simultaneously polite, peaceful, respectful, diplomatic, and succinct in writing. LLMs have a long way to go.
SideburnsOfDoom
IDK, I see this as in some ways verbose, not succinct at all. A completely succinct reply to Mr Mosley would be two words only, the second being "off".
This letter tries to "unpack" its point of view rather than reply succinctly. But you're right that LLMs do not do it that clearly.
hackncheese
Wait Oswald Mosley is a real dude??? I know him from Peaky Blinders, one of those characters you love to hate
jfengel
Very much a real dude. And extremely hateable -- and hateful. He was simply an awful pwerson.
dboreham
He's less well known because the British generally don't elect their charismatic fascists leader of the country. Instead he was jailed and his organization banned.
nabla9
Brits don't elect their PM in their first place. That might be the reason. The structure of British democracy kept fascists away, as well as anything new, not the British people.
Sir Oswald Mosley was member of parliament before starting the BUF. He was the youngest member of the House of Commons when he started as Conservative. He eventually switched to Labour.
harpiaharpyja
> The structure of British democracy kept fascists away, not British people.
That sentence was particularly hard to parse. It read like you were saying that the structure of British democracy kept fascists away, but did not keep the British people away (???).
I did manage to figure it out eventually though. I think you meant to write:
It was the structure of British democracy that kept fascists away, not the British people.
graemep
> Instead he was jailed and his organization banned.
He was interned during world war II as a security measure. He was released before the end of the war and never charged with anything.
bshimmin
Not to worry, though: his grandson, Louis, is in charge of Palantir in the UK. Definitely nothing concerning about that!
overrun11
Why would that be at all concerning? His grandson is guilty by blood?
lostlogin
> the British generally don't elect their charismatic fascists leader
Hold that thought. Current UK politics have taken a turn and the combination of major party incompetence and rising anger might change that.
graemep
I think not.
The protests last Saturday got a boost from the murder of Charlie Kirk so the large turnout is misleading.
The only British political figure willing to accept Elon Musk's backing is Tommy Robinson, and he is not a major player, just someone good at getting into newspapers. Very different from the US or continental Europe - for example Germany where AfD (which took Musk's money) has seats in both the national and European parliaments.
JetSetWilly
Fortunately in Britain we have moved far from the values of former labour MP and noted Europhile Sir Oswald Mosley. I would see reform as a fairly traditional conservative party, though I appreciate that there are many that are keen to shift the overton window so far that they can be described as somehow “far right”.
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mjd
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,”.
esafak
I thought that was how one simply started letters -- you could even say "Dear Sirs" -- but in the US at least it seems "dear" has come to reserved only for close recipients.
cubefox
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.
giraffe_lady
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.
seanhunter
> more or less invented types to solve a problem he was having with set theory.
For people who haven't encountered it yet, this problem is the famous "Russell's Paradox"[1], which can be stated as
Consider the set R, consisting of all sets S such that S is not an element of S.
Ie in set builder notation
R = {S : S ∉ S}
and then the paradox comes from the followup question. Is R an element of R? Because of course if it is in R, then it is an element of itself so it should not be. And if it's not in R, then it is not an element of itself, so it should be. This is a logical paradox along the same lines as the famous "The barber in this town shaves all men who do not shave themselves. Does he shave himself?"
In modern axiomatic set theory, Russell's paradox is avoided these days by the "axiom of regularity"[2] which prevents a set builder like "the set of all sets who are not members of themselves", so what I wrote above would not be accepted as a valid set builder for this reason by most people.
Russell proposed instead Type theory which got revived when computer science got going.
interestica
They had a long history of correspondence. The preceding letter is archived and you can probably get a copy. (https://bracers.mcmaster.ca/79128)
> Jan 6/1962 Re nuclear disarmament and world government. BR is not inclined to agree or disagree with Mosley's views, but he does think that Mosley is "rather optimistic" in his expectations. BR provides criticism of his main two objections. (A polite letter.)
> Jan 11/1962 Mosley wants to lunch privately with BR about their differences.
These are basically all the letters exchanged with Mosley:
https://bracers.mcmaster.ca/bracers-basic-search?search_api_...
thomassmith65
Bertrand Russel also was - and hopefully still is - a public intellectual, like Einstein or Chomsky (for better or worse), whose opinions on many areas of life reached ordinary people. His values were ahead of his time.
This is a wonderful interview with him that gives a great sense of what he was all about:
• A Conversation with Bertrand Russell (1952) https://youtu.be/xL_sMXfzzyA
colinbeveridge
I understand that Professor Yaffle -- the woodpecker bookend in the classic kids' TV show Bagpuss -- was loosely based on Russell.
lostlogin
Russell also lives a long time, with family who did too.
While young his grandfather told Bertrand about meeting Napoleon. Late in life Bertrand watched the moon landing on TV.
https://www.openculture.com/2022/05/philosopher-bertrand-rus...
OtherShrezzing
For general context, this was addressed to post-ww2 Mosley, in the 60s, who argued a unique form of holocaust denialism at the time. He didn’t take the position that the holocaust didn’t happen, he took the position that it was justified.
haijo2
Mr Mosley also had a pretty well known son lol.
seanhunter
For reference, this is alluding to Max Mosley who used to be prominent in formula one car racing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Mosley
pickaprick
[flagged]
lovelearning
> It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own.
Perfectly describes how I feel when talking with rightwingers.
ljsprague
You're just like him!
If someone's too lazy to enter the address in Google maps, here you go: https://maps.app.goo.gl/oZ5c8aqH1uJ35VaD8