James Strachey Barnes
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James Strachey Barnes (1890–1955){{cite book|author=Aubrey Herbert|title=Albania's Greatest Friend: Aubrey Herbert and the Making of Modern Albania: Diaries and Papers 1904-1923|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M_0-QfRL8eMC&pg=PA326|date=15 June 2011|publisher=I.B.Tauris|isbn=978-1-84885-444-4|page=326 note 146}} was a theorist of British fascism.
Life
He was born in India, the son of Hugh Shakespear Barnes and his wife Winifred Strachey, daughter of Sir John Strachey.{{cite book|author=James Strachey Barnes|title=A British Fascist in the Second World War: The Italian War Diary of James Strachey Barnes, 1943-45|page=1|date=20 November 2014|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic|isbn=978-1-4725-1042-6}} Brought up in Florence by his Strachey grandparents, he was educated at St Aubyns School, Eton College and King's College, Cambridge. He became a Roman Catholic convert in 1914.{{cite book|author=Thomas Linehan|title=British Fascism, 1918-39: Parties, Ideology and Culture|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j6k_pyJ3ThEC&pg=PA129|year=2000|publisher=Manchester University Press|isbn=978-0-7190-5024-4|pages=129–}}{{cite book|author=T. S. Eliot|title=The Letters of T. S. Eliot: Volume 5: 1930-1931|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7S7CCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA172|date=28 February 2015|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-21179-5|page=172 note 2}}Jackson, P. (2014). James Strachey Barnes and the fascist revolution: Catholicism, anti-Semitism and the International New Order. In E. Tonning, M. Feldman, & D. Addyman (Eds.), Modernism, Christianity and Apocalypse (Vol. 8, pp. 187-205). (Studies in religion and the arts). Brill. Advance online publication.
Barnes served in the Guards and Royal Flying Corps during World War I. He then worked in the Foreign Office Intelligence department, to 1919. Subsequently, he lived in Italy, disliking British life as he found it. He was a member of the Partito Nazionale Fascista, and a friend of Benito Mussolini.
Barnes became the leader of the Centre International des Études Fascistes (CINEF) in Lausanne, Switzerland.{{cite book|author=Matthew Feldman|title=Fascism: The 'fascist epoch'|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xeHuSpHzqGUC&pg=PA255|year=2004|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-0-415-29019-7|page=255}} Other British founders were Edmund Garratt Gardner and Walter Starkie; George Clarke, 1st Baron Sydenham of Combe and Arnold Leese were members.{{cite book|author=Thomas Linehan|title=British Fascism, 1918-39: Parties, Ideology and Culture|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j6k_pyJ3ThEC&pg=PA128|year=2000|publisher=Manchester University Press|isbn=978-0-7190-5024-4|page=128}} Strachey's The Universal Aspects of Fascism was published in CINEF's journal, along with articles by Edmundo Rossoni, Augusto Turati and Gioacchino Volpe. Barnes became foreign editor of the periodical Social Justice.{{cite book|author=Justus D. Doenecke|title=Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939-1941|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XYFTZYJTyGAC&pg=PA8|date=1 January 2003|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|isbn=978-0-7425-0785-2|page=8}}
His 1928 book The Universal Aspect of Fascism received some attention both in Italy and in Europe.“Book of the Day. The Fascist State: A Philosophic Justification,” The Times, 17 January 1928, p. 8.{{Cite book|last=Galligani|first=Clemente|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SZcGYgLFgJ8C|title=L'Europa e il mondo nella tormenta: guerra, nazifascismo, collaborazionismo, Resistenza|date=2012|publisher=Armando Editore|isbn=978-88-6677-031-2|pages=152|language=it}} Mussolini wrote the second edition's preface.{{Cite book|last1=James Strachey Barnes|url=http://archive.org/details/1928UniversalAspectsOfFascism|title=Universal Aspects Of Fascism|last2=Benito Mussolini|date=1928}}
During World War II Barnes worked to publicise Fascist Italy. His own Fascist views included palingenesis, anti-Semitism, and opposition to liberalism. After the war he lived in Italy.{{cite book|title=Modernism, Christianity and Apocalypse|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_-NTBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA187|date=31 October 2014|publisher=BRILL|isbn=978-90-04-28228-5|pages=187–8}} On the idea of Fascism, he described:
Fascism may be defined generally as a political and social movement having as its objective the re-establishment of a political and social order, based upon the main current of traditions that have formed our European civilisation, traditions created by Rome, first by the Empire and subsequently by the Catholic Church.James Strachey Barnes, The Universal Aspect of Fascism (London: Williams and Norgate, 1928), p. 35
Notes
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Category:People educated at Eton College