Lord Haw-Haw in the 2020s
An essay on the dangers of volunteering to dive head-first into Putin's disinformation rabbit hole
Down the Rabbit Hole by AV and MC is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
Sadly, there are strong parallels between the 1930s and the 2020s. We have already discussed a hard lesson from Winston Churchill in a previous column - if you want peace, you have to prepare for war. There are many other parallels with the 1930s, not least from Churchill’s great rival within the UK Conservative Party, Neville Chamberlain, who is best known for his unsuccessful policy of appeasing the Nazis.
Appeasement didn’t work in the 1930s, just as it won’t work with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in the 2020s. Some of Chamberlain’s contemporary heirs think the West should let Russia get away with its invasion of Ukraine. If we made this mistake, the question will be where Putin would invade next. A leaked audio from early April suggests that Kazakhstan might be the answer. The Russian bear is on the prowl.
Today, though, we will leave Churchill and Chamberlain to one side and instead discuss William Joyce, a figure who began to become infamous from 1939. He is little known outside the UK and younger generations will probably barely recognise his name; but his story carries important lessons for us in the 2020s.
Before we tell Joyce’s story, let’s pause for a second and discuss extremism in the 1930s, as witnessed by three thinkers. Eric Hoffer, a thoughtful docks worker who wrote a classic book on extremism in his spare time, said that the people who were drawn to fascism and communism were often those who felt their own lives were “irredeemably spoiled” for some reason. This group included what he called chronic “misfits” and others who had been impoverished for some reason.
Meanwhile, historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt has shown how the Nazis and Stalinist communists both used myths of a world Jewish conspiracy to make their case. Relentless propaganda and lies were designed to sever any connection between our beliefs and the world outside our heads. She famously wrote: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e.,the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
We have already mentioned novelist George Orwell’s insightful essay on nationalism many times before, not least when we discussed cybernats. One of the most interesting points was about how nationalism is transferable. People from peripheral areas or even outright foreigners can become the most passionate nationalists of all. He said intellectuals are particularly prone to this. What happens next?
It makes it possible for him [an intellectual who has adopted a foreign nationalism] to be much more nationalistic – more vulgar, more silly, more malignant, more dishonest – than he could ever be on behalf of his native country, or any unit of which he had real knowledge.
Let us turn now to Joyce. He was born in New York in 1906 to an Irish Catholic father and an Anglo-Irish Protestant mother. The family returned to Ireland when he was young, while it was still part of the UK. He was a unionist and was suspected of murdering a Catholic and being an informant. He fled to the mainland, where he explored right-wing politics and was slashed across the face by a knife-wielding communist. He later incorrectly claimed that his attacker was Jewish.
In 1932, Joyce joined the British Union of Fascists. He gained a reputation as a demagogue and brawler. He also became fiercely obsessed with antisemitic conspiracy theories. In fact, his last recorded words were an anti-Jewish statement.
When the Second World War broke out, Joyce received a tip that he was going to be detained by the British authorities. He and his wife fled to Germany; and they became naturalised citizens of that country in 1940. The German authorities recruited him for radio broadcasts in English in 1939. The British public were discouraged from listening in, but it wasn’t illegal to do so and many did, largely due to strict censorship at home and a desire to find out why exactly the Nazis were bombing the UK. Joyce’s posh accent soon led to the nickname Lord Haw-Haw, which he shared with some other lesser-known broadcasters.
Joyce recorded radio broadcasts throughout the war, with the aim of demoralising and confusing the British public. He exaggerated British losses, downplayed setbacks on the German side and spread antisemitic speculation.
The propagandist was audibly drunk on his last broadcast in April 1945 during the Battle of Berlin. He was captured at the end of May near the Danish border; and was shot in the buttocks when he reached for a false passport. He was charged with high treason, based on the fact that he possessed a British passport, even though he had lied on his application. He was executed in 1946 in Wandsworth Prison at the age of 39 and remained unrepentant moments before.
Later research has suggested that Joyce cut a deal with prosecutors to spare his wife Margaret (“Lady Haw-Haw”) from prosecution. She was the only one of 33 British renegades and broadcasters caught in Germany to escape charges of treason.
We can see themes from Hoffer, Arendt and Orwell in Joyce’s unfortunate life. A misfit, who experienced family tensions over differing religious views, he lived in four different countries in his early years. He was on the losing side of the Irish War of Independence as a young man; and had to bear an ugly scar across his face after being attacked for his views. Hoffer would have been unsurprised by his story.
Joyce also become a convinced antisemitic conspiracy theorist. Arendt would also have been unsurprised. As Lord Haw-Haw, he adopted Nazism (the most toxic branch of German nationalism) as his own and was “more vulgar, more silly, more malignant, more dishonest” than many native Germans. Orwell would have been unsurprised.
What are the parallels with the 2020s? Putin launched a television channel in English in 2005 called Russia Today, which later rebranded as RT. It was banned through much of the West after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but for many years our complacent leaders let a foreign dictator spread Lord Haw-Haw-style disinformation among the population. RT regularly promoted fringe voices who Putin thought might weaken the West, including conspiracy theorists and sundry extremists and populists.
Some people, particularly relativists, still seek out Putin’s lies nowadays; and some (like US politician Marjorie Taylor Greene) will actively spread them. Many others expose themselves to Putin’s nonsense for the same reason that British citizens tuned in to see what Lord Haw-Haw had to say for himself. Some of them give the channel’s lies an equal weighting to fact-checked information in the mainstream media, which is a huge mistake, as I have argued before in a previous essay.
Some of Putin’s most committed conspiracy-minded fans will pretend to themselves that the news is fiction; and that Russian lies are facts: or will claim that there are no differences between news and propaganda, as Arendt warned us. Political scientist Michael Barkun says that “fact-fiction reversals” are a key technique that conspiracy theorists will use as they dive head-first into a speculative rabbit hole. Bizarrely, the Q-Anon conspiracy sect’s worldview is basically just a remake of the plot of the Monsters, Inc. film franchise.
Unfortunately, exposing yourself to Putin’s lies is not without consequence. A recent report from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that the Ukraine war is very winnable if the West mobilises its massive economic resources.
The Kremlin’s best hope for victory is to promote voices that support appeasement, the ISW says. “The Russian strategy that matters most, therefore, is not Moscow’s warfighting strategy, but rather the Kremlin’s strategy to cause us to see the world as it wishes us to see it and make decisions in that Kremlin-generated alternative reality that will allow Russia to win in the real world.”
I would urge you, gentle reader, to avoid seeking out information from Putin’s Lord Haw-Haw brigades. There is literally no upside to exposing yourself to this nonsense and plenty of downside. If you do seek out Putin’s conspiratorial disinformation, you will find it is easy to digest because of a quirk of our brains called intentionality bias, which we have covered before.
If you choose to ignore my advice, please tread carefully. A little propaganda will go a long way. Cognitive dissonance is a harsh mistress. The more time you spend blurring the lines between fact and fiction, the worse you will find your reaction when you accidentally stumble upon some contact with the real world at a later date.
If you think that Putin’s disinformation will help you understand hidden truths that Western leaders want to hide from you, you should be aware that the halfway point between a lie and fact-checked information remains a lie. Please ask yourself why the Russian dictator feels the need to suppress independent journalists at home. Is this the mark of a man who believes in the value of checking facts?
Reality is reluctant to reveal itself to sloppy thinkers; and we need to develop intellectual virtues like carefulness, flexibility and thoroughness if we are to stand any chance of disentangling reality from our own preconceived ideas. Throwing inconvenient journalists in prison is a huge red flag that Russian propaganda isn’t based on an honest search for the truth, whatever it may be.
Finally, antisemitism is also once again on the prowl. Anti-Jewish racists hold all Jewish people to be responsible for the actions of Bibi Netanyahu’s government; think “from the river to the sea” (a call for genocide) is an acceptable statement; and fail to criticise the Hamas atrocities that lie at the root of the war. Critical thinking is more important than ever!
Please note that the previous paragraph is not an endorsement of any decisions taken by Israel’s nationalist prime minister Netanyahu since October 2023. Supporting the right of Israel to continue to exist is not the same as unconditional support for its government. It is perfectly possible to criticise Netanyahu’s strategy and his tactics without calling for the destruction of the state of Israel or holding random Israeli pop singers responsible for any of his decisions.
The comments are closed, as always when we discuss extremists, who often want to respond to any criticism with “some sharp retort,” in Orwell’s phrase. If, however, you subscribe to this blog, you can reply to the email. I might not get to it immediately, but I will answer eventually. See you next week!
Previously on Sharpen Your Axe
Churchill’s lesson for the 2020s
Russian disinformation and the enemies of institutionalism
Intentionality bias, motivated reasoning and why con artists tell us what we want to hear
Fact-checking can be a political act, intellectual virtues and the moderate disposition
Further Reading
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America by Michael Barkun
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer
Notes On Nationalism by George Orwell
Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia by Peter Pomerantsev
This essay is released with a CC BY-NY-ND license. Please link to sharpenyouraxe.substack.com if you re-use this material.
Sharpen Your Axe is a project to develop a community who want to think critically about the media, conspiracy theories and current affairs without getting conned by gurus selling fringe views. Please subscribe to get this content in your inbox every week. Shares on social media are appreciated!
If this is the first post you have seen, I recommend starting with the third anniversary post. You can also find an ultra-cheap Kindle book here. If you want to read the book on your phone, tablet or computer, you can download the Kindle software for Android, Apple or Windows for free.
Opinions expressed on Substack and Substack Notes, as well as on Bluesky, Mastodon, Post and X (formerly Twitter), are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.