Gardener Who Said ‘Moneybags Rothschilds’ Slur on BBC Appears To Have Named Daughter After Fascist Who Called Herself ‘Jew Hater’

The gardener who made a reference to “moneybags Rothschilds” on a venerable radio program of the British Broadcasting Company has a daughter who appears to be named after one of the nation’s most famous fascists — Unity Mitford.Bunny Guinness, who works with her daughter Unity Guinness, did not respond to a request from The New York Sun about her reference to the famous Jewish banking family on a February episode of “Gardeners’ Question Time.” A Jewish listener complained to the corporation, which first ruled that it was “unable to agree that it was in any way antisemitic” and reckoned that it was unlikely to “perpetuate prejudice” because it did not clearly mention the faith of the Rothschilds. That decision prompted outrage from, among others, the co-chairman of the United Kingdom’s Holocaust Memorial Foundation, Lord Eric Pickles. He contends in a statement that the BBC’s refusal to apologize is “beyond comprehension” and that the remark was “inappropriate and antisemitic, almost comically so.” The BBC makes a “clear distinction between a comment about a named family — one who were famed for the extent of their private fortune — and one about Jewish people more generally.”The shadow attorney general, David Wolfson, thunders in a statement that the “point of a racial trope is that the protected characteristic can be left unstated. ‘Moneybags Rothschild’ invokes an ancient stereotype without needing to spell it out. I assume the BBC thinks a dog whistle is just fine if you don’t identify the dog?”Ms. Guinness is hardly new to the BBC. A regular on “Gardener’s Question Time,” she also writes a column in the Sunday Telegraph and presented the “Great Garden Challenge.” A magazine, “House & Garden,” named her one of the top 50 garden designers in the UK in 2021. She married into the Anglo-Irish Guinness family known for achievements in banking, brewing, and Protestant spirituality. Ms. Guinness’s uncle is the famed rose breeder David C.H. Austin, who in 2010 was named the “Great Rosarian of the World.” In 2019, his roses, named after characters from Thomas Hardy’s novels, won gold at the Chelsea Flower Show. Ms. Guinness’s daughter is named “Unity,” an apparent allusion to a famous fascist who is also something of a relative — in 1929, Diana Mitford, just 18, married Bryan Guinness. She eventually left him for Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists. According to the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics, since 1996 only 28 girls have been named Unity. Diana’s sister Unity, who lived from 1914 until 1948, was one of the six Mitford sisters, who traced their lineage back to the Norman Conquest of England in the 11th century. Her younger sister, Jessica, became a Communist. Unity joined Mosley’s black shirts — and added a Nazi armband to the uniform. Mitford attended the Nazi rally at Nuremberg in 1933 — the next year’s gathering would be immortalized in Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will.” Her middle name was, improbably, “Valkyrie.” Persistent though uncorroborated rumors have insisted that Mitford bore Hitler’s love child. Mitford wrote in the Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, that “The English have no notion of the Jewish danger. Our worst Jews work only behind the scenes. We think with joy of the day when we will be able to say England for the English! Out with the Jews! Heil Hitler! PS. Please publish my name in full. I want everyone to know that I am a Jew hater.” She appeared alongside Hitler on the balcony of the Hofburg Palace at Vienna when he announced the Anschluss in 1938. An MI5 report from 1935 called her “more Nazi than the Nazis.”Hitler’s then-girlfriend, Eva Braun, wrote in her diary with respect to Mitford that “She is known as the Valkyrie and looks the part, including her legs. I, the mistress of the greatest man in Germany and the whole world, sit here waiting while the sun mocks me through the window panes.” After Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, Mitford shot herself in the head with a pistol given to her by Hitler. She survived, but suffered brain damage until her death in 1948 at the age of 33.Mitford writes in her diaries that she learned how to operate a firearm by pretending she was “practising to kill Jews.” She also transcribed her hope that when she died she would “go to heaven and sit there with the Fuhrer for ever and ever. Let all his enemies be smitten down especially the jews which will serve them all right.”

Gardener Who Said ‘Moneybags Rothschilds’ Slur on BBC Appears To Have Named Daughter After Fascist Who Called Herself ‘Jew Hater’

Gardener Who Said ‘Moneybags Rothschilds’ Slur on BBC Appears To Have Named Daughter After Fascist Who Called Herself ‘Jew Hater’

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