30/04/2026
Bowie's history,April 26 1976. David Bowie: ‘Britain could benefit from a fascist leader’ After the 2 concerts in Sweden, David Bowie was interviewed by a Swedish reporter, to whom he made some notorious remarks on fascism.
As I see it I am the only alternative for the premier in England. I believe Britain could benefit from a fascist leader. After all, fascism is really nationalism.The remarks were renounced on many subsequent occasions by Bowie, who attributed them to his prodigious drug intake at this time. However, he had been making references to Na**sm for some time, and earlier in April 1976 had been stopped at the Russia-Poland border where N**i literature and memorabilia were confiscated by officials.
David Bowie Following the concert, a rep from the company that licensed RCA Records in Sweden presented Bowie with gold records for Pinups, Diamond Dogs and Young Americans. At the press conference Bowie was asked about the incident on the train in Russia.
Bowie: I’m working on a film based on the life of young Goebbels – when he was a young man – and they found all my reference, [laughs] which didn’t go down very well at all. They found books of the young SA uniforms, Goebbels’ history and Albert Speer’s Spandau diary and a lot of basic histories of German Romantics – that was the pre-National Socialists, the whole of the 18th, 19th century German history. I travel, generally, with about four or five hundred books and I cut down to a hundred books for Russia but I didn’t – and I’ve been to Russia before; I should have known better – I didn’t realise I had quite so many reactionary books on me.
Inevitably Bowie was asked about the political ambitions he expressed in February’s Rolling Stone. (“Maybe I should be prime minister of England. I wouldn’t mind being the first English president of the United States either. I’m certainly right wing enough.”)
Bowie: I think that maybe by the time I’m willing to throw myself into that kind of position, which would be a good 10, 15 years from now, I think I might be able to cope with it as well as everybody else.You said England needed a fascist leader, do you still think that?Oh yes, not a N**i leader, a fascist leader. Fascism is an extension of nationalism; a radical conception of what Lenin was going for. It’s an intense form of Communism. And for a few years – until I get killed, [laughs] – as Prime Minister, one would need that kind of leadership just to tighten up reins and to pull people into perspective, into definition, so that they can really see what their country’s made of and what they really want. But they won’t know what they really want until they are ruled. When they are ruled then they decide what they really want.You want to be Prime Minister of England. Why not King of Sweden?Because I have great respect for Swedes themselves and they have every right to have their own king! Have I met him? No, I saw somebody who looked like him in the third row, but I don’t think it was him.James Johnson (2013): That’s me in the photograph [above] in the top left hand corner. I was working for the London Evening Standard at the time. Briefly – after the show I was told by Bowie’s American PR that I’d be able to talk to Bowie without a tape recorder for five minutes. She suggested I talk to him about right wing ideas and fascist leaders. He did say Britain might benefit from a fascist leader. My story the next day made a large splash in the Standard. But when other daily papers got in touch with him, he denied saying what I had reported. It was quite a big story at the time. Frankly, I think I was the victim of a PR stunt, but an RCA employee at the time agreed with me.
