I'm sorry if this was posted elsewhere, but this was one hell of a story from yesterday's NY Times.
Possible Nazi Theme of Grand Prix Boss??s Orgy Draws Calls to Quit
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: April 7, 2008
LONDON ?? Few scandals in recent years have provoked as much anger and dismay across Europe as the saga of Max Mosley, the overseer of grand prix motor racing who made tabloid news last weekend in a front-page exposé and accompanying Web video showing him in a sadomasochistic orgy with five supposed prostitutes in a London sex ??dungeon.?
But beyond the licentiousness of the episode, it was the suggestion of Nazi undertones in the role-playing during the session in a basement in London??s fashionable Chelsea district that led to demands for Mr. Mosley??s resignation as president of the Paris-based Federation Internationale de l??Automobile. Known as the F.I.A., it is the international governing body of motor sports, and has presided over the expansion of Formula One racing into one of the world??s richest sports.
Family history has added to the notoriety: Mr. Mosley, 67, is the younger son of Britain??s 1930s fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, and the society beauty Diana Mitford, whose secret wedding in Berlin in October 1936 was held at the home of the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and included Hitler as a guest of honor.
The tabloid newspaper that broke the story of Mr. Mosley??s Chelsea session, The News of the World, described it as ??a depraved Nazi sadomasochistic orgy,? and said Mr. Mosley had paid the equivalent of $5,000 in cash for the five-hour session.
In a video the paper posted on the Internet but later removed, two of the women wore black-and-white striped robes in the style of prisoners?? uniforms. The video showed Mr. Mosley counting in German ?? ??Eins! Zwei! Drei! Vier! Funf!? ?? as he used a leather strap to lash one of the women.
??She needs more of ze punishment!? he cried in German-accented English. One woman appeared to search his hair for lice while another called off items on an inspection list. Mr. Mosley, naked, was bound face-down and lashed more than 20 times.
Mr. Mosley has acknowledged participating in the session. But he has denied that the role-playing had a Nazi motif, and announced Friday that he had filed a lawsuit against the newspaper, claiming ??unlimited damages? for invasion of privacy.
In a letter on Saturday to the head of Germany??s motoring federation, he renewed his insistence that the Chelsea session was a private matter, and added, in a reference to the F.I.A.??s role in promoting road safety around the world: ??Had I been caught driving excessively fast on a public road or over the alcohol limit, I would have resigned the same day. As it is, the scandal paper obtained by illegal means pictures of something I did in private, which, although unacceptable to some people, was harmless and completely legal.?
He has refused to resign his F.I.A. post, appealing to the federation??s global network of motoring organizations for support. But denunciations have cascaded from much of the racing world, from Jewish groups, and from F.I.A.-affiliated motoring organizations around the world, including the American Automobile Association, which said in a statement on Saturday that Mr. Mosley, as F.I.A. chief, needed to set ??the highest standards of ethical behavior? if he was to represent millions of motorists worldwide. It added: ??It would be in the best interest of all concerned if he were to step down.?
Perhaps more significantly, calls for his resignation have come from four major car companies, each of which owns or substantially controls grand prix racing teams: BMW, Daimler Benz, Honda and Toyota.
For the world of Formula One, which attracts a global audience of tens of millions of television viewers, the scandal has come at a bad time. It is still reeling from the enmities sown last year when Mr. Mosley, as the F.I.A. chief, served as chief prosecutor in the so-called ??spygate? affair in which nearly 800 pages of secret technical data were stolen from the Italian Ferrari team and handed to its chief racetrack rivals, the British McLaren team.
McLaren, in which Daimler Benz is a major partner, paid a fine of $100 million, the highest in sports history.
The Times of London reported Friday that Mr. Mosley would argue in his lawsuit that he spoke German during the sex-and-bondage session because two of the women involved were Germans, not to engage in Nazi role playing. He learned the language when his parents, interned by Winston Churchill during World War II as security threats and self-exiled in Paris after the war, sent him to an exclusive private school in Bavaria for two years. He later earned a physics degree from Oxford and became a lawyer before making a career in motor racing.
The Sunday Times of London reported in this weekend??s editions that Mr. Mosley was the target of a set-up involving a van with a hidden videocamera parked outside the Chelsea basement flat where the sex session took place, and that a miniature camera was concealed in the one of the women??s brassieres.
It quoted - Mosley associates as saying that the prison garb worn by the women were ??American convict uniforms? and as dismissing the Nazi allegations by saying, ??The scenario was more Alcatraz than Auschwitz.?
While some British newspaper columnists argued that the affair was strictly a family matter for Mr. Mosley, who has been married for 48 years, much of the news media coverage has cast it as a family tragedy in another sense. Stories have recalled how he was 11 weeks old when his mother was taken to prison, and have detailed how the shadow of his parents ?? his father died in 1980, his mother in 2003 ?? has long fallen across his life.
Mr. Mosley has said that he had hoped for a career in politics, but that his family name made that impossible. Explaining his turn to motor racing, where he had an undistinguished record in the sport??s lower echelons, he has said that he chose it as a career after drivers at a British track in the 1960s speculated that he was related to an Alf Mosley, a prominent builder of British buses. ??I thought to myself, ??I??ve found a world where they don??t know about Oswald Mosley,?? ? he said. ??And it has always been a bit like that in motor racing: nobody gives a damn.?
In the wake of the present scandal, that assumption may have to be re-examined.
His explanations of the Chelsea session have run into a barrage of condemnation, some from Jewish organizations. Stephen D. Smith, director of Britain??s Holocaust center, noted that Mr. Mosley had recently proclaimed an ??anti-racism? drive in Formula One after spectators in Spain directed racial taunts at Lewis Hamilton, the 23-year-old black driver for the McLaren team who is racing??s latest sensation, and said that Mr. Mosley should abide by his own standard.
??This is an insult to millions of victims, survivors and their families,? Mr. Smith said. ??He should resign from the sport.?
A similar rebuke came from a former grand prix driver, Jody Scheckter of South Africa, who won the Formula One world driver??s championship for Ferrari in 1979 and is still the only Jewish driver to have won the crown.
??I don??t believe he can represent anything after this,? Mr. Scheckter said Sunday. ??If it didn??t have a Nazi connotation it would be a completely different matter, but for a person in his position, and with his background, it??s unbelievable.?
Similar statements have been made by Sir Stirling Moss, a grand prix legend in the 1950s, and Jackie Stewart, a three-time world champion in the 1970s. Mr. Stewart, a childhood dyslexic whose criticism of Mr. Mosley??s role in the spying scandal last year caused the F.I.A. chief to mock him as a ??certified half wit,? told a television interviewer in Bahrain that allowing Mr. Mosley to stay in his post would be an affront to the multicultural nature of Formula One: ??He??s president of a global federation that serves many religions, cultures and sensitivities,? he said. ??And Formula One goes to many of these parts of the world.?
But what may prove to have been a turning point in the affair came in the form of the car manufacturers?? statements on Friday. In a joint statement, BMW and Daimler Benz described the facts outlined in The News of The World as disgraceful. They added, ??We strongly distance ourselves from it,? and said they would await appropriate action by the federation??s governing body.
Honda said it was extremely disappointed and urged F.I.A. to make ??an immediate decision.? Toyota said it did not approve of any behavior that ??could be understood to be racist or anti-Semitic.?
Mr. Mosley, undaunted, tried to turn the tables on BMW and Daimler Benz, which manufactures Mercedes-Benz cars, with a statement that raised the specter of the two companies?? own role during the Nazi era. In addition to building engines for German fighters, bombers and tanks, they were accused of using slave labor in some of their plants, and, in Daimler Benz??s case, providing Hitler and the German high command with staff cars. The statement held to his insistence that fault lay with the way in which his actions had been reported by The News of The World, and not with the actions themselves.
If he recognized the irony in the son of the man who led Britain??s ??blackshirts? in reproving German companies for their wartime past, Mr. Mosley did not show it.
??Given the history of BMW and Mercedes-Benz, particularly before and during the Second World War, I fully understand why they would strongly distance themselves from what they rightly describe as the disgraceful content of these publications,? he said. ??Unfortunately, they did not contact me before putting out their statement to ask whether the content was in fact true.?
