British administrators in postwar Somalia openly joked about being fascists without war crimes

Evidence

Another British officer reported, “I was amused by one of the heads of departments at Headquarters, who dined with me the other night, when he described himself as a ‘Fascist—without war crimes’ all in one word.” Letter from British consulate, September 14, 1950, FO 371/80887, UK National Archives. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 1240

Categorization

• CANDY: A striking, darkly comic archival anecdote about colonial mindset.