Newspaper can post video of prostitutes, racing chief Mosley
A British court refuses to stop News of the World from publishing a clip online that depicts the Formula One boss with 5 women. Calls heat up for his resignation.
LONDON — A scandal whose overtones of sex and fascism have engulfed the Formula One racing world heated up today when a judge in Britain allowed a newspaper to broadcast videotape said to depict motor racing chief Max Mosley in a Nazi-style orgy with prostitutes.
Publisher Rupert Murdoch's News of the World pounced within minutes of the court ruling, adding an interview purported to be with a prostitute. She insisted that, despite Mosley's denial of any Nazi overtones, the racing boss hired her and four other women to pose as Nazi guards and prisoners.
The website's traffic immediately jumped, by 600%, as did the troubles of the 67-year-old Mosley. He is fighting to hold on to his job as president of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile, world motor sport's governing body.
The FIA announced a special meeting of its general assembly on June 3 in Paris, when Mosley's future will be decided by secret ballot.
The scandal would likely have been a ho-hum tale of sex and bondage of little interest to jaded Europeans were it not for the fact that Mosley is the son of Oswald Mosley, the controversial founder of the pro-Nazi British Union of Fascists in the 1930s.
His mother was the former Diana Mitford Guinness, one of the celebrated Mitford society sisters. The couple was married in 1936 in the Berlin home of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, and Diana Mosley claimed until her death to have been "very, very fond" of Adolf Hitler.
Mosley had his own run-ins during his youth in defense of his father. But he has long sought to shed his past and pursue both a law career and his longstanding love affair with motor sports, becoming one of the most powerful figures in Formula One.
He has admitted having a sex session with the prostitutes but claims it had nothing to do with Nazism. He said he speaks German in parts of the video because one of his sex partners was German. The guard uniforms, he said, were not Nazi apparel but featured a modern German air force jacket, while the women were wearing not concentration camp uniforms but U.S. prison garb.
"It goes without saying that the so-called Nazi element is pure fabrication. This will become crystal clear when the matter comes to trial," Mosley said after filing suit against News of the World for invasion of privacy.
"I don't think any of this should affect my work on motoring safety, the environment or the sport," he said. "I believe that 21st century adults do not worry about private sexual matters as long as they are legal and harmless."
