'Racial Fascist Corporate State', stressed the supremacy of the 'Aryan race'. The IFL altered its flag so that it featured the Union Flag superimposed with the swastika. As a result of that conversion, the IFL enjoyed a higher profile than its membership might suggest, in large part due to the funding that it received from Nazi Germany paid through the English correspondent for the Völkischer Beobachter, Dr. Hans Wilhelm Thost. Indeed, by the mid-1930s the IFL had turned against the Italian model so much that it denounced Benito Mussolini as a "pro-Semite" and claimed that the Second Italo-Ethiopian War had been organised by Jews. Arrival of the BUF In 1932, Robert Forgan approached the IFL and suggested that it should merge into Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, but the offer was declined. Leese rejected any overtures from Mosley because of the latter's initial reluctance to make anti-Semitism a central theme, leading to Leese dismissing Mosley as a "kosher fascist". He even dubbed the BUF the "British Jewnion of Fascists" over the issue. One of their biggest differences was the fact that the IFL held a biological view of anti-Semitism, the belief that Jews were inherently inferior as a race, in contrast to the BUF, whose eventual adoption of anti-Semitism was framed in ideas about the Jews' supposed undue influence at the top echelons of society. By 1933, the BUF decided to act against the renegade IFL, with Blackshirts attacking a number of meetings. The campaign culminated in an incident in Great Portland Street in which 50 Blackshirts disguised as communists invaded the stage to attack Leese before they caused considerable damage to the hall in an attempt to force a large repair bill onto the IFL. The BUF even passed fabricated evidence of an IFL plot to attack its headquarters to the Home Office. By 1939, with the IFL's influence diminished, the rivalry had cooled to the point that the BUF bookshop in Canterbury was prepared to stock IFL pamphlets. Although rejecting a merger with the BUF, the IFL was linked to the Nordic League through Commander E. H. Cole, a staunch advocate of the Russian Czarist hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, who served as chancellor of the League as well as being a leading IFL member. Before long, both Leese and P. J. Ridout also became members of the group, membership of which encompassed most