The fawning adulation of Queen Elizabeth in the United States, which fought a revolution to get rid of the monarchy, and in Great Britain, is in direct proportion to the fear gripping a discredited, incompetent, and corrupt global ruling elite.
The global oligarchs are not sure the next generation of royal sock puppets mediocrities that include a pedophile prince and his brother, a cranky and eccentric king who accepted suitcases and bags stuffed with $3.2 million in cash from the former prime minister of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, and who has millions stashed in offshore accounts, are up to the job. Let's hope they are right.
"Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who's really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to hear about and discuss clown-related news stories," Patrick Freyne wrote last year in The Irish Times. "More specifically, for the Irish, it's like having a neighbour who's really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown."
Monarchy obscures the crimes of empire and wraps them in nostalgia. It exalts white supremacy and racial hierarchy. It justifies class rule. It buttresses an economic and social system that callously discards and often consigns to death those considered the lesser breeds, most of whom are people of color.
The queen's husband, Prince Phillip, who died in 2021, was notorious for making racist and sexist remarks, politely explained away in the British press as "gaffes." He described Beijing, for example, as "ghastly" during a 1986 visit and told British students: "If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed."
The cries of the millions of victims of empire; the thousands killed, tortured, raped and imprisoned during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya; the 13 Irish civilians gunned down in "Bloody Sunday;" the more than 4,100 First Nations children who died or went missing in Canada's residential schools, government-sponsored institutions established to "assimilate" indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture and the hundreds of thousands killed during the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan are drowned out by cheers for royal processions and the sacral aura an obsequious press weaves around the aristocracy.
Related - Cruelties of the Queen's Reign
The coverage of the queen's death is so mind-numbingly vapid, the BBC sent out a news alert on Saturday when Prince Harry and Prince William, accompanied by their wives, surveyed the floral tributes to their grandmother displayed outside Windsor Castle, that the press might as well turn over the coverage to the myth-makers and publicists employed by the royal family.
Land
The royals are oligarchs. They are guardians of their class. The world's largest landowners include King Mohammed VI of Morocco with 176 million acres, the Holy Roman Catholic Church with 177 million acres, the heirs of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia with 531 million acres and now, King Charles III, with 6.6 billion acres of land. British monarchs are worth almost $28 billion.
The British public will provide a $33 million subsidy to the Royal Family over the next two years, although the average household in the U.K. saw its income fall for the longest period since records began in 1955, and 227,000 households experience homelessness in Britain.
Related - British Land for the Rich as Crisis Grows
Royals, to the ruling class, are worth the expense. They are effective tools of subjugation. British postal and rail workers canceled planned strikes over pay and working conditions after the queen's death. The Trade Union Congress (TUC) postponed its congress. Labour Party members poured out heartfelt tributes. Even Extinction Rebellion, which should know better, indefinitely canceled its planned "Festival of Resistance."
The BBC's Clive Myrie dismissed Britain's energy crisis, caused by the war in Ukraine that has thrown millions of people into severe financial distress as "insignificant" compared with concerns over the queen's health. The climate emergency, pandemic, the deadly folly of the U.S. and NATO's proxy war in Ukraine, soaring inflation, the rise of neo-fascist movements, and deepening social inequality, will be ignored as the press spews florid encomiums to class rule. There will be 10 days of official mourning.
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