The American hot takes on the death of the queen have been breathtakingly stupid. Pundits have branded her a colonialist queen. They seem to have mistaken her for Queen Victoria. Wokeness has made the US media into a laughing stock, says Jenny Holland
The depth of US pundits’ ignorance about Queen Elizabeth II and her reign has been shocking.
The lack of respect that some, invariably lining up in the ‘progressive’ camp in politics, have for others is palpable. Indifference to others who think differently is their normal state, until those others start to make their voice heard and, heaven forfend, exert an influence in politics, at which point we move from a passive state of indifference to an active state of contempt, hatred, and loathing. The real target of the people who obsess over Donald Trump is not so much Trump as the people who support Trump and saw him as giving voice to their long-ignored complaints. The same thing happened in Britain with respect to Brexit. Those extolling the virtues of the EU plainly have scant regard for the deindustrialised parts of the UK thrown onto the scrapheap in the new international division of labour (not that Brexit in itself will resolve that problem). And now the same with the death of Queen Elizabeth II. The same people who have been telling us for years that monarchy is in decline and that the death of the Queen will hasten its end are now seeing how little their wishful thinking is based in reality. And so, in a period of mourning, they pour vitriolic scorn on the stupid, brainwashed masses. How dare people in their millions express such support for the monarchy! How dare they openly and actively contradict progressives’ wishes and demands. The most laughable part of it all concerns those taking their stand on democracy, the same active minorities who have been advancing contentious demands on ‘government’ regardless of popular consent, undercutting and overriding democratic institutions. As one of them put it to me in light of the objections I made: ‘movements push and people follow.’ ‘People,’ it is understood, have no independent creative agency of their own in light of ‘truth.’ I’ll not be taking lessons on democracy from such people – their objection to the monarchy is that it constitutes a transpolitical force and vantage point which they themselves seek to occupy to advance their own political causes.
For Trump-hating people haters in the US read Brexit-hating people haters in the UK. There is a real popular rebellion underway, and ‘progressives’ are on the other side entirely. And these same people have the gall to argue for democracy against monarchy – elitists to their marrow, they haven’t got a democratic bone in their body and can usually be found denouncing and denigrating the ‘stupid masses.’
We are dealing not with stupidity here, but with resentment in the Nietzschean sense: contempt, disdain, bigotry, and a hatred that can only poison interpersonal relations, destroying the civility which is key to any viable polity. That resentment comes from a sense of entitlement and superiority allied to a lack of power. The know-all know-nothings have cultural power, which they mobilise daily throughout cultural media, but much less institutional power (although it is growing) and next to no structural power (unless it is allied to corporate agents, which is also increasingly common). Such people may be anti-monarchists but they are not democrats. The last thing these people want is for society to be governed by democratic will. They already know the truth – their truth. They don’t care what people think. They turn with disdain on all those who dare to think differently and contradict their views. That is the real source of the bile and hatred they have spewed out this week, the idea that there are people in this world, and a lot of them, who spurn their political views. The real target of their criticism of the Queen this week is not only the monarchy but the people who have openly expressed support for the monarchy. The progressives entertained the idea that the monarchy would be all over with the death of the Queen. The last thing they expected was popular support for Charles. They live in their own world, converse only with their own kind of people, so it is hardly surprising that they are so frequently taken unawares by events in the real world. And they can’t handle it. Hence the loss of common human decency this week, hence the abuse, hence the pettiness and meanness. Forget issues of monarchy and democracy and just ask yourself this question: do you think it at all likely that people whose first response is hatred and abuse of others are likely to be able to build and sustain a political and social order in which people get along with one another? They can’t even maintain a dignified silence, let alone show respect, during a period of grief and mourning.
In the summer I had the honour of working with people with autism and learning difficulties, helping to put on a garden party to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. These poor souls had suffered badly with isolation – and worse – during Covid Lockdown. To those ‘progressives’ still indulging self-serving myths of ‘false consciousness’ and brainwashing, I can confirm the simple truth that the joy they felt in a communal gathering and celebration was very real. And infinitely superior to the joyless carping of critics, whose endless and repetitive nature strikes me as frankly neurotic. I know whose company I would prefer to keep. On issue after issue, progressives, even supposed leftists, are on a very different side to ‘ordinary’ people, more often than not against the people. And are mystified as to their unpopularity. There is no mystery. Such people have zero connection with ‘ordinary’ people, their loyalty is to themselves and their own concerns, and they are filled with contempt for all who think differently. I wrote on my experiences at university with leftist ideologues and activists who repeatedly denounced the working class they purported to speak for for their ‘false consciousness’ here.
It will be a great step forward should progressives, leftists in particular, start to restore their connections to ‘ordinary’ people, instead of treating them as alien enemies. How strange it is how consistently the clever people are turned over by the stupid people. You could almost start to think that the clever people, keeping things close as they do, might be missing something. It doesn’t help that when they see it, they express disbelieving disdain. The problem with the ‘false consciousness’ thesis is that it contains an in-built get-out clause – your fundamentally correct views on all things remains correct whilst dissenting others are simply stupid and brainwashed.
Far too many pro-republican arguments – and ‘progressive’ arguments generally – suffer from their framing. In particular, they tend to assume that those in favour of the monarchy are simple-minded or infantile and need to grow up. The implicit democratic pessimism contained in these assumptions utterly contradict the claims to be in favour of democracy as against monarchy, precisely because they undermine notions of autonomous democratic agency. If people really are so stupid, so brainwashed, so easily influenced and misled, then democracy is impossible.
Such thinking is mistaken, not to say insulting. The royalists I know – and have known in the past - have long since ‘grown up,’ are active members of the community, the people putting a shift in day after day. The accusations of immaturity really are a bit rich coming from those who are to be found daily asserting their views on the tippy-tappy, on the assumption that the expression of their views is of some importance, rather than merely a rather tedious way of running the clock down. There is nothing remotely ‘grown up’ about the daily venting of resentment in the electronic Id. Although this need not be the case, Republican arguments can feel like an etiolated version of all that we are - head more than heart; law more than spirit. As someone who has argued the case for a ‘council republicanism’ – as a richer political alternative to ‘council communism’ – the heartless, spiritless, contentless view of republicanism strikes me as liberal to its abstract, empty core. We shall have a democracy when those putting the case actually show some evidence of being on nodding terms with the members of the demos, rather than consistently expressing loathing and contempt for ‘the people.’
“Spite is a little word, but it represents as strange a jumble of feelings and compound of discords, as any polysyllable in the language.”
Charles Dickens (1848). The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
The events of this week have offered tangible proof that the Britain routinely attacked in certain quarters is not only alive but in robust health. The Britain of the ‘traditionalists’ isn’t in decline, but has been cowed into such silence by relentless accusations of colonialism, imperialism, and racism as to make it appear it no longer exists. The physical, visible demonstration of active, popular support for the monarchy this week has infuriated the institution’s – and the nation’s – detractors. The virtues of the monarchy are, in the main, intangible, pertaining to a soft social and cultural power that cannot be defined, quantified, and measured. Anathema in an age of crude positivism, this is monarchy’s great strength, something that those raised on the simplicities of the age find impossible to understand. These are the people who have spent the past week making spiteful comments with respect to the ‘stupid masses’ who need to ‘grow up.’ Because, they ‘argue,’ it is the twenty-first century (as though political and moral principles correlate with the date at the top of the newspaper.)
Nor is Britain the racist etc country that certain voices love to portray it as. The events of this past week have exposed the haters, baiters, grousers, and grifters for what they are - haters, baiters, grousers, and grifters with much less popular support than the institutions they routinely attack. I say that as someone whose politics remain leftist in the main, socialist when it comes to the democratisation of the economy and public life. The problem is that ‘the Left’ has shifted from the socio-economic to the cultural sphere, abstracting politics from class and social roots to the academic and media sphere. The active, vocal, ideological Left in its current contemporary form has minimal connection with the common people, is indifferent to its concerns, and openly expresses contempt when ‘ordinary’ people have the temerity to find their voice. The people who make, move, build, and grow things have been engaged in protest and rebellion against various neoliberal/technocratic/globalist initiatives in recent years, and the new Cultural Left have expressed contempt.
The death of Queen Elizabeth II has offered an opportunity to take stock not only of the nation, but also of politics. It is wise to avoid generalisation, and reassuring to know that the world of media and social media is not the real world – or not the real world at its best. But the reaction of ‘progressives’ to the death of the Queen has been all too predictable, and all the more pathetic for that. The lack of decency, the lack of dignity, the lack of respect are bad enough, but the vitriol, the vulgarity, the viciousness exhibited by far too many indicates something much more alarming – large sections of what passes itself off as ‘the Left’ are thoroughly nasty and not to be trusted with an ounce of power. Leave aside for a moment the issues of appropriate and effective political forms – a debate that ought to proceed respectfully and reasonably – and just compare the dignity, common decency, and geniality of those paying their respects to the Queen with those who have taken the opportunity to express contempt for the monarchy and its supporters. And ask yourself the question: which group is more likely to build and maintain a viable social and political order, one based on mutual respect and dialogue? Which side shows almost zero capacity to show respect and engage in dialogue? If your default position is to denounce those who do not share your political views as stupid and immature (note how often republican critics tell monarchists that they need to ‘grow up’) then you lack the emotional and intellectual equipment to engage in dialogue. It is noticeable that many of those who are most vocal in asserting the claims of democracy over monarchy tend to be the most contemptuous of the views and actions of actual members of the demos. I have been around politics longer than is good for my health and sanity, have certain affiliations and connections with certain political groups and causes. I note that the people who are active in advancing ambitious climate programmes over and above the heads of the people have been very vocal this week in asserting the claims of democracy over monarchy. I like consistency and have a long memory. One character who has been particularly oafish with respect to the death of the Queen, posing as the defender of democracy, once made the statement: ‘that’s the problem with democracy, not enough people know stuff.’ That’s a criticism that has a long and even honourable tradition, going back to Plato. The case is arguable. I have myself long argued that you will get democracy when ‘the people’ are capable of leading themselves by the nous instead of allowing others to lead them by the nose. This is where things can get messy and complicated. Is your primary political loyalty to truth or to democracy as a political form? My strong suspicion is that many of the people who have been most vocal in asserting the claims of democracy over monarchy this past week are loyal most of all to truth, which is to say their version of the truth about reality, and to democracy not at all. I make this criticism particularly of greens who are open and active supporters of groups like Extinction Rebellion, demanding that ‘government tells the truth.’ This truth has squat to do with precise political forms. These people are not democrats. To the contrary, it is evident that they are intellectual and political elitists concerned most of all to constitute themselves and their kind as a new aristocracy. As a democrat, I take no lessons from them.
Contrary to the neurotic accusations of the commentariat and its echo chambers across social media, the state of the nation is actually quite robust. It would appear that most people remain decent, sane, and sober. The quiet dignity of the many paying their respects to the Queen this past week offers a striking contrast to the verbal violence of those who inhabit media world. There is a lesson here – the social world of face-to-face personal interaction is sane and healthy in a way that the mediated world of ideologues and activists with axes to grind is not. Britain is not the divisive, racist, nasty hellhole that too many activists and ideologues and, lamentably, academics would have us believe. There are detractors and abstractors among us, dividers who turn different groups against one another and feed off the controversy and the hatred. Another way of living, connecting, and bonding is possible. The world’s longest queue shows this, people of all kinds wending their way through London to pay their respects to the Queen lying in state in Westminster Hall. This outrages those who have, for years, claimed that the monarchy will die with the Queen. The tendency of so many clever people to succumb to wishful thinking is no mystery. Despising all who think differently, they separate themselves from others, inflict monologues on the world, associate only with like-minded others, insulate themselves from criticisms they routinely dismiss as stupid, engage in groupthink of the highest order. This is why they continually experience the events of the real world as a shock to their systems. That’s one reason for the vitriolic abuse they spew out into the world. The people who are so quick to tell others to ‘grow up’ are actually the most immature of all, wanting to hear only their own voice, delegitimising all others. It is an age of narcissists and neurotics, and narcissistic neurotics and neurotic narcissists. Either way is never a good combination. These are the people who are hooked on the tippy-tappy, giving the world the benefit of their fundamentally correct views on everything every day, day in day out. They are horrified at the thought of going a week without being able to vent their spleen. It’s simply impossible for them to maintain a dignified silence for a week. And these are the people telling others to ‘grow up!’
The queue for Queen Elizabeth II is in a very real and tangible sense a walking and talking rebuttal of the claims of online democrats who claim to speak for the popular masses, and throw a hissy fit when those masses make it clear that they do no such thing. It is also a rebuttal of the woke who take every opportunity they can to accuse any and every Western institution of irredeemable racism and colonialism. It is yet another wake up call to ‘the Left’ – you have lost touch with the people and the people are not with you. How do you propose to realize your political ideals? By force and fraud? By coercion? By authoritarian imposition?
There is still a ‘silent majority’ in the country, and the people shuffling respectfully along the banks of the Thames, joining in harmony to share their grief, form a stark antithesis to the permanently vocal minority who dominate our badly mediated culture. In a week or so, the people in the queue will go home and retire to their quiet everyday lives, and the ‘tiny majorities’ who dominate a media and culture abstracted from social life will restore normal service – division, vitriol, hatred, resentment, revenge, restribution.
As someone on the Left politically, let me say, respectfully – you are as far away from socialism as you have ever been, for want of active social and democratic content. If democrats despise the people, then you are going nowhere.
As for racism and imperialism, the Commonwealth, too, seems to be in robust health. There is no rush from republicans in its member-countries to remove the British monarchy. It may happen, and has been happening, but as an organic process with the monarch’s blessing. It’s a side issue that republicans desperately seeking relevance like to excite themselves over. The bulk of the Commonwealth’s fifty six members are already republics. So it’s really an issue of which countries are looking to give up their membership: which is none. Instead, countries that weren’t even part of the British Empire are looking to join the Commonwealth. The ideologues demanding decolonisation, and the cretins who unthinkingly parrot the demands, fail to see the existence and success of the Commonwealth as a remarkable post-colonial achievement. It is, above all, an achievement of the British monarchy. The truth, however, won’t stop dividers trying to divide. Again, my question to them, but mostly directed to those inclined to follow their narrative, is this: having gone to such lengths to spread division, how do you propose to re-unite people? That’s the problem with the divide and fight mode: once it is established as the dominant political modus operandi, it is well-nigh impossible to dismantle.
Current estimates suggest that some four billion people all over the world will watch the Queen’s funeral at some stage (Monday, 19th September). That’s about half the planet’s population. Numbers like this – like the long queue along the Thames – go a long way towards explaining the hatred, the vitriol, and the animus of the vocal minorities who dominate media and culture – and who seek to dominate politics. For all of their claims to be democratic, they loathe all others who think and act differently, and the blunt figures show that that is most others. Their claims to be democrats arguing against monarchy are belied by the facts. It is rather inconvenient, not to say embarrassing, when people extolling the virtues of democracy over monarchy find that the popular masses take a very contrary view. The people aren’t with you. This has been apparent for years. But the clever folk never learn the lesson, for the reason that they don’t want to learn – they know better and the role of the demos in the vision of democracy they entertain is to agree, conform, obey. That’s not how democracy works. Democrats that love ‘the people’ only when the people agree with their fundamentally correct views on all things are not democrats at all – they are autocrats. Their animus with the monarchy is that it occupies the preeminent place they seek to occupy. But here is the difference: the monarchy transcends politics and political divisions, providing a neutral and unifying space that is able to contain legitimate contention; the would-be monarchists seek to colonise that space for politics, their politics, exclusively, occupying the Empyrean heights, from where they are able to order and organise the society they have seceded from. Their language betrays them. To take just one of many instances, those who demand that ‘government tells the truth’ advance a truth that is pre-political, that is formed long before debate, discussion, and dialogue even take place, thus rendering contention null and void. Consensus here can only emerge as a form of obedience.
The numbers that the monarchy has put out on the streets this week is ‘soft power,’ and Britain has a wealth of it, from the monarchy down through the social and cultural fabric. It is this that certain sections of ‘the Left’ have been systematically targeting in recent years, in the deliberate attempt to subvert the social order, to weaken the resistance of people to changes they have in mind. ‘The Left’ have little soft power, hence the resort to protest, pressure, bullying, and coercion as first and last resort.
[I am extremely uncomfortable using the term ‘the Left’ here, for the reason that the dividing lines between Left and Right are no longer clear. Very many who could be identified as ‘cultural left’ are not remotely socialists, ‘hard left,’ but affluent middle class people who want to keep their good jobs, high incomes, and affluent lifestyles. Hence their predilection for cultural issues. The austerity they advocate, with respect to the environment, is always for others.]
The death of Queen Elizabeth has brought the virtues she embodied and lived by back to the fore: duty, sacrifice, service to others, responsibility, reserve, civility, dignity, modesty. All of these things have become ‘unfashionable’ in recent decades, openly mocked and ridiculed, in fact. The effects are apparent with respect to the crudeness of social life. People are seeing glimpses of a different, and infinitely better, way of conducting social life.
Monarchy is ‘out of date’ and people need to ‘grow up’?
An age of self-promoting grifters will eat public life from within, until nothing is left. An age which is steered by the self-aggrandising, value-free, self-important narcissism of a media abstracted from social reality stands in need of a renewed appreciation of such ‘old-fashioned’ virtues.
The stoicism demonstrated by Queen Elizabeth contrasts markedly with the emotional incontinence, deception, and lies of today’s political culture. Self-sacrifice and service to ideals and others are qualities that were once commonplace and which now seem to be lost. The demonstration that ‘traditional’ Britain still exists and in large numbers suggests, happily, that those values still exist and are begging a context and a culture that encourages their continuous expression. The response to the death of the Queen could be seen as a goodbye to those old-fashioned virtues, or a demand by the countless numbers of people coming out in public mourning that these virtues be reinstated. I would argue that the expression of feeling is a clear statement that the values the Queen embodied are precisely what are being called back to the public realm. It suggests that those values are still there and that people want that to continue. Let’s have some dignity and decorum. To hurl vile abuse and hold up signs containing vulgarities to a family in mourning is devoid of common human decency and shows precisely what the world would be such people come to prevail. Such malevolence would not dissipate with a change in political regime. Democracy? The people who are so quick to abuse the monarchy can tend to be the same ones expressing contempt for ‘the people’ too.
Let’s take a look at this argument that monarchy is out of date in the 21st century. The people who assert this talk as though monarchy still operates according to the ‘divine right of kings.’ Long before the French Revolution of 1789, England had a couple of revolutions of its own to clarify issues in this regard. The historical illiteracy of critics makes clear the extent that we are talking politics and political commitments here, not history. The British monarchy is a constitutional monarchy, one that works very well with democratic political forms, creating the stable political order which enabled the extension of democracy.
Looking around the world, a constitutional monarchy looks rather better than the alternatives. For various reasons, societies are becoming increasingly disputatious, with the most vocal and active in contending / spreading division (it is often hard to tell them apart) becoming less and less inclined to seek and practise compromise, cooperation, and consensus. (Because, of course, truth is non-negotiable!) The idea of political violence towards those with different political views – political ‘enemies’ – is becoming normalised. (How many times this week have we seen images of guillotines? People advocating the execution of opponents? T-shirts are being printed with images and slogans – a leftist version of soft power, softening the psyche for political violence.
Constitutional monarchy is positively benign in comparison, encouraging pragmatism, compromise, and moderation in the combination of continuity and change in history. British society has tended to be stable and pacific over the years, which is no mean achievement (and an achievement that those stoking division and making a fetish of law-breaking either take for granted or deliberately seek to destroy).
Officials at all levels of government along with broad sections of the public have been sympathetic, expressed their deep sadness, and shown great dignity. That this has been the dominant reaction is something that is worth underlining, given the extent to which the public narrative tends to be driven and dominated by the voices of active minorities. These voices were still heard this past week, all the louder and shriller given the weight of numbers against them. Sections of the media, social media, and academia are congenitally incapable of keeping their mouths closed for even a day, let alone ten. It was always going to be too much to expect them to maintain a respectful silence in this period of mourning. For one thing, it is not in their nature. For another, being fair, the powerful demonstration of the monarchy’s hold on people and public life is something that so thoroughly contradicts the republican narrative that republicans cannot let it go without challenge. It’s the nature of that challenge that is revealing. Reasoned arguments for republicanism lack inspirational and motivational force. Republicans know it, and so have engaged in sneering abuse, contempt, vitriol, condescension, hatred, giving us the full-house of resentment. The numbers are against them and they know it, hence the concerted attempt to turn this period of respect and mourning ugly. Within hours of the Queen’s death, critical voices were raised and hit pieces published, connecting the monarchy in particular and Britain in general to racism and colonialism. This is not an ignorance to be corrected by facts, but political prejudice and bigotry designed to traduce an institution and a nation. Is that what ‘the Left’ is now? Is that what ‘the Left’ has become? Have the members of this supposed Left deigned to ask what ‘ordinary’ people think? Do they care?
We can draw our own conclusions about people who think that the period after the Queen’s death is the appropriate time to talking about racism and slavery, yet again, for the umpteenth time. If everything is racist, and everyone too, then, of course, every issue will be the occasion for a ‘discussion’ – accusation – of racism. It’s a dangerous, indeed self-defeating, game to play. But if ‘everything’ and ‘everyone’ is to be damned for original racist sin in this way, then there is no hope for redemption and we may as well reconcile ourselves to racism as the normal order. We need to be aware that this ‘game’ can only be played in societies that are not racist – the power of the accusation of racism depends precisely upon society at large holding racism to be a very bad thing. Britain is such a society. Those who push this game to extremes for political ends risk bringing about the very racist division they claim to abhor.
The dismissive, contemptuous, and abusive comments make it plain that the issue is not one of ignorance. Ignorance can be checked by facts and reasoned debate. The comments betrayed prejudices that are hard-wired, immune to fact and reason. There was real malevolence in the air. The mildest of the commentators merely engaged in sneering contempt, expressing disdain, or made ill-timed, off-hand remarks which deliberately transgressed social boundaries and trashed social niceties. This from the people who pompously claim that ‘facts trump feelings.’ That claim means that no social occasion is free from contention, not even a period of mourning, a funeral.
Then we come to the outright abuse. I don’t know which group of transgressors are the worst here, the ones who engage in mealy-mouthed contempt or the ones who are overtly vicious – the latter at least have the honesty of their bile, the former the deceit and cowardice of the passive-aggressive. Either way, we have been witness to the malevolence of people who are guided by a horrible animus. In seeking to explain this, I cannot but help think of Nietzsche’s dialectic of power and resentment – the less powerful someone is, the more viciously resentful s/he becomes.
The monarchy this week showed itself to be the antidote to the poison of identity politics, an institution which allows people of all kinds to join together in affirmation of the ‘we’ as against the ‘me’ of our atomised, narcissistic, political culture. That demonstration was, of course, much too much for the apostles of the ‘me’ to bear, and so they came out in force. The great revolutionary and political movements of the past had great universal messages and slogans to mobilise a public behind, ‘liberty, equality, fraternity.’ This age has ‘not my …’ ‘Not my president,’ ‘Not my king,’ ‘not my’ anything and everything. This negation reached its peak when a particularly mediocre Irish pop duo issued a statement saying ‘Not my king.’ But, of course, any publicity is better than none. I don’t blame the talent-free for huckstering in this way, I do blame people for playing the game. “Not my king” is such a narcissistic slogan. Everything is about the self these days. Instead of making the case for a new kind of governance, republicans showily opt out of what currently exists. The personal really is political now,
The events of this past week have offered tangible, practical proof of the worth of tradition, the value of ritual, the sanity and serenity of ceremony. Most of all, the events revealed the usually hidden, silent, transcendent familial aspect of the relation that holds between the monarchy and the people. This bond is personal and emotional and does not show itself in normal times. More than principles written on a paper constitution, this is a living, breathing embodiment of the constitution as a collective, organic evolution, one that makes us personally invested. Lacking special days and dates associated with independence and revolution, the Royal Family is the focal point of the nation’s patriotism. This is something that baffles rationalists, the people who want to see a clear statement of principle for them to debate and argue over. You can neither describe nor define a feeling, only be alive to its demonstration when it occurs, so seamlessly and flawlessly as to be easily missed or taken for granted.
The transition works and endures for this reason, there is change, there is continuity, there is stability.
In my forthcoming book on Dante, Dante’s Politics of Love, I argue the seemingly paradoxical thesis that monarchy is the condition for a viable, effective, and enduring democracy. These is no paradox. Since politics is dissensus and disagreement, there is a need for a unifying, cohering frame establishing common principles and connection that cannot be provided by the contending parties.
I have a good rule of thumb in politics – haters and baiters are dividers and deceivers, stoking conflict and provoking controversy and feeding off the ill-will incited. Haters and baiters have a common personality type. If isn’t the monarchy they are grousing about and grifting over, then it will be another issue to group around, making unpleasant noise, inciting conflict, stoking division. Of course they hate the pageantry, the tradition, the ceremonial, the dignity, the decency. Most of all they hate the popularity. They despise the people. I’ve been saying it for a long time now – such ‘progressives’ are working openly to undermine democracy. They do it in their political assaults against democratic institutions, they do it also through their denigration of the democratic agency of the stupid, brainwashed, immature people. These people are anti-democratic to their marrow. It is good to flush these haters and baiters into the open so that the majority of people, all of them still possessing common decency, can see who they are dealing with and give them a wide berth. In truth, they already do, hence the endless outrage of ‘clever’ people at being turned over by the ‘stupid’ people. Increasingly, that outrage is becoming overtly elitist, implying authoritarian political forms – anything to undercut the popular voice.
To those who are at war with the past, I will give this advice: you are going to receive lots of bumps and bruises if you intend to walk through life looking back. Resentment is the destroyer of souls, the destroyer of joy, the destroyer of warm social connection, the destroyer of civility, the destroyer of polity.
It is diabolic.
I would add that in the mug’s game of fighting past battles, activists and ideologues betray a lack of faith in the future. That lack of faith in creating a more equal, democratic, and just society stems from a complete lack of faith in the real flesh and blood members composing the demos.
I’ll let you into a secret that is hidden in plain view – the people who loathe and detest the monarchy loathe and detest the people who support the monarchy even more than they loathe and detest the institution. That is why they become so angry and abusive whenever there is an expression or demonstration of popular support for the monarchy; that is why they cannot maintain a dignified silence but must protest, insult, denigrate, vilify. That popularity reminds them of their own popularity and denies to them the claims to be democratic. They don’t have the numbers and they know it. They will go to extraordinary lengths to explain why the numbers are against them, from institutional or media manipulation to exaggerate popularity – the deliberate massing of people – or that old faithful ‘false consciousness,’ people as dupes of the media. The latter is hilarious given the domination of the leftist voice in culture and academia. People aren’t buying it. And that really infuriates the ideologues and activists. They are in the awkward position of being unpopular minorities arguing the democratic case against a very popular monarchy.
It was the same with Trump, the same with Brexit – the contempt, nay the sheer hatred, these people spew out daily, relentlessly, is for all those ‘ordinary’ people who have the temerity to express views and entertain political commitments and loyalties that deviate from those who claim to know better. (And we know that they know better, for the reason that they tell us daily).
Which is to say that the anti-royalist democrats are anti-royalists first instance and democrats only when the people agree with them, which is so rare as to be almost never. That’s a rather inconvenient fact for would-be democrats to digest. I’ll end by noting the extent to which ‘progressive’ ideologues and activists are involved in an assault upon and denigration of democratic institutions. Many claim to be in favour of greater democracy, as with the device of Citizens’ Assemblies, making statements such as ‘let the people decide.’ Their democratic commitment is wafer thin. A moment’s critical reflection exposes the transparent game being played. The likes of Extinction Rebellion demand that governments ‘tell the truth,’ which implies that ‘the truth’ already exists and is formed in pre-political fashion. They then demand these Citizen Assemblies of representative sections of the population to be fed ‘the truth,’ before making up their minds. It’s an utterly controlled and engineered process. This is the kind of anti-politics you get when STEM people become activists. And it is elitist and authoritarian to the core, as well as being profoundly cynical and manipulative.
The Queen’s Queue will resonate with the people of this nation for a long time to come. The stories we tell during such once in a lifetime moments can shape the narratives of a nation for generations to come. The slow, silent procession is a form of pilgrimage, monarchical yet democratic, egalitarian in the way that it actively unites each and all in a common, participatory, experience, people at the heart of what a state event through a shared meaning. It is a pilgrimage that gives hope for a future beyond the present madness and the maniacs who incite it. And it is ‘the people’ who are doing it, people of all kinds reclaiming a common humanity from out of the toxic world of the detractors and abstractors of this most miserable and neurotic of ages.
I’d like to end by adding a stinger, a kicker, a crucial rider.
Leftist critics are writing that “the Establishment” is peddling the fantasy that the Monarchy embodies the “best of Britain,” claiming that royals exemplify values and virtues that the nation needs to call back from the teeth of a (post)modernist hell. (That’s quite a tall order, given the character of the odd royal (pick your own candidates)).
Since I am not by any count a member of said “Establishment,” then I must be one of the deluded fools who have drunk up the fantasy. Or maybe, just maybe, ‘ordinary’ people are not the easily duped cretins that their leftist would-be representatives routinely take them to be. Maybe, just maybe, there is a strong strain of working class conservatism concerning the nature of culture, belonging, tradition, patriotism, national identity, proximal community, shared narratives and symbols that isn’t false, but constitutes a large part of the authentic identity and experience of people. I, like many ‘ordinary’ people, have grown leery of would-be leaders and emancipators of the people and instead strongly affirm the creative, autonomous, active agency of ‘the people’ themselves. It’s one hundred years now since Lenin arrogated to himself and ‘the Party’ the right to determine the lives of ‘ordinary’ people on account of the claim to possess full knowledge of the true objective interests of the proletariat. It was an ideological claim, of course. In the main, people are better judges of their own interests, needs, and concerns than are those whose relation to the people they purport to speak for is as an objective ‘it.’ Leftists need once and for all to cure themselves of their tendencies for vanguardism and restore connection with ‘ordinary’ people. At present, too much that ideologues and activists argue read like words culled from revolutionary textbooks. It’s not that the words are wrong but they are content-free and lifeless.
That said … I have been a socialist my entire life and remain a socialist, albeit of a distinctly idiosyncratic kind. I prefer the nuances and ambiguities of real people and real history to the simplicities and certainties of ideologues who read social life with all the objectivity of natural science. That’s not social reality, that’s not human life, that’s not the way social existence unfolds.
But I am a socialist and, to that extent, can see precisely what leftist critics mean when they claim that the Monarchy is “the enduring embodiment of the worst of Britain: inherited wealth and privilege, a rigid class system, structural racism, imperialism, and unaccountable power.”
In my written work I have consistently argued for the thoroughgoing democratisation of power and resources. My principal target in this has not been monarchy but capital and the capital system. My current work warns of the dangers of a neo-feudalism and the emergence of a new aristocracy of techno-bureaucratic managerialists ordering society from above and without. My point to leftist critics who write the above in condemnation of the monarchy is that they ought to be more alert to the dangers of a thoroughly anti-democratic elitism that runs right throughout their own political causes and commitments, not least the environmental one.
I would also add that the virtues and values on display – those of self-sacrifice, service, stoicism, duty, responsibility – are not fantasies. I certainly agree that these qualities are not the unique properties of particular institutions and social castes but, on the contrary, belong to the patrimony of a common moral reason. They still need to be called back, and the numbers of people identifying with the monarchy at this moment would indicate that many others think so too. That is my point in this piece. Read it carefully. If this essay reads like a defence and apology for the monarchy, then pay close attention to my principal critical targets – that ‘leftism’ that disparages, denigrates, and abuses others and in so doing violates common human decency. Every point of criticism levelled at the monarchy above with respect to power and privilege may well be right, but if those levelling the criticisms are quick to demonize and dehumanize those who do not share the same political views then any political order they propose to put in place of a constitutional monarchy is almost certain to be far, far worse.
My advice to socialists is to practise your principles positively, creatively, and constructively, win people over to the vision of commonality, affirming the unity of the freedom and happiness of each and all, without distinction. And switch your attention from a monarchy that on balance costs little and has no power to the real forces dividing society and undermining social connection from within. To hit the wrong target and, worse, to do so using the vilest, most vitriolic, of language is not only to waste energy, it is to turn people still on nodding terms with common human decency away in droves. There is a certain smug self-satisfaction in the feeling of being right if somewhat marginal; there is real achievement in being right and politically effective. Try working out what is required to mobilize numbers by way of a positive vision of belonging, meaning, and commonality. The language of the Left was once one of a universality grounded in positive political principles : freedom, equality, justice, democracy. And now? ‘Difference.’ The universal has fragmented, dissolved into a differential pragmatics without constant, cohering, crystallizing principle. ‘The people’ are an abstract mass to be mobilised and manipulated by fear, by the language of crisis, emergency, and necessity. And if that fails there is the abuse, the bullying, the vitriol.
Leftists want to have their transcendent ideals metaphysically and eat them empirically. They will consume themselves and much else besides.
The words of Joe Solo, a man I met through the Wigan Diggers, struck me as sane and sage:
As we stumble blindly into a new era which for many will feel like the day after the end of history, I think it is important to recognise a something often baffling but genuinely profound.
The relationship between the British Working Class and the Queen has been a long, complex and often contradictory one.
For some she represented the Britain they draw their identity from.
For others she was a constant who kept them grounded as the world changed irrevocably around them.
For others she represented the enormous wealth and privilege of the Ruling Class.
Yet even among the latter there was respect for her as an individual whose steadfastness and dedication to the duty she was born into resonated in ways they would struggle to explain.
That is why so much ill feeling was generated yesterday, it's not as straightforward as it appears from our trenches. In many ways it perfectly sums up the contradictions inherent in all of us.
Personally, though the immense wealth and privilege of her position are in clear opposition to my politics, I think the Queen was the living embodiment of those words many of you have on your tea cups this morning: 'Keep Calm And Carry On'
And as the usual mawkish British obsession with protracted periods of mourning gets underway, I think it is probably both respectful and, in that Class contradiction I mentioned earlier, simultaneously disrespectful to do just that.
Maybe that is the best way all round.
Because fighting ideological battles over her memory serves none of us.
Britain does not need more division.
The page turns on history and we write tomorrow.
To advance, politically, requires that people, particularly the political activists, discard the blinders so that the nuances within the contradictory dynamics at work come to be seen and appreciated. I have no interest in people who abuse and, worse, express and normalize violence against others on account of divergent political views. Their way never ends well.
I shall miss the Queen. I shall continue to work, positively, creatively, and respectfully, for the democratic restructuring of power and resources. Can ‘progressive’ critics of monarchy be so sure that the political changes they advocate are similarly democratic, either in intent or outcome?
See the nuances, the ambiguities, the multiplicities, apprehend them. The most intelligent minds are capable of holding conflicting, even contradictory, positions in view whilst being discerning in judgement. Most of all, restore connections to ‘real people,’ the ‘common folk,’ ‘ordinary people.’ Best of all, relate to ‘all kinds’ of people, without distinction. Avoid tendencies to focus exclusively on the objective ‘its’ of history, since these are the things most in accord with what the prejudices of a positivist age see as the only certain, legitimate, knowledge. Such ‘its’ are the easy stuff, of little meaning and value and even less motivational force. Reduce human beings to the status of an objective ‘it’ whose true interests can be read ‘from the outside,’ and you have joined the opposite side to democracy. Again.
The republic that some are entertaining some very excited dreams about is much more fantastical a political form than the constitutional monarchy that is tried and tested by experience. To put the point bluntly, the republic that some are arguing for is quite compatible with the entrenchment and extension of the asymmetries in power and resources that the more socialistically inclined among them protest. As a socialist, I am among those protestors. The political form encasing these asymmetrical class relations can take many forms: the capital system is the most agnostic of social formations, tolerating any politics, ethics, colour, and creed so long as the process of accumulation is facilitated rather than obstructed. There are few monarchies in the world, many republics – asymmetrical relations of class power are ubiquitous. As a political form of misrepresentation, the republic is ideal for the capital system. Leftists shouldn’t allow the bourgeois posing as radicals to waste energies on this side issue.
Ponder these words from Jeremy Seabrook and Trevor Blackwell long and hard:
It is not the least of capitalism's achievements that it leaves its subject peoples in debilitating dispute about illusory antitheses and unreal dichotomies, which can only truly be understood when their roots are traced back to that system which must for ever create false contradictions in order to conceal its true ones. It is only in real people's anguish and torment that the workings of the system are glimpsed, and then only partially; for even at this level the system would have us so mis-recognize the nature of our afflictions that we ourselves perceive them as personal problems and individual disorders.
Seabrook and Blackwell A World Still to Win 1985: 103
You already have a parliamentary democracy in which you can vote for whoever you like. You can stand for parliament if you like, too. The result? Mutual self-cancellation, with people more inclined to vote against the parties and politicians they don’t like rather than for any positive political vision. In the expropriation of the proletariat we have lost not only the physical commons – the democratic control over our means of existence – but also the political and ethical commons. The conditions for doing politics well do not exist and neither a republic nor any other political form will in themselves create those conditions.
I have no intention of writing more on this. It is a period of remembrance, reflection, grief, and mourning.
The Queen acted as a brake on the cultural tyranny of the new elites. Now that she’s gone their intolerance and authoritarianism will intensify, says Brendan O’Neill
Queen Elizabeth and the End of History
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