God saved the queen
From the British Government, the repercussions of Brexit.. and her annoying son. Yes, there really never was a throne which did not represent a crime.
“The institution of royalty in any form is an insult to the human race. A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all. No God and no religion can survive ridicule.”
- Mark Twain
She never went to school, she married her cousin and she ate swans. In fact, every single swan in the UK belonged to Queen Elizabeth II. And every dolphin and whale in their surrounding waters. That Philip was actually her cousin, on Victoria’s side, was always overlooked as were the atrocities committed in Kenya under her reign as their queen in the 1950s. At the height of the Mau Mau uprising, over 1.5 million Kenyans were subjected to torture, rape and imprisonment in British-led concentration camps. In recent years, following Brexit, a concerted British white washing PR campaign began to unfold around the Kenyan tragedy. Almost as if they knew the day of her reckoning was on hand.
29 Billion
Is the number of coins worldwide that bear her image. Queen Elizabeth adorns the currency of 16 countries worldwide. Some influence huh? In fact, right now as I am sitting here writing these words in New Zealand, we are ‘enjoying’ an unprecedented “memorial day” public holiday to commemorate the death of this monarch 20 000 kilometres away. The country was divided when the government pushed the bill through for this holiday. Never before had the death of a monarch or a head of state ever sparked a discussion over a national holiday.
As the Māori party rightly pointed out last week, not even the death of our own Te Arikinui/monarch in 2006, Dame Te Atairangikaahu, resulted in a public holiday in her name. New Zealand only recently acknowledged Matariki or Māori new year with an official holiday, as such it is a proverbial slap in the face of the progress made to rectify the woes of colonialism in our country’s checkered past.
What did Queen Elizabeth do for New Zealand?
Granted, she did visit New Zealand ten times during her 70 year reign and even issued a form of apology to the Tainui people who were ostracised in the Waikato-Tainui treaty settlement.
But beside this apology and her holiday visits, the crown has done literally nothing for this country. None, zilch, nada. On the contrary, out of the 26.8 million hectares of land in New Zealand, the Queen owned 2 million hectares of it! Outrageous really. Considering the housing crisis and the general wealth disparity in New Zealand today, that number is staggering and a little yucky. Imagine what Māori think of this, dispossessed of their own land and heritage, for years it was crown order to prevent Māori from speaking their own language or practicing their own culture.
Every year the House of Windsor siphons off funds from New Zealand pension funds and when any members of the royal family come to visit the country, the taxpayer pays for their stay. Like hungry serfs giving their last morsels to the crown.
When the queen died, I felt an enormous sense of relief. In my mind this death symbolised the end of an archaic and outdated institution and the emotional stranglehold it had over vast swathes of the Earth for centuries. In my mind, there seemed to be this great opportunity for collective British atonement and perhaps reparations of sorts. But the reaction of the world and most Britons was that of utter despair, as if the queen was the spiritual glue and the sole reason the UK didn’t devolve into depravity after the shambles that was Brexit. I believe the queen and her silence on the issue, very much tipped the country into voting against Europe. As her silence on the Kenyan atrocities spoke volumes, so did her moot stance on Brexit, a couple of confounding, wishy washy and insincere comments about the “power of union” were not enough to sway an entire nation.
Seeing the monarchy very much fuels British patriotism, the powerful symbolism of the queen’s mere existence in the minds of the British public, drove millions to vote yes to Brexit. It is completely obvious. Had she stood up and really voiced her opinion about how negatively an exit from the EU would impact the country, I would’ve been the first to stand up and applaud. But she didn’t, she stayed silent.
Aristocratic cowardice at its finest.
“There are shams and shams; there are frauds and frauds, but the most transparent of all is the sceptered one. We see monarchs meet and go through solemn ceremonies, farces, with straight countenances; but it is not possible to imagine them meeting in private and not laughing in each other's faces.”
- Mark Twain
God saved the queen from Liz Truss
The UK is in shambles right now. A former employee of the world’s largest fossil fuel company has taken over the reigns of the British government. A woman who fashions herself on the fascist loving primadonna Margaret Thatcher. Liz Truss is a fucking nightmare, she makes Boris Johnson look like the Dalai Llama. If the UK doesn’t have a change in leadership in the next 4 years, it could really look grim for that country.
A banana republic who cares more about tax breaks for Russian mafia bosses and politicians than it does for its own working class citizens, who they force into austerity whilst the rich in the country enjoy unprecedented wealth. A topsy turvy place like so many others in the world. Italy for instance, who are about to elect their very own Marine Le Pen, the female Mussolini, Giorgia Meloni, right on the backs of Sweden voting in another far right, anti-immigration prime minister in Jimmie Akesson.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up when I think about the conversations that will be had by those three in coming years, throw in a little Viktor Orban goulash and you have yourself the budding of fascist governments all over Europe, with overtly racist, anti-immigrant stances represented throughout. Right now, when we are about to face the greatest existential threat of our species’ existence in the form of climate change. In 2021 alone over 59 million human beings worldwide were displaced due to climatic factors, by 2050 this number will be in the billions. The worst part is that it is the developed countries causing the risks to our climate and it is the developing countries who are bearing the brunt of what is happening. No crueler event has ever happened to our planet.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident -- that all monarchs are usurpers and descendants of usurpers; for the reason that no throne was ever set up in this world by the will, freely exercised, of the only body possessing the legitimate right to set it up -- the numerical mass of the nation.”
- Mark Twain
And it is now that we are choosing xenophobic, isolationist leaders like Truss, Akesson and Meloni? What is wrong with this picture? At a time of unprecedented global wealth and a huge reduction in poverty, we decide it is best to cower away and hide behind some fictional flags that were ultimately born of some form of aristocratically driven historical event. Now is surely the time for the world to band together and work out some form of unifying road map to deal with the nightmares that lie ahead. Instead the boomers are burying their heads in the sand like the ostrich.
I hold the monarchy directly responsible for this situation. Outdated prehistoric institutions will create outdated and prehistoric solutions to problems they don’t understand. We are living in the 21st century, we have smart phones, are about to set foot on Mars, AI, self-driving cars and airplanes that can fly on electric batteries - and then we have the British monarchy.
The cos-play funeral from hell
When I watched some of the multi-million dollar funeral procession, I felt nauseated at the sheer pomp and bravado of the whole affair and the number of people bawling their eyes out as if they had just lost a sibling. Finding solace and refuge in something like this is a psychological phenomenon that relates to people who feel like they never got to grieve a relative and are now using this giant spectacle as an excuse to catch up on long lost tears.
The whole thing reminded me of Disneyland. A Hollywood production of epic proportions. The amount of guns and military regimens on display was overwhelming, reminding us, not so subliminally, of the shadowy past of this monarchy. It is after all, a Judeo-Christian monarchy that espouses military rule wherever it goes. It is not some fancy dress up party where there are no repercussions. The very existence of the queen and those that admire her reign wholeheartedly is the root cause of all of the world’s ills. Make no mistake: Slavery, poverty, tax avoidance, corporate mismanagement, class structures and inequality can all be directly traced back to this archaic institution. The reason why the world doesn’t change is precisely because we hold on to these traditions like they are a form of spiritual life line to the netherworld.
“I wish I might live fifty years longer; I believe I should see the thrones of Europe selling at auction for old iron. I believe I should really see the end of what is surely the most grotesque of all the swindles ever invented by man-- monarchy.’
- Mark Twain
Making the queen out to be some form of altruistic martyr in the days after her death was the most brazen PR campaign ever launched on the planet. The amount of cute photos shared of her with one of her 3 dozen corgis, shaking hands with celebrities and famous athletes made her out to be a sweet old lady with not even a tiny bone of a skeleton in her closet. This image is so insincere and troubling, whitewashing dozens of years of slavery, misogyny and pejorative rule by the British “empire.”
In conclusion I would like to offer my apology to anyone reading this who is offended. The truth often hurts, it is precisely because of this, that so many hang on to a time gone past where it seemed the world was simpler and the lines less blurry. A sweet, lazy, old billionaire queen with wealth appropriated from dozens of colonised countries worldwide wearing a crown adorned by a stolen, precious gemstone worth billions, really is not the answer to all our prayers. Nor is King Charles for that matter.
The whole affair reminds me of a bit in Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, where he summoned up the image of a feline monarchy to replace the human ones:
“I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughable vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive, finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house...The worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so, because it would presently be noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and would certainly get it.”
Rest in peace Elizabeth, may you reincarnate as a cat.. then you’ll at least be allowed to munch on swans legitimately - meow!
Thank you for reading, again, my motivation was not to offend anyone, but more to offer another perspective to the one droning out of your mainstream media controlled devices and social networks. My opinion may not represent yours, but it surely does represent another narrative to the ones many of you have been brainwashed to believe. It is okay to think differently.
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