Does Meghan have a right to crap on the Royal Family ?
- Thread starter Durry
- Start date
He adds that for Meghan and Harry, "and the specifics around her race", it was an opportunity for the Royal Family "to show some public support".
He says the "most telling" parts - and "saddest parts" - was that more than 70 MPs came out and condemned the colonial undertones of headlines and news articles.
Care to show us some of these "racist" headlines, Harry? I've spent a bit of a while trying to find some, but to no avail. So why don't you show us? Maybe it's because they don't exist?
He says the "most telling" parts - and "saddest parts" - was that more than 70 MPs came out and condemned the colonial undertones of headlines and news articles.
Care to show us some of these "racist" headlines, Harry? I've spent a bit of a while trying to find some, but to no avail. So why don't you show us? Maybe it's because they don't exist?
I guess Meghan can say whatever she likes as long as it is the truth!
Good Morning Britain host and former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan...
Joanna Lumley accuses Harry and Meghan of 'spreading hatefulness' with Oprah interview
The unbearable victim complex of Meghan Markle
The Oprah interview was an emotionally manipulative performance designed to consolidate Harry and Meghan’s power.
Well that was explosive. Even more than had been expected. In their two-hour sit-down with Oprah Winfrey, Harry and Meghan drove a long knife into the monarchy. They implied that it’s a cold, cut-off, racist institution that is so bereft of basic human feeling that it drove a young-ish sensitive woman – Ms Markle – to contemplate suicide. It was Diana’s chat with Martin Bashir on steroids. A clash of royal houses worthy of a George RR Martin story. It was also a grotesque spectacle – emotionally manipulative, self-obsessed, and a clear attempt by Harry and Meghan to position themselves as the king and queen of victim politics.
The set-up bordered on nauseating. Here was a duke and duchess in the unimaginably luxurious surrounds of a Californian mansion talking about how difficult their lives have been. In a country where 40million people lost their jobs as a result of lockdowns, this pair who get paid millions for making naff podcasts moaned to billionaire Oprah Winfrey about their oppression by the establishment. Meghan was wearing a $4,500 dress. She’ll probably never wear it again. That’s more than twice the amount that desperate Americans will get in their stimulus cheques to keep them afloat in the next few months. It’s perverse.
Then there’s the hypocrisy on the privacy question. Harry and Meghan detest the invasive media – they referred to it as a ‘monster machine’ – and insist they just want a private life. Yet they’re constantly revealing all. They’ve given us minute details about the miscarriage Meghan suffered. In the Oprah chat Meghan opened up about her suicidal thoughts while ‘trapped’ in the royal family. Nobody invades Meghan Markle’s privacy as much as Meghan Markle does. The problem isn’t us, the grubby, tabloid-reading public, pestering Harry and Meghan for info about their lives; the problem is them forever foisting their most intimate experiences down our throats. How about you leave us alone?
But there’s something else going on, too, something that goes far beyond Harry falling out with his dad or Meghan vs Kate. More fundamentally we’re witnessing a culture clash. A conflict between the contemporary cults of victimhood and identity politics, as now keenly represented by Harry and Meghan, and the older ideals of duty, self-sacrifice, stoicism and keeping your shit together, as embodied by the queen, and as aspired to by most Brits in recent decades. This internecine clash between the Sussexes and the Palace is really an unspoken civil war between post-Diana New Britain and Old Britain. Last night’s interview, facilitated by that doyen of the new elites, Oprah, was essentially a power grab by Harry and Meghan – their attempt to seize the throne of the victim industry and consolidate their cultural power in the post-traditional world.
There is no question that the Oprah interview represents a serious blow to the monarchy. It will badly damage the monarchy’s international reputation, which had held up pretty well even during the divorces, scandals and anni horribiles of recent decades. The interview will contribute to the chipping away of the monarchy’s sense of mystery. The monarchy’s great power traditionally lay in its ability to insulate itself from the external world, to depict itself as being above the flotsam and jetsam of changeable daily life. But that has unravelled in recent decades. The pressures of mass media, social media and, more importantly, the now dominant culture of revelation, of always signalling one’s virtue and advertising one’s wounds, have slowly pushed at the doors of the once mysterious palace.
Princess Diana, of course, played a key role. She was a lightning rod for the late 20th-century victory of emotionalism over stoicism. Who can forget the explosion of takes following her death in 1997? From the broadsheet media, academia and Downing Street itself, then inhabited by Tony Blair, the cry went out: Diana represented a New Britain. One that was more in touch with its feelings. One that worshipped at the altar of the self rather than bending the knee to the demanding, stressful call of public duty. Meghan clearly sees herself as continuing the Cult of Diana’s work, as heir to the victimology and studied ‘authenticity’ that Diana came to represent.
This is why she namechecked Diana in the Oprah interview. She, together with Harry, of course, aspires to embody the cultural power that was invested in Diana by the new elites. But in an even more intensified form. Now it won’t only be the cult of victimhood and emotionalism – there’ll be identity politics, too. Witness Meghan’s vague, unsubstantiated reference to a member of the royal family wondering how dark her son Archie’s skin would be. We have no idea whatsoever if this was an innocent, curious comment or an openly racist one. I suspect very much it was the former. But it instantly gets folded into the narrative that best serves Harry and Meghan’s power grab – the narrative of their being ‘victims’ of the old establishment, of the culture of racism, of the ‘colonial undertones’ of the modern media, as Harry put it, which is rich coming from someone who took part in the occupation of Afghanistan.
The Oprah chat came wrapped in blather about Meghan telling ‘her truth’. In reality this was a coronation of two leading members of the neo-aristocracy. Harry and Meghan have successfully positioned themselves as key figureheads of the new feudalism in which cultural power resides in the hands of small numbers of very wealthy people around Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and in which the little people’s role is to receive moral instruction from the likes of Facebook, Netflix, Oprah, Harry, Meghan… That’s the great irony of Harry and Meghan juxtaposing themselves to the monarchy, and being witlessly cheered on by the left for doing so: these two behave in a far more old-world monarchical fashion than the queen does. Their punishment of the disobedient media; their conviction that they must instruct the rest of us on how to live, how to travel, how many kids to have; their eye-wateringly arrogant mission of ‘building compassion around the world’ – they make the actual British monarchy, politically neutered by centuries of political progress, seem positively meek in comparison.
What we see in Harry and Meghan is the strange, contradictory power of the victim industry. Power today often comes wrapped in claims of suffering. Publicly professed weakness is a precursor to dictating to everyone else that they must open up, change their attitudes, become more ‘aware’. Victimhood is the soapbox from which the new elites, whether lip-trembling politicians or ‘suffering’ celebs, presume to instruct society at large about the right way to think, emote, feel, be. This is why Meghan’s confession of suicidal thoughts was so important. It felt manipulative. It was in essence a declaration of emotional authenticity. Meghan has the right kind of emotional history to inherit the crown of the post-Diana world – that was the message.
Even a republican like me can see there is nothing progressive in the current rage against the palace. That there is nothing to celebrate in the shift from a world of self-control and stoicism to one of incessant self-revelation, and from a democratic era in which the power of monarchy had largely been curbed to a new, woke feudalism in which a select few wield extraordinary cultural influence over the rest of us. These developments harm the freedom of the mind and our sense of moral autonomy, by always cajoling us to bow down to the cult of emotionalism, and they shrink the space for open, democratic debate by investing so much power in the woke feudalists of Big Tech, NGOs, the Oprah set, and so on. Harry and Meghan aren’t fighting the establishment; they are the establishment now. Meet the new aristocrats, even worse than the old.
Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy
www.spiked-online.com
The Oprah interview was an emotionally manipulative performance designed to consolidate Harry and Meghan’s power.
BRENDAN O'NEILL
EDITOR
8th March 2021
SpikedWell that was explosive. Even more than had been expected. In their two-hour sit-down with Oprah Winfrey, Harry and Meghan drove a long knife into the monarchy. They implied that it’s a cold, cut-off, racist institution that is so bereft of basic human feeling that it drove a young-ish sensitive woman – Ms Markle – to contemplate suicide. It was Diana’s chat with Martin Bashir on steroids. A clash of royal houses worthy of a George RR Martin story. It was also a grotesque spectacle – emotionally manipulative, self-obsessed, and a clear attempt by Harry and Meghan to position themselves as the king and queen of victim politics.
The set-up bordered on nauseating. Here was a duke and duchess in the unimaginably luxurious surrounds of a Californian mansion talking about how difficult their lives have been. In a country where 40million people lost their jobs as a result of lockdowns, this pair who get paid millions for making naff podcasts moaned to billionaire Oprah Winfrey about their oppression by the establishment. Meghan was wearing a $4,500 dress. She’ll probably never wear it again. That’s more than twice the amount that desperate Americans will get in their stimulus cheques to keep them afloat in the next few months. It’s perverse.
Then there’s the hypocrisy on the privacy question. Harry and Meghan detest the invasive media – they referred to it as a ‘monster machine’ – and insist they just want a private life. Yet they’re constantly revealing all. They’ve given us minute details about the miscarriage Meghan suffered. In the Oprah chat Meghan opened up about her suicidal thoughts while ‘trapped’ in the royal family. Nobody invades Meghan Markle’s privacy as much as Meghan Markle does. The problem isn’t us, the grubby, tabloid-reading public, pestering Harry and Meghan for info about their lives; the problem is them forever foisting their most intimate experiences down our throats. How about you leave us alone?
But there’s something else going on, too, something that goes far beyond Harry falling out with his dad or Meghan vs Kate. More fundamentally we’re witnessing a culture clash. A conflict between the contemporary cults of victimhood and identity politics, as now keenly represented by Harry and Meghan, and the older ideals of duty, self-sacrifice, stoicism and keeping your shit together, as embodied by the queen, and as aspired to by most Brits in recent decades. This internecine clash between the Sussexes and the Palace is really an unspoken civil war between post-Diana New Britain and Old Britain. Last night’s interview, facilitated by that doyen of the new elites, Oprah, was essentially a power grab by Harry and Meghan – their attempt to seize the throne of the victim industry and consolidate their cultural power in the post-traditional world.
There is no question that the Oprah interview represents a serious blow to the monarchy. It will badly damage the monarchy’s international reputation, which had held up pretty well even during the divorces, scandals and anni horribiles of recent decades. The interview will contribute to the chipping away of the monarchy’s sense of mystery. The monarchy’s great power traditionally lay in its ability to insulate itself from the external world, to depict itself as being above the flotsam and jetsam of changeable daily life. But that has unravelled in recent decades. The pressures of mass media, social media and, more importantly, the now dominant culture of revelation, of always signalling one’s virtue and advertising one’s wounds, have slowly pushed at the doors of the once mysterious palace.
Princess Diana, of course, played a key role. She was a lightning rod for the late 20th-century victory of emotionalism over stoicism. Who can forget the explosion of takes following her death in 1997? From the broadsheet media, academia and Downing Street itself, then inhabited by Tony Blair, the cry went out: Diana represented a New Britain. One that was more in touch with its feelings. One that worshipped at the altar of the self rather than bending the knee to the demanding, stressful call of public duty. Meghan clearly sees herself as continuing the Cult of Diana’s work, as heir to the victimology and studied ‘authenticity’ that Diana came to represent.
This is why she namechecked Diana in the Oprah interview. She, together with Harry, of course, aspires to embody the cultural power that was invested in Diana by the new elites. But in an even more intensified form. Now it won’t only be the cult of victimhood and emotionalism – there’ll be identity politics, too. Witness Meghan’s vague, unsubstantiated reference to a member of the royal family wondering how dark her son Archie’s skin would be. We have no idea whatsoever if this was an innocent, curious comment or an openly racist one. I suspect very much it was the former. But it instantly gets folded into the narrative that best serves Harry and Meghan’s power grab – the narrative of their being ‘victims’ of the old establishment, of the culture of racism, of the ‘colonial undertones’ of the modern media, as Harry put it, which is rich coming from someone who took part in the occupation of Afghanistan.
The Oprah chat came wrapped in blather about Meghan telling ‘her truth’. In reality this was a coronation of two leading members of the neo-aristocracy. Harry and Meghan have successfully positioned themselves as key figureheads of the new feudalism in which cultural power resides in the hands of small numbers of very wealthy people around Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and in which the little people’s role is to receive moral instruction from the likes of Facebook, Netflix, Oprah, Harry, Meghan… That’s the great irony of Harry and Meghan juxtaposing themselves to the monarchy, and being witlessly cheered on by the left for doing so: these two behave in a far more old-world monarchical fashion than the queen does. Their punishment of the disobedient media; their conviction that they must instruct the rest of us on how to live, how to travel, how many kids to have; their eye-wateringly arrogant mission of ‘building compassion around the world’ – they make the actual British monarchy, politically neutered by centuries of political progress, seem positively meek in comparison.
What we see in Harry and Meghan is the strange, contradictory power of the victim industry. Power today often comes wrapped in claims of suffering. Publicly professed weakness is a precursor to dictating to everyone else that they must open up, change their attitudes, become more ‘aware’. Victimhood is the soapbox from which the new elites, whether lip-trembling politicians or ‘suffering’ celebs, presume to instruct society at large about the right way to think, emote, feel, be. This is why Meghan’s confession of suicidal thoughts was so important. It felt manipulative. It was in essence a declaration of emotional authenticity. Meghan has the right kind of emotional history to inherit the crown of the post-Diana world – that was the message.
Even a republican like me can see there is nothing progressive in the current rage against the palace. That there is nothing to celebrate in the shift from a world of self-control and stoicism to one of incessant self-revelation, and from a democratic era in which the power of monarchy had largely been curbed to a new, woke feudalism in which a select few wield extraordinary cultural influence over the rest of us. These developments harm the freedom of the mind and our sense of moral autonomy, by always cajoling us to bow down to the cult of emotionalism, and they shrink the space for open, democratic debate by investing so much power in the woke feudalists of Big Tech, NGOs, the Oprah set, and so on. Harry and Meghan aren’t fighting the establishment; they are the establishment now. Meet the new aristocrats, even worse than the old.
Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy
The unbearable victim complex of Meghan Markle
The Oprah interview was an emotionally manipulative performance designed to consolidate Harry and Meghan’s power.
www.spiked-online.com
So true.
She told Oprah that the Royal Family changed the rules when she was pregnant with Archie so that he won't become a prince. But in reality it's always been that way. The children of the second son of the Prince of Wales do not get the title "prince" or "princess". Prince William's children do - William and Kate are the future King and Queen and Prince George is the future King - but Harry and Meghan's childern don't.
She told Oprah that a royal was asking her what colour skin her daughter she is pregnant with now is going to have and Meghan made this out as a racial slur. In reality, nobody ever needs to ask such a question because we know the baby is going to be white.
Join Us LIVE @ 9pm For A Pop-Up @ YouTube
Meghan 
Victim Media Lies 
Babies ‘Colour’ 
Harry's Brainwashed
'We're very much not a racist family': Angry Prince William publicly hits back at Harry and Meghan's claims as he becomes first member of family to break silence - and reveals he hasn't spoken to his brother since Oprah interview 'but will do
Kate and William head out on first official engagement since Oprah
The couple were seen being driven in London today. They are said to be deeply upset by the way they were attacked by the Sussexes, with Meghan accusing Kate of making her cry.
The crux of the matter is very simple...................if she was speaking truthfully giving an honest opinion.............. YES! If it was loaded with hyperbole and hysteria.............NO.