Groucho Marxism

Things are not going well for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the pedophile formerly known as ‘Prince’. Every time you think his reputation couldn’t possibly sink any lower, yet another revelation about his past comes to light. The latest batch of documents from the Epstein files includes emails that will damage his reputation even further – assuming that is even possible at this point. These latest documents highlight the need to investigate further Mountbatten-Windsor’s links to Jeffrey Epstein and his circle, and to force him to give evidence to the US Department of Justice. As a committed anti-royalist I can’t help but feel a certain amount of schadenfreude when contemplating Mountbatten-Windsor’s demise. Apart from anything else, it highlights just how incredibly stupid the man is.

“Have you found me some new inappropriate friends?” someone called “A in Balmoral” asks in an email Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s friend and companion who is now serving a 20-year prison sentence in the US for sex trafficking. I wonder who “A in Balmoral” could possibly be?! He really covered his tracks brilliantly there didn’t he. Perhaps he was originally going to go with “Andrew in B” but thought it was too obvious. At other points he refers to himself as the “Invisible Man”. Yeah, that should really throw them off the scent Andrew. This isn’t just stupidity; it’s a toxic mix of stupidity and arrogance. Mountbatten-Windsor clearly thinks he is cleverer than everyone else and can easily fool people with these pathetic aliases.

As enjoyable as it is to witness the downfall of this disgusting, pompous man, there is also a serious point to be made here which nobody seems to be making. It is only by an accident of history that Andrew is not our head of state. If his older siblings Charles and Anne had died before they were able to have any children, Andrew would have been next in line to the throne. This once again highlights the fundamental problem with a hereditary head of state: there is no way of ensuring that they are fit for office. As someone once said, a hereditary head of state makes about as much sense as a hereditary dentist. Nevertheless, there are many who try to justify the continued existence of the royal family on the basis that they don’t really have any power, arguing that their role is purely ceremonial. But is this really true?

The short answer is: no. The royal family wields immense power in the UK; but this isn’t obvious as their power is exercised in a subtle, ‘soft’ way. There are several routes by which this is achieved. The most obvious is the private weekly meetings that the head of the royal family – currently ‘King’ Charles – has with the Prime Minister. We the public are assured that the monarch remains ‘politically neutral’ in this meetings, but this is obviously nonsense as nobody in the world is politically neutral. We all have natural political biases, and it is not hard to imagine in which direction the head of the royal family’s political biases would lean. In any case, there is no way for us to verify what goes on in these meetings as they are private, which in itself should ring alarm bells.

Another method by which Charles wields power is through his infamous ‘black spider’ memos: letters and memorandums written by Charles to British government ministers and politicians over several years. Apologists for the royals claim that these memos are “harmless”, but that’s beside the point, which is that Charles clearly has the power to meddle in public affairs if he wants to. But the main way the royals exert their grip over the British people is through a subtle kind of propaganda. Wherever you go and whatever you do in the UK, you will see or hear the royal family being referenced: on money, stamps, the names of our armed services, the names of government departments, the names of tube lines, and so on. Not to mention the insipid ‘King’s Speech’, broadcast to every British home on Christmas day.

All of this is done to create the illusion that the royals are an essential component of everyday British life. We scoff when we see images of North Korea with the ubiquitous pictures of Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung in the background, and wonder aloud how can the people who live there can possibly be so gullible as to give their unwavering support to these obvious mediocrities. The reason, we understand, is that the North Korean people have been brainwashed from an early age into believing that the Kim dynasty represents some sort of super-human family that is destined to rule over their country. Little do people realize that exactly the same dynamic is going on in the UK; the only difference is that here, the brainwashing is less overt.

Ultimately, the royals have power over us ordinary people because they represent the ruling class, which has a monopoly on power. They are essentially the personification of this class. All the furore about Andrew’s appalling behaviour will not fundamentally change anything as long as existing power structures remain in place. Ask a royalist why we should retain the monarchy and the first thing they will probably say is that it creates stability and continuity. I think this is precisely the reason we need to get rid of it.