A lone man holds up a sign outside Westminster saying “Not my king” and is arrested. In Australia, an Indigenous NRLW player posts her disrespect to the monarchy on Instagram and is fined 25% of her salary for the whole season and suspended for one game. Apparently what she said was so “disgusting, distasteful and disgraceful”, Nine’s Wide World of Sports wouldn’t repeat it.
Ray Hadley, the moral guardian of rugby league, has been unable to think of anything ever that has brought more disgrace on that game than the scandal of foul words said about the queen. Rape, gang rape, domestic violence, violent assault, doping, match-fixing… No, none of that measures up to the treasonous power of mere words.
The obvious reaction to all this is bemusement that the crime of lèse-majesté is back, revived and being rigorously enforced with no trace of irony.
We should, however, look beneath the surface of what appears to be a spontaneous, organic re-emergence of love and respect for the monarchy, the few naysayers being shouted (and physically pulled) down by the crowd, literally banished, in the old meaning of that word, from the public square.
It is anything but spontaneous. Not that the enormous crowds of people gathering, milling along the A40 or outside the palace, who answer the question “Why did you come?” with an honest “I don’t know” are not following an instinct rather than a rational thought. Or that the temporary public feeling of attachment to the security of hereditary rule isn’t real either, just because it makes no logical sense. It’s real.
There is, however, conscious design in play, and it follows an ancient script. The flipside of what republicans thought they saw coming — the opportunity that Queen Elizabeth’s death would present to end the stranglehold of monarchy on our polity — was what the monarchy itself knew would be the real impact of that event. Her death would leave a vacuum, and vacuums are always filled.
The solution is simple, and its execution has been near-perfect (so far let down only by King Charles’ inability to not display his petty frustrations with stationery, making him look a little too human before his full ascension to the deity-status enjoyed by his mother has been secured).
It began with the expedient convention that the heir became monarch at the instant of his predecessor’s death. No gap; no vacuum to fill.
That’s just the opening shot. The key to success is what’s been unfolding since and will continue until absolutely everyone’s capacity to think straight has been drowned: a ceaseless, grinding reinforcement of the permanency of the institution itself.
That’s what it’s all about: the pageantry, idiotic ceremonies, silly uniforms, dragging of the royal coffin around from place to place like an oak-clad pinata, the endless manipulation of the roles and privileges of the variously honoured or shunned members of the royal family, ooh he’s not wearing a uniform, ooh she’s wearing the brooch that Queen Victoria was presented by the Nabob of Bullshitistan after the15th Regiment of Foot and Mouth added it to the empire in 1854, or was it 1845, let me recheck the official guide…
It is all pointless, and it all has a very specific point. By the time it’s over, the “now is not the time to talk about” period of mourning which is really the period of succession, the monarchical arrangement will — this is the plan — have re-entrenched itself with such weight of permanence, nothing changed except the figurehead, that there’ll be nothing anyone can be bothered trying to talk about anymore. Fait accompli.
To pull off the trick, the institution of royalty requires help (otherwise, the house of cards collapses entirely). The media, of course, and isn’t the Australian media performing above and beyond expectations in its forelock-tugging hysteria?
The executive and legislative arms of government, yes these too are needed to be not just supine but positively enthusiastic. In Britain that’s a given, but our own government has been outstanding in its willingness to play colonial realm. What’s got into the prime minister, I really don’t know. OK, I do, but I wish he’d stop.
That takes care of all four estates; all are working in seamless conspiracy, not just to uphold the peaceful transition of power but to ensure that there isn’t a squeak of dissent to ruffle the smooth waters of succession.
“Nothing strengthens authority,” wrote Leonardo da Vinci, “so much as silence.” He knew a lot about it, living between the dictatorial authority of the House of Medici and the spiritual authority of the Vatican. Both, like all institutions of power, did not enjoy or tolerate disagreement with their right to rule.
The modern British monarchy seeks no power for itself over our lives; it has learnt to thrive without it. It goes on, in mindless perpetuity. Ask yourself though: who does prosper, in terms of the wielding and maintenance of actual authority, from the monarchy’s continuation?
That’s why the frantic insistence on silence. The institutions of power in our country, all of them, like things just as they are. Suggest otherwise and you, like the man in the crowd who shouted the truth — that an alleged child sex abuser was marching behind the queen’s hearse — will be squashed.
Is the seemingly endless pomp and ceremony a little too much for your taste? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Michael, spot on. The nonsense about the woman’s death is endless.
Your paragraph beginning “That’s what it’s all about…”, covers perfectly the idiotic pageantry of these weeks of pointless carry-on. And the deaths under British tyranny…what of that delicate topic, I wonder?
Yes, love the bits about Kate wearing a million dollars brooch was channeling the Queen. The mawkish syrupy giddiness of over reading every gesture burp and royal fart is hilarious to those of us who are awake not taking the royal sleep serum of the royal Kool aid drunk by the masses. But I guess my favorite poll was one where mourners were asked why they were there waiting for hours and lots of people replied they didn’t know
I saw on the ABC news yesterday some footage of a group of policemen and monarchists eyeballing some bloke holding up a cardboard sign saying that criticizing the royals wasn’t a crime. And he was right, legally and morally. Right at the wrong time; the monarchists had no trouble ignoring his logic and telling him what they thought. This kind of fervor and over-reaction does not sit well with me. Time to start a dialogue about how to become a republic.
In a constitutional monarchy there are two seats of power: the monarchy and the constitution. However, in the case of Australia, whose constitution is little more than a business agreement between groups of colonial traders, the authority of all those who exercise power within its borders draws ultimately from the monarchy alone. Anything that threatens the monarchy therefore threatens the grip of the powerful in Australian society. The powerful includes Australian media companies, whose licenses to operate can be traced back (eventually) to royal indulgence (via entities such as the Commonwealth government).
The authority of the monarchy, though, comes from the people, and a large part of the reason the people invest this authority in the monarchy is because of the perception of the monarchy’s longevity, which fosters the belief that they are safe and can be relied upon to protect the interests of most of the people most of the time. Hence the need for all the pageantry. It’s not silly: it serves a purpose. It reflects ‘tradition’, and ‘tradition’ equals ‘longevity’ which equals ‘safety’. In the end, all those interminable hours of death rites minutiae broadcast by the TV stations are more than just a cheap way of filling in the time between the sports bet ads which are the true reason for the stations’ existence. They are there to protect the interests of the media companies themselves, and to secure their on-going position of power at a time when there is at least a slight possibility of it coming under threat.
For grown-up writing on this (and many other topics) try –
https://www.medialens.org
Thank you for the link.
Their infrequent newsletters are like cool spring water in a media desert.
And they are free.
“Ask yourself though: who does prosper, in terms of the wielding and maintenance of actual authority, from the monarchy’s continuation?” – as Deep Throat said: Follow the money.