Some Thoughts on the Death of the ‘Queen’
“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” —Balzac
The vast British Empire covered a quarter of the world’s land area at its greatest extent in 1921.
The Empire played an integral role in the survival of the British monarchy.
The British Monarchy was/is the living symbol of the genocidal exploitation, theft, expropriation, and usurpation of the land, natural resources, and even the indigenous people in places such as:
India, North America, Africa, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand…
The subjugation and/or enslavement of the native peoples, the vast majority of whom were/are people of color, was the genesis and foundation of the obscene wealth and power acquired, accumulated, and amassed by the British Monarchy.
The impoverishment and underdevelopment of many of the so-called third world nations today is due in no small measure to centuries of British rule and hegemony…
A staple in the articulated justifications and rationales of this historical fact is all of the principal tenets of racism as we know and understand it to be…
In a comment on one of my recent posts, Bitey said that: “racism is here, it’s there, and everywhere in between.”
Several hundred years of British empire and colonialism and the British Monarchy ensured that the racist rationales and justifications were spread to the four corners of the world.
It once was said that “the sun never sets on the British Empire”.
It can also be said that the sun never sets on the racism promulgated by the criminal enterprise operated for centuries by the crime family known as the British Monarchy….
I won’t be wringing my hands over the death of a racist crook…
09/13/2022 @ 7:01 am
I feel as you do about racism. If there is any space between your views of imperialism, and “genocidal exploitation”, I don’t know where it is. I do, however, make a distinction between the person and the institution. I have no use for the monarchy, and would never want to be interpreted as defending it. I think systems of power that do not defer to the will of the people, while recognizing certain human rights, is inescapably evil. I do not see the flesh and blood personification of such a system as evil. I see it, her, or him…as flesh and blood. They could no more create such a system as they could eliminate it. Eliminating such systems falls to the ethical function of democracies. Part of that requires the inherent value of the individual, even wealthy ones.
09/13/2022 @ 8:28 am
“I do not see the flesh and blood personification of such a system as evil. I see it, her, or him…as flesh and blood.”
Bitey,
If we do not or cannot identify or characterize the people who are responsible for their decisions and actions in the perpetration and perpetuation of the evil institutions and entities from which they intentionally, consciously, and knowingly benefit, we will never rid this society and the democracy of the evils that threaten to tear it apart.
Transparent accountability must fall upon the ‘flesh and blood’ individuals who choose to benefit personally from institutional injustices such as, the racism that spawns economic exploitation, political oppression, and yes, even genocide…
If we are to be a multiracial, multicultural society and nation of laws, we must be ready, willing, and able to hold ‘flesh and blood’ individuals personally accountable for violating the laws promulgated in respect of Jefferson’s notion of the universal equality of humanity.
This must be so, even as said laws may be violated through the institutions created over centuries perpetrated and perpetuated for the singular purpose of violating the basic human rights of the many for the benefit of the few.
This is why I cannot and will not countenance the defense of ‘absence at inception’ (“I wasn’t there when..”) employed by the many millions of white people who, knowingly or intentionally or not, continue to benefit from slavery and it’s racist underpinnings to this day…
Whether or not the benefits accrue as a result of longstanding institutional policies, procedures, protocols and behaviors or upon the individual and personal attitudes, decisions, and choices of the beneficiaries upon which institutional behavior, policy, and protocol is predicated…
Institutional racism does not and cannot exist and persist in a political and social vacuum.
09/13/2022 @ 2:27 pm
Again, I agree with you about the bulk of it. I agree with you about those who say, ‘I wasn’t there when this started, so I am not responsible…’. This life is not a case of that, however. That is certainly not how I meant it.
If we use deriving benefits as the standard of culpability for the atrocities of their civilization or their government, then no single soul could escape every ounce of blame that you attribute to this woman. You and I both live on land taken from a civilization by means of a genocide. By that standard, we are due such judgments at our funerals. We are both former members of a military that to date dropped the only nuclear weapons on human populations. We are part of a society that consumes and pollutes more than any on the planet. The standard of deriving benefit catches all, and leaves no room for distinction based upon one’s actions and principles.
It just occurred to me that, by that same standard, no two Presidents of the US could be ethically distinguished from one another.