Meghan & Harry’s interview with Oprah Winfrey has created a tsunami of emotions with the media obligingly stoking the fires for creating headlines, increased circulation and clicks.   But is this shrill cacophony a clever ruse for some insidious motives wrapped in hypocrisy and straw-manning?

To explore this, let us first define some relevant terms for clarity and precision.

• Hypocrisy is to proclaim beliefs in contradiction of your actions. According to The Bible a hypocrite is someone who puts on a mask to pretend to be something he or she is not.
• Straw-man Argument is a manipulative technique which uses fallacious arguments to distract from some hidden agenda.
• Racism is the race-based identification of people as superior or inferior. Racism is as old as the human civilisation and has always existed in all nations and communities, including Great Britain.

In the last 100 years we have made great progress in fighting racism under inspirational leadership of teachers like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.  However, the recent weaponisation of racism by extremists and vested interests poses a grave danger to the hard-fought gains in race relations.

Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China and Hitler’s Germany are some of the extreme examples where evil authoritarian leaders successfully exploited race, religion and class by pitting people against each other to grab power.  They used this power brutally to intimidate and enslave their own people resulting in large scale human suffering and carnage with loss of over 100 million lives.

Is history repeating itself on a global scale today?   Are seductive, irrational, and evil ideas being propagandised again to sow discord and division amongst people?  Absence of purpose and meaning due to the erosion of religion, culture, traditional values and institutions has created a vacuum in peoples lives making them easy targets for manipulation with fashionable or emotionally charged ideas.

The accusation of racism and discrimination against the Royal Family is the latest manifestation of this toxic narrative which threatens the very fabric of our nation risking the systemic dismantling of a culture which has sincerely tried to welcome people of all races, religion and culture to live together in peace and harmony.

As an unabashed believer in the wisdom of the ancient religious texts, I cannot help but invoke the supreme wisdom of Jesus and his exhortation to “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her”.

In Search of Truth

To establish the validity of the metaphorical stones lobbed by the Sussexes (Harry and Meghan) at the Royal Family, and in turn the whole nation, let us consider some simple questions:

1. Are we such a stupid nation that it needed an American Hollywood actress to enlighten us about the Royal Family, headed by the Queen for almost 70 years, being a racist and inhumane institution?
2. If Meghan is so insightful, how come she did not know what to expect when she married into the Royal Family? Is there a clue somewhere in the fact that she also has multiple failed relationships with her own family including an ex-husband?
3. On the other hand, the Queen has over 70-years of very public record of strength of character, selfless effort and sacrifices to keep her family and nation together including the Commonwealth. Why would the Queen, the Royal Family and a nation, shower Harry and Meghan with all their heart felt welcome, love and affection during their wedding?  After all such pretence is surely beyond the scope of anybody not schooled in Hollywood acting skills!
4. If the Royal Family is racist, cold, and uncaring, how did Meghan manage to meet, and marry, the only member of the Royal family who was not? It most certainly qualifies as a modern-day miracle considering Harry’s chequered and wild past!
5. What kind of people professing love and care for their family wash their family’s dirty linen in public? More importantly what were the Sussex’s motives in broadcasting their grievances to the whole world considering that the only possible outcomes were retribution, fame, and fortune?
6. Is it hypocritical for those seeking privacy, and freedom from media intrusion, to indulge in the most brazen acts of self-publicity through staged self-promotional photos and interviews with perhaps the biggest megaphones in the world?
7. Are the actions of the Sussexes congruent with their stated aim of wanting to serve?  Shouldn’t such people sacrifice their self-interest for the benefit of those they want to serve?  Doesn’t diverting attention from the pain and suffering of millions during a worldwide pandemic to seek attention for your own traumas of privilege and victimhood smacks more of narcissism than intention to serve?
8. Does the behaviour of the Sussexes reflect a modern-day trait of the wealthiest and most privileged who seem to endlessly complain the loudest about racism and victimhood?  Michelle Obama says that she is ‘not surprised’ by Duchess of Sussex’s claims of racism in Royal Family’. Even Barack Obama never fails to accuse America of being a racist country, the same country which elected him President twice mainly with the support of the very people he brands racists.  Could it be that racism here is not in the direction the finger is pointed?
9. Why does the charge of racism from a coloured person against the Royal Family automatically achieve the status of gospel with anyone challenging it being accused of racism and heresy? Why is refusal to believe Meghan’s story a greater crime than believing it?  Aren’t both equally valid personal opinions?
10. Finally, is racism confined only to people of white skin? The evidence certainly seems to point to this conclusion considering that there are hardly any publicised accusations of racism against coloured people.  Should we attribute this asymmetry to some fundamental gene characteristic or a false narrative?

Socrates used probing and uncomfortable questions to drive his quest for the truth.  While not in the same class by a mile, I do hope that the above will help in an honest appraisal of this important matter.

If these questions prove the case for hypocrisy and straw-manning by two young, relatively inexperienced and emotionally vulnerable people then the obvious question that arises is, who is pulling the strings from behind the curtain to drive this powerful narrative sweeping the globe?

Ideally a free press should be the firewall against false narratives but not if they are preoccupied with their conflicting interests of ideology, power, and profit.  You do not have to be a rocket scientist to know that the game is rigged when each toss of the coin produces the same result every time.  Run to save your metaphorical shirt and life if you find yourselves ever in such a game!

Inequality of Two Opinions

To illustrate the point, consider the two diametrically opposite outcomes for different opinions about the Sussexes story,

Piers Morgan of Good Morning Britain had to recently resign from his job for refusing to believe Meghan’s accusations against the Royal Family (Link).

But as if that were not enough anybody supporting Piers views was also penalised as is clear from the example of Sharon Osbourne’s show, The Talk, being off the air for the sin of not conforming to the diktats of the woke brigade (Link).  Are we already in a dystopian state where you obey or else…?

Jeremy Vine on the other hand, in his 11 March 2021 show, had no problem proposing the reconfiguration of the monarchy by taking Meghan’s accusations seriously (Link).

He suggested, with a certainty, which can only be borne of sheer ignorance, that since the monarchy was in such a mess due to the race row, Prince Charles should be replaced by William as the heir to the throne.  This in his view would immediately tell the world that it was no longer the old-style fuddy-duddy Monarchy – but a thoroughly modern institution.

He also thought Prince Charles would be too old to be king at the age of 78, if the Queen were to retire at 100, only to be made to look foolish by a guest who reminded him about the American president Biden also being 78 years old.  Jeremy considered President Biden ‘nimble’! Also, in his preoccupation to retire Prince Charles, Jeremy forgot, or seemed to have overlooked the fact, that even our current monarch was 94-years young!

Convinced about his own wisdom he seemed to have forgotten the difference between the UK monarchy and the TV serial Crown, with the former being an integral constitutional institution in our system of governance.

A thought for Jeremy – Does he know that he is guilty of age discrimination in contravention of the Equalities Act?  However, I am sure Prince Charles is a far bigger man than he and will readily forgive him for his lapse. Would Jeremy take his own advice and volunteer to stand down if somebody accused him of racism or ageism?

Are some  more equal than others?

If curiosity about the sex of your second child, a girl, is not sexism how is curiosity about her colour racism? Does racism trump sexism? Or is racism in the eye of the beholder?

Anybody with the slightest pretensions of fairness will see the dichotomy where Meghan can file a complaint against Piers Morgan with Ofcom for not being believed, but the Royal Family is not accorded similar courtesy for the fictional depiction of their private lives in the TV serial The Crown without any disclaimer in the titles about the show being a work of fiction.  I wonder how the producers, or the directors of the series would react to a similar no holds barred series made about their family and children!

Is it sheer coincidence that Netflix should be the common denominator between both as the makers of The Crown and the Sussexes multimillion deal?

Humiliating any family for the sake of entertainment and profit must surely rank as grossly unfair, bullying, exploitative and mentally cruel behaviour.  Where are the protectors of human right on this matter?

Cloak of Respectability – The New York Times

Pick up any newspaper and look into their reporting history and you will easily discern their perpetual bias.  Take the case of The New York Times with its cloak of fairness and respectability.  Delving into its history reveals some interesting insights.

1. It defended and retained its reporter Walter Duranty who won a Pulitzer prize in 1932 for his wrong, biased and rose-tinted reporting about Soviet Russia including denunciation of reports about famine in Soviet Union and Ukraine which killed millions of people (Link)
2. It stood by its decision recently to hire reporter Sarah Jeong, well known for her racist tweets.  Here is a sample “Oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men” (Link)
3. It has an Opinion Race and Culture contributor called Damon Young who on 17 March 2021 published an article titled “Whiteness Is a Pandemic” which offers wisdoms such as “White supremacy is a virus that, like other viruses, will not die until there are no bodies left for it to infect” (Link1 & Link2)

People with woke leanings are given a free pass by most media platforms despite their vile and demeaning racist comments.  They will never be held to account, fired, or banned from social media.  Examples of such rigged moral landscape abound but do not seem to get much airing because of ideological blindness, head stuck in the sand syndrome or sheer indifference of the public.

A Muse Takeaway

Noble laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his book The Gulag Archipelago reflects on his own failure to act, and the sequence of events which led to his eight years imprisonment in the Gulag under Stalin’s tyrannical rule. He exhorts every citizen to take individual responsibility to protect their freedoms by standing up for the truth and justice to prevent society’s gradual descent into anarchy and authoritarianism.

The power of the modern-day technology to distort and censor the truth makes it critically important for all of us to heed Solzhenitsyn’s warning!

At a time when almost all our long-held cherished values, traditions and institutions are under attack, statues are being defaced and toppled; history is being revised and rewritten; speeches, books and movies are being censored; if we don’t stand up to protect the gradual erosion of our culture and freedoms than who will?

Imperfect themselves the race hustlers will forever be aggrieved and continue making increasingly strident demands to be served up Utopia.

You will know that the evil is upon us when you feel hesitation or fear in exercising your unalienable right to Free Speech.  It can only be taken away with our consent!

We would do well to remember that evil is race, religion, and gender neutral and devours everybody with equal relish!