Showing posts with label monarchy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monarchy. Show all posts

Globalist condescension and localist resistance in Belize

Belize is a thrall of the United Kingdom and the United States, which comes at a price to the interests of the local people. We will see local interests disregarded and the government avoiding strong action to protect them.

The anti-colonial People's United Party (PUP) ruling Belize is acquiescent, presiding over a country caught in the slavery of dependencia, being only a source of cheap exports to colonial masters and a paradise to foreign exploiters.

Eco-imperialism

There has long been sufficient cause to suspect that patronising, moralising Western-led approaches to ecology and the environment would produce new tensions along the familiar lines of class and nation. There is no doubt that such a trend was already in motion. Too many an environmentalist simply assumes that the indigenous people are inherently on their side, and that the only conflict is with the proponents of some polluting industry. This simplistic view is false.

Eco-imperialists may be as much, nay perhaps more, of a long-term hindrance to the independence and dignity of colonised people than polluting industrialists.

We see this tension illustrated in the protest over the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's quickly cancelled visit to the village of Indian Creek, addressed in the last post. That originated in the royal-backed global conservation organisation Flora and Fauna International barring villagers from subsisting on their own land.

Globalist-localist tension

Despite the environmentalist slogan to "think globally, act locally", there is an inherent conflict between these two. The international elite primarily think globally, and they purposefully obfuscate or dismiss the interests of the locals in almost every case. The local is always subordinate to the global, for them, and even the formulation of the above slogan reveals this - the global comes before the local.

It is perhaps a sense of the above problem that accounts for why the pejorative "globalist" has come into increased use by those who reject what they see as an international elite. Most of us will not think global and act local but think local and act either local or global, depending on what we can do. Whether or not noble ends can be achieved in a globalist sense should depend entirely on the consent of the local people, not on the fiat of preachy and condescending globetrotting elites.

The silencing of the local

There is a pejorative for those who put their local interests first, too: "NIMBY" (Not In My Back Yard). This term is typical of modern liberal expression, with its willingness to assault, denigrate, and try to eliminate the people and their sensibilities rather than seeking to represent or placate them.

Arrogant liberalism in its present form is directly contributing to an emerging eco-imperialism, by creating a sense of moral certitude and impunity that gives rise to the inconsiderate actions of organisations like the prestigious FFI. For all the talk of decolonisation in the US and the UK, the victims of colonial injustice, such as those villagers in Indian Creek, are still marginalised and it is almost impossible for us to hear their voices. A prejudiced Western-centric megaphone is now the sum of the international media, and it cares nothing for reality, only for perception.

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Did Belize have an eco-imperialist encounter?

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were forced to change their plan to visit Belize, in response to a protest at the village of Indian Creek.

While those in the UK may prefer to read the story as a refutation of the monarchy, it wasn't. Villagers were more upset by the lack of coordination of the visit with their community than the idea of royals being present. What the people of the village seem to have a problem with is actually the ongoing inconsiderate and imperialistic approach taken to their land in the name of conservation - an issue the international media and liberal greenwash ministers everywhere would prefer to sidestep.

A fine example of eco-imperialism

According to a local report, the prestigious Flora and Fauna International (FFI, of which the Duke of Cambridge is a patron), "barred the villagers from using the land surrounding Indian Creek for their subsistence".

Based on the same report, Oscar Requena, Area Representative for Toledo West, seems to have responded with a pragmatic call for the villagers and the international conservation organisation to "come together", and acknowledged villagers are "in need of additional land to be able to expand and I believe the only way to work it out is that the company or the private owners that own those lands have to take those things into account."

Weak or no government intervention

Consider the difference in power between a large international organisation, of which the Duke of Cambridge is a patron (he apparently intended to pass their village on that very visit, yet kept villagers in the dark about it, hence the protest), and the villagers, whose exact views or demands have not even been published clearly anywhere. Requena undoubtedly means well, but leaving villagers to fight it out with a large international organisation and its British patrons, perhaps in a court, is unfair and can only end unfavourably for the villagers.

What is most suitable in comparable situations is the intervention of a strong and independent national government, but is that what Belize has?

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Britain's "scaled back" decline and fall?

The central part of the UK's identity, the constitutional monarchy, may be more beleaguered and unpopular than ever, and now it is willing to cede ground.

In an earlier post, I expressed doubt about whether removing the monarchy is likely or possible, and concluded that the population would not support this. However, they probably would not do much to stop or reverse such a change if it simply happened, either.

The point about our country being a reactionary power is more a comment on the status quo-supporting mindset of people in the UK than a good basis to judge how the future will go. Eventually, things do change. If things have changed by stealth, regardless of what wishes people expressed, Brits tend to support whatever new status quo we are up to.

Bad signs for the Crown

There are signs that the monarchy really is on a slow path into history's dustbin.

The British people would not vote to get rid of the monarchy. However, they may well do nothing about it diminishing and disappearing out of public view. For most people, there would be apathy about this.

The worst wound to the monarchy is the Prince Andrew sexual abuse scandal. Now that that this has ended in an out of court settlement, paid possibly by the Queen using taxpayer money, many see Andrew as certainly guilty. He will not regain his titles.

Rather than plough through popular objections, reassert the Crown with new images of splendour, and spend ever more lavishly on themselves, the monarchy is beginning to yield to common complaints. We see this in the promise of a "scaled back" coronation of Charles and Camilla. This concession, made for cost, is likely unprecedented, considering that each coronation in the past would have been made with increasing fanfare. It is astonishing that Charles does not see the the danger.

Has the monarchy chosen to fade away?

With monarchs, it is all or nothing, at least in the public eye. A frugal monarch who removed the diamonds from the Crown, out of humble submission to the crowd, is nothing much to respect, and the image of that monarch will be greatly diminished in many minds.

One can compare this to the way the Roman Catholic Church has slowly adjusted its doctrine with time, taking no firm stand, to accommodate modern sensibilities. Perhaps the Papacy too will begin to shed its wealth, overwhelmed at last by changing perceptions toward the privileged. In their case, too, there would come a point at which placation became capitulation and the core identity of the Roman Catholic Church was lost.

For these ancient institutions, reform eventually becomes the exit strategy from their own existence. Ironically, budging for the demands of critics and spending less lavishly actually makes it more likely that there will be calls for such institutions to be eliminated completely, as they will start to look shabbier.

Those who would have held on to these institutions for merely the image of splendour would likely be the last to leave. Were the monarchy to find itself in a position where it inhabited dull offices rather than palaces, it would not take long for these offices to be closed as well. In other words, the monarchy may gradually fade so that it is not in the hearts of the next generation or two, such that it just gets abolished and quietly buried without anyone noticing it was ever there to begin with.

Consequences less severe from slow change

The removal of the Crown should be steady rather than abrupt. Sudden abolition could have a destabilising effect in parts of the Commonwealth, creating a number of new republics that may not not know how to forge ahead. It may mean the end of the Commonwealth entirely. The effects will not be contained in the UK.

We also have the movements for independence in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Were the monarchy to diminish or disappear, these movements would grow increasingly strong and the country could dissolve into republics and federations, while Ireland may unite. In such an event, whatever the UK turns into should maintain the Westminster system of government, as the former colonies did, and maintain the palaces in their splendour as the Russians did.

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Barbados should have held a referendum on the monarchy

Barbados has ditched the Queen as head of state based on a parliamentary vote, but this change likely does not reflect the wishes of the population.

According to a report, the reason Barbados did not hold a referendum on the issue of head of state is because the population would have rejected the change. The parliament sidestepped asking the population, knowing the population would vote against them.

There was good reason to think the people of Barbados would not accept removing the Queen as head of state. When the question was posed to Australia, Tuvalu and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, these countries all voted by a majority to retain their current system.

Sometimes, specific parts of a territory even want to stay under the colonial vestiges and it is right to let them stay as long as the populations still wish. This is the case with British Overseas Territories and French overseas departments such as Mayotte, which dissented from the Comoros when it gained independence and remained French.

Barbados as an unnecessary republic

If you compare Barbados with the way countries became healthy republics, there is a difference. Republics became republics as a founding act in their country's history and it defined their national identity, often alongside adopting a state religion. Such was the case with Pakistan, for example, where being a republic was a necessary part of the constitution. The prime historical example of France became a republic as it transitioned into a nation-state rather than a fief.

Barbados was already a democracy and an independent nation with an established and stable identity in 1966. The head of state was just a vestige, only important when it comes to the perception of authority, perhaps compelling the politicians to act as servants to the nation and not masters. There seemed to be a reason for it.

What happened only seems superficially good at this moment, through a simplistic anti-colonial lens. Without that rosy factor, or had this change been anything else of a similar significance, such as adopting a state religion or a new monarch, it would have elicited outrage.

Power votes for power

Those who organised the vote, the representatives in parliament, want to be perceived to have more authority and to be masters of the nation and its identity. Their vote was about themselves, not the population. One hundred percent of them voted for themselves to have more authority, which should surprise no-one.

It was only natural that the normal population would not get any say in the matter. Most of the time, ordinary citizens don't sympathise with power-hungry politicians and tend to block their aspirations.

If anything, sidestepping a referendum on an issue concerning identity and the definition of the authority in their land is a cause for Barbadians to be a bit worried rather than happy. What other kind of power will these politicians vote for themselves to have, in future? We can only hope that they are well-intentioned and do not vote for unlimited terms in office and bans on criticism of their majestic authority.

If you put the question to politicians about whether they would like more power and authority, they are prone to say yes. Instead, a referendum should have been held in Barbados.

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Frank Herbert's Dune and the future of monarchy

Are better forms of governance really inevitable, and is progress itself inevitable? Thousands of years from now, will people still look at the ideas most people consider progressive now, and agree that they are so?

In a previous post, I talked about the British constitutional monarchy and how some feel now is the time to put an end to it. Yet some interpretations hold that there is nothing inevitable or even necessarily good about political and social change, and that in fact there is no clock pacing our civilization forward to a better time.

Reactionary science fiction

In Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, adapted to a movie in 1984 by David Lynch and again in 2021 by Denis Villeneuve, we are presented with a world apparently tens of thousands of years in the future. It is some fine escapism because so little resembles our world today. Nothing important, divisive or aggravating in today's society exists in that world. Even the Earth itself is a distant memory, never mentioned in any dialogue or being a passing thought of any character.

The characters in Dune are motivated by values that would be alien to most Western audiences, and affected by conflicts between ancient forces that will not exist for us for many thousands of years. They follow traditions that, to us, don't even exist yet or mean anything to us.

Despite how strange it may seem, the political system in the distant future worlds of Dune is very clearly based on our own past. Rather than advancing forward to increased liberty, inclusiveness and kindness, darker aspects of humanity have won out. Feudalism has made a return, with no mention of democracy. Capital punishment seems to be commonplace, as are torture, duels and assassination.

But is this regression really possible? Can values that protect the flourishing of a sovereign people indeed be forgotten and replaced simply with the base desire to rule as a monarch? What historical precedent exists?

It isn’t unusual for things to get worse

The best example might be the Greek and Roman civilizations. Each of them established a democratic order for a time. Both Athens and Rome, in their heydays, were determined to maintain a constitution that prevented the abuse of power. The Romans loathed the idea of a monarch, and yet the ultimate evolution of their system turned out to be an empire of absolute rule. This later developed into a system of absolute spiritual rule in addition to temporal rule, under the Emperor Constantine, once Rome turned Christian. Can that kind of social change, driven by such fervour, really be considered progress?

When the meaning of change, changes

The defining difference between the left and right in politics - the progressive and conservative - is their attitude towards whatever set of reforms and changes are the order of the day. It has nothing to do with a particular set of ideas, ideologies or values but simply one's response to whatever social changes are held to be new and pertinent at the time, by a majority of people. In revolutionary France, the advocates of harsh nationalism were also the ones advocating increased rights for common people. Nationalists were considered the political left, attempting to redefine the people as sovereign rather than the monarch. Opposing them. the political right were the defenders of the old order of the monarchy and the church.

As the classical liberal reforms and changes that were once considered revolutionary came to pass, they came to be accepted and written into constitutions such as the American constitution. They aged and became associated with a stable order. In becoming old, these once-revolutionary ideas that had been loathed and fought against by conservatives became the new order the conservatives would defend.

Many views of politics are stuck in the Twentieth Century, because of the dramas of the Second World War and the Cold War. They imagine the political left to be a static set of ideas, essentially socialism or Marxism as applied in the Soviet Union, and imagine the political right to consist of permanent defenders of classical liberalism’s old maxim of life, liberty and property. This becomes confused, however, when modern issues like those surrounding LGBT rights come into the picture, because those would fit into the right-wing ideology based on the above definition, yet are staunchly opposed by the American right because they are contrary to tradition. Tradition is really the main defining feature of the right, rather than a prioritisation of individual liberty. A person on the right merely advocates classical liberalism as tradition.

What constitutes tradition changes, depending on who won out in the previous struggle. In countries that adopted Marxist systems of government, youthful rebellion and subversion came to be associated with Western influence and capitalism. On the other side, in countries that maintained Western capitalism, change has been associated for a long time with socialist movements and the youth were drawn to them, even rallying behind Jeremy Corbyn in the UK before his downfall.

We all want to be a character in some special story

Whether or not something is held to be a form of progress is entirely dependent on what thing challenges the established order. If democratic governments were in power for long enough, revolutionary movements would quickly see something new and promising in the idea of monarchy and wish to reimplement it. Social change is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to make sense or be consistent with past change, and it is normal for it to be awful.

Left vs right, liberty vs order, is simply defined by generational difference and possibly even boredom with what came before. You could have a society with no faults, and the energetic next generation would still find ample things to complain about and try to alter that society into something possibly worse or less stable just so they can feel special in the attempt.

Nobody wants to live in the end of history, or to do nothing about their world. They all want their lives to feel like a story where the world was set right at last, even if this means they must advocate regression or simply nonsense to get that sensation.

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No, now is not the time to abolish the monarchy

#AbolishTheMonarchy was apparently trending on Twitter for a while on 30 October, at a time when the Queen had been ordered to rest for what we can assume are health reasons. The news had sparked the sense that her health might be failing (perhaps she even has Covid-19).

Some believed this was the appropriate moment to produce unfair commentary, obviously wishing her ill and thoughtless towards the feelings of others on the matter. Rather than go over specific tweets and exaggerate their importance, let us look seriously at the problems at hand.

The royal family has taken significant hits to its reputation recently. The worst was the sexual abuse scandal of Prince Andrew, of whom the Queen is reported to still be very protective.

Meghan Markle fans attack

Reports of the disfavour and even possible racism towards Meghan Markle caused the hypocritical admirers of that particular aristocrat to act as if they oppose monarchy. Their concern was not the result of principled opposition to monarchy, but distress that the one they happen to worship won’t be going on the pedestal. We should remember that, absent the admiration of many towards the British royal family, Markle means very little to most people anyway.

In fact, I am sure I remember some fawners indicating their hopes that Markle could be the future Queen, during some other gossip years ago. The significance or seriousness of such remarks is doubtful, but perhaps they demonstrate the absurdity of those who would like a fight with the existing monarchy just because their preferred foolish idol didn't get enough positive press.

The use of a useless monarch

The UK monarchy is one of the oldest in the world, and many see a value in preserving traditions. Even when absurd, traditions can provide feelings of stability. In politics, much power flows from the perception of power and much stability is dependent on the perception of stability. Stability saves lives and keeps many out of poverty. It prevents uncertainty, and it even prevents future terrors we could not have predicted.

A Britain without the monarchy would be a less stable one, perhaps even comparable with Germany after the removal of its monarchy in the wake of the First World War. It was certainly a mistake to remove the German monarch in the manner that this happened (and as dictated by America) since many Germans still believed in authoritarian figures and were ready to follow an alternative figure as soon as one emerged.

The monarchy and the perception of stability that comes from it significantly undermines the prospects of fascists and radicals in the UK, causing conservatives to tone down their rhetoric. If this were removed abruptly and without thought to the feelings of the people, much of the obedience and admiration that is directed to the monarchy would continue to exist but might be focused on supporting another nationalistic hero figure. We have no idea who that might be, or whether that person would be amenable to parliamentary democracy like the current monarch is.

Pulling at the threads of civilisation and removing pillars of stability and predictability, even when they are merely built of people’s beliefs, has almost always been followed by regret among people who did it. Revolutions, vast constitutional changes and upheavals produce uncertainty and violence and cannot be justified, unless it can be proven that the status quo is already fatally intolerable and must end. Across the world, people settle for unsatisfactory coalitions of power and ineffective states because these are better than the alternative of a vacuum.

The British monarchy is not murdering a population or posing an existential threat to people, so there is no need for urgency to remove it at present. Monarchies often do eventually pose that kind of threat to the citizens when the monarch is truly considered sovereign in place of the people. When such conditions arise, they must be removed by the people and tenuous republics must be attempted instead. This is no guarantee that the alternative governments would be any more legitimate or caring, though.

Britain’s monarch is the head of state of a number of other Commonwealth countries, some of which may rely on perceptions about her for their internal stability. She is also a spiritual figure, being the head of the Church of England. Her removal would challenge the existence of a state religion in the UK and interfere with the faith of many, with yet more unknown consequences.

We should not look for things that appear to be useless from our privileged perspectives, and remove them out of our boredom. It has to first be necessary and urgent to do so. Something needs to be not just apparently useless but a demonstrable threat to the people, to justify removal.

A reactionary power

Proponents of change should accept that Britain is an exceptionally reactionary country. While other populations even in Europe have eagerly taken to the streets in fervour to support revolutionaries, Britons tend not to. In fact, British people should be expected to react to such figures with quiet mockery and attempt to go on with their lives as before. It is for this reason that no major new ideology, including Jacobinism and socialism, has ever been adopted by the British state in all the centuries it was confronted with them. Britain may be unique among the entire international community in that it seemingly continued, on and on, with the same flag and the same system as before, while ideologies emerged and perished. That is unlikely to change even in the current century.

The Queen is doing no harm and her health is important to many, including in other Commonwealth countries. May she recover soon.

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