Last month, the Telegraph published an unintentionally hilarious interview with historian David Starkey. Starkey ended up talking sh-t about Prince William (“hopeless… Nature intended him to be the manager of a second-division football team and he’s be rather stretched at that”) and the monarchy (“fading into irrelevance”). I was surprised that the Telegraph even published the interview. Well, they’re at it again. Piers Morgan’s wife Celia Walden interviewed A.C. Grayling, a British philosopher, professor and author. His new book is Discriminations: Making Peace in the Culture Wars. He spoke about how the right-wing uses “woke” as a pejorative, but woke is a good thing and societies should be anti-discrimination and more. He spent part of the interview discussing the Duchess of Sussex and how Meghan is the epicenter of the “woke wars” within the UK.
When it comes to “campaigns of cancellation”, there is no better current example than Meghan Markle, says A.C. Grayling. “The attempt to cancel Meghan Markle was and is huge. I mean, there are so many different media outlets and groups in society that are really dumping on her.”
There’s something very amusing about her name in his mouth. After all, this is Prof A.C. Grayling, philosopher and bestselling author of Philosophy and Life: Exploring the Great Questions of How to Live. For the past hour, we have been ricocheting from the origins of Christianity and the Roman emperor Theodosius to Holocaust denial. Then, out of nowhere, up pops the royal Kardashian, her name carefully enunciated.
“Now, I’m completely neutral on her score, since I really don’t know all the details,” the 75-year-old goes on when I ask what he thinks the reasons behind this cancellation campaign may be. Because as someone who has “dumped on her” more than once, I’m thinking some of them may be valid. “It’s not impossible to exclude the racial thing,” he says. “The idea that people don’t want a woman of colour in the Royal family, while others didn’t like the way she behaved.” Indeed. “People are very possessive over the Royal family. There’s a standard of purity which has to be met, because it preserves the heart of things. Then, if it’s penetrated by someone deemed to be a little bit too woke…”
…“Listen,” he resumes, “I don’t know what it is about her personally that seems so abrasive and barbative to people. I cited her as an example of a massive cancelling endeavour on the part of the anti-wokeists to make a point.” Which is? “That if that amount of attention were directed at something truly awful like white supremacists? Then there would at least be a bit of a balance, wouldn’t there?”
“People are very possessive over the Royal family. There’s a standard of purity which has to be met, because it preserves the heart of things. Then, if it’s penetrated by someone deemed to be a little bit too woke…” Standard of purity? Penetrated? A little bit too woke? Obviously, the right-wing still uses “woke” and “DEI” as not-subtle dog-whistles to mean Black. When people cry about Meghan being “too woke” for the Windsors, they mean Black, that she’s too Black for the Windsors. When someone says that the Windsors’ purity must not be penetrated by woke, they mean the Windsors must stay white, with no mixed-race princes or princesses in the line of succession. But what Grayling says about “the attempt to cancel Meghan Markle was and is huge” is absolutely correct.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
