The Queen’s Jubilee: One Big ‘Who’s The Best Slave’ Competition

The Queen's Jubilee: one big 'who's the best slave' competition

I don’t know how many people outside of the UK are aware of the English Queen’s Jubilee celebrations that have been going on since Saturday, but it has been a shocking display of mass psychosis if there ever was one.

I posted a comment on a story in an English newspaper about the event (comment is on page 5 and responses to page 6), and, ok, the comment wasn’t exactly pro-Jubilee or the track record of the British Empire (the idea of a ‘glorious’ British Empire appears to go hand in hand with celebrating the British monarch, ‘Queen and country’ and all that) but even I was surprised at the number of vitriolic responses to my comment provoked.

Apparently, over the past few days, millions of English people have been reveling in their status as “subjects” to the British Royal family and woe betide anyone who rains on their parade (although it did rain on the actual parade).

The definition of a ‘subject’ is: “a person under control or dominion of another”, so it’s pretty fascinating to me that so many English people are so eager to publicly display their inferiority and subservience to another person, to promote their slave/serf status and, apparently, believe that this somehow makes them more important.

I suppose that makes them all ‘authoritarian followers’, a phrase coined by Bob Altemeyer and discussed in his excellent book The Authoritarians. ‘Authoritarian follower’ basically describes a person who has no inner sense of his or her own authority and therefore idolises those they perceive to have authority.

In a world such as ours, governed by psychopaths, that makes for a dangerous mix.