The Sussexes: Lessons in modern class politics

The Sussexes’ claims of serial victimhood are symptomatic of a modern cultural malaise where there is no need to pass a means test to be classified as oppressed. BY NIck Cater.

First published on skynews.com.au

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have quashed reports that they were distressed by being portrayed as self-absorbed, dim-witted and conceited celebrity royals in the TV series South Park. Their decision not to sue a couple of crudely drawn, irreverent cartoon characters is a wise one. Yet we are entitled to feel disappointed that the Sussexes’ claims of serial victimhood and being denied the universal right to privacy will not be tested in court.

Early reports claimed the Duchess was “upset and overwhelmed” by an episode featuring the fictional Prince and Princess of Canada, a young royal couple who move to a small town to seek seclusion while simultaneously making public spectacles of themselves.

The script-writer’s description of the princess as a “sorority girl, actress, influencer and victim” not only fits the role Meghan Markle has sought to carve for herself, but also captures one of the great absurdities of modern identity politics and its narrative of oppression.

Earlier versions of Marxism at least demanded some evidence the members of the proletariat were materially deprived. Revolutionary posters in the early 20th century depicted them as gaunt, bent and bedraggled figures armed with nothing but sticks and pitchforks. Their tormentors were stout, cigar-chomping menacing clowns who sat around banquet tables on piles of loot surrounded by empty bottles of champagne.

In today’s twisted class politics, there is no need to pass a means-test to be classified as oppressed. Would-be victims have no need to show any material evidence of actual oppression, discrimination or unfair treatment they themselves have actually received. It is enough to be a member of a particular class of people defined by race, gender or sexual affinity which can demonstrate oppression at some point in history.

Readers who do not follow the British royal soap opera closely might have been as surprised as I was to learn that Markle had been offended by alleged racist slurs from a senior royal. Call me inattentive, but I had not realised up to then that Markle claimed African-American heritage. Had I met her I would have thought it impertinent and irrelevant to ask, even if the thought had occurred to me.

Until the arrival of identity politics, an actress who achieved some fame and material success and then had the extreme good fortune of marrying a handsome prince could hardly have made a claim for discrimination except in a positive sense.

The obligations that come with entering the Royal Family mean surrendering some freedom, but one would be confident that you and your children would never be denied freedom from hunger or the freedom of not having to apply for a part-time job cleaning the grills at McDonalds or stacking shelves at Coles.

In the reductionist ideology of modern wokeism, however, oppression is cultural, rather than material. It is shared, not personal. Victimhood is experienced through empathy with the sufferings of others.

The modern rituals of the Black Lives Matter movement illustrate the case.

You don’t actually have to experience the horrifying death of George Floyd under the knee of a reckless white Minneapolis Police officer to claim victimhood, just as you don’t have to be stripped of your badge and be convicted of second-degree murder to be an oppressor. Whether you must bend the knee or expect others to bend the knee before you is determined purely by race.

The Sussexes’ second grounds for complaint, the claim of being denied the universal right to privacy, is mercilessly satirised in the South Park episode. The Prince and Princess of Canada embark on a “worldwide privacy tour”. At one point, the characters hold signs that read, “We want our privacy” and “Stop looking at us”.

The couple handed the scriptwriters all the ammunition they needed in their March 2021 interview with Oprah. Asked if they should expect to lose privacy due to their royal status, Markle said: “I think everyone has a basic right to privacy. Basic. We’re not talking about anything that anybody else wouldn’t expect.” She buttressed her case with the hypothetical example of a worker with a photograph of their child on their desk. A co-worker who used that picture as an opening to ask to see other pictures of the child on the worker’s phone would be out of order. “You go, ‘No. This is the picture I’m comfortable sharing with you’,” said Markle.

By conflating a matter of good manners and workplace etiquette with a universal human right, Markle trivialises the genuine freedoms enshrined in the United Nations’ Declaration. Even if we believe that the freedom to enjoy privacy is absolute, where does it rank alongside the rights to life, liberty and the security of person?

The answer is it doesn’t. The right not to have one’s space invaded is coupled with the right not to invade the space of others. The right to be treated with equal dignity comes with the obligation to treat others the same way.

By stepping into the limelight and seeking to be moral influencers, lecturing lesser mortals on the etiquette of racism; by accusing their fellow humans of “wreaking havoc on our planet”, as Prince Harry did at a speech to the UN, the Sussexes invite scrutiny of their own lives to assess if their actions match their words.

By siding with the Black Lives Matter movement to condemn the racist soul of America, to opine about the lingering stain of British colonialism in a Netflix documentary and by buying into the complex constitutional arguments in the US over abortion - naturally on the side of those who reject the right to life - the Sussexes have passed judgement on the rest of us members of the ignorant or vindictive masses responsible for what the Duke describes as the "multiple converging crises" the world faces.

The hurt the Sussexes may feel from being turned into popular laughing stocks is largely self-inflicted. They had already become a parody of themselves long before the creative team at South Park got to work. Their arguments are as hollow, two-dimensional and intellectually vacuous as the words that spew out of the South Park characters’ hinged heads. Alas, we can only speculate how a claim for defamation would have stood up to the truth defence.