The media tells me the queen is the embodiment of 'grace' & 'dignity', & has maintained a 'dignified silence' through adversity during her reign - but what does this really mean for the head of an imperial state which will not face its crimes, past or present? 1/
In her lifetime she kept a dignified silence through the 'Malayan Emergency' and the Batang Kali Massacre, she held her grace through the Bengal famine and the partition of India – the millions of victims of these atrocities did not trouble her poise 2/
The beginning of her reign coincided with the opening of eight years of torture, mass internment and massacres of the Mau Mau in Kenya, and again, grace and dignity remained undisturbed. 3/
Britain’s role in countless Cold War massacres and coups from Vietnam to Indonesia to Chile (again with millions of victims) through to the more contemporary catastrophic invasions of Afghanistan & Iraq did not move her – nothing has penetrated the gracious exterior 4/
She still sits in grace & silence on colonially extracted wealth, blood gems & the value drained from working class labour in both colony & metropole 5/
The queen is the imperial state embodied and personified. Crimes are silenced with ‘dignity’ before they are even over, while the glass-eyed ability to perform decorum against a backdrop of atrocity is a shared feature of state and monarch alike 6/
Honestly, just abolish the monarchy & all other imperial relics already - this really should not be a radical position in the 21st century! 7/
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
