Supporting the Royals is the last form of patriotism allowed by the narrative people. By Ed West.
The purpose of ruling class fashions is to distinguish the PC people from ordinary people:
Many things suffer from a cascade where higher-status members of society come to disassociate themselves because it feels too déclassé. Duelling fell out of fashion in part because the working class took it up. Further back, crusading also came to be less prestigious as aristocrats lost interest. Most recently, this is what happened to patriotism, as the mass middle class came to attend universities which, by their nature, tend to be hostile to nationalism and rootedness. Patriotism came to be seen as proletarian because, if you got the grades, you were above all that.
That’s not going to happen to monarchism. Too many poshos have a vested interest in the system, and they have well-cut suits and sumptuous houses and beautiful daughters and, contrary to the image of the chinless toff, they are often ruthlessly clever (you don’t survive nine and half a centuries by being stupid).
Royalty also has glamour. It is capable of putting on a good show, no doubt a facet of its strong association with the military. The sight and sound of soldiers on parade cheering for their new king was impressive, and emotive. Many people were quite moved, even swept away, by the day.
In these circumstances I almost feel sorry for republicans, whose views are largely dismissed. …
Free speech in Britain is running second to using state power to enforce ruling class fashions:
But I’m not sure that many people will care about the harassment of people with unpopular ideas. There are a few principled ideological liberals who defend the right of unpopular people to have a level playing field in the marketplace of ideas, but they could all fit in the average Gen Z London flat.
Few people actually care about the civil liberties of people they don’t like. After all, back in the real world, you can get sent to jail for four months for making jokes about George Floyd, and the police might turn up at your house or launch an investigation if you question the dominant beliefs about gender.
If you have children at school, perhaps you object to it commemorating the King, but if you’re a conservative parent the school teaching your children objectionable things — which you have almost zero recourse to stop or protest because they are moral absolutes — is just everyday life. As others have pointed out, Britain is a country where you can be arrested for stating the doctrine of the state religion.
Supporting the royals is about the only form of patriotism allowed by the ruling class:
Events like the coronation feel like a window into a world in which conservatives are culturally dominant. Like a Feast of Fools in our crazy, upside world where our values are in retreat. A day where tradition, hierarchy and religion are widely accepted as good or necessary, rather than equality, (fake) subversion, radical autonomy and an instinctive hostility to the old order. …
Conservative opinions tend to be low status, but that low status and the framework of laws and legal harassment interact and reinforce each other.
Encouraging the PC ideas with money:
Similarly, the financial rewards given to enforcers of progressive ideas tend to give those ideas more status; in the US, for example, many diversity and equality officers earn more than academics, while in Britain the diversity officer of the Wellcome Trust is paid more than the prime minister. If large companies paid people £200,000 a year to be ‘chief patriotism officer’, a position which could hardly be less productive or useful than ‘chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer’, you’d suddenly find that more people believed patriotism to be a good thing.
Of all the conservative institutions, the Royal Family are rare in still having in their possession lots of goodies: titles, invitations to parties, the chance to hobnob with the great and the good, royal endorsements for one’s business. This incentivises a large number of prestigious people to signal their support for the institution, the sort of people who otherwise have quite predictably progressive views on social issues, if not on their tax arrangements. …
Virtue-signaling rules:
Very few people are truly non-conformist — society couldn’t function if they were — and political views are very influenced by social pressure, vibes and taboo (which is why the Left is correct to believe that anti-racism norms have to be policed very strictly, being very thinly held by many).
Quite a few people with overtly university-produced liberal opinions, which include disdain for patriotism or aristocracy, are deep down quite moved by this sort of ceremony. Although they will claim to find nothing good to say about the country, liberals often actually quite love it, but they lack the permission structure to express those feelings. Occasionally, patriotic ideas will be presented in such a way that they feel it’s acceptable — the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony being the quintessential example — but monarchy also allows those conservative instincts to be felt with less embarrassment, because enough prestigious people join in.
