How the Authoritarian Right Is Weaponizing the Queen’s Death

How the Authoritarian Right Is Weaponizing the Queen’s Death

On this week’s episode of The Time of Monsters, a discussion about the monarchy and right-wing sentiment.

Jeet Heer
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

Queen Elizabeth II is being widely mourned in the United Kingdom and elsewhere as a symbol of the British state, tradition, and service. These mainstream sentiments, often expressed in the media coverage in the United States as well as the UK, are not universally shared. In Ireland and many other former colonies, the queen is a symbol of the oppression of an imperialism that is now in retreat but still leaves a legacy. Conversely, many right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson and former Trump adviser Steven Miller, are using the queen as an avatar of an earlier era when the right people with the right bloodlines enjoyed unquestioned power.

To discuss the meaning of the queen’s death and the monarchy, this episode of The Time of Monsters features a conversation with Nora Loreto, a Canadian journalist who podcasts at Sandy and Nora Talk Politics. One example of a right-wing politician seeking to weaponize monarchical sentiment is the newly chosen leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre. Nora and I take up the dangers of Poilievre’s mixture of libertarianism and cultural populism.

Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.

Support The Nation’s June Fundraising Campaign

With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.

As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Nation elevates progressive ideas, movements, and elected officials achieving real change across the country into the national conversation. At the same time, our journalists are exposing how crypto and AI-funded super PACs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to knock out candidates they oppose, reporting on the devastating impact of the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, and sounding the alarm on attempts by red states to quickly redraw electoral maps, disenfranchising Southern Black voters.

We can play this critical role because of support from readers like you. This June, we’re raising $20,000 to power The Nation’s independent journalism in the run-up to November’s immensely consequential elections.

It’s in our power to build a more just society, and your support at this critical moment brings us closer to that bold vision. I hope you’ll donate today.

Onward,

Katrina vanden Huevel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

Jeet Heer Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.


x