Meghan and Harry are masters of propaganda

Well, at least Meghan is. Harry just needs a better therapist.

I like to think of myself as a smart and worldly chick, but I have to confess a major weakness. I’m a total sucker for good packaging. I will happily pay over the odds for an average product if said product has beautiful, tasteful, or cool packaging.

I found the worldly and gullible sides of my personality in direct opposition recently, when I watched — against my better judgement — the Harry and Meghan series on Netflix. I won’t call it what the producers called it, a documentary, because even by documentary’s dodgy standards it didn’t even make a pretence toward objective reporting.

But something about it surprised me very much. So slick was the Meghan and Harry packaging, that I found myself almost won over by the princess of woke millennials and her sad plight of having strangers on the Internet say mean things about her as she lived off taxpayer money in a palace. Sorry, I mean on the grounds of a palace, as she and her husband were at pains to point out. Their actual home was but a small cottage. On the grounds of a palace. Where they lived for free.

I came away from the six (!!!) part series with a newfound respect for Ms. Markle and her absolute genius for social climbing, her chutzpah in placing herself among heroes of righteous causes and her uncanny ability to sniff out the prevailing winds in order to sail herself directly into the warm waters of flattery and riches. To say nothing of her tremendous skill at wearing hats. Kudos to her. She is a master at packaging herself (and her ginger appendage of a husband). She will go down in history as one of womankind’s most masterful manipulators. Up there with the women of the royal court in days of old, when overly daring power plays could result in decapitation.

I went into the show firmly in the anti-Markle camp, but I’m not being facetious when I say that they did manage to convince me that the Buckingham Palace crew manoeuvred against them, and that the family rift is a genuinely painful one, at least for the spare Harry. The screaming headlines of the last week only make Harry’s actions more pitiable, as he flings his family’s shit-covered laundry all over the place, while also bleating: “I want my father and brother back.” Dude, you are a hot mess, and I can’t help but feel sorry for you. 

And that, friends, is where my sympathy ends. Because though I’m not above slowing down to watch a deliciously tabloid-y car-crash, there is a much more significant element to this story than just the royal family drama.

What was most telling was how Harry and Meghan align their sob story — which is actually a tale of entitlement and grandiosity — with the most deeply chilling, anti-democratic, authoritarian impulses of our time. And by far the worst part is how thoroughly it tracks and mirrors the language and challenges of genuine freedom seekers. They very cleverly mimic the righteous — you know, the people who are actually punished in very concrete ways for speaking out against real injustice; people whose speaking of the truth costs them friends and favour. People who are not rewarded for their actions, as these two are, with palace addresses, mansions in California and multi-million dollar deals with powerful media corporations.

This is masterful propaganda. I’m guessing that the populations the show aimed at are Millennials and Gen Z, as so many of those two generations were steeped from birth in both woke BS and the kind of incredibly indulgent, soft upbringings that leave bitter Gen X’ers like myself aghast. In one of the episodes, one of the fawning courtiers posing as an expert in something, says in a tone of pearl-clutching shock, that it was almost as if the United Kingdom felt that Meghan, in return for her newfound fame and fortune that the UK taxpayers were underwriting, had to prove herself to the British people. Being a crusty old Gen X’er, I thought to myself “damn right she should prove herself!” But I can imagine very sheltered 20-somethings — programmed to expect the world in return for very little effort — really resonating with poor Meghan’s plight. 

What I can’t figure out is this: what is the point of this spectacle, really? Is is just catharsis for a clearly wounded Harry, still ruminating on his dead mum, and revenge for the ultra-ambitious wife? I find it hard to imagine how two people with so much access to talented and experienced storytelling professionals could really get so far down such an embarrassingly personal road. I find it hard to believe they are motivated simply by resentment and self-promotion, now matter how sincerely they may feel such things. But, like I said above, I can be gullible.

Or are they working for a larger agenda? Tying Meghan’s supposed mistreatment by Brits to Brexit, of course, which is tied to racism, clearly, and misogyny, natch. They efficiently tick off all the required SJW boxes that must come standard in contracts for all new Netflix content. I sat through these episodes and rolled my eyes. 

But it’s when Harry starts opining about misinformation that I found myself getting angry. He claims, with a straight face, that misinformation is “a global humanitarian crisis.” The episode features a host of purported experts, with one in particular, Christopher Bouzy, called in to do some heavy lifting with “studies” and “numbers” — because there is nothing that the chattering classes love more than throwing a veneer of science over their bullshit. 

Bouzy is “CEO” of a “company” called Bot Sentinel, which did a “study” of “hate” directed at Meghan on Twitter. They “analysed” 114,000 Tweets about Meghan. Bouzy — whose company is funded mostly through donations, I wonder from whom? — says what they found was somehow uniquely terrible: “this is not your everyday trolling,” he says while sinister music plays in the background. “They were actively coordinating.” It was “highly coordinated and deeply networked.” These brave digital warriors even checked the fetid ecosystems of the great unwashed! “Everything from QAnon to MAGA to Covid disinformation to climate change disinformation, we’ve never seen anything like this.” [Note the handy list of all the opinions we are not allowed to hold.]

And my personal favourite: Bouzy says that seventy percent of “hateful content” came from “just” 83 accounts. All this is imparted to us as screenshots of mean Tweets flash on the screen.

As much as I loathe this, I can’t help but be impressed. This slick packaging, the music, the numbers, the serious tones, the signalling of wrong vs right opinions, is there to prevent us from seeing what is really in front of our eyes. Namely, that a small number of Twitter accounts tweet negative, unpleasant things about a massively famous woman…and that’s it. And despite Meghan’s tears and Harry’s frowns, that is the end of the story. Big whoop.

Our mainstream culture is now little more than a miasma of lies and spin. Last week, the BBC handed over the editorial reins of one of its flagship shows to the chief spy in the country. Jeremy Fleming — the head of GCHQ — used the opportunity to “interview” Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence of the United States. Together, they talked about "pre-bunking” “false narratives” about Russia and Ukraine. How was this allowed to happen in so-called journalism?

And here we have Harry, getting paid millions on top of his already impressive, unearned fortune, coming out with lines like: “when that same lie is given credibility by journalists or publishers, it’s unethical and as far as I’m concerned, an abuse of power.” 

Wow, Harry, I agree! But please remember that he’s talking about Tweets accusing his wife of being a nasty person, and I’m talking about conflict in Europe, funded by the US and UK that some fear could lead to nuclear war. 

The series ended with a quote from a Meghan supporter that really took the biscuit in terms of being a perfect example of DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender): “Let’s be clear what’s at stake here: it’s symbolic annihilation. If you can destroy people who are symbols of social justice, then you can scare people into not wanting to be public as a way to signal to the rest of us to stand down.” (As she says this pictures are shown of heroic Meghan giving speeches to adoring crowds and tenderly cradling her babies.)

Correct. Now do J.K. Rowling.