Note: Following the warm reception of the previous article on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, we thought it might be fun to do another analysis – and just in time for the Duke of Sussex’s release of his autobiography, Spare.
Like taxes and the Kars for Kids commercial (that’s kars with a “k!”), Harry and Meghan are frustratingly inescapable, despite the best efforts of 99% of the American public and world at large. Over the past 24 hours, several excerpts from Spare have been leaked to the media, thanks in part to several Spanish booksellers who were too busy sipping sangria and enjoying their lives away from the Sussex circus to realize that the book was supposed to be under strict lock-and-key, as befitting the autobiography of a former royal and current reality television star.
Many of these revelations have been entertaining; for example, the story of “dogbowlgate,” when Prince William allegedly shoved Harry to the ground and broke his necklace, has already sparked a series of hilarious memes. Other revelations are shocking and gauche; for example, Prince Harry shared private conversations from his grandfather’s funeral, and even more appallingly, revealed that he and his brother are circumcised in a bizarre and completely unnecessary breach of privacy.
But while the Sussex sparring makes for good tabloid fodder, a recent article in The Hill has made clear that there are serious geopolitical consequences for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s neverending Festivus.
“Beijing and Moscow, gleefully, are on ‘Team Harry and Meghan,’ and decidedly for self-serving and nefarious reasons. Intentionally or not, the two sidelined British royals, while luxuriously decamping in southern California, are recklessly undermining the national security of the United Kingdom and, by extension, imperiling that of the United States and its allies,” the article declared.1
The authors added that by consistently accusing the Royal Family of racism and calling the Commonwealth “Empire 2.0,” Harry and Meghan are fracturing the diplomatic relationship between the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth nations – specifically those in Africa and the Caribbean. Meanwhile, Russia and China have sought to exert their influence in those very countries through generous economic and military investment.
This has real world consequences: President Xi managed to convince several Commonwealth states into supporting Beijing over London, such as when ten member states sided with China during a UN Human Rights Committee vote on the Hong Kong National Security Law. Similarly, five member states refused to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
As a man who believes he saw his mother’s spirit in a leopard in Africa and claims he fell deeper in love with his wife when she started singing to seals, Prince Harry likely does not have the capacity to understand the gravity of his actions. But China and Russia do – making him one of the most high profile “useful idiots” in history.
A study conducted by consultancy group 89up, and published in The Telegraph, has sounded the alarm on thousands of bot-like Twitter accounts that obsessively tweet their support for Meghan Markle in a “coordinated” fashion.2 By some coincidence, many of those faceless, nameless accounts also tweet their support for extremely progressive politics and Russian conspiracy theories. Who knew that the overlap between RT readers and Meghan Markle stans was so large?
Hawwy vs. Haw-Haw
But this is not the first time that the United Kingdom has had to deal with useful idiots helping its foes. One of the most famous examples is that of Lord Haw-Haw, an American-born Irishman and Brit who sided with the Nazis and decamped to Berlin to broadcast anti-Allied propaganda during World War II under the pseudonym Lord Haw-Haw.
Though Haw-Haw claimed he was a staunch Brit, his broadcasts – with its infamous opening of “Germany Calling. Germany Calling” – focused on highlighting all the ills of England while propping up the so-called utopia of Germany. Later in the war, he reveled in England’s defeats and warned his former homeland of “great retribution” and “annihilation.”
Shockingly, many Brits were supportive of – or at least listened to – Lord Haw-Haw in the early months. According to William Shirer’s Berlin Diary, Ed Murrow reportedly confessed that Haw-Haw “commanded at least half of the English radio audience when he was on the air.”3
This is backed up by statistics taken at the time. According to the British Imperial War Museum, a BBC survey, taken on behalf of the Ministry of Information, found that at the end of January 1940, “one out of every six adults was a regular listener, three were occasional listeners, and two never listened.”4
When the survey asked respondents why they listened to Lord Haw-Haw, many responded that they found his show not credible but rather a fun source of entertainment – not unlike how many watch the Harry and Meghan trainwreck today.
But there was a high number that believed Lord Haw-Haw’s propaganda.
“He sounds like such a nice man. It makes you think there must be something in what he says,” said one woman.
“We nearly always turn him on at 9.15 to try and glean some news that the Ministry of Information withholds from us,” added another.
Even members of the military were not immune. “He talks a lot of cock and 75% of his statements are either lies or propaganda, but occasionally he hits the nail on the head. It’s then that he makes you think. You wonder whether a lot of his statements are also true,” noted an RAF airman.
Lord Haw-Haw’s popularity became so dangerous that Aylmer Vallance, a journalist who worked for the War Ministry, warned the BBC’s director-general that the broadcasts were “a definite factor affecting public morale.”
“[His rumors] are spread by people who are normally responsible and sensible and cause genuine alarm,” wrote Vallance. “[It] is a very grave danger to morale and may be in the future a very definite penetration point for enemy propaganda,” the director of home intelligence also warned.5
Even more alarmingly, Lord Haw-Haw’s propaganda wasn’t just confined to England; his broadcast was available in both the United States and Canada. This became a serious issue because while Brits were able to see the clear falsity of some of Haw-Haw’s more outrageous proclamations of gloom and doom in England, the Canadian and American public could not.
The British government and BBC did not know how to handle such a situation. They tried to deliver their own show, helmed by well-known barrister Norman Birkett, to counter Lord Haw-Haw’s. However, it was not particularly successful – and critics mocked the show as having an audience comprised of “adolescents and middle-aged women.”6
There was even talk of following Germany’s lead and making it a criminal offense to listen to foreign broadcasting. Fortunately, this was rejected as a betrayal of Britain’s democratic ideals.
How Do You Solve A Problem Like . . .Propaganda
Instead, the BBC came up with a brilliant solution. Taking heed from their Listener Research Department, the BBC bosses opted not to fight fire with fire, but fire with fun. They pivoted to creating more entertaining content desired by the masses with a renewed focus on the “barometer of listeners’ preferences.”
At the same time, the BBC created a show specifically for the United States and Canada, headed by criminologist Edgar Lustgarten. Using the pseudonym “Brent Wood,” Lustgarten created a program that was a direct response to Lord Haw-Haw that was tailored to the North American audience.
Though statistics from North America are slim, statistics from the United Kingdom show that Lord Haw-Haw quickly began to lose listenership in the spring of 1940. Around 10% of what were once regular listeners had stopped tuning in by March 1940. Numbers continued to drop throughout the war. Part of this was due to fatigue over his show, with one listener citing his “dullness.”7
“The more one listens to him, the less impressive he is,” added another.
However, it is likely not a coincidence that as Lord Haw-Haw found his audience drop, listenership for entertainment related programs on the BBC grew rapidly. As noted by James Curran and Jean Seaton’s Power Without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting, and the Internet in Britain, “audiences for serious music increased sharply, and drama ratings doubled between 1939 and 1941.”8
At the end of the war, Lord Haw-Haw was arrested and executed as a traitor. Ironically, he still maintained that he loved Britain despite his concurrent blubbering about the evils of the Jewish race and capitalist classes.
If the Royal Family were to take guidance from the past, they would handle Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s anti-Commonwealth crusade just as the BBC and the Ministry of Information handled Lord Haw-Haw. They would prioritize creating “new content” for their British subjects, such as an onslaught of glitzy events and charitable schemes, rather than engage in a tit-for-tat with their rogue relatives. Already, the U.K. audience – like the U.K. public of yore – seems to be bored of the drama and the lies.
At the same time, however, the monarchy would be wise to take steps to begin a series of counter-propaganda operations in the Commonwealth to reject claims of racism and colonialism and preserve the bonds forged by the late Queen Elizabeth II.
It should be noted that there are some crucial differences between Prince Harry and Lord Haw-Haw. Prince Harry, despite dressing up as a Nazi, is not the same vile “true believer” that Lord Haw-Haw, a prominent lieutenant of British Fascist Oswald Mosley, once was. Moreover, Prince Harry seems not to know, or to care, about how his barbs are affecting the Commonwealth, unlike Haw-Haw’s very pointed and deliberate attacks. Harry’s family drama is simply being used by enemy states instead of being commissioned by them.
But there is another difference that cannot be ignored. It would be wrong to say Lord Haw-Haw deserves more respect because he actually believed in his cause; his virulent antisemitism and anti-capitalism were, and are, abhorrent. But, in some weird way, at least he was a true villain motivated by evil.
In contrast, Harry doesn’t seem to care if he takes down the monarchy . . . and for what? For nothing more than stupid and petty Shakesparean jealousy, epitomized when Harry lamented that William and Kate got all the good furniture, while he and Meghan were cruelly forced to purchase their own couch from Sofa.com.
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3784176-the-trouble-with-harry-and-meghan/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2019/03/08/megbot-army-linked-russian-conspiracy-theories-tweeting-obsessive/
Shirer, William. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941, page 26.
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-rise-and-fall-of-lord-haw-haw-during-the-second-world-war
https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-unfortunate-odyssey-of-lord-haw-haw-the-nazis-wartime-voice-in-britain/
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-rise-and-fall-of-lord-haw-haw-during-the-second-world-war
Ibid
James Curran and Jean Seaton. Power Without Responsibility: The Press, Broadcasting, and Internet in Britain, page 129.
AH Childs is right. Harrry and Meghan are idiots, though she conveys that point with great elegance.