The Circus of the Spectacle

by Brian Patrick Bolger (February 2025)

The latest Harry and Meghan Christmas card shows the long time narcissists together with Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. The kids have a minor role in the background, but hey—its a start. Of course, they are not Christmas cards but ‘Happy Holiday Season’ cards. Rumours of an impending split hovered over the yuletide holiday season log. Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has described the current era as one of ‘liquid culture.’ Now I thought this meant the over imbibing of draught beers and mulled wine over the festive period. But no, it signifies the erosion of cultural bonds as society dissipates into atomisation and traditional norms are threatened by the polarisation of political debate. Poor Harry! Bludgeoned by Meghan to follow the woke bible, he now finds himself to be likely airbrushed from history like Meghan’s father. What will become of ‘Spare’? Christmas was in Montecito, as they were ‘persona non grata’ at Sandringham. A spokesman for the ‘Montecito Lady Macbeth’ said the couple spent Christmas at home with friends and Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland. So that was three for Christmas dinner then. Get the Crackers out! Rumours that Harry, post divorce, and Prince Andrew will rock up together in a bedsit in Haight Ashbury are way off the mark, however. Probably more likely to be Chinatown, London. Or Mazan in France.

Back to ‘liquid culture’: a 500 year old British Pub in Buckinghamshire called ‘The Saracen’s Head’ has been handed a court summons by a convicted Pakistani terrorist living in the UK. He is prosecuting the Buckinghamshire pub after claiming the pub sign was a “racist depiction of a bearded Arab/Turk.” The boozer was built in 1530 as a tribute to ‘Richard the Lionheart’ who visited nearby Amersham in the twelfth century. ‘Saracen’ was the all inclusive term for Arabs and Turkmen who fought in the Crusades. ‘Richard the Lionheart,’ the English King who earned his moniker for being able, single handedly, to pull out the hearts of Lions, would be turning in the proverbial grave. Khalid Baqa received a 4 month prison sentence for distributing jihadi and terrorist threats and literature. Those British ‘far right’ protestors throwing stones at the Police last summer, after another terrorist killed children in a Liverpool kindergarten, have all received massive sentences—most over 4 years—some longer. Jihadi justice in Britain. British Immigration Lawyers have this week secured the stay in Britain of one of Albania’s biggest violent criminals, Gjelosh Kolicaj. Britain is now a holiday destination for international terrorists and criminals. And unwanted Royals.

There are now 85 Islamic Shariah Courts operating in the UK. They have ordained over 100,000 Islamic marriages. These attract Muslims world wide wishing to grant divorces, marriages, ‘by the back door.’ This is ‘two tier’ Britain with the indigenous population hoodwinked by Labour to prosecute their own downfall. The ‘National Secular Society’ under Stephen Evans, the Chief Executive, said that it “undermines the principle of one law for all.’ This quasi legal system, giving rights to some groups and not others, go against ideas of Natural Law and Common law in the UK. No wonder Britain is seen as a laughing stock in the wider world.

Not all criminals wear balaclavas, however. A lot of them sit in the House of Commons. If you thought that Starmer’s free £16,000 worth of dresses (for his wife surely?!) from Lord Ali or the Chancellor’s dodgy CV wasn’t bad enough, now there’s another brazen corruption scandal. This time its ‘Tulip’ Siddiq, the UK Treasury Minister, who has a remit to tackle financial corruption. She is accused of the embezzlement of billions in a dodgy Russian deal for a nuclear power station. Demure ‘Tulip’ is from the family of the previous regime of corrupt rulers and abusers in Bangladesh. Sheikh Hasina’s rule in Bangladesh was marked by massive corruption and human rights atrocities. Welcome to Britain Tulip! In previous periods of British History this would have brought the collapse of the government. But no—the Guardian gives it a tiny space next to the usual litany of knife murders, drug gangs from Pakistan and obesity. The Guardian‘s virtue soaked sot, Polly Toynbee, that darling of the left, remonstrates against people sending their children to private schools. She omits to mention that she sent her two children to £75,000 per year Bedales School. Happy New Year Polly!

All of this mayhem and malevolence was foreseen by the nineteenth century philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who outlined his two premises of modernity; ‘dread’ and the ‘demonic.’ Dread involves a type of fear. We see the abyss of modernity all around us but are strangely attracted to this mode of loathing. Now the ‘demonic’ is how we respond to the alienation. The demonic is our retreat into escapism and irresponsibility. Rather than becoming an ethical superman, aka Nietzsche, individuals retreat to superficial existence through the Internet, drugs and TV. They lose feelings for ethical issues. This trivial scintillation becomes the norm; fear and loathing becomes the norm. The endless circus of the ‘Spectacle’ ; the dread of another Royal scandal, another virus, another war, another Taylor Swift tour.

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Brian Patrick Bolger LSE, University of Liverpool. He has taught political philosophy and applied linguistics in Universities across Europe. His articles have appeared in the US, the UK, Italy, Canada and Germany in magazines such as The Independent, The Times, The American Spectator, Asian Affairs, Deliberatio, L’Indro Quotidiano Indipendente di Geopolitica, The National Interest, GeoPolitical Monitor, Merion West, Voegelin View, The Montreal Review, The European Conservative, Visegrad Insight, The Hungarian Review, The Salisbury Review, The Village, New English Review, The Burkean, The Daily Globe, American Thinker, The Internationalist, and Philosophy News. His new book, Nowhere Fast: Democracy and Identity in the Twenty First Century, is published now by Ethics International Press. He is an adviser to several Think Tanks and Corporates on Geopolitical Issues.

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