Accidental Lessons from Hollywood on Monarchy

The 1939 film "Juarez", a biopic of Mexico's most famous president, is well worth looking at for monarchists, even if that seems odd. Juarez is upheld as the 'Abraham Lincoln of Mexico' and this point is driven home hard in the film to the extent that Juarez is rarely seen on-screen without a portrait of Lincoln in the background. It is a love letter to Benito Juarez and makes no apologies for that. However, it does not vilify Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlota either. Being all about deifying Juarez, it certainly is against the monarchy and their very presence in Mexico, however, it spares the idealistic couple and focuses its wrath on the French Emperor Napoleon III. From the perspective of this film, Napoleon was the real villain, a wicked tyrant on a mission to eradicate democracy and republicanism in the New World whereas the handsome young couple, Maximilian and Carlota, are pitiable dupes; good people tricked into an "evil" enterprise by a manipulative Frenchman. Because of this, the Emperor actually comes off as a rather sympathetic figure. For a broad overview of the film, you can read a review of it here.

For me, one part of the film, two scenes, really stand out as being worthwhile, though they will be of most benefit only to those who know their history and in light of the events of our own time. In the first, Emperor Maximilian comes to meet with the captured rebel General Porfirio Diaz in his prison cell, in an effort to convince him to take a message to his president, offering to make Juarez the Prime Minister of the Mexican Empire. Emperor Maximilian has some very good lines as he makes the case for having a free and liberal society with a benevolent monarch at its head as a sort of safety valve. He presents such a good case that he seems to have won Diaz over and convinced him that the Emperor is a man of sincerity who wants the same things for Mexico that Juarez wants and Diaz goes to deliver this message to the President along with his offer to make Juarez his premier and allow him to run the government of Imperial Mexico. The next scene is Juarez, with kindly bemusement, listening to the naive, young general who has been duped by Maximilian. Juarez then starts preaching the republican gospel to Porfirio and showing him the error of his ways.

This scene, coming after the heartfelt speech of Emperor Maximilian in the previous one, is enough to make any monarchist who is familiar with the history of republicanism, and Mexico in particular, roar with laughter at how Hollywood inadvertently shows just how painfully wrong Juarez was in all of his speechifying on the glories of democracy. In the first place, they make much about the constitution that Juarez wrote, however, any honest historian of the period knows that Juarez himself violated the constitution he wrote on numerous occasions. Part of what makes constitutions ultimately worthless is that they can only do good if they are adhered to voluntarily, which could be done without them, and they have no power on their own to prevent anyone from violating them. Even the United States is proof of that and it has a record better than most republics in that regard.

Juarez explains to poor, ignorant, Porfirio that Maximiliano duped him. When Diaz explained how honest and sincere the Emperor was, Juarez responds that, "virtue is a powerful weapon in the hands of an enemy" which is meant to sound "wise" but is absurd if you think about it for more than a second. It essentially says that Maximilian is wrong regardless of whether he is wicked or virtuous. He says that the unbridgeable gulf between himself and Maximilian is "democracy" and that this is the right of men to rule themselves. He explains that since a man never rules himself into bondage, freedom flows from democracy like the rivers flow from the mountains, just as naturally and serenely. This is, of course, quite hilarious given that Mexico itself democratically voted itself into bondage more than once. The PRI, for example, held tyrannical control over Mexico for the better part of the last century. Yet, the current President of Mexico was the leader of the PRI, voted back into power after a break of only two non-PRI presidents. It is also extremely laughable in the context of Juarez, a man who came to the presidency not by election, speaking to Porfirio Diaz who would go on to lead a rebellion against Juarez, then run for president himself, winning on the promise that he would serve only one term, only to then rule as dictator of Mexico for the next 35 years!

It is quite a howl that virtually everything Juarez and Diaz talk about in these scenes as being the major problems of their country; too much land owned by too few, a privileged elite prospering while the masses are impoverished, freedom of speech being suppressed, even selling out to foreign influences (such as the French) are ALL accusations made by many against General Diaz himself during his hold on power from 1877 to 1911 (with a small break in there). At the end of the scene, Juarez says, again -so profoundly, that when a monarch misrules, he changes the people but when a presidente misrules, the people change him. A perfect ending really, given that the liberal-democratic leaders of North America and Western Europe are doing precisely what Juarez said the wicked monarchs do, they are changing out their peoples for a new batch that will keep them in power. Irony doesn't begin to describe it. And yet, what is the final cherry on top of this heaping bowl full of republican hypocrisy? The fact that Juarez, the native Mexican fighting against an Austrian Emperor, was played by Paul Muni, real name Friedrich Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, a Jew from Galicia in what was then Austria-Hungary. So, yes, instead of giving the part to a Mexican actor, Benito Juarez was played by an actor from Austria.

Oh Hollywood, you really are too much sometimes...

When Does the Republican Magic Work?

The liberal democratic republican model makes great claims for itself. Even more extensive are the claims of the socialist republican model which promises a communist utopia of absolute equality for all. Liberal republicans (who truly believe in their system) will join us backward reactionaries in noting that the revolutionary, socialist republican model has utterly failed everywhere it has been tried and only persists in countries where it is supported by foreign powers or has largely abandoned its original Marxist economic principles. However, the liberal republicans are less willing to look at their own record of success in living up to the great claims they make for themselves. They, to be fair, have never promised equality of outcome as the Marxists do but they have, nonetheless, claimed to be better than any other system for organizing human endeavor which the world has ever seen in the history of existence. That is quite a claim.

Most liberal republics, however, clearly do not have much of a record of success to back up such claims as we have detailed on these pages before. The republicans of France, for example, can hardly claim to have delivered maximum human happiness and contentment for their people considering that France is currently on her fifth republican incarnation in the fairly short historical period since the French Revolution. The liberal republican model in China hardly drew its first breath before degenerating into civil war, ending only in succumbing to a communist dictatorship. The republican records of success in places such as Latin America or Africa range from fair to appalling and in Europe the most successful countries have been and still are monarchies. On the continent, the most looked-to republic has been the Federal Republic of Germany which, again, does not have much success behind it.

The Weimar republic was a degenerate disaster which easily succumbed to National Socialism and the post-war republic has been fairly prosperous in economic terms but in virtually nothing else and could hardly be said to fit the ideal liberal republican model in any event what with its constant banning of political parties and speech codes which make it clear that the German people are not to be trusted. That is what republicanism is supposed to be all about and yet, the laws of Germany show that they do not trust their people but rather firmly believe that if they are ever able to hear the arguments for National Socialism, discuss or debate such a subject, or the Holocaust, the German people will immediately rush headlong into another Nazi dictatorship. That the Germans would be in the position they are today is hardly surprising, and the idea of the democratic “will of the people” might be seen as not such a priority, given that every generation of German children since 1945 have been routinely marched to museums on a regular basis to be told how terrible there are year after year.

The Italian Republic has certainly been no roaring success. There is much to admire about Italy and people around the world will talk about how great it is (I would too) but only in cultural terms. The people, the art, the music, the food, the antiquities are all great but no one ever boasts about the government which is top-heavy, corrupt and which has buried the future of Italians in crippling regulations and massive debt. The First Spanish Republic was so incompetent that it collapsed very quickly and the Second Spanish Republic almost immediately started down the path to Marxist dictatorship and quickly degenerated into mass murder and finally a civil war which saw it destroyed. Where is the great republican success story? The countries in Europe that people point to as the most successful and the ones which more people want to move to are all monarchies; the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

However, if all else fails, liberals can always point to the one country that mesmerizes people all over the world, the one which both her friends and foes make the center of all life on the planet; the United States of America. Even in America-bashing Europe, the liberals almost invariably point to the United States and to the Founding Fathers of America as the great success story and the example for others to follow. Yet, the liberals, and the left-liberals in particular, cannot seem to get their story straight. On the one hand, they believe that America is so wonderful and so superior to all other countries in the world that it is positively cruel and inhumane to expect people to live anywhere else, while on the other hand being the ones most eager to provide skeptics like myself with the longest list of American failures or to respond to the likes of President Trump with the assertion that, “America was NEVER great!”

That America has done better than other republics, I have never denied. However, I fail to see how the USA can be claimed as the great, liberal, success story when the liberals themselves continuously redefine their measure of success. For example, liberals certainly claim to believe in democracy but, what is democracy? Does it even exist? I ask the question in all seriousness because the supporters of this ephemeral thing do not seem to have a substantive answer. Originally, in the USA, democracy meant that all landowners could vote. Then, for most of early American history it meant that all free, White, adult men could vote. But that was not democracy because later it meant that all men of any race could vote. However, it turns out, that wasn’t really democracy either because later still women were given the vote and that was democracy. Now, in at least one state I know of, the definition is about to change again to include convicted criminals, so I do not see how anyone can say that we have democracy clearly defined even after several centuries have gone by in America.

Similarly, if the American liberal democratic model is all about freedom and liberty, why are we constantly hearing about the people who do not have these things and why are we still struggling to achieve them? There was the struggle to end slavery, the struggle for worker’s rights, the struggle for women’s rights, the struggle for civil rights, the struggle for “gay” rights and so on and so forth. Has everyone ever been satisfied with their state of affairs in the United States? I am sure the modern social justice warriors would say that only straight, white, males have been satisfied in America. If true, that is hardly a record of success and if, as the right-liberals would say, this is not true, they still cannot then explain how the American system which they so idolize failed to protect itself from the likes of the social justice malcontents and troublemakers. The more right-leaning liberals would also have a hard time explaining how such gross violations of constitutional rights was able to occur in the Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt administrations. Ah, but, we are told, those cannot be held against the liberal model because it was times of war and great national crisis when Lincoln used military force to suppress the state government of Maryland or when Roosevelt put American citizens in “internment” camps.

That could be a fair point, though the United States government was not at war when federal agents entrapped Randy Weaver into a minor firearms violation and then murdered his wife and son when he refused to be an informant for them. The USA was not at war when federal agents (some of the same ones in fact) stormed and incinerated a commune of religious oddballs near Waco, Texas. No one was ever punished for any of these atrocities, few people remember them or really care. You might even be scolded for caring at all on the grounds that Randy Weaver was probably a racist and the Branch Davidians were a creepy cult. Fine, except the liberal standard they set for themselves claims that people are not supposed to be punished for their opinions or religious beliefs no matter what others may think of them. Not that I am willing either to brush aside the earlier suspension of vast constitutional rights just because it was wartime. Is that not in itself a damning indictment of the liberal republican model that it can only be expected to work when everything is fine and there are no emergencies? Are the traditional monarchies of history ever extended this same courtesy?

The answer, of course, is no. Freedom of speech is widely trampled on in the liberal regimes of the world today, yet, again, the United States is upheld as the exception to this. When you point out that many people are silenced, the response will be that they are silenced by private companies and not by the government. This is a distinction without a difference, the people in question are still being silenced. Liberal republicans, of course, would not allow traditional monarchists to get away with this such as by saying, just as truthfully, that the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church never put heretics to death, the inquisitors simply determined if heresy was present and, if it was, handed the guilty party over to the secular authorities to deal with. No, the liberal republicans would say that the Church and the monarchy were both complicit in suppressing religious dissent. They would not say that when Czar Nicholas II closed the State Duma, as he was repeatedly forced to do, that, as with the actions of American presidents, that the circumstances of the time made such a thing necessary, they simply dismiss him as an autocratic tyrant regardless of the facts of the matter.

The bottom line is this: if liberalism is supposed to be all about the power of the people and allowing the people to do exactly as they please; why are so many people in even the most “successful” of liberal societies so constantly unhappy and discontented? The answer, as should be all to obvious by now given recent events in both Europe and America, is that the people are not actually ruling themselves, they never have done and doubtless never will. They are being ruled but not in an open and honest way and this means that they are being manipulated by those who are their rulers but do not wish to be seen as such. This, I think, is something no traditional monarch has or could ever be accused of doing. For them, such a thing would have been unseemly as well as unnecessary but in the liberal system of idealism, it must be done to maintain the charade, to keep hiding the truth that liberalism is just as totalitarian as every other political “ism” that has ever been devised.

The Empire of Lies

One of America's most important "Founding Fathers" once referred to his vision of the United States of America as an "Empire of Liberty". A better description of modern republicanism in general could be the "Empire of Lies". Jefferson, of course, knew that his phrase in the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal" was a lie when he said it. The struggle which prompted that phrase was based on a number of 'whoppers' such as the colonies being over-taxed (in fact, they were hardly taxed at all) to the claim that they could not be taxed since they had no representation in the British government when, in fact, they wanted no such representation because they could have been easily outvoted by the much larger population of Britain which was also much more heavily taxed and likely none too sympathetic with their receiving all of the benefits of British rule while shouldering hardly any of the cost.

We have lately been “treated” to two sides of the political spectrum in America arguing over “free speech” when neither of them actually believe in such a thing. The left shouts people down or resorts to violence to silence speech they disapprove of and, while the right has not done the same (such as in regards to the protests of the national anthem), that may well only be because they are unable to. As with all people of all times, they refuse to tolerate anyone disparaging that which they hold most dear. In the old days, it was speaking disrespectfully of the king or of Christianity that would land you in hot water, today it is more often speaking against the “narrative” of the ruling elite.

Also, recently, after the horrific mass-shooting in Las Vegas, we have the left telling another big lie which is that they are all about “gun control” and if only we could take guns away from people, all would be well. They don’t mean a word of it. If they did, they would not have put a stop to Mayor Giuliani’s program of “stop and frisk” in New York City which was aimed at getting illegal firearms off the streets. However, it seemed that the people with illegal firearms were too consistently of one color and so this was deemed “racist” and had to be stopped. So, by their actions, we know that any effort at “gun control” is really only an effort to suppress gun ownership by one segment of the population and not the population as a whole. After all, that “equality under the law” jargon has been shown to be nothing but a lie as well. The law only applies to certain people and some people are ‘more equal than others’.

Lies are the foundation of our modern society. Everyone knows this, it is only that few wish to seriously address it. Everyone in probably every society knows some version of the joke about politicians, how they pretend to tell us the truth and we pretend to believe them. The lies are positively essential when you have a society based on vague, ephemeral, unrealistic and unobtainable “ideals” rather than actual reality. Equality is not a reality and no amount of legal paperwork, five-year plans or social engineering can ever make it so. Popular sovereignty is a lie, there are those who rule and those who are ruled and that is just as true today as it was in the age of absolutism, the Middle Ages or ancient Rome. The separation of church and state is a lie and an increasingly obvious one. The official religion of every modern state is not always a traditional religion but it is at least a pseudo-religion. Often, this too is simply a “narrative” and that narrative will be defended with all of the zeal of the Dominicans of the Inquisition.

Modern Germany offers a plethora of examples. Freedom of assembly? Only for those approved of by the elite. Democracy? The Germans never voted to make themselves an endangered species. They never voted to get rid of the Kaiser and in this Germany of government ‘by the people’, the choice of going back to the Kaiser is legally forbidden to them. Freedom of speech is an obvious lie everyone knows about and it has been mentioned here before. Tell someone you think the Armenian genocide did not happen and you may be thought a crank but tell someone you think the Holocaust did not happen and you will be put in prison. Fly a communist flag, you may offend a few but will be in no trouble. Fly a Nazi flag and, again, you will go to prison. In Nazi Germany, all parties but one were banned. Modern Germany gives you a wide selection of parties to choose from but only those the ruling elite approves of. We are told, of course, that this is because some ideas are simply too dangerous to be allowed a hearing. That is fair enough, however, it also means that the people who lie and say they believe in self-rule by "the people" do not believe the people are intelligent enough to refrain from supporting the Nazis if they were able to hear them and consider their ideas. Obviously, once again, the whole basis of their system is a lie.

The French Republic, likewise, rests on a bed of lies. The lie that the Revolution was in any way glorious rather than an orgy of self-destruction, the lie that the revolutionaries ever actually delivered on any of their high-sounding promises, the lie that the republic prevailed because of its superiority rather than the inability of the royalists to present a better alternative, all the way up to more recent lies such as what the French were doing in World War II. Some things, such as the storming of the Bastille being a heroic enterprise, are simply lies but the French Revolutionaries are more likely to lie by omission. This is quite common nowadays. There is simply no way to put a positive spin on something like the crushing of the Vendee uprising, the September Massacres or how the little Dauphin was abused, tormented and finally starved to death so such things are simply not talked about at all.

Practically all of our modern lives are based on lies. The education system is full of lies designed to feed the narrative of our rulers, as is the news media and much of pop culture. Our economic system is based on lies. Napoleon Bonaparte once said that, "History is a set of lies agreed upon". Substitute the word "currency" for "history" and this statement is just as true. Our money has value because our government lies to us and tells that it does, simply because they say so, and we believe them because not to would be disastrous. So much of our economies today depend on people making bets on the profits to be made on products that have not even been manufactured yet. We buy, sell and trade success or loss on items no one has produced. Not all of course, but a great deal of it is all based on nothing concrete, nothing substantive. In other words, lies, selling a product you do not have for imaginary money from someone else. And, it all goes on because to admit the lie would cause the entire facade to come crashing down and leave everyone in ruins. One of the "benefits" of globalism is that all the nations of the world are now members of a suicide pact.

Once upon a time, all of this was not so. In the pre-revolutionary days things were quite different. Not that lies did not exist in those days, they certainly did, but because before the revolutionary era there was no mass-politics, no politicians and thus no need to resort to wide-scale deceit in order to win and hold on to power. In the days of traditional monarchy, the system was not based on lies but on straightforward loyalties and obligations. Monarchs were monarchs of peoples, their peoples and their only concern was what was in the best interests of their peoples. The King of the English, the King of the Franks, the Emperor of the Romans etc did not have ideologies, political parties and pressure groups tearing at them. They did not have welfare states to fund (the Church and the guilds took care of such things), they did not have an entire system of government based on false and absurd ideals that required an army of propagandists working 24/7 to maintain and adjust the flow of lies. You knew who was in charge, you knew who had power over you, you knew what your obligations were and you knew who was responsible if things went badly.

I doubt many today could even imagine how much more simple, direct and honest things used to be in the days before every man, woman and child was expected to be involved in politics. I doubt many can imagine what it was like before everyone in society was locked in constant ideological warfare with their fellow citizens. It was the way life was once. There were no Tories, Labourites and Liberal Democrats, there were just Englishmen. There were no Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Greens and so on, just Germans, Frenchmen and so on all wanting to make the best of their lives, to live in peace and not be plundered by the neighbors. Your king was your king, your lord or other local authority was well known as were his obligations. A society without politics, without political parties, seems endlessly attractive to me. I wonder if we are becoming so inundated with lies these days that others might start to feel the same?

The Republican Menace in Australia

Recently, traitorous politician Bill Shorten, leader of the Labor Party of Australia, announced that if he becomes the next Prime Minister, he will hold another referendum on the monarchy in his first term (article here). For quite a few decades at this point, the mainstream media, the political class and the academics (all the usual suspects) have been pushing for Australia to become a republic and to sever the last remaining link with the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth Realms, that link being HM the Queen. As most readers probably know, this culminated in a referendum in 1999 on abolishing the monarchy and becoming a republic with a president chosen by parliament. A slight majority of the public voting to remain a constitutional monarchy and none of the Australian states backed the move. That, along with new royal weddings, babies and the usual thing that generates warm feelings for the monarchy, meant that the republican debate was set aside for a while. However, the respite did not last long.

Today, the situation seems more serious given that the political class seems to be increasingly republican. The Green Party has long supported Australia becoming a republic, the Labor Party does too as seen by Shorten’s promise but even the (allegedly) right-of-center Liberal Party is currently led by a republican, the sitting Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The only difference seems to be when this should happen as Prime Minister Turnbull said that he sees no chance for a republican victory while Queen Elizabeth II still lives but that, after Her Majesty departs this mortal coil, the time will be right to strike as treason will be more readily accepted against the less popular Prince of Wales than against the widely respected Elizabeth II. That, in and of itself, says a great deal about the character of republican traitors who pretend to be respected statesmen. Shorten, on the other hand, sees no reason to wait for the current Queen of Australia to depart this life and has no problem overthrowing this 91-year old World War II veteran who is the longest reigning monarch in British history. So, the leaders of both major Australian parties want to betray their sovereign, one just wants to do it sooner rather than later.

This has been particularly irritating for me as it so neatly fits into several issues I have recently been in rather heated arguments over. For one thing, it shows how even modern, muzzled, all but if not outright ceremonial constitutional monarchs cannot win. Those who complain that they are useless, rubber-stamps for the ruling class never stop to ask themselves why, if this is so, does the ruling class so consistently favor getting rid of them? The Australians, to my annoyance, have gone ‘all in’ with the republican mindset and I mean to include in that even the *good* Australians. They have basically said that Australia is a “crowned republic” and that a republic with a monarch is better than a republic without one. They maintain that they already do have an Australian Head of State as they argue that the Governor-General is actually the Head of State while HM the Queen is “Sovereign” of Australia but not the Australian “Head of State”. Yet, all of this ‘meeting halfway’ with the republicans has not been sufficient to settle the issue. Despite, as Australian monarchists themselves claim, being a republic in all but name already, the drive to remove the Queen as Queen of Australia still persists.

Personally, I think many of these groups in the Anglosphere, trying to do the right thing, do not help much in the long-term. For instance, the insistence on stressing the *Australian* monarchy or the *Canadian* monarchy and objecting to any use of the term, “the British monarchy” has never seemed like a proper hill to fight for to me. Not only does not seem a fight worth having, I do not see how it could ever possibly succeed. The Queen of Australia was born in Britain, raised in Britain, lives in Britain and so do all of her children, grandchildren and so on. You are simply never going to be able to make people see the British monarchy and the Australian monarchy as two totally separate things, even though, in terms of technical legality, they are. In Australia in particular, the problem that this does not solve is the acceptable level of anti-British bigotry in the country. There are no mobs at the embassy or violence against tourists but, let us be honest, the British are the one group of people it is most acceptable to denigrate, insult, mock and disparage in Australia. Saying anything derogatory about another ethnic group will land you in very hot water but you can say anything you like about the “bloody Poms” in Australia and get a laugh.

This is stupid but, I think, extremely significant because the fact is that the British and Australian peoples are actually not different peoples at all. By heaping scorn on the British, the Australians are heaping scorn on their own forefathers. Recently, I was rather surprised to hear a certain American speak about the War for Independence with at least a certain degree of regret on the grounds that it had created the false impression that the British and Americans were different peoples, that European colonists in America were no longer Europeans but, somehow, had become an entirely different breed. This was long ago but, obviously, this same thinking has led to noticeable problems in other countries of the former British Empire, from Canada to Australia, with these people suffering from an identity crisis in which they can only define themselves in a negative way; by what they are “not”. This is one reason why, I think, even ceremonial monarchs are still targets for the political class. They need people to be disconnected from their roots, their history, their heritage and so on. A monarch, even a powerless, largely ceremonial, constitutional monarch is still a symbol that these power-hungry politicians want to see brought down.

For the same reason, debates about the monarchy in Australia also tend to go hand in hand with the ‘on again, off again’ debate about the Australian flag with the treason-crowd wishing to do away with the current design because the presence of the Union Jack in the canton makes it far ‘too British’ for the very anti-British Australians. The point is to separate people from their roots, water down their identity and they will say or do anything to make that happen. In Canada, for example, it was argued that the traditional national flag, the Canadian Red Ensign, was ‘too British’ and that, under a new and unique design, the French Canadians of Quebec would feel ‘more Canadian’ and less like a different people. Well, as the facts of history have shown, they actually are a different people and changing the flag did nothing to change that fact. Quebec still tried to secede from Canada and becoming a republic on their own, however, by the time that happened, Quebec had too many non-French Canadians in the province to achieve the result that most French Canadians wanted.

Make no mistake about it, if Bill Shorten or Malcolm Turnbull and their kind have their way, Australia will cease to exist entirely. The vilification of the British has consequences. It is all usually wrapped up in the vilification of the British Empire and the desire of modern Australians to distance themselves from it. However, as a former colony, Australia would not exist without the British Empire. Do away with the monarchy, do away with the flag and what is left? The people, you might say. Not so fast. As Mark Steyn wrote early last year, while Australia has recently reached a record high population of 24 million, this is not the result of growth in the British or even European-descended majority population. Lebanese immigrants to Australia have 4 children per couple, Syrian immigrants have 3.5 while Australian born women have only 1.86. Within a few generations, as Steyn shows, this means that the majority population becomes a minority. Given how democratic we all are these days, that all means the descendants of those who built Australia will have no power at all. How then can Australia be considered Australia at all then? This is why I say these people are traitors, not just traitors to their Queen and country, but traitors to their people, their history, their entire civilization.

Monarchy and Morale

One of the most horrific but telling things I have ever read about the difference between a monarchy and a republic was written by Robert Katz in the last chapter of his book, “The Fall of the House of Savoy” on the subject of the end of the late Kingdom of Italy. In a paragraph praising the republic for what I would call listlessness and lack of ambition, Mr. Katz wrote, “Italy has fared well without the monarchy and its recurrent, restless dreams. The country no longer pretends to great powerhood. A president sits now in the Quirinal. Few people abroad know his name. The republic has no plan to march for glory.” I suppose one could easily cite this as a sort of test. If you can read lines like that and think, as Katz does, that this is a good thing, you must be a republican. If you think they are horribly tragic, you are probably a monarchist. This could be “Exhibit A” in making the case that liberal republicanism saps the morale of a great people. Personally, one of the things that I find most despicable, damnable and insidious about, in this case, the Italian republic, is that it has made people comfortable with mediocrity.

Simply consider the context. Italy, a land with almost nothing in the way of natural resources besides mineral water, once conquered the entire Mediterranean basin, ruled the known world and in many ways created western civilization as we know it. The cultural legacy of Italy alone was fought over by the great powers that rose up after the fall of Rome for centuries. Italian religious spread Christianity to distant shores and Italian navigators discovered new continents. Even after centuries of being divided and ruled by foreign powers, the Italians reunited, won their independence and, despite being the last out of the gate, set out again and built an empire that reached from the Alps to the Horn of Africa. When the Kingdom of Italy was brought down in World War II and this modest, most recent of the European colonial empires was demolished, we see the result in the waves of “refugees” from Eritrea and Somalia of what becomes of such places when the benefits of Roman civilization were withdrawn. Yet, led by a corrupt, top-heavy, talking shop that dispenses social welfare, people are dulled into passive acceptance with their elite always assuring them that this is the best they can expect.

I take a different view. I say that those, “recurrent, restless dreams” which Katz faults the House of Savoy for, are essential for the health and morale of any people. The liberal elites do not want this though, they simply want listless, passive consumers. They want fuel for their machine and nothing more. They do not want people to think, to dream or to aspire to greatness. Italy is only one example of this but it is a stark one. The republican ruling class has taken a population who are the sons and daughters of the Caesars and taught them to be content with being second-rate, even third or fourth-rate. If this were being done by parents, in a family, people would surely call it child abuse. Forget Augustus and Trajan, forget Legnano, forget Venice and Genoa, forget the Medici, Farnese and all the great houses of the Renaissance, forget the great strides, from Turin to Naples, forget the “fourth shore” and all those who sacrificed there, from those led by Scipio to those led by Graziani, forget the model plantations of Somaliland, forget the great art, the great buildings, the great music and literature. Just watch football on TV, wait for your check and buy yourself something nice. Something “Made in China”. Whatever you do, just don’t show any ambition.

Not every nation, of course, has the origins of the Roman Empire in their background, but most do have some period, long or short, of greatness that they once achieved. Lithuania, for example, regarded today as a minor Baltic state, overlooked by most, was a force to be reckoned with in the Middle Ages. Lithuania dominated Eastern Europe, controlling an area that stretched all the way from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Bulgaria, after the fall of the Byzantines, was the Bulgarian Empire, dominating the Balkans. They certainly had spirit, they certainly had high morale as when that empire was destroyed, the Bulgars did not lapse into apathetic acceptance. They strapped on their armor, fought back and built the Second Bulgarian Empire which again dominated the Balkans. They had what it takes to do great things and the blood in their veins was no different than that which flows in the veins of Bulgarians today. I look at most of the nations of the western world today and I want to shake them by their collective collars and shout, “YOU’RE BETTER THAN THIS!” What would your ancestors think of you if they could see you now?

One of the many southern European countries known for being in particularly bad shape economically is Portugal. Some take a fatalistic view of the situation but I do not. A cousin of mine is of Portuguese ancestry and she has a work ethic that would put the Puritans to shame. Portugal, yes, is a relatively small country but consider how it started. It had to fight for its liberation from Moorish rule and then, despite having relatively little land, a small population and few resources, Portugal still had ambition, still had a vision. They took risks, they tried new things and they became the leader in exploration, cartography, navigation and global trade. They built an empire that stretched from Brazil, all around Africa, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia and East Asia. They controlled virtually every major trade route and became the wealthiest country in Europe. The Kingdom of Portugal did all of that and the Kingdom of Portugal started with far less than what the Portuguese Republic has today. We know what great things were possible because they actually did them. There can be no excuse for settling for mediocrity with so many great achievements in your past.

Unfortunately, the fact that a few countries have allowed their kings to still live in their palaces and still call them kings, does not make them immune from this republican mentality, this socialist dependency and consumerist apathy. Monarchies in which the monarchs have been virtually taken prisoner by the ruling class often have the same affliction and none seems worse off than the nominal Kingdom of Sweden. The Swedes, at this rate, may well go down in history as the first nation to actually die from political correctness. It doesn’t have to be this way. Sweden does not have to be the way it is now. The Kingdom of Sweden, the Christian heirs of the Vikings, once dominated northern Europe. In fact, for a brief time, the King of Sweden dominated most of eastern as well as northern Europe. The Swedes once had the audacity to fight Russia and more than once the Swedes won wars against mighty Russia. They made the Baltic Sea a Swedish lake and played a decisive role in European, even world affairs. And what did they have to begin with? Again, they were a country with little useful land, a small population, few to no resources and had much more powerful neighbors like the Germans and the Russians, yet they still proved capable of great things. We know what Swedes can do and as long as the Swedes are Swedes, there is no reason they cannot be great again.

I will not go on at length like this but it is all the more frustrating because I easily could. Russia, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, France, Spain and so on. Each has a similar story in this regard. Each one has been far, far greater than what they are now. Each one is capable of so much more than what they have been coddled into accepting in this present year. In the past, the liberals and even the socialists claimed that under each of their systems, the people would be delivered from poverty and they would then be free to pursue greater things. It was a lie. Credit capitalism or socialism as you please, hardly any country these days is not a combination of the two, the result of freedom from poverty has not been the freedom to pursue greatness but a dull, sullen, sickeningly contented apathy. Which is not to say that there are none who struggle in our modern world, far from it, but generally speaking more people today live on some sort of government assistance than at any time previously and as long as they have their bread and circuses, their government cheese and their cable TV, their only concern is not losing that rather than trying to gain something more.

This is not surprising given who is in control of what people are taught, what they see and hear on a daily basis. In the past, people took great risks, tried new things, struck out into unknown seas, for the chance of fortune and glory and to bring salvation to the heathens. Today, however, those who did this are shamed, vilified and their motivations have been stripped from the modern populace. The desire for profit is terrible, we are told (though the ones doing the telling seem to profit a great deal), very out of step with our egalitarian ideals. To convert the heathen is likewise a monstrous notion, we are told, for the only ones who do not defame Christianity among our current elite are the ones who say that St Paul got it all wrong and that Christianity is not about converting others to save their souls but accepting the heathens as they are and not doing anything to change them or make them feel in the least bit challenged or uncomfortable. The republican mentality has drained the morale of people everywhere, created an infantile society more servile than any that bowed, kneeled or kowtowed to a prince. The republic has drained away the motivation and the inspiration of once great peoples. Is it any wonder they are now dying off in record numbers?

To return to the original example of the Kingdom of Italy, regular readers may recall a post from last year in which I pointed out an article by one Andrew Roberts of “The Telegraph” who denounced Donald Trump as the American version of the late Duce of Fascism, Benito Mussolini. His evidence for this boiled down to little more than the slogan, “Make America Great Again”. This proves the point very well, I think, about someone who truly embodies the republican mindset of today. I am sure Mr. Roberts would detest any number of things about the Fascist regime in Italy, such as its suppression of the socialists and Marxists, its insistence that men be masculine and women be feminine, its teaching of religion in schools and its encouragement of Italians to marry and have very large families. However, what most offended Mr. Roberts in this instance was that Mussolini wanted to ‘make Italy great again’, he wanted top-tier status, he even wanted to rebuild the Roman Empire. Simply the desire that your nation be great is considered a crime to these disgusting people and I have no hesitation and absolutely no shame in saying that, given the choice between the views of Andrew Roberts and those of Benito Mussolini, I would take the Duce every time, call me what you like.

When people have nothing to believe in and nothing to strive for, they sink into apathy and slow death. We are seeing this happen right before our eyes. It is a psychological sickness everyone must strive to overcome and save others from. I will not be as blunt as I might about the opinion of Robert Katz as he passed away from cancer a few years ago. However, given that he was sued for libel by the Pacelli family for some outrageous things he wrote about Pope Pius XII, I consider myself in good company for being completely opposed to his point of view. Italy has not “fared well without the monarchy” specifically because it no longer has the “recurrent, restless dreams” of the House of Savoy. Other than that, he is correct, “The republic has no plan to march for glory.” but it certainly does seem to have a plan to march toward the doom of western civilization entirely. That alone, I would think, would be enough to make any rational person an ardent monarchist.

How Indonesia Became a Republic

The fate of modern Indonesia was, like so many countries, decided during the Second World War. Prior to the conflict, Indonesia was a colony of the Kingdom of the Netherlands known as the Dutch East Indies. It had grown in importance under the Dutch Crown, first as a center of trade and later as a major oil producer after the Dutch discovered this vast natural resource and set up the necessary infrastructure to extract and export it around the world. As long as they did not threaten the colonial authorities, the Dutch mostly left the native principalities alone, allowing them to carry on in a cultural capacity and to deal with certain legal issues on a very local level. There had been some anti-colonial agitation, some of it nationalist, some of it Islamic in motivation, but the professional Dutch colonial army had little trouble dealing with it. To most observers the Dutch East Indies seemed like a model colony, as good as or better than most other European colonies around the world at the time. There was even a Volksraad or “People’s Council” made up of Indonesians which was established by the Dutch government in 1918 to provide local political representation. Even when World War II broke out in Europe and the Netherlands fell under German occupation, life in the Dutch East Indies went on much like before under the direction of Queen Wilhelmina and her government-in-exile in England. However, all of that changed in 1941.

President Roosevelt

In order to put pressure on the Empire of Japan, whose forces were engaged in conflict with the Republic of China, the United States placed an oil embargo (along with other vital resources and a freezing of all Japanese assets) on the island nation. Japan had purchased most of its oil from the United States but, so that alternative sources could not be obtained in the Dutch East Indies or Malaysia, the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt urged Great Britain and the Netherlands to join in the embargo as well. Both countries were eager to stay in the good graces of the United States for the assistance the American government was already sending them in their fight against the Germans and in hope that America would join the fight and bring its massive industrial, economic and military strength against Germany, the Churchill government and the Dutch government-in-exile quickly agreed to join in the boycott of Japan. As the Empire of Japan was placed in the position of submitting to American demands for a total withdrawal from China or to fight and take the resources they needed by force, the Dutch East Indies became a target. With its vast natural resources and limited defenses, it was an inviting one. With the homeland under occupation, there would be little the Dutch government-in-exile could do to further defend the East Indies in the event of an attack.

The decision was made in Tokyo to fight and the course of East Asian history was changed forever when Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. What followed was a land, sea and air version of “lightning war” done the Japanese way. The Philippines were attacked, the British colonies of Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore came under immediate attack as well. Operating from bases in French Indochina, the Japanese quickly brought Southeast Asia under their control. The Dutch East Indies also came under immediate attack. As an archipelago, everything depended on the naval battle. The land forces of the Dutch colonial army were tough and determined but without naval mastery they would be isolated and unable to coordinate or keep themselves supplied. Still, they fought the invaders as best they could while another battle waged in the waters surrounding them. The Dutch resisted admirably, their tiny flotilla of submarines actually doing considerable damage to the Japanese fleet but the main fleet engagement proved disastrous. The Allies, hastily assembled, failed to coordinate properly and were soundly defeated by the Imperial Japanese Navy using the classic tactics of Britain’s Admiral Nelson.

General Hitoshi Imamura

After the naval defeat, the total Japanese conquest and occupation of the Dutch East Indies became inevitable and the island chain quickly fell to Japanese control. However, the Japanese had no clear plan about what to do with Indonesia once they had taken it. At first, as in other countries, the Japanese sought out nationalist, anti-European leaders to seek their collaboration. Some of these nationalist forces fought on against the Japanese just as they had the Dutch but others collaborated such as Sukarno and Mohammed Hatta. However, this was a result of the local Japanese commander operating on his own authority rather than based on a clear policy from the government in Tokyo. Lieutenant General Hitoshi Imamura released Sukarno from prison and, while making no promises regarding Indonesian independence, said that the occupation would go better if the locals learned to speak Japanese. Sukarno went to work at this and began organizing pro-independence forces in cooperation with the Japanese. However, not all Japanese were impressed by the way Imamura was running things and sent complaints up the chain of command. The result was an investigation which showed that Imamura was keeping order with only a minimum force and so advised Prime Minister Tojo and the Chief of Staff to allow him to continue. His policies were allowed to continue and he was even given command of an army group in the hope that he could send assistance to the beleaguered defenders of Guadalcanal.

The fate of Indonesia, however, was certainly not something that had been decided at that point. When Japan hosted the leaders of The Philippines, Burma, Thailand, Manchuria and the pro-Japanese government of China at the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere conference Sukarno was noticeably absent as were any leaders from Indochina where Japan was allowing the French colonial regime (answerable to Vichy) to remain in charge. Kenryo Sato, chief of the Army Affairs Bureau, said this was because Prime Minister Tojo was reluctant to see Japan give up control of the vast resources of Indonesia, saying that the locals were not “quite ready to handle all that treasure”. This would not be surprising given how, particular in the war situation, Japan vitally needed those resources. Even without it, Sukarno was working in collaboration with the Japanese and there was no shortage of talk and speculation about what the future might hold in the event of a Japanese victory. One idea was to merge Malaysia (minus the border territories handed over to Thailand) with the East Indies to create a “Greater Indonesia”. Sukarno, of course, presumed he would be in authority over such an entity.

Indonesian Homeland Defense Volunteer Army

None of this boded well for the cause of monarchy in the East Indies. The Dutch had taken a casual attitude toward the local princes. Coming from a constitutional monarchy themselves, they had no problem with the local princes as long as they caused the Dutch no trouble and stayed out of politics above the most local level. Such a situation could have endured under the Japanese were it not for the person of Sukarno. He detested all things traditionally Indonesian and was a very anti-capitalist, pro-egalitarian socialist. Although he was perfectly willing to make use of religion as a tool against the Dutch (just as he was willing to make use of the Japanese if it could aid his cause) he was himself no devout Muslim but an ardent secularist. He despised the native monarchies of Indonesia, blaming them and what he termed as “feudalism” for allowing Dutch colonial rule to ever take hold in the first place. Any future for Indonesia with him in charge was a future that would have no place for the traditional monarchies of the region.

Sukarno established a militia force allied with Japan and helped organize a huge force of Indonesian laborers to build, to clear land and to gather resources for the Japanese war effort. Not everyone in the Japanese leadership trusted him but he seemed the only option to work with and none could complain about how the occupation was going. As the war dragged on and the situation became increasingly worse for Japan, there was also more talk about independence to keep Indonesia on side. By the end of 1944 Japanese Prime Minister Kuniaki Koiso promised Sukarno that independence would come but would not set a definite timeline. The Japanese military authorities began to allow the establishment of an Indonesian government, under Sukarno, but Sukarno himself was not given the green light to declare independence until the summer of 1945. He was actually brought to Tokyo, heaped with praise and honors and told he had the full blessing of Japan to establish an independent Indonesia but this was not until after the first atomic bomb had been dropped and negotiations for surrender were under way. Of course, Sukarno was not told about this at the time and did not learn about it until after he returned to Indonesia and was informed by some of his followers who heard about it from an Allied broadcast on a hidden radio.

Sukarno declaring independence

Sukarno was, given this, rather reluctant to declare independence for feat of how the Allies would react given that they had just won the war. In fact, he had to be practically forced to make the declaration. However, his reluctance was rather pathetic as he had already collaborated as closely as anyone could, even more than some leaders whose countries actually were given their independence by Japan, and so he should have been just as “tainted” as other leaders like the Vietnamese Emperor Bao Dai, in fact even more so since the Vietnamese Emperor collaborated with the Japanese for only a few months in 1945 between the time that the Japanese removed the French administration and their final surrender. In any event, Sukarno did declare independence and no one at the time paid any attention other than the Japanese authorities. The Dutch actually requested that the Imperial Japanese Army stay in place in Indonesia rather than be surrendered and repatriated to Japan until their own colonial forces could return. The British did something similar in southern Vietnam which is the only reason South Vietnam remained free of communist control post-war. Unfortunately, unlike in Vietnam, the Japanese refused to cooperate and a few thousand even stayed in Indonesia to fight for independence under Sukarno. Of course, the fact that he would have spent the war in prison rather than rising to a position of national leadership thanks to the Japanese, and in spite of the fact that they basically trained the hard core of the army he would lead against the Dutch in the war for independence, Sukarno still had the audacity to demand (and receive) more than a billion dollars in compensation from Japan for all that Indonesia had suffered under their occupation -an occupation he fully endorsed and collaborated with.

However, as it turned out, Sukarno did not need to be too worried about how his collaboration would look to the Allied powers because, ultimately, the only Allied power whose approval mattered was the United States but we will come to that in a moment. The Netherlands certainly did not recognize his declaration of independence and were soon returning to reestablish control of Indonesia. Many Dutch people and certainly Queen Wilhelmina herself, were full of righteous indignation over the whole affair. They viewed the entire invasion, at a time when the homeland was occupied and in a fight for its survival, as a stab in the back and had not forgotten the extreme misery suffered by the Dutch people who had been living in Indonesia with many suffering horrifically at the hands of Sukarno’s followers who took sadistic glee in tormenting their former rulers when the Dutch were helpless and the Indonesians were backed up by the Imperial Japanese Army. For Queen Wilhelmina, there was no debate on the subject; the Dutch Crown would be restored but even after all that had happened, she was willing to grant full self-government to a proposed “United States of Indonesia”. When Sukarno and his party rejected this, the Dutch Queen determined to go to war and deal with the nationalists as both rebels and collaborators.

Queen Wilhelmina

This would not, in most cases, have included the Indonesian principalities. Their suffering came entirely at the hands of Sukarno who was as anti-monarchy as one could be and he made no secret of that with the basis of his government being a sort of pan-Indonesian nationalism, democracy (under his control of course) and Marxist style socialism. When he gained power and where and when he had the ability he carried out a horrific sort of “cultural revolution” all his own. He called this a campaign for “social justice” but it was simply the sort of repression seen in leftist revolutions all over the world with the traditional elites and princes being persecuted or killed off. When the Dutch launched a military campaign to regain control of Indonesia, some of the local princes tried to stay out of it while others tried to join the revolution and so most ended up being punished by one side or the other and some by both. The princely states were wiped out in the course of the conflict or in the immediate aftermath in the usual round of “land reforms” which meant the confiscation of royal estates and princes and aristocrats being punished in show-trials meant to display the egalitarianism of the Sukarno regime.

It must be said, in all fairness, that to an extent the native monarchies made their cause an almost hopeless one because of their lack of unity. There were a large number of them, many had conflicting territorial claims and a great many had disputed successions. In fact, many had succession disputes that went back hundreds of years and which are still around today. Even during World War II and the revolution there were some that were still carrying on private little wars of their own against royal rivals to reclaim a certain state or overthrow some other branch of the royal family in question. Often, third parties, whether the Japanese, Dutch or native republicans, found it all a disorienting mess that it was better to just ignore or sweep away. Sukarno largely swept them away, though some who supported him sufficiently were allowed to survive and eventually some of the princely states were recognized by the Indonesian government in less oppressive times. That the country overall would be a republic was a forgone conclusion, at least so long as Sukarno won his war for independence against the Dutch.

Queen Juliana

What was extremely frustrating to at least some people in the Netherlands, and certainly to Queen Wilhelmina, was that the Dutch practically won the war. Full of understandable anger over all that had happened to the Dutch in Indonesia, they fought the war with zeal and tenacity. In virtually every major engagement the Dutch military forces were victorious, almost every operation was successful and even Sukarno himself was, at one point, taken prisoner by the Dutch. The communists even came out to try to take advantage of the chaos and seize power but they were defeated as well. Unfortunately, at this point of victory, the Netherlands was undercut by its former wartime ally; the United States. The Truman administration basically ordered the Netherlands to give up their victory and threatened to cut off Marshall Aid to the war torn country if the Dutch did not desist in all military operations in Indonesia. This, combined with growing complaints at home by the wealthy elites who opposed the war, forced the Dutch to give in. Queen Wilhelmina, exhausted and embittered, abdicated in favor of her daughter Queen Juliana. The new Queen recognized the independence of the Indonesian Republic the following year. It was an economic disaster for the Netherlands and a social one as well as the entire Dutch population of the archipelago (as well as many Indonesians) were deported back to the Netherlands, many of whom had never even visited the country.

Some of the Dutch and pro-Dutch forces tried to hold on in Eastern New Guinea, declaring it a separate colony as Netherlands New Guinea but the Sukarno regime claimed the territory of course and sent in military forces to seize it. These were defeated by Dutch troops and supportive natives. However, once again, a liberal American administration came to the rescue when President Kennedy (a long-time admirer of Sukarno) sent his brother Robert to the Netherlands to brow-beat the Dutch into abandoning West New Guinea, which took shape after an agreement signed in 1962. In the aftermath, Sukarno became even more vociferous in his anti-western rhetoric, first opposing the British in Malaysia, drawing closer to Communist China and the Soviet Union and then finally becoming more openly anti-American. He even withdrew from the UN for a time when America supported Malaysia taking a seat on the Security Council. About the only monarchy the Republic of Indonesia has remained on consistently good terms with has been Japan. Indonesia has been largest recipient of Japanese investment and charity and has been largely economically dependent on Japan ever since independence.

Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the aftermath of a failed coup that still managed to see Sukarno removed from power with America backing his successor Suharto who led the country until 1998. Some local monarchies still exist in a ceremonial capacity with their status recognized by the government (though they have no official position) while others have been swept away. Despite being virtually irrelevant in an overall republican system, plenty of the old titles are still being fought over by feuding claimants. Indonesia itself, despite its vast wealth in resources, has remained far from prosperous, peaceful or stable with various minor factions, some driven by political ideology, others by religion, continuing to cause trouble. What would seem to be most in order for the cause of monarchy in Indonesia would be some recognized judicial body to sort out royal claims and a greater political unity amongst the various princely families. Some such organizations already exist but they need to be mobilized for political action. This could then push for a conversion from republicanism to monarchy on a national scale with Malaysia providing an example for a sort of federal system that could work in Indonesia.

My Thanks to the Duke of Bavaria

I mean that sincerely. I wish a thousand appreciations to HRH Duke Franz of Bavaria. Why, you may ask? Because with the recent focus on Spain, the abdication of King Juan Carlos and the installation of His Majesty King Felipe VI the neo-Carlist republicans have been coming out of the wood work in the last few days doing their best to help bring about a Third Spanish Republic. I had to ask myself why these pretended legitimists are such a bigger pain than the neo-Jacobites out there (and they are out there, at least on the web) and the only conclusion I can come to is that the neo-Carlist republicans have a pretender to rally to and the neo-Jacobites do not because Duke Franz, God bless him, nor any of his predecessors going back to Bonnie Prince Charlie ever tried to claim to be the King of England, Scotland, Ireland and France. The neo-Carlist republicans, on the other hand, have Prince Sixte-Henri de Bourbon-Parma as their figurehead and I can only assume that is why they are so much more active in causing problems and trying to kill monarchism in Spain forever. So, on behalf of every actual monarchist and loyal monarchists across the United Kingdom and Commonwealth Realms (if I may be so bold), thank you Duke Franz, thank you from the bottom of my heart and I do pray God that you one day be restored to your rightful throne (as King of Bavaria).

Some, undoubtedly, will accuse me of being intentionally antagonistic by referring to the neo-Carlists as republicans. In the first place, I have no problem with that considering how antagonistic they have been recently and secondly, I say that because that is exactly what they are. Spain has a monarchy, they do not support it. They have nowhere near enough support to bring about any of the sort of changes they want, so by opposing the monarchy they are actively assisting in the creation of another republic. They are hurting the cause of monarchy and helping the cause of the republic, hence they are republicans whether they are honest enough to admit it or not. There is also no way on God’s green earth they could be called legitimists. The neo-Jacobites may or may not be republicans depending on their attitude to the British monarchy but that they are legitimists no one can deny. In the French royalist community the legitimist royalists are legitimists without question. The neo-Carlists, on the other hand, are nothing of the sort. In this area, again, they are republicans. This should be quite obvious by the very person of their royal front-man Prince Sixte-Henri. He has absolutely no legitimate claim on the Spanish throne at all. Period. He is leader of the neo-Carlists solely because he proved more popular than his brother Prince Carlos Hugo, who himself had no legitimate claim either.

The true Carlists of history came into being officially because of a legal dispute but also because they really did not like the wife of King Fernando VII who would be regent on behalf of his young daughter Queen Isabella II. In truth, both sides had some tradition on their side. As a legal matter, the Carlists were completely correct, King Fernando VII had not acted according to the law in the way in which he named his daughter as his successor. What is a bit ironic is that the Carlists were the ones who favored an absolute monarchy while the forces of the Queen Mother Maria Christina favored constitutional monarchy and it was the fact that Fernando VII was the last absolute monarch of Spain that made him think he could just do as he pleased and make his daughter his successor rather than his brother. As far as tradition goes, the Carlists were fighting to uphold the traditional Salic Law which did not allow a woman (or in this case girl) to become monarch under any circumstances. On the other hand, this had only been the tradition since the House of Bourbon replaced the House of Hapsburg in Spain which had died out. The earlier tradition in Spain allowed for female monarchs though males still had preference.

However, in an effort to gain greater support, the Carlists decided that while they were very attached to the Bourbon tradition of Salic Law, they were not so attached to the Bourbon tradition of centralizing power and so they denounced this and thus attracted a great deal of support from the regions that resented the loss of their old privileges to the government in Madrid. So, they were traditional in some ways, not so traditional in others but that they were legitimists no one could deny. That remained the case up until the time of HRH Infante Alfonso Carlos, Duke of San Jaime. He was the last male-line descendant of the original Carlist pretender the Count of Molina (Carlos V to his supporters) and after his death the senior male descendant of King Carlos IV (the last monarch before Fernando VII and all the trouble) would be the (by then deposed) King Alfonso XIII of the rival line. So, it was at that point that the Carlists ceased being legitimists because if they had, they would have embraced King Alfonso XIII and then his son Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona, his son King Juan Carlos I and his son King Felipe VI and we would not be having any of this fuss today. Instead, however, they abandoned bloodline legitimacy in favor of ideological popularity and Infante Alfonso Carlos (again, breaking the very laws the Carlist rebellion originally started over, only more so) determined that he could decide who would be his rightful successor and he chose the nephew of his wife, Prince Xavier of Bourbon-Parma.

Things really came to pieces during that time with the Carlists being split into a number of factions and that has continued until today with the most prominent faction basically deciding who the “legitimate” heir to the Spanish throne is based on his religious and political opinions, thus it landing on the person of Prince Sixte-Henri who is not even the legitimate heir to the Duchy of Parma to say nothing of the Kingdom of Spain. Infante Alfonso Carlos, the last legitimate heir of the Carlist line, had ordered his adherents to support Generalissimo Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War and they played a considerable part in his success and were a significant force in Spanish politics in the aftermath. However, their breakdown in unity, their abandonment of bloodline legitimacy and so on meant that they lost influence rapidly during the Franco years and have never since been a political force worthy of serious consideration. In recent years, or decades at this point, many (of the faction that did not go the Marxist route) attached themselves to the cause of Catholic groups such as the Society of St Pius X or those that refuse to accept the legitimacy of the Pope, saying that there has been no Pope since Pius XII or John XXIII (there is disagreement on that point). Obviously, it is a mess and even if they all came together they would still not have sufficient support to effect their grandest wishes and as it stands now, their own in-fighting would preclude them from even making a genuine effort at effecting change of any sort.

The problem with these modern-day neo-Carlists is that they manage to be both practical republicans in the present and totally insult the memory of the original Spanish Carlists who were legitimist monarchists at the same time. The fact that they carry on as they do, even in times of crisis for the Kingdom of Spain, is enough to make one speculate that they may be more than just inadvertent republicans, helping the cause of republicanism out of ignorance. They would have to get their own house in order before being able to have any chance of even the slightest effort at an actual political impact in Spain and so far they cannot even agree on which house is their own to start getting it in order. So, they attack and slander the existing and legitimate Spanish Royal Family, adding their voices to all those of the enemies of monarchy while having nothing but an even more godless republic to replace it with and, moreover, while their list of things they oppose grows longer. For example, while remaining staunchly Catholic, they condemn the Spanish monarchy for not being sufficiently Catholic while also condemning the Pope and the leadership of the Catholic Church for not being sufficiently Catholic. Perhaps, then, instead of wishing to change the government, monarchy and entire Royal Family of Spain they should focus first on making the Catholic Church more to their taste and teach and behave the way they think it should and then perhaps their dissatisfaction in Spain will take care of itself, perhaps the existing Royal Family will be given proper instruction and become ideologically acceptable to them. Focusing on one impossible goal at a time might make sense to some people.

Anyway, having probably wasted my time with that last bit there, I want to point out that not everyone, certainly not all Catholics, share this same ignorance and this can be proven by looking to Russia. First, keep in mind that the place in question here is the Russian Empire that was officially and zealously Russian Orthodox and recall that the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches have not gotten along very well for about a thousand years or so. I have read a number of history books written by Catholic authors which deal with the subject of the Russian Revolution. These were extremely partisan books which were not bashful about recounting the history of Catholic-Orthodox relations as being pretty black and white, with the Catholics in the right and the Orthodox in the wrong, one even going so far as to joke (I think?) that the sacking of Constantinople should be a feast day on the Catholic calendar. Now, keeping all that in mind, not one of these books recounted the Russian Revolution as anything other than the horror it was and while some may have had some criticism for the Emperor and Empress, every single one regarded them as good, God-fearing people who died a heroic death at the hands of the worst criminals imaginable.

Why do I point this out (this is a post about modern Carlists that started in Bavaria and has gone to Russia, don’t act so surprised)? Because even though each of these very partisan, Catholic authors would have regarded the ideal as Russia and the rest of the Orthodox world reuniting with Rome while offering their abject apologies and for Russia to become a Catholic empire “eastern style”, they knew that such a thing was not about to happen and that what did happen was that the traditional, religious, God-fearing Russian Orthodox monarchy was replaced by a murderous, godless Bolshevik regime that waged war on the very idea of any religion. In the same way, these same Catholic authors condemned the overthrow of King Charles I of Britain despite the fact that he was a Protestant because what was bound to come after was not going to be a Catholic Britain but a Puritanical one. On the opposite side, I have never come across a Protestant, British monarchist who cheered the French Revolution because it brought down a “Papist” monarchy that did not have a government or a church that they approved of. Would they feel different if the very Catholic and absolute monarchy of France had been replaced with one that was constitutional and Protestant? Perhaps, but that is not what happened and no one would be so great a fool as to think there was any chance of it.

That is the bottom line and that is one major reason why I call these neo-Carlists republicans. There is no more chance of the current Spanish monarchy collapsing and everyone in Spain deciding to make Prince Sixte-Henri of Bourbon-Parma the absolute monarch of a new Spain religiously administered entirely by the Society of St Pius X than there was of the French Revolution turning the country into a Protestant constitutional monarchy or the Bolshevik revolutionaries deciding to turn the Russian Empire into a Catholic monarchy. The odds are absolutely as ridiculously infinitesimal as that. Spain will have the monarchy it has or it will have no monarchy at all. For my part, being a monarchist is simple; I support the monarchy, the monarchy which would be reigning over me if things had gone differently in the past (and perhaps if there had been no series of wars over the succession the Spanish Empire could have been maintained) and I have drawn the line in the sand here. I cannot change the past but I can make a stand in the time and place that I am now and I say that I want no more monarchies to fall. In the world where I live, in the time that I live here, I can say, “no farther, not if I can help it”. It is for that reason that I will not abide or tolerate in any way anyone who does not support the precious few monarchies we still have with us today and why I say ‘thank you’ again to the Duke of Bavaria and why I say sincerely ¡Viva Felipe VI!

(Additional Note: The night before posting this I received two or three confirmations that neo-Jacobite republicans do exist and are indeed adding their voices to the republican mob, so I may have spoken too soon with my praise. I will hope otherwise and in any event still appreciate the Duke, and his predecessors, for having more sense.)