It’s gonna be a tough few days watching people I know mourn the death of a man born into wealth, born to serve as the head of a fundamentally unjust system, even in the midst of a family scandal over its ties to Jeffrey Epstein; but at least in this moment I can express some joy. Every king died is another straw on the camel’s back to get people asking “why do we even DO this?!” — there are people I know who actually agree with me that the monarchy is unjust, but they’re just attached to Harald’s personality cult nevertheless. Godspeed to every republican agitator in Norway! The old king is dead, the new king yet lives, death to monarchism!
Marg bar monarchy!
I can’t find it because search engines are useless now but. There was an amusing article for a few years back that talked about Norway the way western chauvinist media talks about global south countries.
Think: The Norwegian regime, rich in oil but harboring a civil society that worries international observers, is dominated by an octogenarian king.
I always get a kick out of describing Norway as “everyone’s favorite oil monarchy” and watching Liberals hem and haw about how that’s an unfair comparison
Closest thing I think was SoyViking following such format
WOLOLO
AYOYOYU
I have never understood how people could mourn a person who they have never met and who has never done anything for them.
I can kind of understand paradoxical relationships to artists or authors or streamers, at least they do something for you. But royals don’t even do that, the best case scenario is that they keep out of public scandal and spend their life cutting ribbons, smiling and doing small-talk with local dignitaries.
Why are people so emotional over this?
I have never understood how people could mourn a person who they have never met and who has never done anything for them
They feel the same way about monarchs as you do about Palestinian children. They delusionally see themselves in the royalty, in the obsolete vestiges of their feudal heritage, instead of as the descendants of peasants who faced oppression by the same boots oppressing the world today. To grasp that the monarchy is a part of the system keeping them poor is a revolutionary act and requires a systemic (marxist) analysis most people have never heard before
Another kkkrakkka down
Congratulations!
Funniest part is, our now new queen was buddies with Epstein lmfaooo
Heia Norge!!!
YASS KWEEN
YEEEEEEEEEHAW!
more dead monarchs, plz
I hope it hurt you blue-blooded bastard!
Contrary to popular belief, the blood of royals is not actually blue.
It’s purple due to the hemerythrin content, since all royals are descended from priapulid worms.
We love a dead monarch, don’t we folks!
The only good monarch is a dead one! (Or, y’know, the butterfly. Those are cute.)
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apparently he was cool on october 7th?
nevertheless
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on October 7 told King Harald V to keep his mouth shut, because it’s the ministry’s responsibility to handle condolences for other countries, not the king’s. And so the king kept his mouth shut, as he was basically obligated to do, and indeed the Norwegian state condemned Operation al-Aqsa Flood on his behalf. Harald did however go to the Oslo synagogue for the one year anniversary of Operation al-Aqsa Flood, along with his heir apparent, the current king Haakon VIII. If Harald hadn’t been advised to keep quiet by the very big and expensive PR firm that is the Norwegian state, we can only assume he would’ve personally said everything that the state said on his behalf in 2023, and everything he said for the one-year anniversary, which wasn’t exactly based anti-Zionism.
I’m assuming you might be referring to this post with a screencap of some Xitter Zionazi accusing Harald of “only expressing sympathy for the Palestinians” with a quote rexeet saying that Harald “may be the greatest king of all time rest in peace”. I reckon the average Xitter Zionazi does not know much of anything about the inner workings of Norway’s political system, and has been seeing red ever since Norway recognized Palestine, so I think this Zionazi’s subtextual attempt to characterize Harald as some sort of rabid anti-Semite who hates Our Good State of Israel™, comes partially from trying to make sense of how Norway could end up recognizing Palestine based on the Zionazis’ twisted and fundamentally idealist worldview, and partially from wanting to do a petty jab at the object of Norway’s ““national mourning”” as a tit-for-tat for the ““slight against Israel”” that was Norway’s recognition of Palestine.
The average Xitter anti-Zionist also does not know much of anything about the inner workings of Norway’s political system, and is quick to posture and dunk on Zionazis at any opportunity; which explains why the anti-Zionist user in the screencap apparently unquestioningly bought into the Zionazi’s inaccurate narrative just for an easy opportunity for a one-liner.
i see, yeah i was taking the dunk at its word.
Was he an effectual king? Maybe it was the Swedish king who just wore silly hats to football games. I could have sworn there was at least one technical monarchy where the king was more of a tourist novelty than anything else and was therefore was more profitable to maintain than worth abolishing.
I mean… Even the br*t*sh monarchy would probably lose its power pretty quick if it actually tried to use it tbh
I don’t think that one in particular is true. I remember reading something about the queen having some power to influence legislation. That one was actually super fucked
Yes, the British monarchy signs off on legislation and refusing to do so knocks the legislation back to the legislature, but if they started refusing to sign off on things for reasons the bourgeoisie disagreed with, that would be the beginning of the end for them, is my point.
Ahh, I misunderstood you. They have a pro-bourgeoisie influence on legislation which I called influence, but you mean that they couldn’t disagree with the bourgeoisie and get away with it. That totally tracks for me
Yup! The British monarchy are currently 1,000,000% aligned with the bourgeoisie, so they enjoy unparalleled power and privilege… As long as they do nothing cool. If they did? Oh goodness. Goodbye Charlie. (uncool)
Pretty much every European monarchy except Vatican City is portrayed as a quaint “tourist novelty” that’s more profitable to maintain than to abolish,[1] but frankly this is just “our quaint constitutional monarchies” versus “their barbarous absolute monarchies”: not to say that there are no differences between constitutional vs absolute monarchies — as I understand it it’s basically the difference between liberalism and fascism — I just want to emphasize that the monarch is in any modern monarchy the head of a bourgeois dictatorship, beholden to the interests of the ruling class as a whole, and able to act as a member of that same ruling class, regardless of whether they have a hypothetical legal right to act on their whims as head of state. I think it’s especially important to keep in mind how every liberal democracy is designed to be able to turn fascist when necessary and vice versa.
The Norwegian state and royal family have always had a keen interest in pushing an image of the monarchy as an inexpensive, folksy institution, but this is just propaganda largely built on secrecy, clever labeling of assets, and simply not drawing attention to the royal family’s actual cost and wealth. ↩︎
It’s almost hilarious the idea that they might turn the funny hat guy back into a vehicle for cringe politics.
