The first thing the mob kills is its own humanity. Long before they sink their collective claws into the target of their flapping ire, they lay waste to their own decency. We see this in the digital hounding of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Behold the ugly gloating over a man’s downfall. Witness the peddling of false accusations. The shame, right now, belongs less to Andrew than to those who have made a bloodsport from his troubles.
We don’t even know if Andrew is guilty. He hasn’t even been charged
What do we want from Andrew? When will the mass stalking of him like a wounded deer finally be satiated? When his head is on a spike? When all memory of him is scrubbed from the public record? I get it – Andrew is far from a sympathetic character. He strikes me as boorish, pompous, and unlikely to take kindly to republican riff raff like me. But so what? Don’t even the disagreeable deserve fair treatment and the presumption of innocence?
The hunting of Andrew has gone too far. Admit it – you can feel it. His arrest this week on suspicion of misconduct in public office unleashed yet another round of prideful animus for the former prince. Social media was a riot of malicious glee. Then came that photograph of him in the back of his car following his release from custody. He looks startled, haunted, frightened. The mob lapped it up. They wrung pleasure from his pain.
That picture is everywhere now. On the front page of every paper – naturally – and all over X. It has been turned from an image of one man’s anguish into the emblem of a dying elite. The relish of the mob over Andrew’s hollow-eyed torment horrifies me. One comic whipped his followers into a frenzy of medieval jeering by saying this is the face of a man who after 66 years of coddled life has finally ‘had the briefest of glimpses of the real world’. ‘Plenty more where that came from, I sincerely hope’, he said.
We don’t even know if Andrew is guilty. He hasn’t even been charged. Will I be denounced as a snivelling apologist for the venal elites if I humbly suggest we let justice take its course? Right now, Andrew is as innocent of the crime of misconduct in public office as you are, dear reader. Praying for the swift ruination of a wealthy former royal is no better than dreaming of the stocks for a poor woman suspected of stealing bread – in both cases a twisted clamour for vengeance drowns out the enlightened ideals of justice.
Then there are the outright smears, which always attend mob outbursts. The witchfinders of social media are crowing because, in their estimation, someone is finally facing justice for the ‘demonic sex ring’ run by the late Jeffrey Epstein. Meme after meme hints at depraved sexual activity by Andrew. But that is not what he is accused of. Andrew has long denied the accusations made by Virginia Giuffre. That case is closed, settled out of court. The suspicion is that Andrew shared official documents with Jeffrey Epstein back when he was a UK trade representative between 2001 and 2011. That’s it. It’s less Eyes Wide Shut than The Thick of It. Let the police investigate.
I know – asking for calm and reason from the Epstein obsessives is like asking a baby to recite Shakespeare. Nothing will dislodge their feverish belief that Epstein was the wily mastermind of a global cult of Satan-worshipping paedos, and that Andrew was one of them. Slander and calumny come naturally to the mob. In their eyes, every weapon, even lies, can be deployed in the hunt for the hated one.
Republic, the anti-monarchy pressure group, has been giddily whipping up anti-Andrew sentiment. As a lifelong republican, I find their antics shameful. The case for a republic should be made positively. It should be about appealing to the good moral sense of the everyday Brit, whom us republicans trust to choose for themselves their head of state. In marshalling mob hearsay against a former prince, Republic is betraying republican principles. They’re playing the very games of court gossip and medieval finger-pointing that republicans once wanted to consign to the history books.
Then there is the King’s behaviour. His perfunctory remarks on Andrew’s arrest feel cold, unbecoming of a brother. There is no expression of fraternal concern, no plea for calm in the digital realm, no defence of Andrew from the truthless accusations that bubble like effluent in the cesspit of social media. I have five brothers. If one of them was going through what Andrew is going through, I’d be right in his corner insisting on fairness and truth. Your Majesty, I know you have your differences with Andrew, but you know what they say – me against my brother, but my brother and I against the world.
I can hear the cries from the cellars of the Epsteinheads: ‘How can you defend Andrew?!’ Actually I’m trying to defend the presumption of innocence. And truth. And reason over hysteria. Destroying the principles of Enlightenment just to get one over on a posh bloke you don’t like is human folly of the most demented kind. Stop.
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