Stop slandering the dead - RIP Prince Philip

On April 9th, the Duke of Edinburgh and her majesty the Queen’s husband of 73 years passed away aged 99, and although this likely did not come as a shock to many people, it was still heartbreaking to know that the ‘grandfather of a nation’, and a man who has served so many in his vast lifetime, has died. Unfortunately however this didn’t stop nasty trolls slandering the name of a dead person - a person who is no longer here to defend himself - so soon after his death.

Anti-monarchists from across the world have shared countless TikToks, tweets, and Instagram posts mocking the death of Prince Philip, with some even making ridiculous claims with, usually, no sufficient evidence to support them. One Twitter user in a now deleted tweet talked about how the late Duke was ‘Nazi scum’, conveniently omitting the fact that he fought the Nazis in the Second World War. Many users also pointed towards, although legitimate, comments made by the Duke towards certain ethnic minorities; and whilst many of these comments were indeed quite politically incorrect, many were made over thirty years ago when these sorts of comments were pretty much socially acceptable, and although this does not make it correct, one cannot judge a person’s actions from a previous time in today’s context. These people are choosing to ignore all the work Prince Philip has done with people of colour both in the UK and in the Commonwealth countries and have chosen to go straight to some silly jokes made decades ago. How convenient.

Another thing I’ve noticed is the amount of ‘white saviourism’ amongst these social media posts. Considering the Prince’s comments were made about certain ethnic groups, maybe this is just me but I haven’t seen one person from those ethnic groups complain about them. More or less every person I have seen complaining about them have been white and completely unaffected by them. Now this does not mean white peoples should never speak out when they see racism, but no matter what colour you are, remember that if you find yourself the only group of people speaking out about an issue that affects someone else, and the person it affects is WILLINGLY not speaking out about it themselves, then it probably isn’t as important as you might have thought so. Why not take some time to ask people of the group it is affecting whether it is important or not rather than trying to be a saviour? And this goes for any colour and any race.

In conclusion, it’s quite cowardly to insult and slander a person who is dead, because they’re simply not alive to defend themselves, so they’d win any argument anyway. For obvious reasons this does not apply to people who are *obviously* evil like Hitler. But when someone is clearly not one of those people and is loved by millions across the world, some idiots only obviously feel that in order to stand out from the crowd they need to mock the dead. Have some respect. It’s not that hard.

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