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Title: Dianamania Author: John Moore Date: 1998 Language: en Topics: nationalism Source: Retrieved on December 12, 2009 from http://lemming.mahost.org/johnmoore/dianamania.htm Notes: Published in Green Anarchist #51, Spring 1998
The labyrinth of power has many entrances but few exits, and many lose
themselves within it. Should we feel pity for the lost as we ignite the
flame that burns down its dry thickets?
Frankenstein’s Monster. Created by the media, killed by the media, given
an afterlife by the media. Meanwhile, a body lies bleeding, mangled in
the machinery.
Media’s children. Britons look into their tv mirrors, see themselves —
dead — and mourn.
A vicarious death. In weeping for Diana, Britons subconsciously weep for
their own deaths, their living deaths — the deaths of their hopes,
dreams, desires.
A measure of vacuity. The more one mourns the death of one’s masters,
the more one affirms the evacuation of one’s self.
An inverse ratio. The more repressed people are, the more hysteria lurks
just below the surface, waiting to erupt. The greater the obsession with
privacy, the greater a people’s prudity — but also their prurience.
The real tragedy of Diana’s death remains the media-orchestrated
spectacle of British slavishness and obedience to authority.
We all mourn. Like an ugly jingoistic mob, moral fascism stalks the
land, policing this lie — belligerently glaring, righteously
intimidating, and hysterically awaiting any hint of dissent — eagerly
desiring an opportunity to pummel with disapproval.
Heard the sick joke about the death of Diana and Dodi? The institutions
they symbolise — state and capital, respectively — still exist.
The events following Diana’s demise: Albert Speer’s finest hour.
Apotheosized as St. Diana, the ‘people’s princess’ joins the pantheon of
the gods of New Labour.
Blair’s project: modernisation; i.e., an intensified, more integrated
form of capitalist totalitarianism. Diana is cast as the Queen of
Hearts, virgin mother of a demonic child.
A national(ist) disgrace. ‘There is [a] kind of tears that rise from
shallow springs and flow or dry up at will: people shed them some as to
have a reputation for being tenderhearted, so as to be pitied or wept
over, or, finally, to avoid the disgrace of not weeping’ (La
Rochefoucald).
The new logo for UK PLC: ‘Charity shall cover the multitude of sins’.
Contrary to all appearances, Britons yearn for human regeneration.
Naïvely hoping that Diana’s death would mean that nothing would ever be
the same again, they feebly tried to effect apocalypse through public
despondency and social passivity, then meekly returned to working and
consuming. A very English, very reactionary equivalent of May 68
resulted merely in more of the same. Nothing changed, it just got worse.