Mail Denounces Royal Compassion

The heir to the throne gave Radio 4’s Thought For The Day yesterday; here Prince Charles expressed his concern over prejudice and intolerance being meted out to followers of all the Abrahamic religions. He “warned that the rise of populist extremism and intolerance towards other faiths risks repeating the ‘horrors’ of the Holocaust” and said “We are now seeing the rise of many populist groups across the world that are increasingly aggressive to those who adhere to a minority faith. All of this has deeply disturbing echoes of the dark days of the 1930s”. This much was hardly controversial.

What's so f***ing wrong with putting the boot in on the Royals, c***?!? Er, with the greatest of respect, Mr Jay

And he said of those refugees from conflict and persecution “The suffering doesn’t end when they arrive seeking refuge in a foreign land”. In this, Charles urged his subjects - that would be us - to show compassion, to consider the plight of those less fortunate than us. That was a step too far for the Dacre doggies at the Daily Mail.

Charles had clearly touched a very raw nerve with the Vagina Monologue, who has today ordered Stephen “Miserable Git” Glover over the top to twist the Prince of Wales’ words into an attack on the Mail and its readers - and the Combover Crybaby Donald Trump. “Most reasonable people will surely agree it is not a good idea for the future King of England to make a coded attack on the next President of the United States … But that is what appears to have happened yesterday morning” he blusters.

Charles did not make an attack, coded or otherwise, on Trump, which is why Glover has to say he “appeared to”. But away he goes, accusing the Prince of lying (yes, a Daily Mail pundit calling “liar” on others) and claiming “The great tide of people which has been sweeping across Western Europe includes refugees displaced by the civil war in Syria and other conflicts, as well as many economic migrants … Only a small proportion are the victims of religious persecution”. Two things here.

One, Glover has to put words in the Prince’s mouth to make his assertion of dishonesty - another false assumption. And two, as so often with the Mail, we get no facts in support. Then, when Charles talks of “the rise of many populist groups across the world that are increasingly aggressive to those who adhere to a minority faith”, Glover loses it.

“It is this passage that has been interpreted as a veiled lunge at Donald Trump - and for all I know it may also be a furtive dig at those supposed populist numbskulls who were rash enough to vote for Brexit”. Bullshit. This is the reaction of the paranoid - Glover and his editor think it’s about them, and their guilty consciences then betray them.

Another dead giveaway is “Islam is the second largest religion on the planet and can hardly be described as a ‘minority faith’”. Again, two things here. One, Charles was not specifying any faith, and two, it’s a minority faith in Western Europe.

Glover, though, is not done: Mail readers have to know that Islam - it has now become about followers of The Prophet - is not a religion of peace: “It was hardly very apt, particularly at this time of year, to compare the peaceable Holy Family with the martial Prophet Muhammad, who some time after his arrival in Medina was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Jews”. Read much of the Bible, have we, Stephen?

There is rather a lot of violence in the Good Book. And there’s plenty of intolerance. There is also ambiguity, so those who want to depict Christianity as peaceful, and Islam as bloodthirsty, can find enough in the Bible and Qur’an to support their arguments - as can those who want to argue it the other way. That does not deter the Miserable Git.

He proceeds to administer the Mail’s break-glass emergency smear, the mental health slur, calling Charles “dotty … worse than barmy … daft … dopey”. And that this is a hatchet job to order is underscored by a suitably thundering Daily Mail Comment.

Here, the authentic voice of the Vagina Monologue rants “the Prince of Wales is absolutely right to highlight the appalling persecution of Christians across the Middle East … he gave a graphic description of how some of the world’s most ancient Christian populations are being driven from their biblical homelands in a ruthless wave of killings, kidnappings and expulsions … Strangely though, he neglected to say who was to blame”.

[It’s the Scary Muslims (tm), right?]

And then off veers Dacre into his realm of paranoia. Charles was meaning him - and all those Daily Mail readers. So out came the smearing iron. “Instead he attacked ‘populist groups’ for religious intolerance - likening their growth to that of the Nazis. Such people, he said, were ‘increasingly aggressive’ towards refugees”.

Got your Daily Mail Comment bingo card at the ready? Here it comes: “This may have been meant as a humanitarian intervention but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion it was a somewhat worrying foray into politics. The Prince must be aware the word populist has become a cheap slur - particularly used by the BBC - against those who voted by a significant majority for Brexit”. Politics, Brexit, BBC, victimhood - HOUSE!

The conclusion is even better for all those rant connoisseurs out there: “Yes, we admire the Prince’s compassion as he pens his missives in the luxury of Highgrove. But we do question his wisdom in entering such controversial political areas - especially as he seems to have so little understanding of the realities of the seismic changes across Europe”.

So says the editor who trousers a million and a half notes a year, has a mansion in the Home Counties, a pied-à-terre in Belgravia and a Scottish estate propped up by hundreds of thousands of pounds in EU farm subsidies. The editor who deems the exhibition of compassion to be “political” and “controversial”. The editor who clearly knows Jack Shit about Mainland Europe, but appeals to an authority he does not possess anyway.

It is a dark day indeed when someone urging tolerance and compassion attracts so much venom from those in positions of “power without responsibility”. The message of the Christmas story - and the life of Christ - has been lost in Paul Dacre’s raging fog of intolerance, prejudice, and religious bigotry.

The Mail must be a terribly sad place to work. Having to spend all day pouring out hatred, just to keep the readers in line and flog a few more papers. Sad, really.