Prince Philip: Not-so-good side

A cartoon of the Royal Couple that appeared in a British tabloid displaying with the Queen carrying a book titled ‘Eugenics’ and a remark made by the Prince.

by Parakrama Waidyanatha

The late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was an amiable man and much praise has been showered on him in the media following his death earlier this month. Regrettably, he missed ‘scoring his century’, which many expected, passing away a few months before reaching his hundredth birthday.

There has also been his ‘unpleasant side’. He was famous for making derogatory remarks about people and places, some of them being rude quips and jokes! In fact, a tabloid had listed some 90 of them, some of which are excruciating and derogatory! Let me just quote three. When visiting a London community, he apparently asked a group of women, “Who they sponge off”! On a visit to China, meeting a batch of English students studying there, he told one of them that if he stayed too long in China he might go home with “slitty eyes”! ‘Do you still throw spears at each other’ he had asked an official of aboriginal descent in Australia! Queen Elizabeth, too, has been known to make derogatory gaffes, witting or unwittingly. In fact, even a book titled ‘The Wicked Wit of Queen Elizabeth II’ is in print!

Prince Philip was made the President of the Worldwide Fund for Nature in 1961. In that very year he was reported to have slaughtered 39 tigers, 18 rhinos and four bears in a hunting spree in Nepal. He was known in his young days as the ‘trigger happy Prince’! The dead tiger shown in the picture was one of two, which some 200 beaters chased into a clearing where the Duke was perched on a wooden tower with his gun. The tiger he shot dead was taken to the Maharaja’s palace in Jaipur, where it was stuffed and shipped to the Windsor Castle for display! It is reported that he once remarked that he was not ‘killing but culling’! At the start of the 20th century, it is reported that India was home to 100,000 tigers, but the numbers rapidly crashed following independence in 1947. There are now a mere 3000 in the wild! Even at that time, the tiger hunt caused a furor both in India and Britain, but not heeded by the killers. Such wild tiger hunting is, of course, now totally prohibited.

It is reported that not only Prince Philip but Prince Charles and one of his sons, Prince William, are of the same trait! On one occasion the young Prince William procured a large collection of birds (parrots?), brought them to the Windsor Castle, released them, one by one, into the air and shot them in a shooting practice exercise!

Emblem of the Eugenicists

Before talking about Prince Philip, the eugenicist, it should be useful to enlighten the reader a little on the subject, as it is not known to many. Eugenics is a culture that believes in improving the human genetic traits by excluding individuals or groups thought to be genetically inferior, and promoting those identified to be superior. Plato (400 BC) apparently proposed the application of selective breeding for human populations. However, in current usage it is simple scientific racism or white supremacy! Although the concept dates back to the epoch of ancient Greece, the more recent emergence of it is in the 19th century, when a popular eugenic movement emerged in the U.K, and later spread to many European countries, and the U.S and Canada. Many countries too adopted eugenic policies hoping to improve the quality of their populations, by encouraging individuals deemed to be fit and intelligent to reproduce, and adopting negative means such as marriage prohibitions, forced sterilizations of unfit people with mental and physical weaknesses and also marginalising minority groups.

New impetus to the movement was provided by Francis Galton, a half cousin of Charles Darwin, misinterpreting Darwin’s theory of natural selection and evolution. Galton believed that desirable qualities in humans, animals and plants were mere hereditary traits, despite Darwin’s objections that his views were badly misinterpreted by his cousin! Soon after Darwin’s death, Galton labelled his research as eugenics, in which he implied that human character is entirely or mainly determined by genes, unaffected by education or environment! However, throughout human history eugenics has remained highly controversial!

Nazi Germany and the Holocaust boosted the eugenic movement. Many defendants of the 1945/46 Nuremberg trials, argued to justify their human rights abuses claiming that the Nazi and the U.S eugenics activities are comparable. However, following World War II, with growing human rights concerns, many began abandoning eugenic policies, but some countries, such as Canada, the U.S, and Sweden continued to carry out forced sterilizations. More recently, with new reproductive technology advancements, the possible revival of eugenics cannot be overruled.

In fact, eugenics has become an academic discipline in many colleges and universities with funding received from various organizations. Organizations were formed, seeking public support especially for eugenic values in parenthood. Two of the leading societies were the British Eugenics Education Society (1907) and the American Eugenics Society (1921). There were also three well attended international Eugenic Conferences in 1912, 1921 and 1932. Subsequently, the International Federation of Eugenics gave impetus to the movement and even created several research organizations. The Federation advocated sterilization laws and rejected the doctrine that all human beings are born equal! Its racist elements included the pursuit of the Nordic race and the Arian gene pool and eventual elimination of the unfit races.

Eugenics as a social movement reached its highest popularity in the early decades of the 20th century. Many British parliamentarians, including Churchill, supported the philosophy. He believed that it could solve the race deterioration problem and reduce crime and poverty. Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean Prime Minister, too, promoted eugenics in the 1980s, attributing his success to genetics. He claimed that intelligence is 80 percent nature and 20 percent nurture!

However, in 2015 the UN took up the position that eugenics challenges the principle of human equality. The movement is still active, but secretively. Many, especially some very affluent and reputed people think that serious population control via eugenics is vital for sustainability as natural resources are rapidly dwindling.

The reputation of eugenics began to decline in the 1930s partly because it was used as justification for racial politics of Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler incorporated eugenic ideas in Mein Kampf in 1925. Eugenic practices at the time led to the Holocaust. Largely because of the association of eugenics with the latter, many began abandoning it.

Coming back to Prince Philip and his links with eugenics, he and the royalty in general covertly supported eugenics. For example, his remark ‘the bloody useless eaters, I say’ in the above cartoon apparently refers to his attitude towards poor African and Asian populace, whom he considers a threat to future global food security.

Finally, the BBC quoted the Prince that if he were to be reincarnated he would like to be born a deadly virus that can devastate 90 percent of the global population, probably implying that it will make available more resources for the elite to live comfortably!