Prince Harry has caught the apology bug
The philosopher Hannah Arendt delivered her audacious oeuvre of political theory in countless zingers. I was reminded of one of them last week, in light of Prince Harry’s Zoom address from California about institutional racism, addressed to the winners of the Diana Awards in honour of his mother.
Referring to the widespread guilt of young Germans in the Sixties, Arendt wrote: “It is quite gratifying to feel guilt if you haven’t done anything wrong. How noble!”
How right she was. Harry can hardly be said to be racist, yet his zeal for apology and the performance of guilt by implication is extreme. “My wife said recently that our generation and the ones before us haven’t done enough to right the wrongs of the past,” he said. “I too am sorry. Sorry that we haven’t got the world to the place where you deserve it to be. Institutional racism has no place in our societies and yet it is still endemic.”
Big words for the Prince, who – as is the woke way – will refuse to rest until our very subconscious has been thoroughly picked over: “Unconscious bias must be acknowledged without blame to create a better world for you. I want you to know we are committed to being part of the solution and part of the change that you are all leading.” So, Harry is sorry for our society, sorry for its hidden as well as its explicit thoughts. Sorry for literally everything.
He is, in other words, enjoying what Arendt called that pleasing noble feeling of guilt when he hasn’t, in fact, done anything really wrong. Well, he has done one thing wrong: he dressed as a Nazi for a fancy dress party in 2005, swastika included, and never publicly apologised for that.
Combating racism is important and right. But making a show of selfflagellation in grandiose, empty terms – from your LA mansion – can come across as disingenuous and plain weird.
These things don’t help, and can sometimes just get in the way of the pursuit of truth, knowledge and justice.