1/ Rock and Roll podcast on BBC coverage of Philip's death: excessive, indicative of fear of right wing press.

Shallow analysis though: not delving into why royal funerals are important to the right.

2/ The UK state is based on the fiction of the elevation of royalty to some higher status than mere mortals - they live separate from us as "demi-gods" to be worshipped.

3/ An electronic road sign yesterday advised not congregating around Royal Residences. As if the thought had crossed my mind.

4/ The Royal family's status and veneration is a means to enforce and reinforce a very specific and uniquely English power structure by the state.

This power structure is based on wealth, power but also class, upbringing, blood-lines.

5/ The back-story for how Philip Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg got to be a UK Prince, or how his wife the queen, attained their status historically, is not relevant to worshippers.

6/ That's because it's an embarrassment and acknowledging it would undermine the cult of royalty.
Because that's what it is: a cult. And it's a cult which cannot be questioned, because like any cult, questioning it - revealing the truth - undermines the premises for its existence

7/ Althusser might say that the monarchy is part of the "Ideological State Apparatus" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology_and_Ideological_State_Apparatuses

8/ "Ideological state apparatuses (ISA), according to Althusser, use methods other than physical violence to achieve the same objectives as Repressive State Apparatus [ government, courts, police and armed forces, etc..]

9/ They may include educational institutions (e.g. schools), media outlets, churches, social and sports clubs and the family."

These formations are ostensibly apolitical and part of civil society, rather than a formal part of the state (i.e. as is the case in an RSA). "

10/ "In terms of psychology they could be described as psychosocial, because they aim to inculcate ways of seeing and evaluating things, events and class relations. Instead of expressing and imposing order, through violent repression, "

11/ "ISA disseminate ideologies that reinforce the control of a dominant class."

So my theory is that the monarchy is a part of the UK's ideological state apparatus and Prince Philip's death is a massive opportunity for the state to reinforce power structures.

12/ The (authoritarian populist) serfs love this of course because they seem to have a disposition or a predilection to like the idea of a "superior set" of anointed demi-gods awarded palaces, and attention and servants and grouse moors.

13/ This probably taps into prioritised values in the authoritarian mindset

https://www.britainschoice.uk/media/532l3rhs/britain-s-choice-chapter-3.pdf

14/ But also, crucially notions of IDENTITY bound up the nation - the monarchy being symbolic of national identity.

15/ The monarchy's role right now, at this moment, expressed in the coverage of Philip's death is:
1. Red meat to nationalists whose identity is personified in the monarchy: as an unattainable (though strangle aspirational) expression of Britishness -

16/ - this despite the royals - e.g. Philip being "foreign" "Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, is a collateral branch of the House of Oldenburg, members of which have reigned at various times in Denmark, Norway, Greece and several northern German states."

17

2. (Obviously) Philip's death serves as a distraction from whatever political scandal occurring right now (NIP, Brexit, Cameron, Coronavirus - take your pick there)

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3. The death serves as an opportunity to reinforce stratification in society which gives authoritarians a sense of security but also bolsters the inequality on which wealth and power in the UK is predicated.

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4. There's probably a final reason that those on the right (should they be neo-cons) believe in the Straussian idea that nations are unified by common myths (could be a religion, or the possibility of an external threat).

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The status of Monarchies is certainly baseless and mythical, and we can agree that for much of the population it's unifying. But I would say - so are death cults.

21/ Nearly forgot-I predicted this would happen and then it did:
5. Philip's death is a culture war opportunity for the right too: Philip was an un-reconstructed conservative - "traditional values" meaning sexism, racism etc.
The authoritarian right claims him as one of their own

22/ ...then piggy-backs on the adulation via the veneration of monarchy, and the political correctness of never speaking ill of the dead.

This purdah on criticism gives them a free ride to claim their values are valid and those of liberalism are not. https://twitter.com/dasvee/status/1381517288344584192