THE PRINCE AND THE GANGSTER

Prince Andrew, Gaddafi, Mandelson and the Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

Sometime recently after he launched one of his dribbling diatribes a reporter compared Muammar Gaddafi to King Lear. This felt extremely inappropriate, indeed positively offensive, dignifying this disgusting man with the tragedy of Lear. No for me the real comparison should have been with another play, with Bertolt Brecht’s ‘The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.’ Ui, the gangster thug who fights his way to power through the mechanism of the protection racket, blackmail and the use of extreme violence.


This view was confirmed for me whilst watching the television interview of the ‘heir apparent,’ Saif Gaddafi, the seemingly urbane, western educated, laid back son of the dictator. Listening to his chilling threats, mixed with that odd cocktail of self pity and persecution mania that seems to be the mental condition of all autocratic gangsters, one knew that here was the face of the true Ui archetype, he knows where you live.

It is not surprising to me that Mr Gaddafi Junior was on friendly terms with the likes of Peter Mandelson and Prince Andrew, ruling elites have always had a penchant for flirting with gangsters, the Junker aristocracy in Germany, almost to a man, cosied up to the Nazis, whilst in the UK it was the aristocracy who most strongly supported appeasement and who took great pleasure in entertaining Nazi ‘dignatories’ in the run up to the second world war. This flirtation is not so difficult to understand, a form of penis envy, loose talk about the power of the Jews over a dinner table could be translated into real muscular action by the men in black. On a lesser scale you can see the attraction for someone like the unaccountable Prince, here in the shape of a dictators son he comes face to face with someone who can make things happen without reference to the concerns of the smelly proles.

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