Is King Charles the Antichrist?
And other conspiracy theories about our new monarch
Dear subscribers — thanks for bearing with our radio silence in the last fortnight. We’ve been working on some exciting projects which, if all goes to plan, we’ll be able to share with you soon. Until then, we wanted to surface briefly with a blog about reactions to the proclamation of King Charles III.
It’s always interesting to watch conspiracist and far-right communities reacting to major events, and gauging how they might exploit them for propaganda purposes. The death of Queen Elizabeth and the accession of her son have prompted some curious responses. I expected that white nationalist groups who consider themselves patriotic would welcome Charles with similar enthusiasm to the second Elizabethan era. But that wasn’t what I saw.
In the messy, sometimes-overlapping worlds of the far-right and the hardcore anti-vaxx conspiracy brigade, I’ve spotted four loose types of reaction, mostly negative. Here they are — comment or reply to this email if you’ve seen any others.
Reaction 1: ‘King Charles is a globalist stooge’
Charles has long been accused of shilling for the World Economic Forum and its founder Klaus Schwab, both of which are seen in far-right and conspiracist circles as malicious. The new king has endorsed the Great Reset, which is Schwab’s plan to equitably and sustainably reconfigure society after the pandemic. Some anti-vaxxers and far-right influencers, however, view the Great Reset as a sinister plot to enslave the human race. In the last few days, footage of Charles speaking at Davos has resurfaced on Telegram, the preferred social media app of far-right groups, alongside comments about his “evil agenda”.
Charles’s links to the World Economic Forum seems to fit his reputation as an eco hand-wringer and altogether moist leftie. “Unfortunately,” said Tommy Robinson, in a typical response to the death of the Queen, “we are now left with wankers like her son Charles who is an out of touch woke, WEF, eco fascist, Saudi Arabia, Islamist bum loving idiot.”
Response 2: ‘King Charles is in thrall to Jews’
The more extreme end of anti-Charles reaction focuses on the idea that the new king is a puppet of Jewish interests. Or, as one devotee of Patriotic Alternative, the white nationalist group, describes him: “Charles of Arabia, WEF member with his complete grovelling to the global Jew.”
I’ve seen three main bits of “evidence” that apparently support this antisemitic talking point.
The first is a quote of Charles, a patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, speaking at Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to victims of Nazi Germany.
The second is the above photograph of Charles chatting to Evelyn de Rothschild, a financial adviser to the late Queen. Rothschild, a member of the famous Jewish banking dynasty, is seen pointing a finger at Charles: concrete proof, so it is claimed, that Jews are controlling the royal family.
The third, and I really do apologise for bringing this up, concerns our new king’s crown jewels. The baby Charles, it has been reported, was circumcised by Jacob Snowman, a Jewish doctor. The absence of a royal foreskin has been taken as proof in conspiracy world that Charles is in thrall to International Jewry. It might be inappropriate, at a time like this, to question the integrity of a member of the royal family (sorry). But it is a claim flying around conspiracist groups of Telegram that we feel compelled to document.
In any case, Charles’s attitude towards Jews isn’t as philosemitic as his critics might think. In 1986, the future king wrote a letter to a friend, since leaked, that blamed “an influx of foreign, European Jews” for causing problems in the Israel-Palestine conflict. “Surely some US president has to have the courage to stand up and take on the Jewish lobby in US,” he wrote. “I must be naive, I suppose!”
Response 3: ‘Charles is a satanist, a paedophile, and perhaps even a satanic paedophile’
More common than conspiracy theories about Charles’s submission to Jewish interests is the claim that he is a paedophile, or a least a defender of paedophiles. Charles, according to one rant being reposted on Telegram, was “connected at the hip” to Jimmy Savile. Charles, newspapers have reported, sought marriage advice from the paedophile radio DJ, and even considered making him a godfather to Harry.
These two details have been taken as evidence that Charles is part of an “elite satanic cult” that ritualistically rapes, tortures and murders children. “Should Charles take the crown he will torch those who speak truth,” says the viral rant. His proximity to Prince Andrew, a friend of the billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, is also seen as evidence against him. (While we’re on the subject: Charles may have paid for his brother Andrew’s settlement with one of his alleged rape victims, but according to news reports, Charles also insists that Andrew may never return to public life).
The “Charles-is-a-paedophile” theme is connected to more far-fetched conspiracy theories that he is some kind of devil creature. For more than two decades, some people have claimed that Charles is the Antichrist. This is partly due to a 1998 conspiracy book called The Antichrist and a Cup of Tea by Tim Cohen, and a weird Brazilian statue made in the noughties that depicts Charles as a muscular winged figure.
The accession of King Charles has given fresh oomph to claims that he is a shapeshifting devil. A clip of his speech at COP26 has been circulating, in which he discusses the need to tackle climate change with “a vast military style campaign with trillions at its disposal”. In Charles’s drawl, the word “at its disposal” sounded like “at his disposal”. This slip of the tongue, some conspiracy theorists are saying, is bona fide evidence that Charles referred to the Antichrist.
Response 4: ‘Long live the King’
Enthusiasm, as far as I can tell, has been the rarest reaction to the proclamation of King Charles. While there is praise aplenty for his mother, who evokes for some white nationalists the memory of a powerful, racially homogenous empire, I haven’t seen much hope for the third Carolean era.
Back when he was a prince, far-right groups were all too happy trashing Charles. In 2020, Paul Golding, the head of Britain First, called Charles an “embarrassment” and “a woke, tree-hugging eco warrior Green Party member”. Golding went so far as to predict that upon the death of Elizabeth he would become a “confirmed republican”.
So what’s the significance of all this? Something I’ve been thinking about is how the new monarch is no longer solid propaganda material for far-right organisations. While the Queen was alive, it was easy for the far-right to put themselves on the side of the monarchy in the hope of appearing patriotic. Are those days over?
You might recall that last summer, a scandal erupted at Magdalen College, Oxford. Its graduate student body, an insignificant group composed of approximately 200 nerds, voted to remove a portrait of Elizabeth from their common room. Cue a lot of far-right outrage about woke students sneering at our great monarch. For extremist organisations like Britain First, this was an easy publicity win.
Imagine, if in a few months time, Magdalen’s student body voted to get rid of a portrait of King Charles. Would anyone care?
Wow, I never thought he was this important.
I'll stick with my own verdict. Charles is a schmuck, but much less of a schmuck than his oldest brother.