True story, about 29 or 30 years ago, I was perusing the books in a bookstore. And I came upon this political satire book by the British puppet show Spitting Image. For those of you too young to recall, Spitting Image did these political satires using comical puppets. It was based in the UK. So naturally the subject was largely British and European. (I personally used to watch it on the local Canadian channel, Channel 9 in Windsor, Canada. I don’t know how other Americans were able to watch it [hence, the book].)
Yeah, there was this funny satire where a small puppet of Pres. Ronald Reagan was being controlled by his wife Nancy. It was a joke at the time, and I assume it was also a veiled reference to the fact Reagan was just a corporate shill. I’m serious.
Anyways, there was this section on Queen Elizabeth II. I don’t know what they were referencing. But she said she was a left-wing revolutionary now. And I remember she said her husband Prince Phillip was a ‘crypto-fascist’. Again, I still just don’t get the joke. Anyways, at the end of the joke, she said ‘all you have to lose are your chains’.
‘All you have to lose are your chains’. Clearly it was a left-wing reference that British people would understand. And it was possibly a revolutionary reference too. I get what she meant. But where did this quote originate? Who was the first to use it? And how is it used now?
Again, it is a reference that most Americans just wouldn’t get. That’s why I am curious about its origins.
The premise (pre-GWB, pre-Trump, of course) was that he was unusually dim and needed someone to act as puppeteer (I seem to remember they did those skits as a cartoon-style series called “The President’s Brain Is Missing!”).
Because it is her job, as well as her personal instinct, not to be anything of the kind, but just to keep up the established traditions.
No one who is from the 50s and 60s would fail to recognize that reference.
Modern day Americans probably have no more understanding of it than most modern-day Europeans, since the fall of the various Marxist regimes in Eastern Europe has made the rhetoric of the Communist Party very passé. But I recall my mother telling the story of her time in college in the early 50s, when someone from the HUAC was visiting the campus, and the main statue/rock/item of inspiration was swathed in chains that day. So it was pretty ubiquitously understood at the time.
On May 1, I went into the office, my phone blaring out the internationale and yelled “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains”. Nine people with fifteen college degrees between them had absolutely no clue.
Not just Americans. Two are Vietnamese, one Dutch, one French and one Portuguese. All under 35.
