As tributes poured in after the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday, some netizens voiced dissenting voices, sometimes going so far as to celebrate the death of the monarch, whom they represent as a symbol of Britain’s colonial past.
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“Lizzy is in a box,” fans announced at a stadium in Dublin (Ireland) in a video that went viral within a few hours on YouTube and Twitter.
On Snapchat, some of their fellow countrymen are shown dancing in a nightclub carrying messages featuring “Lizzie is dead”, or even all smiles and thumbs in front of the announcement of the death of the British monarch announced on TV.
Another scene shows three Irish dancers in front of Buckingham Palace to the sound of “Another Bite the Dust” of the Queen group. However, the series was filmed in January 2022, but it reappeared on Twitter on Thursday, where it “gained more than 530,000 likes in less than 24 hours.
Behind the hashtags #IrishTwitter, #BlackTwitter and #IndianTwitter, since Thursday, there have been various videos, photos and messages in English, but also in Spanish or French, often openly sarcastic and sometimes very political, suggesting that Elizabeth II, during Her life 70 years of rule, she was also a sovereign of a country that colonized others.
“The Colonial Queen passed away today,” an English-language netizen said in a viral video on TikTok. “I committed a lot of violations,” another adds in a French-language message “I loved” 25,000 times, calling on its subscribers to learn about the “Mau Mau Revolution,” carried out in the 1950s against colonial forces in Kenya, in which at least 10,000 were killed. Person, according to the lowest estimates.
“Today, we mourn all the lives that were stolen, raped, traumatized, affected and destroyed during the reign of Elizabeth II,” it launches a message relayed in English on Facebook in several groups dedicated to the Australian Aboriginal community.
Ojo Anya, a professor at a prestigious American university who was born in Nigeria, a former British colony, has harshly criticized Elizabeth II in tweets, prompting much criticism.
She said, referring to the 1967 civil war (or “Biafra War”), in which at least a million people died (most of them from starvation) after the territorial secession attempt. The UK has been accused of contributing to the crisis by supporting the central government.
South Africa’s hard-right Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party released a widely retweeted statement, declaring: “We do not mourn the death of Elizabeth, because for us her death is a reminder of a tragic time for the country and the history of Africa.”
When Elizabeth was born in 1926, the British Empire spanned across six continents. During his rule, which began in 1952, most of the 56 countries that make up the Commonwealth gained their independence, including many countries on the African continent such as Ghana, Kenya or The Gambia.
