To write a long piece on Diana Spencer, contributing to the plethora of literature written about her already, is something that I have resisted doing for an extremely long time.
Miss Spencer is the sort of topic most serious researchers avoid, bar the odd discussion every now and again. Part of the problem is that if you are interested in her demise, invariably that meant you had to be interested in her, in some way.
I make no apologies for the fact that I never was. Thus, I think this dispassionate treatise will undoubtedly ruffle some feathers.
Indeed, my good friend Charles Drago advised me along those lines when he told me, “…what do people care about what you think of Diana, it’s the evidence of the case which is the major issue.”
Yet – is it really?
The towering figure of Diana herself has greatly overshadowed the evidence in the case. Indeed, exploring the world of celebrity conspiracy is a tough one, because rich and famous people have a habit of dying relatively young.
Let’s face it, they have a dazzling array of choices with which to do so. You have suicides, drug overdoses, car accidents, plane crashes, drowning, liver failure, bulimia, crazed fans, rival ‘gangsta’ record labels, painkillers and that old chestnut – autoerotic asphyxiation.
Taking on Princess Diana Conspiracy Theories
To equate these individuals with a measure of influence is one thing. Oprah Winfrey, for example, carries no small amount.
Yet to equate them with true power, requires a massive leap of faith and logic. Alarmingly, a number of people now conflate celebrity news with real current events, a phenomenon Maureen Orth has written about (3)
This is the type of thing that Diana Spencer herself helped pioneer to the point that Paris Hilton even wants to emulate her (2).
The conspiracy researchers who helped me out on this piece were the David Guyatt-influenced trio of Charles Drago, Jan Klimkowsy, and Magda Hassan from the Deep Politics Forum.
This is a place where some serious researchers congregate and discuss all manner of topics.
Though I am in many ways more conservative, their reasoned discussions on the Diana topic are a damning indictment of Diana conspiracy mongers out there.
Indeed, it was through my conversations with sane people like this, that my opinions on the Spencer case became a 50-50 debate as to whether she was really murdered or not (on a good day).
Nonetheless, what had to be done to even get to this precarious point, was excise the crass and banal cult of celebrity that had been built up before and after Spencer’s death, and the absolutely garbage-infused pile of evidence surrounding her death, from the more legitimate evidence that surely existed underneath.
This essay does not seek to discuss those legitimate questions that make for a good debate. It instead seeks to examine the excessively bad arguments the vast majority of Spencerites have made over the years.
These arguments have only destroyed their own case for any sort of conspiracy. This essay also serves as to what happens when those with few faculties, like Al Fayed, go unchallenged in any area of research.
However, Making Al Fayed and the Spencerite/Dianaist conspiracy crowd look stupid has never really been a very difficult thing to do, by any stretch of the imagination.
The Inflationary Nature of Celebrity Fatality
As soon as I made my bones as a JFK researcher, questions surrounding Miss Spencer’s fateful encounter with a Parisian tunnel abounded as if it was somehow interlinked, in some way, with Kennedy’s dance with those magic bullets in Dealey Plaza.
Matthew Engel, writing for the Guardian, was one of the very first to associate the two on the 1st of September 1997 article Diana’s Body Flown Back to Britain.
“The news, as it seeped into public consciousness on a sleepy Sunday morning, stunned Britain and the world as no event has done since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 34 years ago. Though she held no official position, other than being a detached member of the royal family, her life and death are likely to acquire the same iconic significance as Kennedy's. The candle has burned out but the legend will never die.”
Since then, there has been a cavalcade of similar sentiment equating Miss Spencer's demise to JFK's.
Jim DiEugenio and I have put our foot down on this type of comparison at CTKA before, when we discussed Jones one time co-host Jason Bermas’ tragically inept use of Diana’s death and her hyper-inflated status alongside Kennedy and other figures.
“Another fatal and unforgivable error in Bermas’ documentary is that shortly after discussing the deaths of JFK, King and RFK; he omits Malcolm X and allows a certain Diana Spencer to share the spotlight with these three eminently more important individuals. At one point in the show, Bermas had indulged in a spiel about the low standards and trivialization of the news media. Now Bermas turns around and places 'The Paparazzi Princess' with the Kennedys and King. Bermas also ignored a mountain of criticism and research from the right and the left that has not only been critical of Diana, but of the way her death had senselessly dominated the media and been elevated to quite unmerited levels of martyrdom.”
No researcher I know of, or associate with, would demean the legacy of JFK, RFK, King and Malcolm X by relating the importance of Spencer’s life and death to theirs.
It’s the kind of thing that maybe Hollywood would indulge itself in, and in so doing, thereby inflating Mohammad Al Fayed as some kind of truth-seeker.
Comparing Spencer’s life and death to that of other more important and influential figures in modern history is indulging in sophistry of the highest order. What would Miss Spencer have done in the Cuban Missile Crisis; donned her land mine garb and thrown herself down some stairs?
Not only that, the portrayal of Mohammad Al Fayed as a truth-seeking hero is extremely and inappropriately flattering to him. However, after Maureen Orth's Vanity Fair article exposing "...Fayed's lying, thieving, bugging of his staff, sexual shenanigans, true background, and propensity for prosecuting vendettas against innocent people...", Al Fayed tried to sue the magazine, only to withdraw his threat at the end of 1997 (4).
References & Image Credits:
(1) The Sun
(2) Princess-Diana.com
(3) Britannica
(4) Guardian Lies
Seamus Coogan is a long-time conspiracy theory researcher. His focus is conspiracy 'theorists' that have undermined the hard work of genuine even-minded researchers and journalists for far too long. Seamus has 17 post(s) at Top Secret Writers
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