Like, bro, it’s just not gonna happen.

November 11, 2020 7:21 PM

Parliament even tweeted this out, when this whole thing was kicking off, they were like, “Well, it does enshrine the rights of the people in opposition to the king.” And I was like, “What the fuck are you talking about!” It does not! Like, even parliament is lying about what Magna Carta does, because they still want the story. The historiography of it is like, “Oh, yeah, the king can’t just come in here and walk all over you.” But the king 100 percent can come in here and walk all over you and there’s nothing you can do about it, and Magna Carta is not going to help. The king simply cannot go into 25 barons’ houses. You are not 25 barons!

Chris Thompson interviews Dr. Eleanor Janega, a medieval historian and professor at the London School of Economics. Eleanor Janega previously, previouslier, previousliest.

Come for the batshit soft-play-area owner in Liverpool,

But let’s say the 13th-century equivalent of a soft-play-area owner tried to wave around Article 61 of the 1215 charter. Would they just chop his head off on the spot or what?

Yeah. They would just be like, “The fuck?” The way the legal system in the medieval period works is it’s usually about property. Crimes, the way that we think about, like, murder or stuff like that, obviously that’s a crime, but there’s no police force, there isn’t really a way of catching people. (There wasn’t that much murder, comparatively, because they’re very small communities, everybody knows everyone and, like, you’re gonna get caught.) They did do a lot of shaming. They’re big on shame, that’s a huge one. But, like, the thing that courts exist for is property disputes. That’s what the law is actually about, for the most part.

stay for the reasons the American founders loved Magna Carta.

There is this very specific part of the generalized modern historiography around the time of the Enlightenment, where people act like the medieval period was very bad (and it really was pretty awful) and, actually, what was good was Rome. Because I just love a slave empire. I just absolutely love an empire where 60 percent of the population was slaves. That’s the good stuff, and that’s what you wanted. And for obvious reasons, because that’s what America was doing, right? Oh no no no, we’re more like Rome, where a bunch of rich guys ponce around voting on things while a huge population of slaves toils out in the fields. And let’s not even talk about women. They’re doing a very similar thing to Rome, and so they want to negate any sort of hierarchy or framework that is held over from the medieval period, because they see it as illegitimate or representative of a time that was, like, snuffing out the True Light. So it suits them to say there was a natural order that preceded the Normans, a noble old English tradition of which they are a new iteration.

posted by medusa (46 comments total)

I watched the video and magically the rest of the text narrated itself in John Bishops scally accent, like.
posted by bolix at 7:33 PM on November 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

This was so good. The whole emphasis on even if the right was what you thought it was (which it isn't), it only applies to 25 barons! You're not one of them.

Plus the coda that all but three codicils were revoked anyways, just great works all around.
posted by Carillon at 7:37 PM on November 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Ok Google, how do I become one of the 25 barons
posted by allegedly at 8:16 PM on November 11, 2020 [8 favorites]

The idea that the US system is based on Enlightenment fanfic of medieval laws explains a lot.
posted by emjaybee at 8:18 PM on November 11, 2020 [59 favorites]

The whole putting the article in the window of the shop thing reminds me of some of the "sovereign citizen" nonsense in the U.S.--essentially it's treating various minor details as if they're magic totems that can ward off evil, i.e. laws that obligate or inconvenience you in some way. This article is the equivalent of making a big deal out of your name being in all caps on a legal document or the fringe on a courtroom flag or something like that.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:23 PM on November 11, 2020 [4 favorites]

The whole putting the article in the window of the shop thing reminds me of some of the "sovereign citizen" nonsense in the U.S

They touch on that later in the article, with the conclusion that yeah, those are definitely related.
posted by aubilenon at 8:30 PM on November 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

That's always struck me as very Masonic or some other sort of Secret Society kind of thinking, that small symbols have giant meanings. I don't believe any of it, but I understand on some level how some might believe it.
posted by hippybear at 8:30 PM on November 11, 2020

When i was working on my political science major, one of things I learned was how the Whigs of the UK back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were very big on reinterpreting the history of Magna Carta.
posted by Fukiyama at 8:38 PM on November 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

This is really interesting. (I'd claim this is something I care about, but I learned many things. Thanks!)

I knew a guy who used to carry a laminated card in his wallet explaining why his belt buckle knife wasn't technically an illegal belt buckle knife according to the laws of the US state he lived in. Imagining a scenario where that would help is almost impossible. I'm not sure I understand this impulse. But, I also don't understand people's devotion to religious texts. I suspect, with no evidence, that the former is a virus running on the same evolutionary hardware as the latter.
posted by eotvos at 8:54 PM on November 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

I’m 25 barons in a really big coat. A barding.
posted by clew at 9:24 PM on November 11, 2020 [23 favorites]

So, the part where she differentiates Canada from Australia on the basis of reserve powers is, to the best of my knowledge, not true. Canada's GG is technically appointed by the Queen on the advice of the prime minister, and has largely the same technical authorities as Australia's- she summons and dissolves Parliament and invites parties to form a government and she mostly does this in a ceremonial way right up until it actually matters and then things get weird - or wider use any situation in which the maybe GG has to act is already weird - but she has significant authority to act, she just usually doesn't because it is kinda not a good look on the monarchy to get too involved.

(Look, that was a lame explanation but this did not really come up much in Constitutional Law. And if it did, I forget.)
posted by jacquilynne at 9:48 PM on November 11, 2020 [6 favorites]

25 barons coming on up
Darren, busting king chops
tweeting-little puffy sweater
gotta rent summer
subsaharan, Baron ferren takes aride out
dragging, baronet is tripping
this year's little city Baron Heron-
fallout from the fucking magna carta
strolling..."generalized modern historiography"...ography, history, generalized Baron Banality.
posted by clavdivs at 10:21 PM on November 11, 2020 [5 favorites]

So, the part where she differentiates Canada from Australia on the basis of reserve powers is, to the best of my knowledge, not true.

Also I have never heard of someone in Australia using the Magna Carta as a basis for believing weird shit. We have sovereign citizens in Australia, and they've largely imported woo from the US intact, much like all the other woo we import.
posted by Merus at 11:01 PM on November 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

There's a pandemic on, and people are trying to find ways of gaming the system so they can get away with running around infecting other people.

Imagine if this were the Blitz and people were claiming they didn't have to close their blackout curtains because the government order was printed in the wrong font.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 11:51 PM on November 11, 2020 [46 favorites]

"There wasn’t that much murder, comparatively, because they’re very small communities, everybody knows everyone and, like, you’re gonna get caught."

That really depends what you're comparing to. Some very sensible working through of the numbers (obviously, your confidence intervals are biiiig given lack of, for example, census data) comes up with a homicide rate ten times higher than current rates, even when you lop off a large portion on the grounds that they would likely have survived with modern medical intervention and therefore be assaults rather than murders. Medieval Death Bot gives short descriptions of a lot of murders (as well as accidents and natural causes), and a lot of them are a result of fights - people don't set out to murder, because of the above, but hit someone wrong and it's murder.
posted by Vortisaur at 12:05 AM on November 12, 2020 [5 favorites]

King John’s son takes over and makes another Magna Carta.

That's what we call the prime minister around our house, 'king Johnson.
posted by Grangousier at 12:45 AM on November 12, 2020 [25 favorites]

So, the part where she differentiates Canada from Australia on the basis of reserve powers is, to the best of my knowledge, not true.

FUNNY YOU SHOULD MENTION THIS ON NOVEMBER 11 when the governor general dismissed the elected prime minister...

Sorry, the keylock on my keyboard was unexpected... but appropriate.

The OP interview goes...

Dr. Janega: ...Canada is part of the commonwealth, and they do get their parliamentary system and stuff from here. And, I mean, the queen is on their money. So I can see where that might come from, but also the way the powers are devolved, it just wouldn’t work. Canadian parliament is completely sovereign. You could make a better argument if you were coming from Australia. In Australia there’s this guy, the Governor General, who is technically appointed by the queen, and can technically, technically stand down the Prime Minister, which I think may have happened in the 1970s? And actually, Australian parliament has a copy of Magna Carta!

Chris Thompson: Uh oh, Australia might be the next frontier of Magna Carta truthering. (Too late, mate.)

Dr. Janega: It’s definitely that. And Australians would have a better shot at this, I guess. But Canadians have completely divested themselves of that, and the structure. So it wouldn’t work anywhere, but it especially would not work in Canada.

We have a precedent for this weird shit.
posted by Thella at 1:46 AM on November 12, 2020 [3 favorites]

Oh Merus, we (in australia) one million percent have Magna Carta truthers! And many of them ARE sovereign citizens. And a common belief (of these combination sov cits/Magna Carta truthers is that the queen didn’t sign our constitution so ... the Magna Carta holds instead so ... I don’t have to pay council rates!!
(I have no citations as this is entirely hearsay from the people these people call to complain about how the local council for some reason keeps insisting that rates do need to be paid, why don’t they understand?)
posted by applesauce at 2:46 AM on November 12, 2020 [3 favorites]

Yeah sorry, Merus.
posted by prismatic7 at 4:03 AM on November 12, 2020

What if I am 25 tiny barons in a skin suit?

Hypothetically speaking.
posted by MattWPBS at 4:10 AM on November 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

a homicide rate ten times higher than current rates

All those murder ballads had to come from somewhere.
posted by Foosnark at 4:39 AM on November 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

Did she die in vain?
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:44 AM on November 12, 2020

I hate the word 'truther'. It means someone who believes untruths.

We don't use 'footballer' to mean someone who doesn't play football.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 4:47 AM on November 12, 2020 [9 favorites]

Yes, Janega's misunderstanding of the Australian system is discussed in the Defector comments (which are hilarious, recommend). To be fair, she is a medieval historian.

CF, how about we just use the word liar? "Magna Carta liar" sounds pretty good. Birth certificate liar. Coronavirus liar.

Also sorry Brits but the term "soft play area" sounds hilarious and porny in American.
posted by medusa at 5:00 AM on November 12, 2020 [11 favorites]

We don't use 'footballer' to mean someone who doesn't play football.

Özil?
posted by biffa at 5:17 AM on November 12, 2020 [6 favorites]

I haven’t read TFA yet, I swear I will, I just got stuck on the soft play area and wondered if it had something to do with kink and bdsm clubs. Guess not. Damn.
posted by Bella Donna at 6:08 AM on November 12, 2020

These barons, are they feral? What if it turns out there are 30-50 of them?
posted by Ranucci at 6:24 AM on November 12, 2020 [7 favorites]

Twenty Twenty Twenty-Five Barons to go
I want a Magna Carta
posted by stevis23 at 6:28 AM on November 12, 2020 [18 favorites]

Also sorry Brits but the term "soft play area" sounds hilarious and porny in American.

It sounds hilarious and porny in British as well.

Here in old Blighty we have a long and happy tradition of innuendo, from Eric Idle's Mr Nudge-Nudge through Finbarr Saunders to the radio show Innuendo Bingo, in which contestants had to fill their mouths with water and then try not to be the first to spit it out uncontrollably all over their fellow protagonists while having childish double-entendres fired at them.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 6:32 AM on November 12, 2020

Alright, but what if I were one of the five Metabarons? Would the Magna Carta cover me then?
posted by aramaic at 7:22 AM on November 12, 2020 [2 favorites]

Lot of conflating British with English in this article.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 7:38 AM on November 12, 2020 [2 favorites]

It sounds hilarious and porny in British as well.

so glad we have transatlantic agreement on this burning issue of the day
posted by medusa at 7:46 AM on November 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

Lot of conflating British with English in this article.

Which is especially annoying because if you nail a copy of the Declaration of Arbroath to your door in Scotland you not only cannot be fined but you also become more attractive, have fresher breath and develop a mysterious immunity to scabies.
posted by Vortisaur at 8:01 AM on November 12, 2020 [8 favorites]

All you need to know about Magna Carta in under three minutes (with a beat!)
posted by YoungStencil at 8:04 AM on November 12, 2020

If you think "truther" is bad for meaning the opposite of words, check out the aside that the Brexit party is rebranding as "anti-COVID."
posted by RobotHero at 8:08 AM on November 12, 2020

The Lord Craigmyle stuff is hilarious, as apparently these people have just chosen a random baron to swear allegiance to who is very uninterested and confused by this whole thing.
posted by corb at 8:31 AM on November 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

I’m trying to think of something Lord Craigmyle could publicly require of his soi-disant, uh, henchmen? that would be medieval enough to remind everyone of the 13th c., hard enough that they wouldn’t want to, and not damaging in itself.

Summoning them to swear fealty in person would maybe do in non-pandemic. Paying taxes, possibly?
posted by clew at 9:27 AM on November 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

I knew a guy who used to carry a laminated card in his wallet explaining why his belt buckle knife wasn't technically an illegal belt buckle knife according to the laws of the US state he lived in.

This is a promising type of guy - do you have more stories about him?
posted by atoxyl at 9:36 AM on November 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

This is a promising type of guy - do you have more stories about him?

It's hard to tell the good stories without accidentally doxing him (and me). Hit me up at a meetup when such things exist again. But yeah, he's fascinating. He was PhD student who spent well over a decade in school before dropping out, mostly playing online poker the whole time, as far as I could tell. He'd play four games at once in the middle of the day at work for hours, with no hint of shame. (Fair enough, if you also get a reasonable amount of work done. He also didn't do that.) After going pro as a poker player failed to pay the rent, he switched to teaching young people in a subject that has nothing to do with law or history. I suspect he's really good at it. He's a lovely, fun, smart person who believes many things that are dangerously untrue. I miss arguing with him.
posted by eotvos at 10:06 AM on November 12, 2020 [2 favorites]

Also I'm embarrassed to admit that it took me reading 2/3 of the way through the article to pick up on the fact that Magna Carta has no article, like it's a person or country. My mind was adding "the" for me as I read.
posted by medusa at 12:26 PM on November 12, 2020 [3 favorites]

so glad we have transatlantic agreement on this burning issue of the day

If your soft play area is giving you burning issues, you should seek medical attention, and inform your recent play partners.
posted by nickmark at 1:34 PM on November 12, 2020 [5 favorites]

it took me reading 2/3 of the way through the article to pick up on the fact that Magna Carta has no article

You're 1/3 of an article and perhaps a good fraction of a lifetime ahead of me. Thanks!
posted by eotvos at 3:28 PM on November 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

Imagine if this were the Blitz and people were claiming they didn't have to close their blackout curtains because the government order was printed in the wrong font.

I don't know why people assume this ridiculous shit didn't also happen during the Blitz. Citations and fines for failure to blackout were common and there is no way people didn't try the absolute worst logic to argue their way out of it.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 6:57 AM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]

Fiction written during or just after the Blitz seems much more likely to assume a lot of protest and cheating and dislike of the enforcers, I feel, based on light reading. Then there’s fifty years of 'Finest Hour'.
posted by clew at 10:01 AM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

The most sovereign citizen parts of the video, for me were a) the repeated insistence that he was not forming a contract with the cops and b) prompting the cops to explicitly label him as "a man" (presumably as opposed to the fictional "legal person" which is contracted to the state and subject to its laws)

I'm sure if he talked for longer more sovcit talking points would come out too
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:09 AM on November 14, 2020

This soft play area owner thought he was one of 25 barons. 25 barons. That's as many as five fives. And that's terrible.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:06 PM on November 18, 2020