Meghan Has 'Diana's Bad Aspects'—Historian Behind 'Racist' Slavery Remark

Meghan Markle's "resentment of the monarchy is synthetic," according to a historian who was canceled for "racist" comments about slavery.

David Starkey caused a backlash just more than a month after George Floyd's murder when he said that if slavery was genocide "there wouldn't be so many damn Blacks in Africa or Britain would there?"

The historian issued an apology at the time and said he lost "every distinction and honour acquired in a long career." More recently, he was quoted by The Daily Mail on September 1, 2022, saying: "The whole world of transsexuality is a gigantic lie."

Starkey appeared on GB News on September 6, the 25th anniversary of Princess Diana's funeral, and said of Meghan: "Unfortunately she's all Diana's bad aspects and none of the good ones. The charities are utterly synthetic. Diana's charities were real. Diana took real risks in doing it, Meghan simply performs."

He added: "Even Meghan's resentment of the monarchy is synthetic, as for the whole behavior of Harry. I think, if we say that she's trying to replay Diana, I think we're reminded of Karl Marx. History first as tragedy with Diana, and then I'm afraid as farce with Meghan and Harry. It's a royal farce."

Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, a prominent U.K. based lawyer and author, told Newsweek: "What a despicable thing to say. David Starkey is absolutely abhorrent and his statement on GB News is evidence that he is not contrite at all about comments he previously made about slavery and about Black people.

"First of all, being so derogatory about Princess Diana tells you exactly where he stands. Using Meghan Markle to drive home his misogyny, his sexism really is the pits.

"I'm not surprised that David Starkey has come out with this abhorrent statement and I'm not surprised that GB News has given him a platform because this is what GB News is about."

Starkey appeared on YouTube channel "Reasoned" in June 2020 where he was interviewed by Darren Grimes for an episode titled: "Dr David Starkey: Black Lives Matter Aims To Delegitimate British History."

It was the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, on May 25, 2020, at the hands of a white policeman, and Black Lives Matter was at the center of a worldwide debate about the damage caused by racism.

Starkey said in the interview: "Slavery was not genocide otherwise there wouldn't be so many damn Blacks in Africa or Britain would there? An awful lot of them survived."

He was not challenged on his comment during the interview, though Grimes distanced himself from Starkey after the backlash.

The commentator, who now has a separate show on GB News, tweeted in July 2020: "I reject in the strongest possible terms what Dr Starkey said in that clip and so very wish I'd caught it at the time. I am still learning the ropes, I will be much more alert to challenging this kind of thing in future."

Former U.K. chief finance minister Sajid Javid wrote on Twitter at the time: "We are the most successful multi-racial democracy in the world and have much to be proud of. But David Starkey's racist comments ("so many damn blacks") are a reminder of the appalling views that still exist."

Quoted by Sky News, Starkey said at the time: "It was intended to emphasise, in hindsight with awful clumsiness, the numbers who survived the horrors of the slave trade.

"Instead, it came across as a term of racial abuse. This, in the present atmosphere, where passions are high and feelings raw, was deplorably inflammatory. It was a bad mistake.

"I am very sorry for it and I apologise unreservedly for the offence it caused. I have also paid a heavy price for one offensive word with the loss of every distinction and honour acquired in a long career."

Meghan and Harry have spoken at length about racism and the media and the duchess told her March 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview: "And because from the beginning of our relationship, they were so attacking and inciting so much racism, really, it changed our . . . the risk level.

"Because it wasn't just catty gossip. It was bringing out a part of people that was racist in how it was charged. And that changed the threat. That changed the level of death threats. That changed everything."

More recently, Meghan told her Archetypes podcast on Spotify how she was not treated as a "Black woman" until her relationship with Prince Harry.

During a conversation with Mariah Carey, she said: "I think for us it's so different because we're light-skinned. You're not treated as a Black woman, you're not treated as a white woman. You sort of fit in between.

"If there's any time in my life that it's been more focused on my race it's only once I started dating my husband.

"Then I started to understand what it was like to be treated like a Black woman because up until then I had been treated like a mixed women. And things really shifted."

Newsweek has approached Harry and Meghan and GB News for comment.