A Pennsylvania-based professor who said she expected Queen Elizabeth to die an “unbearable death” has doubled down on her controversial comments, saying in a podcast on Wednesday: “I said what I said.”
Uju Anya, a Nigerian-American professor of linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University, sparked widespread anger with her response to the queen’s final hours.
Jeff Bezos was among those who condemned his tweet, commenting: ‘Is this someone supposedly working to improve the world? I do not think. Wow.’
On Wednesday, Anya, 46, told the This Week In White Supremacy podcast that she has no regrets about her tweet, which Twitter has removed.
In response to the controversy, Anya tweeted: “If anyone expects me to express more than disdain for the monarch who oversaw a government that sponsored the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family and whose consequences those alive today are still dealing with to overcome”. , you can keep wishing on a star.
She told the podcast on Wednesday: “In other words, I said what I said.”
Uju Anya, a Nigerian-American professor of linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University, told the This Week In White Supremacy podcast that she stood by his controversial comments about the queen.
Hundreds of people criticized the rude teacher for her comments on the Queen’s last hours
Uju Anya is a professor and associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Anya’s hatred for the queen, who died last week aged 96, stemmed from her family’s experience in Nigeria.
In 1967, seven years after Nigeria gained independence from the British Empire and 15 years after the young queen took the throne, a civil war broke out in the east of the country.
The Biafran separatists wanted independence for the Igbo people of Nigeria, but were heavily suppressed by the Nigerian government, supported by the British government, which supplied arms.
More than a million people died in the two years of conflict, many of them from hunger.
Anya blamed the queen.
‘I had an emotional reaction. And an emotional outburst,” she told the podcast hosts.
‘This news provoked me.
‘It was deep in pain and trauma for me. Due to my family experience with the government of this monarch.
Anya said on Wednesday she was ‘triggered’ by the queen’s death
Queen Elizabeth, pictured June 2, died last week aged 96. Anya said she despised her for Britain’s role in fueling Nigeria’s civil war in the late 1960s, which killed more than a million people.
The coffin with the body of the queen is taken to the Palace of Westminster on Wednesday.
Anya, who said she was an “unapologetic, left-wing” provocateur used to contentious debate, said her tweet was “unplanned, very spontaneous” and “extremely real”.
‘I heard that the main monarch of a thieving and raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May his pain be unbearable,’ he wrote in a tweet to his roughly 70,000 followers.
She said she was surprised by the attention the tweet received, but said it was designed to educate people.
‘I like teaching. I am fundamentally a teacher,’ she said.
‘And I bring evidence and support for the claims I make.’
Some opinion writers also celebrated the queen’s death, with one promising to dance on her grave and another describing her 70-year reign as “devastating”.
As millions of people around the world mourned the death of the 96-year-old monarch, provocateurs mocked the outpouring of grief within hours, in some of America’s most esteemed publications.
His reign was ridiculed by Tirhakah Love, Senior Newsletter Writer for New York Magazine.
“For 96 years, that colonizer has been sucking up the Earth’s resources,” he wrote in his Thursday night newsletter.
He added: “You cannot be a literal oppressor and not expect that the people you have oppressed will not rejoice at the news of your death.”
Tirhakah Love, senior newsletter writer for New York Magazine, said he was looking forward to dancing at the queen’s tomb.
Love, who was named in December, described by the magazine’s editors as “creative and restless” and “funny and surprising,” said he felt nothing but joy at her death.
‘Now am I supposed to be quiet or, better yet, cry over what was a barely breathing Glad ForceFlex garbage bag? Please don’t,’ she wrote.
I just want to remind you that in the rest of the world, and I mean the real world, the majority will be celebrating today.
‘We all have our methods of crying to friends; doing the electric slide over a settler’s grave turns out to be mine.
Love knew her views on the Dinner Party newsletter would be provocative, tweeting: ‘Hahaha make sure you guys read Dinner Party.’
When someone reacted with mock horror, the Texan replied: ‘WHAT LEFT YOU WANT? ??? I’m about to be as respectful and sweet as ever!
In The New York Times, Maya Jasanoff, a history professor at Harvard University, where she focuses on the history of Britain and the British Empire, said it was wrong to ‘romanticize’ her reign.
Maya Jasanoff, a Harvard professor specializing in the history of the British Empire, said it was wrong to ‘romanticize’ the queen’s rule
“The queen helped obscure a bloody history of decolonization whose proportions and legacies have yet to be properly recognized,” he wrote.
Jasanoff highlights the crackdown in Malaysia, Kenya, Yemen, Cyprus and Ireland.
“We may never know what the queen did or did not know about the crimes committed in her name,” he said.
‘Those who heralded a second Elizabethan age hoped that Elizabeth II would maintain British greatness; instead, it was the era of the implosion of the empire.’
A writer for The Atlantic magazine, Jemele Hill, also weighed in on her Twitter account, saying journalists had a duty to cover what she called the “devastating” impacts of Elizabeth’s reign.
“Journalists are tasked with putting legacies in their full context, so it is entirely appropriate to examine the queen and her role in the devastating impact of continued colonialism,” Hill wrote.
That tweet also received a comments section full of critics, one of whom said, “Lol no one is going to say anything.”
Jemele Hill, a writer for The Atlantic, wrote about the queen’s ‘devastating’ reign.
Another journalist, Eugene Scott of The Washington Post, also offered his thoughts, asking when would be a good time to talk about colonialism under the queen.
‘Real question for the ‘now is not the right time to talk about the negative impact of colonialism’ crowd: When is the right time to talk about the negative impact of colonialism?’ he wrote.
Imani Gandy, a legal analyst for Rewire News, tweeted a video of a group of men tap dancing outside Buckingham Palace to the song Another One Bites The Dust.
“The queen is dead and the Irish are on it lol,” she wrote.
