US academic activist says he is pleased at interest of Prince Harry’s fiancee in his work

Meghan Markle could “shake up” the British monarchy, according to Noam Chomsky, the eminent linguistics professor and leftwing political activist, who is one of the actor’s favourite writers.

Markle displayed her radical credentials last summer when she told her 2 million Instagram followers that Chomsky’s book Who Rules the World was a “great read”, adding: “highly recommend”.



She met Prince Harry, who she will marry in May, around the same time as she was reading Chomsky, a one-time anarchist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist.

According to the New York Review of Books, that particular book is a “plea to end American hypocrisy and to introduce a more consistently principled dimension to American relations with the world”.

Chomsky, 88, told the Guardian on Friday: “I’ve heard about the marriage, but didn’t know about Markle’s interests. Naturally pleased to hear it. Sounds as though she may, for many reasons, shake up the royal family.”

Chomsky’s attitude to royalty is somewhat barbed. Asked by Prospect Magazine in 2011 if the monarchy was good for Britain, he quoted his philosopher friend Peter Slezak. “Royalty serves a useful purpose, he said: the pomp and ceremony helps undermine respect for state authority.”

Markle is planning to take British citizenship, but for now her head of state is Donald Trump. As a supporter of Hillary Clinton, she is likely to find any involvement in a state visit by the US president challenging.

“The way to understand Trump, I think, is pretty simple,” Chomsky said. “Apart from the pathological megalomania, he is an astute enough politician to understand that his only hope for power is to keep his adoring base in line, and they relish the fact that he is lashing out at those they see as their enemies and persecutors: Muslims, elites, foreigners … Not unknown in history, and not with welcome outcomes.”