The recent outpouring of rancour and bilious accusation at the death of Queen Elizabeth II has brought out predictable justifications for incivility in the name of social justice: ‘It’s okay when we do it; if you criticise us, you’re an oppressor too.’

Last Thursday, a Nigerian-born university professor at Carnegie Mellon tweeted her hope that Queen Elizabeth’s pain on her deathbed would be ‘excruciating’, excusing her crudity by referring to the Queen as the ‘chief monarch [sic] of a thieving, raping, and genocidal empire’.

Professor Uju Anya is not a historian – she has a PhD in the academically unserious discipline of second-language theory while...