What DOES Harry know about the 'toxic trauma therapist' Gabor Mate he'll be ... trends now
Self-help guru Gabor Mate has compared the murderous terrorists of Hamas to the Jewish heroes who rose up against the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943.
He has contributed to a pro-Kremlin website that defends brutal regimes around the world.
He has rushed to defend Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour from charges of anti-Semitism and he has even spoken warmly of the spittle-flecked Pink Floyd star and alleged ‘Putin apologist’ Roger Waters.
So for all that he styles himself an expert in ‘toxic trauma’, critics insist that Dr Mate — a bestselling writer and fervent advocate for drug legalisation — knows a few things about being ‘toxic’ himself.
And yet, despite these and other controversies, today Prince Harry will be sitting down with the 79-year-old Hungarian-Canadian Holocaust survivor for a cosy chat, livestreamed for paying customers on the internet, on ‘the importance of personal healing’.
Prince Harry will be sitting down with the 79-year-old Hungarian-Canadian Holocaust survivor for a cosy chat, livestreamed for paying customers on the internet, on ‘the importance of personal healing’
Self-help guru Gabor Mate will have an ‘intimate conversation’ with Harry — the latest effort to promote his memoir, Spare. The move has appalled Jewish leaders who have questioned how the Duke felt it remotely appropriate to collaborate with such a man
The livestream costs £17 and comes with a free hardback copy of the duke's memoir
With his popularity plummeting in America and even the makers of the satirical comedy South Park savagely mocking him and his wife Meghan, perhaps the Duke of Sussex can’t be too choosy about his friends these days.
Nevertheless, what’s billed as Harry’s ‘intimate conversation’ with Mate — the latest effort to promote his memoir, Spare — has appalled Jewish leaders who have questioned how the Duke felt it remotely appropriate to collaborate with such a man.
‘I am working under the assumption that the Prince did not know this person’s political bias, his hatred for the Jewish state and his covering for Hamas terrorists,’ said Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish human rights group. Whoever made the arrangements to have this individual appear with Prince Harry did him no favours.’
The Prince and Mate both have books to plug, however. And they also share the same publisher, Penguin Random House, which together with bookshops has arranged today’s discussion.
But this tête-à-tête is far more than a neat little marketing stunt. Rabbi Cooper may be disappointed to learn that the Prince is well acquainted with the doctor, according to a British interviewer who visited Harry at his Californian mansion in January and who reported that ‘we spoke excitedly about Mate for some time’.
After all, despite their very different backgrounds, the two men have a surprising amount in common.
For example, Harry has admitted consuming the powerful Amazonian hallucinogen ayahuasca, which Dr Mate — a former family GP and palliative-care specialist — once enthusiastically promoted to his patients. (That is, until the Canadian government threatened to arrest him for doing so on the grounds that the drug was illegal.) For another, Mate is a self-confessed neurotic attention-seeker who believes that most adult hang-ups can be attributed to something bad happening to us during childhood.
And this, some might judge, makes him perfectly suited to talking to Harry — who suffered the loss of his mother at a young age and who has spoken exhaustively about his various gripes in TV interviews, a Netflix show and while promoting his memoir.
Those willing to stump up the £20 to tune in to the exchange (a copy of Spare is included in the price) should not expect a robust exchange of views.
Not for the first time, Harry has chosen to talk to an interviewer whose calls for greater compassion towards mental health mirror his own.
Meanwhile, in another neat symmetry, Mate’s new book seems strangely appropriate.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in New York, may be disappointed to learn that the Prince is well acquainted with Dr Mate
Even if the Duke avoids talking about his father, his chat with Mate is expected to dwell heavily on the death of Diana, Princess of Wales (pictured together in 1987)
Entitled Hello Again: A Fresh Start For Parents And Their Adult Children, it should make fitting reading for a son who remains all but estranged from his own father and who was recently told that his British home, Frogmore Cottage near Windsor Castle, is no longer his to use.
(Harry is said to be furious at the perceived slight.)
Even if the Duke avoids talking about his father, his chat with Mate is expected to dwell heavily on the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.
The two men, we are told, will discuss ‘the difficulties of living with loss’ in an event that will help to ‘remove the stigma around what we call mental illness’.
Over the past couple of decades, Dr Mate has built a lucrative self-help empire and carefully cultivated a reputation as a guru on addiction, stress and child development.
Once hailed as the ‘sainted icon of the drug-legalisation movement’ — he would decriminalise all drugs, no matter how dangerous — Mate has since moved on to become the darling of the therapy-obsessed, touchy-feely California circles in which Harry and Meghan now move.
He has built a huge and, critics say, almost cult-like following, relying
