Via LP, I learn that there were several ‘mini-Cronullas‘ this Australia Day, the worst taking place along the Manly Corso in Sydney. No-one dead or seriously injured this time, but people abused, people showered with broken glass, drunken nongs running around wearing the flag like a superman cape (something I find extraordinarily disrespectful), racist epithets flying thick and fast etc etc.
Various people at in the comments at LP saw other examples of similar silliness, and putting the differing left and right versions of ‘appropriate’ patriotism to one side (there is a little bit of argy-bargy on this point, but not much), one thing all agree on: this carry-on is new. I certainly don’t remember any kind of stupidity attached to Australia Day when I was a kid. If there was going to be trouble (more often of the ‘drunken idiot’ variety) in times gone by, then it happened on Anzac Day. The One Day of the Year (a play I suspect most of us have read at some point) was partly on this theme. Not very much happened on Australia Day except cricket (Adelaide Test) and a day off. One commenter makes the following telling remark:
I only own one Australian flag. It’s a little enamel lapel pin no more than 15 mm across and it was given to me ten years ago when my wife and I gained our citizenship. I’m immensely proud of it, not so much because of what it is but because it represents, symbolically, what my citizenship certificate confirms officially. That a better country than that of my birth had weighed me in the balance and found me worthy of acceptance.
I used to wear it on the waistcoat that passes for formal wear chez Bogan. Still do, for that matter. but, somewhere along the line, and I’m not sure where exactly, I’ve become quite uncomfortable about displaying it. It still means the same to me, but the potential for misinterpretation by others worries me, and that makes me a sad panda.
Now I haven’t been to a dawn service in years, and so I don’t really know what happens after Anzac Day parades these days, but it does seem that Anzac Day has gained in stature of late while Australia Day has lost ground — and this despite the best efforts of charitable groups, local councils and RSLs to do ’something nice’ for Australia day (even if it’s just a free BBQ). There is something more going on here than just simple racism and loutishness. It may be convenient to blame John Howard (as many lefties do) but I suspect that really is a gross oversimplification. This tendency has been around for a long time, and figuring out why it’s ‘changed days’ and morphed into something truly ugly would be an interesting exercise in itself.
The Americans have somehow managed to be flag-waving and patriotic, but you never see stuff like this attached to their flag; as one American points out, if it happens there it’s the Confederate Flag that gets ‘claimed’ by various drunken nongs. And I just can’t imagine any American using their national flag as a superman cape.
UPDATE: It seems I spoke too soon. One dead on the Gold Coast; the dreaded ‘youth of middle-eastern appearance’ strikes again. I know we’ve got to get over ourselves, but for Chrissake can’t immigrants check their baggage at the door too?
51 Comments
Compensation for a new round of the “cultural cringe” phenomenon? Not that I know whether or not the cringe is back. Just an idea.
SL: Anything analogous (although I doubt the violence is as marked) in Earl’s Court, or whatever the equivalent is these days? (Or are the ozzies quiet because we are crap at cricket now?)
I didn’t do anything for Australia Day, and in any case January in the UK has been the coldest in a decade, so anyone running around London or Oxford dressed like the idiots described above would finish up in the local A & E with hypothermia.
Yobbo made the point over at LP that quite a bit of this appears to be ripped off from English soccer hooligans (although they use the St George Cross, of course), which isn’t a particularly comforting thought.
This is bullshit..take it from one who has viewed it in a number of countries. Piss makes pissheads … end of story… the rest is hype.
I asked my wife (to confirm) yesterday as we drove through the usual suspects in St. Kilda at about 10pm last night on OzDay..are the yobbos in St. Kilda new?…Nah!
“PC” is anything that represents collectivism…get them together & control them. Yobbos (no redirection intended) are the norm, hysteria over them them …well enough said. This is not new and perhaps more Oz than most wish to accept.
“There is something more going on here than just simple racism and loutishness.”
My take on this is that it is probably due to the fact that more of the white population are becoming part of the group (“white-trash”) that will get essentially nowhere in their lives for various reasons, and living like this is much harder and less socially acceptable these days than 30 years ago (at least in their minds — and especially in the cities). In addition, since they arn’t able to blame themselves for their own predicament, other groups are a convenient scapegoat, and the blaming of the other is a manifestation of this. So it’s frustration because they think they are somehow the owners of Australia but are no-longer the masters of Australia. Thus we see a nasty form of nationalism start appearing more.
That’s all very well to say if you aren’t the minority group being harassed, but if you want the hunted to become the hunters (like, say, some of the African groups in Melbourne), this type of harassment is a good way to start.
It must have been about 10 years ago that I noticed people putting Australian flag stickers on their car (with the slogan “Young and Free”). It freaked me out – there was something jingoistic about it which I’d never really seen in Australia before.
As I’ve said before, I think that it’s a mistake to write off the original Cronulla as simply “racist” – there was a complex mix of things going on there. But it put the idea of ganging together and drunkenly harassing ethnic minorities on the map as an activity for some of these idiots. I think Conrad is right – there is an anxiety in the “white trash” population that they will get nowhere in life, and blaming other ethnicities is a way of dealing with it. I don’t know how they think randomly abusing ethnic minorities will fix this…perhaps it just makes them feel powerful.
This kind of behaviour makes me feel ashamed of being Australian rather than proud. It makes Australia Day into something very unpleasant. I hope this phenomenon of jingoistic nationalism does not continue.
Gee, SL, it seems to me that Australia Day has grown over the past 10-20 years. Before that it was just another holiday.
I think that it has been a government/media creation “go out and celebrate if you love your country”.
Perhaps the behaviour you describe is an example of how people choose the way they want to celebrate rather than the official way. The behaviour of English football fans is an example of something similar.
LE: I’ve always thought that Cronulla was more complex, and that the riots showed that Muslim immigrants and Australian Muslims have as much (or more) to learn about living in a liberal democracy where women can dress how they please than the drunken louts who decided that Alan Jones was some sort of a seer. I’ve never bought the leftie arguments on that front.
But the whole ‘Southern Cross Soldiers’ and their associates and this mangled version of ‘patriotism’ — that’s new, as is the copycat violence (without any of the complexities associated with the original Cronulla riots).
SL, I agree with you on the complexity of Cronulla – I was just making my own position clear.
What is with these Southern Cross Soldiers and the like? It’s seriously freaky. I think some people are just out for any excuse for violence. But there’s also a sense that other ethnicities have been targeted as representing a threat to the way of life or security of the group (a phenomenon I have explored before). I suspect these groups whip up moral outrage within their confines, and when that happens, a “ruthless” switch in the member’s minds is tripped. Anyone different is seen as the enemy.
“I don’t know how they think randomly abusing ethnic minorities will fix this…perhaps it just makes them feel powerful.”
.
I think this is just part of the mainly male human condition unfortunately. It happens in lots of domains — the other obvious one being rape where, at least in the adult-adult case, I think it’s generally agreed is often to do with power and generally directed at someone that isn’t the initial cause of the problems.
Australia has always pleasantly limited its nationalism to cricket and swimming.
I think there’s a significant distinction that should be drawn here, too – patriotism vs nationalism. To me it is patriotic to (for example) protest against the Iraq war, but it is nationalistic to defend as true and right everything that your country does. These bogans are nationalists, not patriots.
There is definitely, definitely an upsurge in this stuff. You see stickers on cars which say things like “we grew here, you flew here” and (the one I hate more than any other “Australia: love it or leave” (what if I love Australia but hate you? will you leave?). I did not see those stickers ten years ago.
I hate to sound like a ‘typical lefty’, but in my opinion we are reaping Howard’s whirlwind: 10 years of dog whistle politics and subtle institutional racism and xenophobia has produced a generation who think that nudge nudge-racism is acceptable and normal. I have had conversations with people who genuinely believe that (a) we are about to be invaded by Indonesia and (b) we will be taken over by Muslims unless we “do something about it”.
Of course these people don’t really care about our values. They would be the concentration camp guards in a parallel universe.
People thought we were about to be invaded by Indonesia when I was in grade school (ie, the seventies and eighties). The fear of the ‘Yellow Peril’ has been around forever, and with some historical legitimacy. The Japanese — let’s face it — were not encamped in PNG during WWII for recreational purposes.
Thing is, people who thought that sort of stuff didn’t go out and try to glass people who disagreed with them. And the drunken silliness on Anzac Day tended to be Vets letting off steam, even when — as occasionally happened — it got out of hand.
Expect this to get worse as the credit crunch bites, because I have a bad feeling it has economic origins. Conrad has flagged them already.
Paul: “I hate to sound like a ‘typical lefty’, but in my opinion we are reaping Howard’s whirlwind”
No, the current demonstrative nationalism began with Hawke/Keating. What we are talking about is an unpleasant manifestation of it. We can blame H for quite a lot, but not everything.
“If I had my way” (always a dopey thing to say), I’d drop all organised celebrations of national days and such.
Half changing the subject, I believe that when a nation (or any group) goes on at length about something, such as a national characteristic, it is being done to teach or inculcate that characteristic, which in truth is not well established. So, Australian mateship is in modern days a very shallow value. Same with British stiff upper lip. In Japan, you will hear “ganbate” (roughly “hang in there, don’t give up”) ten times a day. If it was part of the national character, it would not be necessary to keep reminding people of it. American demonstrative patriotism is, on this reasoning, trying to inculcate a set of values that don’t come naturally.
All this, coupled with my natural tendency to reject what I am told to think or believe makes me a conscientious objector to Australia Day.
Ugh, I’ve not seen the stickers saying “we grew here, you flew here” and “Australia: love it or leave”. Hey, we’re all immigrants here, unless we’re indigenous (and even indigenous people arrived here from somewhere else, just a long, long, long time ago). I do think these kind of sentiments have become more prominent over the last ten years. I’m not quite sure why – although like Paul, I do think it became more mainstream during the Howard era to express these kind of views. People felt that they could reject the “black armband” view of history, as Howard himself did – but paradoxically, some went to the other extreme – a nationalism whereby Australia could do no wrong.
I’d agree with you, Ken, about the inculcation of cultural values like “mateship”. I see scant evidence of mateship in practice these days, but people go on about it all the time. A case of the nation doth protest too much.
Yep, Legal Eagle, as I said to one of these bogans once “you don’t look like a koori to me”.
Of course they’re ugly failures fuelled by grog and testosterone, but ugly failures didn’t always express themselves in this way in Australia and it’s a quite disturbing development.
Only slightly OT, I wish weed was legal. This sort of thing wouldn’t happen if they got stoned instead of pissed.
Don’t blame Howard for tribalism. When I was at school in the 70s it was common place to call people wogs or coons or whatever, and to worry about viet boat people etc. What is new is the violence and you will find that at any pub strip on any weekend. Oz day just sees the violence combined with the tribalism.
I’m not blaming Howard for creating the underlying sentiments. I’m blaming him for subtly encouraging the notion that it was acceptable to express them without shame or embarrassment. “We decide who comes to this country…” etc etc. Although on the whole I think freedom of expression trumps all, a bit of social stigma can be the difference between a relatively good natured lout and an openly racist lout.
As you correctly say, LE, there is a great irony in young white Australians abusing others for having the temerity to come to this country.
I also feel that some blame must be placed at the feet of cultural relativism. Some of this behaviour might be a reaction to the perceived threat to “our way of life” or “our values” posed by recent immigrants. These same yobbos probably feel very alarmed when they are told they must accommodate the needs of other cultures in ‘their’ country. Perhaps if we as a society (and our government) more clearly articulated actual values we believe in (not drivel like “mateship”, but rather, “gender equality”, “racial equality”, “equality before the law”, “universal suffrage” etc.) then people would have less recourse to basic racial/religious discrimination.
(And don’t even get me started on the issue of whether there is any validity whatsoever to the current system of nation states… As someone I know says, patriotism is the same thing as racism).
This is bullshit..take it from one who has viewed it in a number of countries. Piss makes pissheads … end of story… the rest is hype.
Exactly. I regard alcohol as a mug’s drug and a testament to the power of culture to shape our preferences and justify the same at some latter point. Must avoid that cognitive dissonance and disturbingly there is some evidence to suggest that we adjust our values to fit our behavior rather than vice versa. Perhaps that is why it can be so difficult to change peoples’ values, we aim at their thinking when we need to change their behavior and the thinking will follow.
On Australia Day I asked a friend if he was going to Burleigh Heads for some celebrations. He replied there would be too many bevans and trouble. I thought he was being pessimistic. 5 minutes later I returned to my room and checked news.com.au: huge brawl at Burleigh Heads Aus Day celebrations was the headline article.
Alcohol is generally regarded as having a disinhibitory effect. It will potentiate latent hates that all of us carry within us to varying degrees. These “hates” are effectively innate, numerous studies point to human beings possessing a cognitive predilection towards tribalism and in particular to being wary of possible outsiders. Get a large group of people from differing sub-culture together, add alcohol in liberal quantities, and it is almost a statistical inevitability that there will be trouble. It will be fascinating to see to what extent culture can again mitigate these less unpleasant aspects of our behavior.
I certainly don’t remember any kind of stupidity attached to Australia Day when I was a kid.
No but the country was a lot more ethnically homogenous when we were kids. It was also more ‘Strine in terms of the olde Aussie kulcha before people needed to go past grade 10 en masse to actually get into the workforce.
My take on this is that it is probably due to the fact that more of the white population are becoming part of the group (”white-trash”) that will get essentially nowhere in their lives for various reasons, and living like this is much harder and less socially acceptable these days than 30 years ago
And less economically practical as well. I reckon there’s a good subsection of the Anglo-Celtic populace who haven’t come very far since convict days culturally or economically.
However pre-1980s that wasn’t a problem. One could be a total dropkick and own a house and boat and the rest. A lot of these people feel that, as Australians, they’re entitled to a middle-class lifestyle. Since we’ve had to work for a living this is no longer so. And of course blaming others for it is easier than taking a look in the mirror and admitting that it’s one’s own laziness.
That all said the ethnic tension is not eminating solely from Anglo-Celts. There are all sorts of equally troublesome groups from other ethnic groups. Many of them carry old racial bullshit from the old country, for example the Lebanese, the Greeks and Cypriots, the Balkans blah blah blah.
Piss makes pissheads … end of story… the rest is hype
I think there’s a tendency to blame alcohol. I’m sure that it contributes but I’m equally sure it’s not the basic reason. People are getting of the trains 6pm on a Saturday night and proceeding to violence right away.
Also as I”ve said it isn’t just a case of Anglo-Celts. Other groups are likewise responsible. There’s a notion that only white people can be racist. This is something that should be put paid to as racists of other ethnic groups carry on carte blanche without so much as a tut tut tut.
Most Africans I’ve met are cool. But there’s a section of gangsta rap dickheads who do occasionally prowl the streets menacing people and they do get racial about it. (Hip Hop has ‘em convinced that white people are all scared of ‘em).
In fact Gangsta Rap dickheadism probably accounts for a lot of this crap.
Adrien@21 said “There’s a notion that only white people can be racist. This is something that should be put paid to as racists of other ethnic groups carry on carte blanche without so much as a tut tut tut.”
Terms such as “goyim”, and to a lesser extent in recent decades “gaijin”, have certainly caused major problems. Both are nationalistic.
derrida derider@15 said “I wish weed was legal. This sort of thing wouldn’t happen if they got stoned instead of pissed.”
Yes, the so-called toxicology can have a very good sociological outcome if well managed. Just as affected, but unable to get off the couch and cause trouble. Besides… boosting Oz agriculture, increasing tax revenue, avoiding Oz kids in overseas jails…
The only racist bit might be “By good Ozzie weed, not that Thai/Afghani/whatever crap!”
Or maybe the solution is to lock a selection of young bigots from all races in a room full of weed (I’d say ecstasy too, but that is WAY too damaging) until they are all best mates! (As long as other resources like Mars Bars aren’t scarce).
Racism and ethnic prejudice ain’t new, it’s just the expression of them in Australian via this kind of flag/cape-wearing nationalism. I wonder if the flag wearing phenomenon comes from that photo of Pauline Hanson draped in the flag??
I agree, Adrien: troublesome groups also definitely aren’t confined to Anglo-Celts, Africans, Lebanese or whichever group someone is attempting to stereotype at this particular moment. I do find big groups of lads on street corners a little scary and threatening; and I don’t care what race they are.
“Many of them carry old racial bullshit from the old country, for example the Lebanese, the Greeks and Cypriots, the Balkans blah blah blah.”
Yep, I find that pretty weird too (especially when carried out by the second generation). It’s also not clear to me why some groups do and some groups don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Pakistanis fight Indians here (does that happen in the UK?), or the Koreans fighting the Japanese , but those groups would have as much reason as any others.
Spoke too soon — one dead on the Gold Coast, and the dreaded youths of ‘middle-eastern appearance’ strike again.
I will opine more anon, but this is merely the early stages of blowback to dingbat Keating’s Multiculti. Oh, and also be aware that Aussie, Aussie, Aussi, oi, oi, oi nationalism is also growing among second generation non-Anglo kids who were born here. They are tired of the authorities and their parents trying to keep them stuck in “the old country” which they have never even visited.
Luvvies and academics are COMPLETELY out of their depth on this one, which explains their reflexive grab for 1970s sociological models and ideological framewaorks.
No it doesn’t. As far as your average racist nong is concerned “they’re ALL pakis” whether Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi. Most of the riots we have are Asian on White in places in the north of england such as Bradford, though Asian on Black is not unknown.
A story in The Age today about the straitened economic circumstances faced by many.
It’s not so weird that immigrants to Australia carry ethnic rivalries and tensions from their old country. The Catholic/Protestant rivalry between Aussies of English/Scottish origin and those of Irish origin should have been forewarning of this.
I remember remnants of 1980s Hawke/Keating inspired jingoism from my childhood in Balranald. Whitlam got into it too (it was his government that first settled on the much-mocked Advance Australia Fair as a national anthem, though maybe this is one of those things about the Whitlam years that people have been trying to forget!) Patriotism and jingosim has definitely been an ongoing force in Australian politics, and it probably misses the point entirely to blame any one politician for outbreaks of violence.
These yobs have probably been festering with resentments since early childhood. They almost certainly got it from their parents. If government does bear responsibility for these outbreaks of violence, it’s been a collective failure of governments over the past three decades, at least.
Disagree. Alcohol is a truth serum – it brings out what’s already there.
I am a pretty big drinker, yet somehow I avoid forming gangs and victimising people of other races.
Like any drug, its effects depend on the circumstances of its use. Despite the terrible press it gets, I have had plenty of great alcohol-related experiences.
I’m not sure where you get this from.
I think there’s more a notion that if the dominant group in a society victimises minority groups, that is more of a problem than the reverse. Perhaps it’s an issue that needs to be reversed. But I think most people would be just as shocked if they were refused entry somewhere because they were white as they would if it were any other race. If there’s a difference, it may also stem from the fact that in historical terms whites discriminating against other races (in Anglo-Australian history) has been much more prominent than the reverse, so there is naturally higher sensitivity towards it.
I don’t think it’s some politically correct conspiracy – I think there are obvious demographic and historical reasons for it.
However, I totally agree with the underlying point – racial discrimination should be totally unacceptable, regardless of which groups are involved.
You have a point there, TimT. Took us a bloody long time to get over sectarianism. My parents were told they’d have to get married ‘behind the altar’ because dad wouldn’t convert (he was a wishy-washy Proddy-dog; mum was a proper Cattle-tick).
Just on festering hatreds, if you want to see just what they look like for those thrown together and forced to live beside people they basically don’t like (ie, no-one ‘plays well with others’), then try to catch Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino.
In many respects a meditation on gender (it beautifully skewers the greatest weakness of many immigrant groups/minorities — their attitude to women), the film also cheerfully dispatches the ‘only whites can be racist’ furphy while simultaneously drawing out the complexities that underlie racial tensions in multicultural areas.
So called ‘white’ racism gets most of the attention, that’s certainly true.
Take as a recent example the apology to the stolen generations. It was performed by the Federal Government with the implication being that they were apologising on behalf of Australians in general.
But: a) Australians born after the end of the ‘stolen generations’ policy had no responsibility or guilt for this particular policy.
b) Australians who emigrated to Australia following the end of the ‘stolen generations’ policy likewise shared no responsibility or guilt for the implementation of the policy.
Ergo: the professed guilt of a significant minority of Anglo-Saxons who felt responsible for the stolen generations phenomenon was universalised and made applicable to all Australians, quite irrationally.
There are other examples, but that’s the best I can think of.
I don’t know where this irrational notion that personal guilt can be universalised comes from, but my theory at the moment is that it stems from the guilt of 19th century anti-slavery campaigners. (Read some William Cowper poems recently and the sense of an inescpable original sin, in connection to slavery is palpable.)
I’m always very wary of any kind of group guilt, just because group identification of any sort always seems to carry within the seeds of its own destruction. People like it when it’s KRudd’s kindly speech: ‘we’ (big group) are sorry to ‘you’ (little group). They tend to forget that group dynamics are not usually like that.
Rudd’s apology could be interpreted as meaning “Australia, as a government and a society, recognises that wrongs were done to a group within our ranks, and are committed to righting those wrongs irrespective of which individuals actually committed them.”
I don’t think he meant that each white Australian was personally culpable in some way for acts done in the past by others.
If a government doesn’t act for society as a whole, who does it act for? The stolen generations were the product of government policy, after all.
I would still be interested to see an example where anyone has actually put this forward as a serious proposition…
Very, very widespread as part of US identity politics, and still has some currency. I was taught it as a serious idea in the UQ English Dept in the early 90s. Google the phrase ‘racism equals prejudice plus power’ and you can follow any links you fancy. Alternatively, this is a useful potted summary of the idea, with some good links. That said, I found it by doing the above google search.
Paul, you’re very fortunate to have been educated after the universities stopped being stuffed with leftie bollocks.
That google search, in all its purblind glory.
A few years ago, I was out with a female friend from a different background to myself. She saw a white girl in a short skirt, and said, “Look at that white sl*t”. I got really angry and said, “What am I?” She had to concede that I was a white gal too, but she said, “You’re different; you don’t wear short skirts or sleep around like most white girls.” I got cross and said, “According to my cultural mores, I could do that if I wanted to, and no one can say I’m a sl*t – it’s something that’s acceptable in mainstream culture. And you’re making gross generalisations based on skin colour. So I don’t want to hear that kind of stuff again.” My friend took my point and apologised.
The point is that my friend did not think of her comment as racist until I pointed it out.
“I don’t know where this irrational notion that personal guilt can be universalised comes from”
I don’t know if it’s that clear cut — Germany paid a lot of money to groups for what it did in WWII, and there is definitely still collective guilt over that. I’m sure in 50 years time the Chinese will talk about Tibetans in exactly the same way as Australians talk about Aboriginies — should they be absolved of any wrong doing simply because a certain amount of time has passed too?
Tim T – The Catholic/Protestant rivalry between Aussies of English/Scottish origin and those of Irish origin should have been forewarning of this.
Well being half Irish Catholic and half Scot Presb. I always make sure to pay respects to my heritage equally by beating the shit out of myself on the 24th of May every year.
Paul – I would still be interested to see an example where anyone has actually put this forward as a serious proposition
Few do. But it’s implicit in the discourse. It’s like the idea that feminists think sexual difference is entirely a product of social convention and that nature has nothing to do with it. If you assert this commonplace there will be the same sort of objection you raise but the absence of any address of natural sex difference in mainstream feminist discourse says otherwise.
Generally speaking, and Skeptic’s right that this is very much prevalent in the US, concerns about ‘racism’ in the discourse of the subject are almost entirely about white racism. Even when the racism is nothing of the kind.
That racism or equivalent tribal prejudices might be widespread in other cultures which have not had to confront the Holocaust as the consequence of such thinking does not occur to people. The category that obtains is white=oppressor and ‘other than white’ = oppressed. And the same old confusion of powerlessness and virtues manifests.
Thing is that racism is the end result of a long series of intraspecies conflict that has resulted in its own mythology. Hence you have the absurd spectacle of Islamic pan-Africanists who teach that white people are the blue-eyed spawn of Satan even tho’ the extra-African trade in black slaves was and still is perpetrated by Arabs. And in fact prior to the modern era north African Muslim slave raiders, black and Arab, enslaved huge numbers of NW Europeans roughly comparable to those transported in the Atlantic slave trade.
Ironically the nefariously racist Europeans are the only culture I can think of who put a stop to their own slavery.
Post-war Germany also gave the most piddling, powder-puff sentences to guys who shot up entire villages, too. The average for members of the Einsatzgruppen was about 4 years. Sometimes I think this stupid collective guilt palaver comes from a failure to deal with the individuals who actually perpetrated the shitty behaviour. The average German was simply not responsible for the d*ckhead who shot up entire villages. Indeed, the average German often retained some sense of right and wrong.
One of HLA Hart’s essays catches this well. Einsatzgruppe chaps were in the habit of leaving rolls of massacre pictures in ordinary suburban pharmacies to be developed. In every case the response of the store owners and their staff was to ring the coppers when ghastly stuff started floating up out of the fixer. The killers were given a kicking by high command — for letting the cat out of the bag, not for the actual massacre.
Hart’s point was that — occasional exceptions apart (like the kommissarbefehl), Nazi Germany did not change its positive law in order to make it okay to kill people the Government happened not to like. It just went ahead with the killings anyway.
Yup, it’s all the fault of the vile Anglo-Saxon, not we Celts…
In my heat addled moments this morning I was thinking of society as a pendulum – back and forth. So we had black armband history (Anglo-Celt = do bad stuff) and added cultural relativism (anyone other than Anglo-Celt doing bad stuff = their culture, can’t criticise it). Therefore the picture is Anglo-Celt = terrible, anyone else = can do no wrong. The natural reaction of people is to decide that this is rubbish, but then there’s a proportion who go to the other extreme of the pendulum: namely, Anglo-Celts = can do no wrong, any other culture = does bad stuff. And so it goes on.
The truth of the matter is that all cultures have their terrible aspects and their terrible histories. And all cultures have positive aspects too. Everyone is capable of racism – that is, discriminating against others and judging them because of their background, not their individual characteristics.
Re cultural relativism – of course, you have to understand a person’s culture to an extent to understand where they are coming from, but in my mind, this doesn’t mean excusing behaviour which is fundamentally against human rights.
The true picture of Anglo-Celtic history in Australia is more complicated. My own great x 7 grandfather was on the Fourth Fleet. He was such a nice fellow that at least two or three of the local indigenous people decided they were going to adopt his name, and did so. He wasn’t going out raping and pillaging indigenous communities. He doesn’t figure largely in any histories – the most I read is that he looked after Norfolk Island for a while, and was remarkable for the fact that everyone liked him, convicts and administration alike, and all were very sad to see him go. Someone like that doesn’t make good history, and he probably doesn’t represent the majority of settler/indigenous interactions – but there were people in those days who were as decent as they could be (given their culture and background). There were also some really terrible people who exploited indigenous people and treated them appallingly.
The same goes for all cultures. I think to view things in a kind of goodies versus baddies way is not unhelpful, and may actually push people the other way. It’s better to see interactions as complicated, and concede that all groups of people (and all individuals) have positive and negative aspects.
I don’t think dress codes had anything to do with Cronulla.
Women in Australia are at liberty to dress as they like. Muslims in Australia have every right to criticise how people dress.
Criticising someone’s dress is one thing. Harassing someone because of their dress is another.
My understanding is that the whole Cronulla thing flared in part because prior to the alleged assault of a lifeguard, young women wearing swimming costumes at the beach were being harassed by young men, allegedly primarily of a Lebanese background. The young men presumed that women who dress scantily must want attention. The women did not have the same understanding. They did not want the attention and started to feel uncomfortable at the beach. Hence the notion expressed at the rally of “reclaiming the beach.”
Personally, as far as I’m concerned, people can say whatever they want about the way I dress. So Sheikh Hilaly is free to say that uncovered women are cat’s meat, and I’m free to say that he’s an idiot in response.
But people are not free to harass others merely because of the way they dress. This goes equally for women who choose to wear bikinis or women who choose to wear hijabs. Each should be free to dress as she wants, without suffering racist or sexist comments from others.
Yup, it’s all the fault of the vile Anglo-Saxon, not we Celts
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Except I think it was us that gave the Aborigines whiskey. D’oh!
When white females get “attention” from white men, other whites seem to be fine with it. When you colour the men olive the “attention” becomes harassment and pisses other white men off.
The reality is that these “Lebanese” people are a product of Australia and its mannerisms.
LDU, I can’t speak for other women, but to me it doesn’t matter what colour a man is. I don’t care to be hassled by anyone. Seriously.
What do you mean by the statement that “these Lebanese people are a product of Australia and its mannerisms”? If you mean that the two groups have pushed each other into a situation of conflict, I would agree with that. Both sides have harassed the people from the other side, and there’s ignorant yobs on both sides. Some people will use any excuse for a fight.
When white females get “attention” from white men, other whites seem to be fine with it. When you colour the men olive the “attention” becomes harassment and pisses other white men off.
It’s not just whites or just guys.
Stay away from our women white boy!
Um, your women? You can’t own women in this country.