Interestingly the conservatives whether nats and libs have devised an alarming cultural reinterpretations of Australian history. While there are many deviations, the two most extraordinary are the denial of our colonial past and a reinterpretation of Australia’s war history.
Most high school kids can tell the poor old cultural conservatives that the act of colonisation is the invasion of someone else’s land and the use of that land for the invaders’ benefit. Initially a forceful and aggressive act, and post invasion interaction includes massacres and disenfranchisement of original inhabitants to inferior status. Coupled with this brutality, the conquer despises the conquered and attempts to destroy the culture of the invaded.
Ultimately the colonised fight back. For the Irish, this struggle against the English lasted over 500 hundred years. The Indians not a long. The French were moved on swiftly from their Middle Eastern colonies. But remember those bloody battles of independence in Algeria. Apartheid in South Africa was finally bought to its knees by the struggle of Black South African people and world public opinion swelled against Western countries trying to support this hideous ideology. We celebrate these momentous victories.
However in the Americas, Australia and NZ, Indigenous peoples were small in numbers and consequently occupation by an eternal flow of violent coloniser with guns, bullets and diseases made their struggle and potential uprising extraordinarily difficult. But the struggle never ceased.
Frankly it is time for cultural conservatives to understand the nature of colonisation as this is white history. Omission and denial of truth, really is wilfully pernicious.
Moreover it seems ridiculous asking the First Nation People to accept the notion of a bit of a preamble in the very constitution of the white folk who invaded their land decimated their numbers and destroyed languages and culture.
The good old cultural conservatives, generally blokes, love to engage in photo shoots with the military. Remember all those shots of Little Jonny Howard with a general or two or heavens, Tony Abbott surrounded by braided blokes and yes even Malcolm Turnbull likes the odd photo of himself surrounded by brass, and the odd AK47.
Australia has engaged itself in quite a n umber of wars. With the exception of the Second World war all of these conflicts related to the invasion of someone else’s territory, frequently with disastrous consequences for civilians and infrastructure … remember Iraq.
However there are a two wars which the cultural conservatives have rewritten stealthy by omission, namely the First World War and later the Vietnam war.
Both wars relate to conscription that beloved tool of Conservative governments …. such laws put us plebs in our place… as cannon fodder for the Generals on either side!
Now back to war. Acknowledged by most folk as appalling imperialistic war WW1, resulting in millions of deaths, the conservative devaluation myth provides us with hero stories from the war front, but denudes events happening in Australia. On two occasions the Federal Government attempted legislation to enforce conscription. Twice the legislation failed. Valiant men and women fought to stop conscription, the streets of Sydney and Melbourne massed with people opposed to war and conscription. Sadly this information is slipping from our popular history sheets.
The Vietnam war, appalling carnage, agent orange, massive bombing followed by the final humiliating defeat of the US forces. Over the ensuing years the conservative rhetoric somehow minimised the horrific causalities, the shattered environment and ignominious defeat and started to shine a light on the treatment of Vietnam vets both regular army and conscripts.
However another smaller group of courageous young blokes have been written out of this history, namely those men who refused to participate in the deplorable lottery of conscription introduced by the conservative government. They were chased and hounded by police and courts. They were heroes but are never acknowledged.
And as with WW1, the masses of people on the streets were heroes too. And the sheer size and numbers of marchers made conservative politicians shrink and gave Whitlam government where he stopped conscription and ended Australia’s involvement in this war.
There are two elements always at play in conservative governments in this country. Firstly when in power they invariably attempt to privatise any taxer payer funded entities. Better, say the old cultural conservatives in the hand s of their rich mates of private enterprise. And following the dismissal of a conservative government an enormous sigh of popular ecstatic relief … the bastards are gone says the electorate with a shudder. And very bad cultural conservative Prime Ministers loose their seats too!
However we need to be mindful of cultural conservatives rewriting of our history. After all it is our history, not theirs!
*Josephine Zananiri lives in the Independent electorate of Indi in Germantown Vic and currently works in the manual labour arena tending native and exotic trees.
