As Tony Abbott sends us off to war we are reminded of John Howard’s eagerness to do the same thing 12 years ago. Dean Laplonge offers a brief insight into Howard’s Australia and what Howard tried to achieve, and the comparisons to today’s Australia are startling.
I wrote this article 12 years ago. Has anything changed?
Australia is fast heading down a dangerous path. While our stories of history may permit us to see an era of fascism only in some distant place and some distant time, there is no guarantee in this story that the ugly head of right-wing extremism will not rise again. Just because we participated in the fight against it, and shared in the spoils of the victory over it, does not remove us from being the constructors of an equally horrific threat. The current rhetoric of patriotism that is circulating within this nation suggests quite clearly that fascist ideologies are gaining prominence once again. And in this land where we claim there is opportunity for all, amidst all the rhetoric of a tolerant multiculturalism, such destructive ideas are starting to appear quite normal.
I’m not saying that John Howard is akin to Hitler. Let’s be honest, he really doesn’t have that much flair. Given a bit more intelligence, and the ability to speak with passionate vigour, and he might be taken more seriously by the masses. As it stands, however, he’s far too feeble and too docile to be such a crowd-controlling force. All too often his slippages and wayward comments have to be reshaped by his publicity machine in order to make them fit the full picture. It’s as if he doesn’t quite have all the pieces there to be able to do it alone.
But we do have the concentrat-ed/-ion camps. Here the unwanted “aliens” are held under lock and key, behind barbed wire fencing. What happens to them inside, not one of us is permitted to know. Their lips are sewn. They have all but faded from our minds right now. Will their faces reappear in years to come when the reality of their stories are finally untold? What future guilt awaits us? What demands for yet another “sorry” to be spoken from our lips? It is not too hard to notice the increase in discussions about the flag, the anthem, the pledge of allegiance, and citizenship. Nationalism in this country is currently flying unhealthily high. Memories of Anzac and fallen heroes of the battlefield occupy a place of public pride in this land. War movies populate our television screens. Young Australians are urged to go out and “fight” for peace in numerous territories overseas. We are obsessed with fighting. And still, for some bizarre reason, we appear to be gagging for a new war. How much bigger do we wish to be? How much further throughout the globe do we want to advance our Australian name?
Our own naïve self-image of the laid-back lifestyle full of Christian compassion is a long way from the understanding of those who are currently angered by the position we are taking in the world. Do we really think they would hate us so much if they too saw in us the same pacifistic, peaceful image that we see in self? While Howard’s aggressive comments do not speak for all of us, we should recognise that this is exactly how they will be interpreted. Does not our own media represent the words of foreign governments as reflective of the general consensus of all the people in these countries? If this is this case, then we are indeed being seen as racists, colonisers, overly full of ourselves. To shrug off such opinions as unimportant is arrogant. To think that we are okay, that we know best, that “foreigners” know nothing, is the kind of attitude that drives a nation deeper and deeper into its own isolated cave. From here, it becomes increasingly difficult to see the bigger picture. Sitting here, we all start to look like, think like, talk like little Johnnie Howards.
Today, we fail to see that the Aussie dream, where the voice of the average person on the street is said to matter, is all but dead; that our governments are becoming increasingly distant, wrapped up in their own corporate-style worlds from which they see nothing of the reality of our lives. We just sit back and we trust them. We let them tell us of the fear on our streets and to our borders. There’s something out there, threatening, waiting to get in. Don’t go outside. Don’t question. The foreign—the outside world—is, so we are told, now a danger to our “normal” and precious way of life. But this way of life, this normality of us, is just an idealised way of life. It doesn’t even exist. The people we offend by adopting such a nationalistic and high-and-mighty stance may soon grow impatient with having to appease us. We would do better, therefore, to start recognising our commonalities with them instead of dozily lapping up the rhetoric of right-wing ideologies without thought, without concern for the kind of future we invite. But we can only begin this process of communication and understanding when we stop thinking of ourselves as some superior and master, unquestionably lucky race.
Dean Laplonge is a cultural theorist whose research and consulting work explores the relationship between culture and everyday practices. He is the Director of the cultural research company Factive (www.factive.com.au) and an Adjunct senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales.
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