In another time, and another place, the shirts started out Brown, then segued to Black. It appears that Australia chose to avoid an interim and simply raced to the dark side.
Black Uniforms, as worn by bureaucratic representatives of some of our government agencies, are symptomatic of something else. They are symptomatic of a creeping malaise at the highest levels of political leadership in this nation.
Uniforms generally are not worrisome. Our local footy teams wear them. Our aged care workers and nurses wear them. Our police wear them. Our defence force personnel wear them. Uniforms of all of those kinds have existed for obvious reasons since the day dot. They are part of the visual landscape, and we are well used to them.
But Black Uniforms resonate differently. Black Uniforms stand for something quite different. They don’t represent love, light, or awareness.
When the political leaders of this nation conduct press briefings on matters such as refugees or national security, all too often they backdrop themselves with the flag, and a bevy of black-uniformed bureaucratic operatives.
All of that smacks of another time, and another place.
A time when anybody who was different, anybody who was vulnerable, anybody who was an ‘other’, anybody who was powerless … was demonised as Untermensch.
The predilection of our current government to choose the dark, the black, the oppressive, and the suppressive, as the guiding light for their ideological agenda concerning the poor, the unemployed, the refugees, the homeless, the religiously different, and the politically at variant, speaks of a very dark philosophy that we thought had been eradicated from this earth at the closure of the year 1945.
Not even the most conservative governments of our past, and there have been some, chose to enact such an overt parade of such a black philosophy. This current government is doing it with such unchallenged ease.
People say that it could never happen here. People also forget the lessons of our own history.
When Francis de Groot rode up and severed with a sword the opening ribbon on Sydney’s Harbour Bridge in 1932, he did so as a representative of the New Guard, he did so as a representative of the Australian Fascist Right.
So I simply say, in this era, look at our current government. Look closely at the kind of people that head a number of key of Ministries in that government. Look at the level of power they have been given. Think about how easily the masses fell into line at the last federal election.
Then have a really long hard think about those Black Uniforms.
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Seems everyone needs to be in a uniform nowadays and maybe the influence on police comes from the US; one recalls the uniforms, weaponry and SWAT tactics used by Victorian Police early ’90s to detain and in some cases kill (from a distance) those with mental health issues.
Few years ago the AFP had their plans for a sweep of the Melbourne CBD, random checking of IDs or bona fides to check legality of foreign visitors (details were lost in the fog of backtracking).
Obviously this would have required profiling or guessing based upon whether one was the right colour, but worse what was missed by media. Assuming that ‘others’ would have been the target it would have required Australians who appear ‘other’ to carry passports to prove their bona fides and a caution that all Australians can become the focus of authorities if not suitably ‘Australian’ looking.
Outrageous and yet doesn’t seem to bother anyone, nor were AFP held to account, as the planned sweep was very quickly disappeared from media. Salami tactics or boiling frogs…
I try to say this at every opportunity , eventually I hope enough people will listen.
The Nazi party under Hitler began in the 30s promising a new start for Germany, a new vote. One they achieved power they set about destroying any kind of democracy, and ultimately slaughtered millions of innocents. The German people as one after the war said We didn’t know.
Well we DO know, and we are allowing it to happen again. Our government isn’t even doing it by stealth which says a lot for the education and mentality of the electorate.
We can stop it, we just have to say WE KNOW what you are doing.
But will we.
How quickly will border protection morph into religious protection. Our Judeo-Christian heritage?
How soon will the protector, our government, become our lord the protector?
How soon will all acts of “protection” become “acts of love” in his name?
Ever creeping social control leading to deleterious change.
Witches of Salem?
Change.org and CEC are two groups calling the government to account. Where the controlled media is failing, others will have to take their place. My father, grandfather and I were all sent overseas at different times to “protect” our Australian values of fair play, It really ticks me off to see these “snout in the trough” scumbags destroying the country, the environment and the people who worked hard to create and maintain it. The only question I need answered is “where is the head of the snake?”
I am a pacifist, I abhor violence of any description BUT, when it comes to fascism and totalitarianism if we, the people, don’t stand up in the near future all will be lost and we’ll be consigned to a history similar to that of the bulk of the German populace before, during and after the Second World War.
We won’t be invading other countries unless it’s as a siccafant to the new rising fascist state of America and for that matter the UK under that odious pompous moron Boorus Johnson. Dump is a maniac on a mission to destroy the world and unfortunately the only future we can aspire to will be after we resist this insidious ideology.
Horriscum is not your average daggy dad or that endearing uncle who’ll look after you altruistically not matter what your station in life is by the way, he’s a grub, a liar, a hypocrite, and one of the most dangerous politicians since Ming or Howard, ( they used to call Coward the PM, I called him the CS), you can work that out.
We need to take a leaf out of the book the people of Hong Kong are following. Democracy is about more than electing a government.
There was a time the public cared, has the guts to stand up for what they believed in. They told the government what to do. They didn’t sit about and whine about the government.
They took a stand in the workplace, out on the street. Nothing in this life is handed to one on a plate.
‘ There was a time the public cared, has the guts to stand up for what they believed in. They told the government what to do. They didn’t sit about and whine about the government.’
Oh yea when did all this happen? Sure a minority of people have the balls to fight most don’t. Most sit at home on their arses and expect others to make a stand for them. We are on the slippery slope to a fascist state and no one gives a shit.
The current Coalition resembles the Democratic Labor Party, which supported the Liberal Party by virtue of the Catholic Church preaching that the ALP was a communist front, via the dreadful Cardinal Mannix and the daily televised diatribes by Bob Santamaria, whose peculiar diction and slightly effeminate voice has been replicated by Abetz.
The point about this is that the Catholic Church was instrumental in aiding and abetting the Nazi regime under Hitler, and Opus Dei facilitated the smuggling out of Europe to South America and elsewhere of leading members of the Nazi Party, notably the likes of Mengele and Eichmann.
Tony Abbott’s politics were and are pure DLP and the black uniforms he suggested for the agents of ideological enforcement in Australia should surprise nobody. The DLP May have lost its powerful position politically but it didn’t die – it flourished and has actually taken over the Coalition – with the clear knowledge of the electorate. Reference to Nazism is said to be acknowledging tat you have lost the argument, but that’s only said by people who you are pointing your finger at.
JackCade What have you been reading.
It’s too late. In recent times, overt Fascism has been building up since Howard/Reith’s foray in union busting on sending the blackshirts in to break the Patricks dock strikes in WA. Subsequently, the fact that the Abbott regime was elected by a majority of Australians in 2013 on outright lies and promises that were promptly ignored within days says it all. There were no major protests or marches at the time. Just business as usual. And most recently in May 2019, when the ALP took a swag of fleshed out, moderately progressive policies to the electorate, and the LNP offered no policies but a Pentecostal marketing manager who took to wearing baseball bats, gagged any of his festering colleagues, and ran a US-style presidential campaign, who did Australian vote for?
In response, Albo’s ALP have now lurched to the Right and are hoping to be Fascists-light; let’s not forget Labor’s AG Nicola Roxon’s draconian security/privacy laws, started mandatory and off-shore detention, continued the NT Intervention, joined every US-led illegal war possible etc.
It won’t be political leadership that will make Australia a more equitable place. Perhaps it will be climate emergencies that will drive change and it will most certainly get a lot worse before, if ever, it gets any better.
‘ The point about this is that the Catholic Church was instrumental in aiding and abetting the Nazi regime under Hitler, and Opus Dei facilitated the smuggling out of Europe to South America and elsewhere of leading members of the Nazi Party, notably the likes of Mengele and Eichmann.’
All true. The Catholic church up until a few years ago celebrated Hitler’s birthday. Most of the Nazi high rollers were married in Catholic churches. On the German soldiers belts. “Gott Mit Uns” God with us.
‘ It’s too late. In recent times, overt Fascism has been building up since Howard/Reith’s foray in union busting on sending the blackshirts in to break the Patricks dock strikes in WA ‘
I know I was there.
Senator Cook came down and gave us all the old flannel. The union was lied too the rest is history. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Labor party sold the union out.
The pushy politically self promoting perverts of decency have always sought to rise to the top, n order to control, dominate, cash in, coerce, intimidate, if necessary kill. And it’s a big bandwagon, with keen recruits, even if some are desperate for a job, Notice, money, prestige, and fringe benefits, see large numbers of ordinary people leave the old ranks, turn their backs, join in military, police, government offices of the dark and devious type, so as to be Some One. Uniforms and medals help, plus indemnities and ability to get away with (literally) murder. The whole brain and nerves of imperialism, fascism, imposing regimes, is full of these I’m all right Jack/Jose/Josef/Jan I’lldoanythingandobey types. Regimes recruit, demand, enforce, crush, dominate and always thieve and murder in their good cause. Human sources of what we now call fascist or gross authoritarian regimes have always risen like festering boils on civilisation’s thin skin, a pox on progress and a pustule on people’s contentment. Let us kiss the fundament, therefore, of Trump, a current attila or caligula, or josef or benito or adolf or whoever, maybe a buffoon like a caligula or a boris (Johnson?). Poor US.
You need not go much further than read; Brave New World by Aldous Huxley to see how that pre-1984 George Orwell novel more accurately reflects today’s society. Why are the people blindly heading into their own subjugation? One word, “distraction”.
Karen Kyle.
What have I been reading?
History.
You should try it.
Jack Cade: I agree firstly not just Abbott, but Howard resurrecting features of the DLP to peel off older Catholic Labor voters ( as Steve Bannon promotes Irish/European Catholic votes or culture while attacking any liberal utterance from the Pope; some Conservatives in an Oz news group do same).
Further, Nazi movement never disappeared completely while many senior Nazis used the ‘rat lines’ to access passage to South America, with some assistance from members of the Catholic church.
Martin Lee researched and wrote of this years ago (many others since), in ‘The Beast Reawakens’ (they never went away)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/959744.The_Beast_Reawakens