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Fibbing on Anzac Day

April 25, 2022 was one of the less edifying days in the annals of commemorating the fallen. The day is regarded as special for Australians and New Zealanders for being a solemn occasion, a moment to consider those who gave their lives up for King (or Queen) and country. In recent decades, militarists and organisers of the occasion have found greater merit in focusing on that nebulous notion of “mateship” – friendship and collective spirit under fire. This serves as a suitable distraction from those malignant ignoramuses who put them there in the first place. Barely credible and competent commanders and politicians can be exempt from scrutiny so that the diggers can commune in memories of lost friends and valour.

But this day was a bit different. There was an election to fight, and Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, was going to make the most of the occasion. There were fibs to be told, myths to hail. This was no occasion to talk about interest rates, rubbish and roads. There were veterans, families, and school children to convince or inculcate. The message: go home, those who cherish peace, and prepare for war. There were those who came before; there are more to come.

Yet again, it was a day for Morrison to use a naff analysis of the global political situation. “An arc of autocracy is challenging the rules-based order our grandparents had secured, and democratic freedoms.” An odd statement to make on a day born from a failed invasion of a sovereign entity, itself cooked up as part of a military gamble by the fiendishly adventurous Winston Churchill.

The dawn service in Darwin heard from the prime minister about another country suffering. “The world has been reminded in recent weeks that the strength and defence of any nation starts with the citizens themselves.” This reference was not to Tigray or Yemen. There was only one war that exercised the Australian leader, one so clear and devoid of historical complexity as to be digestible even to him. Ukraine, to put it simply, had produced the right sort of refugees – the fair-blue eyed sort – and the right sort of moral baggage to promote during an election campaign.

Then, a statement of the obvious, dressed up as a warning: the defence of a country depended on “the willingness of a people to give all.” “The defence of Australia depends on us.” Not untrue, but hardly explains the fact that the Commonwealth has only ever genuinely needed to defend its own shores once during its short history. Other conflicts have seen Australian soldiers as disposable pseudo-Gurkhas, mercenaries for empires, deployed without question and, it should be said, without wisdom, to conflict zones across the globe. Theirs not to reason why.

Morrison recalled some of these engagements – many defeats in the Gallipoli tradition. “From Gallipoli to Mosel, from the jungles of Vietnam to the sands of Afghanistan, from the skies above to the oceans below, what has compelled our soldiers, sailors, aviators, nurses and chaplains is the willingness to defend what they love.” Or at least what they were told to love.

In a manner condescending to the modestly learned and well-studied, the prime minister suggested that veterans of previous conflicts were not “naïve”, appreciating Australia as having a “liberal democratic” system. This came with freedom of speech, freedom of association, a free press and free elections. The remark is astonishing, as concepts such as free speech or freedom of association do not exist in Australia in any meaningful way – certainly not constitutionally or as a personal right. The only thing Australians can rely upon is a watered-down constraint on legislative power known as an implied right to communicate on political subjects. There is no constitutional personal right vested in a citizen against the government or executive.

As for a free press, Australian federal authorities have raided the homes and offices of journalists, including that of the national broadcaster, the ABC, for publishing and writing about atrocities and violations of civil liberties. The Australian Federal Police even went so far as to advise the Commonwealth Department of Public Prosecution that it could prosecute ABC journalist Dan Oakes, an important figure behind the publication of the Afghan Files. A reluctant CDPP decided against it, citing “a range of public interest factors, including the role of public interest journalism in Australia’s democracy.” Morrison’s idea of Australia as a political nirvana of freedom remains phantasm and fantasy.

Greater fibs then came from Australia’s Defence Minister, Peter Dutton, upon whom the muse of history, Clio, has never smiled sweetly. This was the occasion to push erroneous comparisons, the sort that any half-competent logician would have dispelled with sour contempt.

On Channel 9, the Minister encouraged peace lovers to prepare for war before searching the historical record for an anchor. “People like Hitler and others aren’t just a figment of our imagination or that they’re consigned to history,” he stated with implausible authority. “We have in President [Vladimir] Putin somebody at the moment who is willing to kill women and children. And that’s happening in the year 2022.” The Australian-backed Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is also doing the same thing in Yemen, but the House of Saud did not offer useful material.

With Hitler now in the comparative mix, Dutton could expand with comic effect. The People’s Republic of China, he suggested, could also be compared to Nazi Germany – at least in terms of the latter’s pre-Second World War guise. Both countries annexed territory, and Germany did so ahead of its invasion of Poland in 1939.

Details were otherwise sketchy, the history student found wanting, but the moral of the tale was clear. “We have to stand up with countries to stare down any act of aggression to make sure that we can keep peace in our region and for our country.” No “curling up into a ball”, he advised. To do so would result in repeating “the mistakes of history.” With Dutton and Morrison holding the reins of power, such mistakes are guaranteed.

 

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25 comments

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  1. New England Cocky

    Lest.we.forget.English.High.Command.Incompetence. American.North.East.Military.Industrial.Complex.Vietnam. Words.of.Mass.Deception.Iraq.
    America.abandoning.Afghan.collaborators.
    Domestic.Violence.Yassmin.
    COALiiton.corruption.Nazional$.self.service.misogyny.

  2. GL

    NEC,

    The LNP abandoning democracy and freedom and the country becoming an autocracy with Supreme Dear Uncle Leader Scummo in charge?

  3. Michael Taylor

    NEC,

    Can I add the tens of thousands of Aborigines murdered at the hands of the English colonists?

  4. Harry Lime

    The chance to falsely claim patriotism has always been a favourite of those of a conservative bent,the little bastard Howard played it for all it was worth.Mendacity Morrison,his ill begotten disciple, was never going to pass up the chance to get his two bob’s worth in.It is as sickening as it is hollow,and yet still many fall for it.This sort of bullshit has been used on the people since Moses was in nappies.To add to the Liar’s burgeoning sack of past failings, he has that idiot cretin Dutton continually gazumping him.Auditioning for the coming vacancy? The voters of Dickson and Cook could do us all a service and vote these insulting fuckers out.The country would be considerably safer as a result Never mind their gross incompetence..

  5. A Commentator

    A remarkably poor taste comment on ANZAC Day, even for Binoy. Most returned servicemen that I’ve met put great emphasis on camaraderie and mateship
    Binoy suggests that it is a contrived or manipulated sentiment.
    Being a wordy “academic” he presumably is au fait with the mindset of those that have fought.
    Then Binoy ridicules the comparison of the brutal fascist Putin, with brutal fascists of the past.
    We can rely on Binoy to downplay the brutality of Putin… and the CCP on this occasion.
    If these is one thing Binoy is willing to excuse, it is the rich murderous fascist dictator Putin

  6. Harry Lime

    Meanwhile,the reluctant Foreign Minister has been dragged out of protective custody and forced to repeat the current government lies about the ugly failure in the Pacific.She continues the sad and sorry parade of incompetence and incompetents that is the hallmark of the worst government this country has ever endured.

  7. Michael Taylor

    To me, Anzac Day is a sacred day. I grew up in a soldiers settlers community and then a farm on Kangaroo Island.

    The only people I knew were returned soldiers and their children.

    It’s a day I respect, and I don’t fathom those people who say it’s just a get-together of old diggers glorifying war. I’m yet to hear one returned serviceman or woman glorify it. Not. One.

    One year while watching my father march in the Anzac Day parade in Adelaide I almost wept to hear people shout out to them; “Rapists. Rapists. War rapists.”

    But anyway, I’m less concerned about what Dr Binoy says than I am with what our political leaders say. Dutton’s words, to me, were more inappropriate.

  8. Michael Taylor

    If these [sic] is one thing Binoy is willing to excuse, it is the rich murderous fascist dictator Putin.

    AC, I consider that highly inappropriate and defamatory.

  9. A Commentator

    Binoy always is full of sarcasm and contemp for those that criticise the rich expansionist murderous fascist Putin…

    “This was the occasion to push erroneous comparisons, the sort that any half-competent logician would have dispelled with sour contempt.”

    “With Hitler now in the comparative mix, Dutton could expand with comic effect”

    “Details were otherwise sketchy, the history student found wanting”

    Binoy is an apologist for the fascist who represents the greatest threat of nuclear war.

  10. Michael Taylor

    AC, I’m not quite in the mood, inclination or health at the moment to engage in debate that could possibly go on for days.

    To end the matter, and for your satisfaction, if you go to the “About The AIMN” page you will see where to find Dr Binoy on Twitter. Ask him yourself.

    Over and out.

  11. Socrates.

    What do I think?

    Yes, ANZAC day is special.
    Like Good Friday, it contemplates grimly the gruesome end of those scapegoated and the silence of the many while terrible deeds are done, but aspects of human nature and human affairs that people generally like to avoid.

    What is suffering? Trying sticking your hand on a hot stove, then imagine how it must be for hundreds of millions of people every bit as worthwhile as us globally, who cop pain every day.

    What Kampmark ACTUALLY discusses is about cultural conditioning, not a pick at good people who went off thinking they were defending civilisation not oligarchy. This was a despicable smear at Kampmark., a false accusation some should have kept to themselves till they had thought thru the article more carefully.

    It is a time when I think maybe I and others, fed on juvenile TV, turn out later to see that not all are quite the legends in their own minds they beleive they are, starting with politicians and tabloid slime (and if I am honest, myself at my worst)

    Not the humble service people, including nurses, but stinking, opportunistic politicains nowadays, trying to exploit the thing for base reasons as did the jingoists of a century ago, self serving.

    The idea of “laying down their lives for others”, either on a cross or rotting in soaking filthy trenches in the miserable cold, dying on the Burma Railway along with hundreds of thousands of slave-labour locals, never mentioned, is bullseye accurate from Dr Kampmark, as to the his real issue; a study of persuasion, ideology, culture; cynical consent manufacture and myth,
    MOST particularly as manipulation by the rulers

  12. Old Codger

    WRT New England Cocky, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, if you were a member of the English upper classes and had a son who was rather dim, it was advised to either buy him a commission in the army or put him into the church. And that would have gone some way to explaining the needless slaughter during WWI.

  13. John

    I agree with Socrates. And in support of Binoy why not check out the set of essays re the necessity to re-assess the Anzac Legend featured on the Pearls & Irritations website. The thing about legends is that much of the contents of such are patently untrue and/or fabrications.

  14. Consume Less

    Well said Binoy.

  15. New England Cocky

    @ GL: In my experience, the Nazional$ have never been democratic.

    @ MIchael Taylor: Apologies Michael. I intended to include the genocidal massacres and poisonings of whole communities of Aborigines by European colonists.

    @ Harry Lime: Fortunately, not many countries have a fat suburban dyed redhead house frau as Foreign Monster.

    @ AC: Somehow your comment appears to imply that you have always been an armchair general who has never been anywhere near the sharp-end;….. just like every Liarbral Prim Monster who has sent Australian military personnel into a war zone pursuing the imperialist dreams of other third party nations and manufacturers.

    They are all there ….. Menzies resigned his Australian Army commission on the first day of WWI …. and licked the Royal backside in London while Australia was threatened by the Japanese during WWII; Then to add to idiocy he invited Australians into Vietnam for the benefit of the American war machine profiteers.

    Little Johnnie Howard puffed up his cheeks and chased an American Congressional Medal for sending Australian personnel into Iraq, the Afghanistan ….. neither being a regimental dinner and at enormous cost/waste of Australian financial resources.

    Now we have Scummo & Benito Duddo cracking their knuckles in eager anticipation for a ”scrap” with PRC China. I hope somebody reminds them about the size and proficiency of the Peoples Liberation Army. Remember Tiananmen Square??

    @ Old Codger: Agreed. Then ;later the English ”upper classes” provided the public servants and politicians ….. who have given us Brexit for the detriment of English voters.

    Some other authors who question ‘the Anzac day tradition”
    .
    1) https://johnmenadue.com/anzacs-contested-legacy/?fbclid=IwAR24dz8eDO3OfmQRmsBb-__eoOX964uouALv3f9hK9gR44LHK_jj7ACz0gA
    .
    2) https://johnmenadue.com/greg-lockhart-anzac-and-the-great-deception-in-australasian-history/?fbclid=IwAR1YzD_r60C75I2jVoNG0Mjoks29rMzxT5mUEO_iLlM2g2UAWa5qyiF-WbM

    3) https://johnmenadue.com/a-strange-anzac-day/?fbclid=IwAR2vnDCPQoE_mj77SeTk2go16fkOJUEQHQ2GAEEPpucpPrpqzIup0m8s7QU

    Thank you Binoy, you are in good company.

  16. Michael Taylor

    NEC, no apologies necessary.

  17. Harry Lime

    Shit,Socrates, I thought you carked it in 399BC,but your moral philosophy stands rock solid in 2022,that’s an astounding consistency…and still fucking absolutely right….. in the face of these atrocious mediocrities we have now,lying like pigs in shit.
    Nice one ,Cocky,on the money as usual.For what it’s worth I was conscripted in September 1966 and had a reluctant education in politics and what the regular army types thought..it was a mixed bag,but with very few exceptions,most will strive to do the right thing, despite the drip feed of misinformation,and when the shit hits the fan,everyone stands up for their mates,It’s a survival thing.But it’s a million miles away from the horseshit brayed by the likes of Morrison and Dutton

  18. Kerri

    Meanwhile lawyer and journalist Richard Ackland has referred to Benito D****n for at least a decade!

  19. wam

    It is hard to believe anyone thought ANZAC was a worthy campaign.
    But Attaturk’s comments exemplified why, through my dad’s suffering, me, my children and grand children not only remember the heroism of the ANZACs but revere the men and women of Australia’s wars.
    We are as one, in the condemnation of both churchill the racist, sexist warmonger and our pig-iron bob who, after his party’s disgraceful start to the war, slunk back into politics to lead Australia for 16, marching on the spot, years.
    For conservatives, there is no thinking and no attempt at understanding the political purpose behind Gallipoli.
    They are victims of the john wayne lies about america and war and the white republican propaganda of justification.
    The extent of their ignorance is:
    “Justin Loccisano
    Wartime politicians are a different breed to the rest, which is why many people find them hard to work with during peacetime. I would argue that Mr. Dutton is the right Defence Minister at the right time in history, and in a few short years he will be the right PM to lead us through the inevitable.”
    How sad are those words?

  20. Jim Jacobsen

    Excellent article Binoy

  21. Fred

    WAM: No, no, no… Dutton is not and never will be the right person to lead. He clearly has not thought through the consequences of inflaming situations where a minor mistake can have drastic consequences. His choice of weapons (virtual nuke subs, Abrams tanks) are inappropriate and demonstrates a lack of critical thinking. His whole war mindset is woeful… statements of “prepare for war”??? What kind of war does he mean? Hi-tech or boots in the dust? We live on an island – our attackers will need to come by air and sea. Who are our potential threats? If he wants to rattle a saber at China, what does he think will happen should they retaliate and as a consequence we take on an enemy 100 times more resourced? One doesn’t need to run war-game simulations to know the outcome will not be good. Wars are started and ended by “politics”. Potato head can only comprehend starting one, has no idea about running one and certainly wouldn’t know when or how to end one.

  22. New England Cocky

    @ wam: Churchill was the instigator of the abysmal Dardenelles Campaign to rip out the soft under-belly of the German allies, especially the Turks. But Churchill, a journalist at the Boer War in South Africa, and promoted to First Sea Lord (?) at that time ensured that he was nowhere near the sharp end of the disaster created by the incompetent, lying English High Command.

    For the record despite English incompetence, Australian troops took Lone Pine early on Day One and defended it until pushed off by Attaturks re-inforcements about 1500 hours that afternoon.

    @ Fred: Agreed. Benito Duddo is unfit to be Defence Minister and his knowledge of weaponry, shown by his purchase of war materiels for a WWII scenario suggest that this was vassalage tribute paid to the American NE Military Industrial Complex for allowing the COALition to be in misgovernment.

    Well, who will notice a couple of BILLION dollars paid for weaponry that has exaggerated capacity, runs enormously over-cost during development and if finally delivered is completely outdated by better technology developed elsewhere?

    Overweight tanks and fantasy submarines have been clearly shown as past technologies by Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Precision bombing protected the Iraq Oil Department building from damage, so leaving the oil resources information that caused that imperialist invasion by the USA (United States of Apartheid). Drones driven from Virginia USA shot up Afghan civilians at home and missiles driven from Russian locations mercilessly destroyed Ukraine cities.

    So, $BILLIONS wasted on already redundant weapons again demonstrates that the COALition misgovernment must be voted out of the Treasury benches before they do any more damage to the Australian economy and way of life.

  23. Socrates.

    Harry Lime, as I said to the tricksters, “On substantial things, all I know is I know nothing”.

    Unlike some members of the government and press.

    Albo seemed to adopt the same policy, to keep his mouth shut and not constantly trip over his own bs trying to impress people as to his wisdom, which by his statements, he actually lacks.

    You get a proper inning by not flashing out side the off-stump like Joyce and Morrison have.

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