From the Frontline of the Culture Wars

The Safe Schools Program certainly has the Godly and Righteous in a lather. I would have thought by now they might have realised that they look more like a Monty Python skit than they do a group of concerned citizens from the 21^st century.

For months rabid right whingers have been gathering in little digital packs and braying at this subject online. That the rest of the population continues to studiously ignore their antics just seems to further inflame their joint indignation. At the end of each article about how the Safe Schools project is variously turning our kids into gay transgender lesbian Marxist greenie communist traitors who hate god, there is a long thread of responses from furious and indignant readers who are utterly freaked out about the looming social sexual apocalypse. It’s a hoot.

To call this pack of right-wing conspiracy theorists mere ‘nutters’ is to entirely discount how spectacular and awe-inspiring their delusions often are. These are much the same group of people who might also argue that there has been no actual warming of the globe for about two decades, and that the world is only six thousand years old, and that miracles not only do frequently occur but that ‘my friend Margery’ saw God ‘so there’. So they also display the same amazing kneejerk propensity to ignore the need to proffer anything even resembling actual evidence. Instead, they simply assemble arguments out of obvious assertions based on obvious god given facts. Obvious facts like ‘all communists want to kill us all’. ‘Children are naturally Christians’. And that hundreds of classrooms and their local teachers are very easily controlled (via some sort of Atheist Radio-wave technology) from Heathen HQ at La Trobe University.

Yes, in the beginning, some of these protestations in the threads did seem to bear some passing resemblance to actual arguments. However, in recent times the ‘Safe Schools Conspiracy’ has progressed so far beyond being mere ‘news’ it is now best described as being an ‘all singing, all dancing, right wing, conspiracy extravaganza! Ta Da!’

Remember we are talking here (in the real world) about an optional anti-bullying program where teachers (daringly) ask students to imagine that they might be standing in someone else’s shoes. Using role play and age-appropriate discussion materials the project asks students to not only imagine that they are of another gender, but then to consider what the world might look like when considered from this ‘other’ person’s point of view. Racy stuff, eh?

Yet while the Safe Schools project material, and virtually all the teachers who are teaching it, say the project is dedicated to reducing the number of incidents of deliberate and explicit bullying, and to also assist in fostering an intolerance of incidental attitudes and behaviours which are oppressive and exclusionary. The right wingers know better. There seems to be no doubt in the minds of both the journalists and the readers of the Australian, and among the hosts and listeners to virtually every right-wing talkback station in the country, that the Safe Schools project is actually a fifth column infiltration, directly into the hearts and minds of our children, being undertaken by Marxist communist traitors.

As they say, you just couldn’t make this sort of stuff up.

This comment by ‘R’ in today’s online lynch mob summarises a common-sense viewpoint that Marxists should be (at the very least) crucified in the public square: When did parents become accountable to a Marxist who was able to take advantage of a mindless state government and a university only too eager to fall over itself to accommodate political correctness (aka social engineering), regardless of the wishes of those parents, the majority of the public and the consequences for society, in particular future generations?

 

 

Setting aside the obvious reality that in our pluralist democracy we are supposed to set aside the fact that we might individually be a Marist, a Keynesian, a Marxist, a lesbian, or a transgender accountant, and also setting aside the obvious irony that at its heart this is what the Safe Schools Project is all about, the instant and obvious response to ‘R’ (and the majority of these commentators) is: ‘What planet are you on?’

For example, consider this comment directly from the heart of the cold war (yet published today): Marxists are at least as dangerous as Fascists so should be banned from public office and influence. Marxism has been responsible for millions of political deaths over 100 years and its adherents should have no place in our public life. Just imagine for a moment if this had been the work of a closet Nazi. It almost is.

It makes you want to shuffle your feet and look away. Somehow, in the minds of this small segment of the Aussie population, an anti-bullying class, being conducted by the teachers at your local school, has been captured by an underground clique of Marxist academics (led by a childless short haired white cat stroking international communist femme fatale going by the name of Roz). One reader even helpfully provides a short psychological profile: Ros Ward is a pseudo-academic with serious problems, at best. No way should she be teaching children. For a start, has she got any children of her own?  And if so, let’s have a look at them. What’s her own background?  It’s relevant if she’s teaching our children.  They know nothing of Marxism or the untold millions it’s killed.

Yup. At the end of such a statement you are left in no doubt that right now you are shoulder to shoulder, in a trench, with comrades in arms, even while the culture war rages on around you. In the digital threads of the Australian there are very few who would dare to argue in favour of this obvious attempt at ‘mind-control’ on behalf of Communists. As one says: Prof Mitchell needs to understand that The Australian is a pivot around which sensible people in this country seek to reclaim the education of their children.  

So no compromise is possible. Empathy is the enemy. It is righteous and warranted to be bigoted against gay and transgender children, and to label children as good, bad, and/or corrupt. Otherwise all that is Godly and Righteous will crumble. This is why we refuse to teach our children drama! Or allow them to read corrupt and godless literature. Such practices will invariably lead to children experiencing empathy. And empathy will lead to a tolerance of heathens. So anti-bullying is anti-God.

So in the trenches on the frontline of the culture wars the language is triumphant. They might be a tiny chosen few, surrounded on all sides by the seething mass of the ungodly and satanically inspired. Yet they will prevail. In fact. Some of the conspirators even hint that any minute now the tables will turn and the godly will rise and march forth to reclaim the world from ‘these people’. After all: These people seem to always be out there, milking the system with little standing in their way, busily attacking our freedoms. Perhaps it is time that the Right started fighting back harder and played just as nasty – publishing the addresses of where they live, holding raucous protests outside their offices and so forth.

So all of us Gay-luvin heathens have to watch out. The mob with pitchforks and flaming brands is very nearly at our door. The power of our Marxist mind-control conspiracy is about to be broken. Any minute now I will begin to build some protective battlements (based on plans borrowed from the Middle Ages). I promise.

As soon as I can get up off the floor and stop laughing so hard.