Events in Melbourne have shown how strongly differing political views can dominate mainstream discussions. It’s concerning that past political perspectives might shape how we address important national topics today.
The left and right of politics do not go off in a straight-line ad infinitum, they curve towards each other. Extremes on both the left and right can lead to authoritarianism, which is a concern for our democracy. Having these two political extremes play out on Anzac Day serves as a reminder to protect our social cohesion.
In my hometown in regional NSW, veterans invite a local Aboriginal man to give a short welcome on behalf of his ancestors, followed by the didgeridoo at the Dawn Service. Many local diggers had Aboriginal ancestry, making it a fitting tribute rooted in community, not politics. It’s a moving experience I cherish deeply.
However, I felt that the Welcome to Country at the Melbourne Dawn Service had a political tone that detracted from the unity of the occasion. While there was no excuse for ‘booing’, the event highlighted underlying social discontent, the discussion of which has become taboo.
Some Australians believe that certain individuals in Aboriginal affairs emphasise political goals, which can feel like forced participation.
In my view, the Welcome to Country went beyond a cultural acknowledgment and became a political statement. To me, the phrase ‘past, present, and emerging’ is more elaborate than necessary.
I see myself as a seventh-generation Australian of British descent, with a Kamilaroi great-grandmother who avoided the Walhallow Mission. Growing up in Far North Queensland, I was one of the few ‘white’ kids on my rugby league team. I’ve stayed at Weipa South Mission Station and taught drill in Australian Creole. My Torres Strait Islander brother-in-law and I follow Islander tradition, calling each other ‘Thowie’. To me, that’s true Australian life.
I didn’t encounter a ‘Welcome to Country’ until living in Canberra years later. As a veteran from a family with four generations of Army service from 1916 to 2017, Anzac Day is profoundly significant to me, and its politicisation troubles me deeply.
As an academic and political scientist, I value attempts to develop theoretical understandings of our shared experience. However, the most recent craze in my academic discipline has been identity politics.
I am concerned about the rise of identity politics in academia, which I find misguided. We see this in tensions between honouring the Anzacs and recognising Aboriginal perspectives.
Kevin Rudd formalised the Welcome to Country in 2008, and I feel it has since become a routine practice that can lack depth. My great-grandmother regarded herself as an Australian. I doubt she would see today’s Welcome to Country as more than a politically charged practice.
Some extreme groups, which often overlook Aboriginal perspectives, have exploited conservative critiques of the Welcome to Country. Conservatives are therefore unable to critique the Welcome to Country without being labelled as extremists, even though their concerns are legitimate.
Assuming everyone of a particular ethnicity or heritage shares the same politics is contrary to individual freedom.
Further, Neo-Nazism is a dangerous ideology rooted in historical failures and grievances. So too is communism.
The Jewish scholar Hannah Arendt attended the trial of the major Holocaust perpetrator, Adolf Eichmann, in Jerusalem in 1961. Arendt’s investigations led to our understanding of the ‘banality of evil’, in that:
‘What had become banal – and astonishingly so – was the failure to think.’
Further, the Milgram experiments, conducted in the same year, investigated the extent that individuals will obey an authority figure, even if it meant inflicting harm on another person.
In the first case, Arendt suggested that Eichmann was not a monster, but an ordinary person who, in the absence of critical thinking, was able to perpetuate such atrocities against Jewish people. In the Milgrim experiments, the absence of individual responsibility in the face of bureaucracy was key to ordinary people who would otherwise do evil things if they were instructed to do so.
It is a condition not without precedent in Australia.
For example, Sir Henry Parkes championed public education in the 19th Century to address the moral shortcomings that encouraged ‘organised gang bushranging’ in NSW, especially the ‘last bushrangers’, Thomas and Jack Clarke. The Clarke brothers were hanged in 1867, some 13 years before Ned Kelly was hanged in Melbourne.
As our liberal democracy has become increasingly bureaucratic, it is difficult for Australians to discuss an issue of critical importance without being labelled in undesirable ways. It is why the Anzac tradition is so important and should be a unifying principle of being an Australian, even if you were not born here. Critical thinking and freedom of speech are two of its ideals.
The Anzac tradition is not a myth, it is a legend. Legends are a necessary part of nation-building and social cohesion.
If you want to enjoy the fruits of the Anzac tradition, then we should honour it.
We can talk about global citizenship, but that idea won’t help us enter another nation-state without a passport. Anzac Day represents the value of liberal democracy. It is a value worth fighting for. It should have nothing to do with identity politics.
Identity politics can struggle to account for the complexity and individuality of people’s experiences. It tends to work as a schema for victimhood rather than a resolution for cultural or institutional injustices.
Aristotle said that if you have two or more people together you have politics. Identity politics has tried to remove this requirement so that individuals can live in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance. There is no longer any critical thinking and there is no longer any individual responsibility.
The numerous elements of identity politics have been prioritised over individual discretion. Hypothetically, it is entirely possible for an individual to exhibit numerous characteristics that would seem politically and contemporarily incompatible. But before identity politics came along, none of this was anybody else’s business.
Mao Tse-tung’s works on ‘contradiction’ suggested that new historical eras arise from conflicts within a system that lead to its failure: feudalism leads to mercantilism, which leads to capitalism, eventually giving way to socialism. It is my opinion that identity politics aims to accelerate the process by attacking the foundations of liberal democracy.
Governments have embraced identity politics, shifting political activities from interpersonal interactions to within individuals. This cognitive dissonance, where two conflicting ideas seem correct simultaneously, was evident in Melbourne on Anzac Day.
But when the Greens move the Australian flag out of camera shot to highlight the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags, they do the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples a disservice.
For many Torres Strait Islander ‘Sarpeyes’ at the 51st Battalion, The Far North Queensland Regiment, the Australian and Torres Strait Islands flags can be proudly flown together. For they are Islander veterans.
When the Aboriginal flag is flown next to the Palestinian flag, however, then perceptions are politically charged.
We’ve seen the NSW flag replaced by the Aboriginal flag on the Sydney Harbour Bridge despite considerable opposition. Similarly, in regional NSW, a local council allegedly removed the NSW flag outside a memorial hall and replaced it with the Aboriginal flag. (Arguably, the flagpole does not belong to the local council.)
I believe such actions risk undermining efforts toward social cohesion and reconciliation. Indeed, the independent spectator might consider such politicisation of national symbols to be strategically deliberate acts of social sabotage. The issue is made worse when it cannot be discussed openly in public.
Extreme individualism without regard for the ‘common good’ is the result of prioritising individual rights over freedom of speech. This is not some conservative trope about rights and responsibilities, but it is a lesson we can learn from Hannah Arendt’s work.
We’ve lost the art of critical thinking and freedom of speech in our education system, something that was highlighted recently at Macquarie University where students were allegedly assessed on their ability to deliver an acknowledgement of country. Even Indigenous elders labelled the exercise as ‘indoctrination’.
What is absent is a unifying principle.
I see concerning parallels between extreme groups on both sides that disrespect shared values. In recent times, such extremism has manifested in antisemitism.
It’s concerning when groups across the political spectrum disrespect Australian values. They have no solution to the problems of social cohesion that are plaguing the UK and that have arguably arrived here in Australia. Indeed, identity politics is prioritising anything and everything above the ties that traditionally bind us together as a diverse nation.
As a veteran, I find political statements during Anzac Day deeply troubling.
It begs the question: Are Australians truly ‘one and free’?
If we are, then we owe that freedom to the many Americans and our own diggers who gave the ultimate sacrifice defending us against invasion in the 1940s.
It’s important to promote dialogue that includes all Australians without alienation. If we are truly ‘one and free’, then we should be able to discuss how the Anzacs and our veterans are honoured free from political overtones.
I find it unwelcoming when political statements about ‘unceded lands’ are made during ceremonies. Anzac Day is a time to say, ‘thank you’.
Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is The Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. All opinions in this article are the author’s own.