Sunday, January 27, 2013

Rudd's missing national identity

Yesterday I wrote a post on Malcolm Turnbull's attempts to define our national identity. Turnbull, if you remember, is a right-liberal - a leading member of the Liberal Party. As such he is a true believer in a civic national identity. This means that he rejects a traditional identity based on a common ethnicity and instead believes that you can have a stable national identity based on citizenship and a shared commitment to liberal political values.

Turnbull's civic identity, when it came to the crunch, turned out to be remarkably thin. It came down to Australia spending more on welfare than the U.S.

But Turnbull's civic nationalism was less shocking that what followed. Kevin Rudd, the former Labor PM, was the next politician to talk about Australia's identity and he presented Australia's development in quasi-religious terms, as a casting out of national demons of racism and sexism to get to the promised land of tolerance, diversity and membership of a global village.

If you're at all conservative it sounds a bit mad. It is reducing the existence of an historic nation of people to the terms of Rudd's political ideology.

But I don't think we should be surprised. One of the secrets of Australian politics is that the leaders of the Labor Party have not only given up on a deeper traditional nationalism (as have the Liberals), but they've given up on a civic nationalism as well.

There's a reason for this. If you're a liberal and you believe that we should be free to self-determine who we are, then you won't like a traditional nationalism, because that's based on what liberals dismissively call "an accident of birth", namely an inherited ethnicity. With a civic nationalism, ethnicity no longer matters - anyone can become a citizen.

However, civic nationalism is still in its own way exclusive. A civic identity might make our ethnicity not matter, but it still makes our nationality matter. And nationality is usually just as arbitrary as ethnicity - we gain our national citizenship because of the state we happen to be born into.

Therefore, the drift of liberalism is to move away from all distinctions of nationality.

The leadership of the Labor Party seem to have reached that point decades ago. For instance, when former PM Bob Hawke was asked what defined an Australian he answered:
An Australian is someone who chooses to live here, obey the law and pays taxes
 
That's the answer of someone who doesn't take distinctions of nationality very seriously. The next Labor PM made his position even clearer. Paul Keating once ranted against the idea of civic nationalism, complaining that it was "exclusive" and that it relied on:
constructing arbitrary and parochial distinctions between the civic and the human community ... if you ask what is the common policy of the Le Pens, the Terreblanches, Hansons and Howards of this world, in a word, it is “citizenship”. Who is in and who is out.
 
Keating, in other words, had openly moved beyond distinctions of nationality, even those based on citizenship and a civic identity. And what of Rudd himself?  Back in 2005 a Labor Party committee recommended the formation of a Pacific Community:
There would be a Pacific Parliament, a Pacific Court, a Pacific Common Market, a common currency and military integration.
 
Far from having a strong sense of a distinctly Australian national identity, the Labor Party was already at the stage of wanting to merge Australia's sovereignty into a larger regional state. When Rudd became PM in 2007 he decided on an even more ambitious project, that of creating an Asia-Pacific regional bloc:
Kevin Rudd wants to spearhead the creation of an Asia-Pacific Union similar to the European Union by 2020.
 
Which leaves us with the current Labor Party PM, Julia Gillard. Her Government has created draft legislation which would make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of nationality or citizenship - a law which doesn't exactly uphold the spirit of a civic nationalism.

So when a Labor leader is asked to talk about a specifically Australian identity they're in an even more difficult position than a Liberal leader. They have already moved a long way toward the idea that nationality shouldn't matter, not even a civic based one.

So it's not surprising that Kevin Rudd should present Australia's development in political-ideological terms as a shift toward an ever greater liberalism. What else could someone who is "post-national" do?

17 comments:

  1. Mark, this is where your analytical approach is most helpful.

    I found it impossible to respond to what Rudd is saying, because it seemed mad, disloyal, evil, and infuriating.

    "How dare he!", however justified, is not a useful analysis. We have to be able to talk back to these people, which requires a framework.

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  2. Mark, great critique.

    Labor is 100% dedicated to the UN Agenda 21, they have been for decades, where our geographic regions become supranational states. The UN is stacked with The Fabians. Under these circumstances Australia will dissolve away into a mishmash of decline and warring tribes. The 5th generation warfare/surveillance technology that our militarises and corporations have been inventing the past 35 years, will not contain the 4th generation warfare that has embroiled Africa, Middle East and some parts of Asia. Look at Timor and Fiji as differing micro examples in our own region, I bet the Philippines will be next.

    The Liberals are also on the same bandwagon unfortunately, even if it's at a slower pace. Blows me away the politicians state their intentions. Yet the majority of people are ignorant of what politicians really mean, when they spout this rubbish. The masses need to have knowledge of this information.

    It's a sad state of affairs, we really do need a trad con, Pro AgloCeltic party, to not stem, but change the tide. I was hoping The Australian Katter's party may do this, I doubt it now.

    We may have to resort to cultural shadow networks to survive the all encompassing federal surveillance, warfare/welfare state.

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  3. This is interesting
    In the early 1900s Fabian Society members advocated the ideal of a scientifically planned society and supported eugenics by way of sterilization. This is credited to the passage of the Half-Caste Act, and its subsequent implementation in Australia, where children were systematically and forcibly removed from their parents, so that the British colonial regime could "protect" the Aborigine children from their parents. In an article published in The Guardian on 14 February 2008, (following the apology offered by Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd to the "stolen generations"), Geoffrey Robertson criticised Fabian socialists for providing the intellectual justification for the eugenics policy that led to the stolen generations scandal.[30][31] Such views on socialism, inequality and eugenics in early 20th century Fabians was not limited to one individual, it was a widely shared view in Fabian Society.[32][33]

    So was Rudd's apology for Fabian policy or Australian policy?

    I've been thinking lately about Finland as I have an interest in that nation. Particularly the Soviet influence on that country. I read that their president Kekkonen banned criticism of communism and outlawed all nationalism from 1950s to the 1980s. So effectively their national identity was "missing" during that period.

    So it has been established soviet sympathizers will attempt to erase ethno-national identity as a policy.

    Why is Finland relevant to Australia? Well in Finland right now their school children have an education module specifically about Australia.
    It paints Australians as Nazis that exterminated the Aborigines. Now the Finnish character coupled with the brainwashing of the 1950s and 1980s means they do not question this narrative. It is 100% factual history that Australians behaved identical to nazis in the past.
    It is also worth noting that their education system is tied closely with the EU.

    I'm going to drop the c-word and say I think it is a world wide conspiracy little clues like this make it completely clear that geographical distance does not matter in the propaganda policy of erasing national identity.

    So on the one hand Fabians set up the stolen generation. Apologise for it on behalf of Australians.
    Then their connections world wide spin the narrative about nazi Australia.

    Sounds like we are being set up.

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  4. Oh I should also mention the policy of Multiculturalism applied to Australia is also being applied to Finland with 1/4th our population.
    This process of assimilation. Will most likely result in the extinction of Finns by next century.
    This reminds me of past eugenics policy now being applied to white "aboriginal" groups.
    Its safe to say these Fabians(et al) are obsessed with eugenic social engineering and genocide. They don't even seem to have a rational aim. Simply that they can apply it to anyone

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  5. If the bill banning discrimination on the basis of citizenship passes, you should stop paying your taxes. When the prosecutor comes to get you, screen discrimination. After all, there are billions of people who don't pay taxes to the government of Australia. Why should the pick on you? Just because your like, you know, a citizen.

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  6. And what of Rudd himself? Back in 2005 a Labor Party committee recommended the formation of a Pacific Community:
    There would be a Pacific Parliament, a Pacific Court, a Pacific Common Market, a common currency and military integration.


    Get ready to be submerged in a sea of billions of Chinese, Indonesians, Indians, etc.

    You have to wonder what role the liberal elites think they would play in such a situation. They might be the last to be put up against the wall, but put up against the wall they would surely be.

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  7. So what is the Australian national identity then, if liberals and liberal/conserbatives get it wrong?

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  8. Anonymous seems a bit unhinged but I'll clarify a few points:

    True, the Soviet influence was so significant in Finland after the wars that there's a separate term for such a situation. However, our nationalist sentiment stayed (and still is) very high compared to other Euros. Kekkonen is a case in himself. Opinions vary whether he was a cunning realpolitikian making the best of a non-ideal situation or a myopic fool groveling towards the Russians much more than was necessary. Nevertheless, we jumped on board of the full-scale liberal bandwagon only in the early 90's.

    It's been a few decades since I was in elementary school, but we're generally one of the more sane nations in Europe and I'd bet a significant amount of money on that our schoolbooks are not equating Aussies with Nazis. There's probably a bleeding-heart section on Aborigines in the so-called "White man's burden" history course, mentioning the stolen generations explicitly but I guess that's par for the course these days.

    The beach riots in 2005(?) where your local beach boys kicked some well-deserving Lebanese ass made a few headlines, though.

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  9. According to the Wikipedia entry on Finland's Kekkonen: "From December 1980 onwards, Kekkonen suffered from an undisclosed disease that appeared to affect his brain functions, sometimes leading to delusional thoughts."

    Presumably this is another way of saying that Kekkonen became an Australian right-liberal ...

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  10. Anonymous seems a bit unhinged
    Why because I retell factual information?

    As an Australian who lived a long time in Finland i'm qualified to talk about the Finnish psyche in away Finns do not.
    Their unusually ability to blot out things they don't like and to not rock the boat is the perfect environment for brainwashing.
    It wasn't just in Finland that this happened. All the soviet states had decades of history missing. Where their ethno-national identity was suppressed.
    My point is this is now being done to western nations like Australia.

    Also I can tell you the modern day Finnish education curriculum revolves around climate change, black supremacy and feminist supremacy.
    I had to actually stop tutoring Finns in English because the propaganda was just too much. More outrageous than i've seen anywhere.

    I'm sorry if i've upset your Finnish attitude of not drawing attention to your country but its relevant. Especially when your country gleefully starts painting Anglo-Australians as bloodthirsty murderers.

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  11. One world government seems inevitable. One has to wonder, once it is accomplished, just what WILL be celebrated?

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  12. "Why is Finland relevant to Australia? Well in Finland right now their school children have an education module specifically about Australia.
    It paints Australians as Nazis that exterminated the Aborigines."

    I'm married to a Swede. My wife's sister was still in high school when i first met the family. I was shown the high school English textbook. There were sections in the textbook discussing each of the larger English speaking countries and their histories. This was done from hard-left perspective. There was an account from a light-skinned Aboriginal heroine speaking about her survival amongst the White rogues. I cursed to my wife and upset her sister. On a later occasion my wife's teen brother remarked that my family were "all really nice." He told me that he didn't know much about Australians but he knew what we had done to the Aborigines. So it surprised him that my family were so "nice".

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  13. Kevin Rudd is a true believer. The Asia-Pacific Region. A big Australia. He is quite mad. He wants to dissolve Australia into Asia, nothing less will make him happy. He is an open-borders loon of the highest order.

    Bob Hawke once said "We’re all bloody boat people" and now I think he's working to help the Chinese buy up Aussie assets.

    They are all reckless and dangerous men without identity.

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  14. Remember that Kevin Rudd is a crazy little man. Mean, cruel and petty. Australian's gollum. Made crazier by power. Still craving power.

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  15. They are all reckless and dangerous men without identity.

    Ideologee, that is hard-hittingly good.

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  16. Mean, cruel and petty.

    Was it not Rudd who churned through employees?

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  17. Make that '"Australia's Gollum".

    'Was it not Rudd who churned through employees?'

    Yes it was.

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