The article looks at a historical re-enactment society in the Victorian city of Ballarat. The young members of this society are quite articulate when it comes to explaining why they devote so much time to their hobby. For instance, David Waldron believes that it connects him to his heritage:
His participation ... is a way of "bridging the disjuncture from my heritage - my own history. I am recreating that sense of connection."
Another member of the society, Fred Cheney, an English and history teacher, has a theory about the loss of Western identity:
Fred ... has tried to connect with Asian spirituality but found immersing himself in the essentials of northern European culture is the better fit pyschologically. He says the transported gene pool of white Australia set his social lineage adrift.
"And in the absence of knowledge about our own ancestral roots, we tend to project our internal indigenous sense onto the exotic other - the Aborigines or the Asian races," he says. "Through these processes we are reclaiming our own roots. For me, enacting the Viking period is a way of engaging with my racial heritage. We get the sense it is still there. The costumes are profoundly respectful of our ancestors, but by wearing them you get that instant consciousness of The Great Then."
There are women involved too. Anna says of history that,
"reading about it just isn't enough." And best of all is the payoff in a real sense of connection. "This sense of tribal community is vital to sustain us now because it has a real integrity. We do operate as a tribe or an extended family."
If this sounds a little politically incorrect, it's because it runs against the grain of orthodox liberalism. According to liberal orthodoxy there is no collective good, only an immense set of self-chosen individual life paths. The overall aim is to achieve an autonomy in which we self-determine every aspect of who we are. We don't choose our ethnicity or our ancestry, so these are thought of negatively as impediments to the self-creating, blank slate individual. Furthermore, because liberals associate the West with power and dominance, they see Western forms of ethnic identity as being constructed for the oppression of others. So Western identity gets tagged as supremacist or discriminatory, whereas non-Western identity is tied much more positively to resistance to Western cultural and political dominance.
So there is a profound rejection of modern liberal orthodoxy when the Ballarat history players declare that their own Western ancestry is authentic and indispensable to who they are.
I personally have no desire to dress up like a Viking. Nor do I think that re-enactment is the most effective way of challenging the liberal status quo. But I do agree with the Ballarat history players that a sense of our ancestry and roots is important in forming our self-identity. It deepens and enriches our sense of who we are. It places us within a distinct tradition, so that we identify with a set of cultural ideals and achievements, rather than always being outsiders who are not actively involved in reproducing a culture of our own.
If liberal theory treats such an identity, at least for Westerners, as wholly negative, then this only shows that liberal theory is inadequate - that it limits too severely what can be expressed within our self-identity.
Great post, Mr. Richardson.
ReplyDeleteMr. Cheney really does put his neck out. He says, "For me, enacting the Viking period is a way of engaging with my racial heritage."
"Racial"? There are at least two more PC alternatives I can think of right now that he could have chosen in lieu of that charged word. And I'm sure he's no less well-versed in PC terminology. That he still chose the word "racial" therefore signifies a break with PC norms.
I wonder what made him confident enough (and in a national publication) to do it? As you implied, Mr. Richardson, there isn't a credible liberal rationale for this statement. It's just flat out illiberal.
And that's great news. Folks, talk often, and talk openly. It's working.
I wonder if the Turks are doing the same in Shepparton. Come to think of it I do recall seeing an inordinate number fezzes I was there last time......
ReplyDeleteThe point has been made before by others, but I'm increasingly inclined to suspect that the damage recently and very publicly done to Henry Louis Gates' lifelong campaign against whitey might be the Stalingrad of Politically Correct Caucasophobia. Ten or five years ago, Gates would've triumphed. Now, though not defeated, he has been comprehensively laughed at; and for race hustlers like Gates, being laughed at is almost worse than being vanquished. Perhaps the time is coming where whites in the West will no longer feel obliged to spend their entire public lives wearing "kick me" badges.
ReplyDeleteThis is slightly off topic, but Mr Richardson in his post has referred to a magazine, and the following refers to another magazine, so perhaps it isn't all that off topic. Does anyone know if The Independent Australian is still being published? I haven't received a copy for a long time (though I gather my subscription is still valid) and any E-mail I have sent to the editor has bounced back, unread and presumably undelivered. It would be unfortunate if this periodical had altogether ceased to exist.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's different in Oz, but in the USA reenactors are regarded as obsessive cranks, nerds, losers, and people who never got over playing army as a kid. There's even a book (Confederates in the Attic) about how charmingly weird they all are.
ReplyDeleteIf "white identity" wants to be taken seriously, it needs to be owned by other people besides those fruitcakes.
As I often like to say regarding this topic "The deeper the roots, the stronger the tree"
ReplyDelete"Fred ... has tried to connect with Asian spirituality but found immersing himself in the essentials of northern European culture is the better fit pyschologically. He says the transported gene pool of white Australia set his social lineage adrift.
ReplyDelete"And in the absence of knowledge about our own ancestral roots, we tend to project our internal indigenous sense onto the exotic other - the Aborigines or the Asian races," he says. "Through these processes we are reclaiming our own roots. For me, enacting the Viking period is a way of engaging with my racial heritage."
Why are northern European-descended people in Australia so lacking in racial consciousness?
Perhaps the most likely possibility is that for a long time during the early days of Australian society, the English who formed the core of the Australian population, and the majority, were unselfconscious about ethnicity because there was so little ''diversity''; early Australian society was characterised by an English-descended majority and a largely Anglicized Celtic-descended minority, with the tiny number of non-Europeans being effectively excluded from national life. Thus, there was no need for forming a strong identity in competition with others who opposed the majority.
In fact, up until several decades ago, Australians of British descent were the dominant group with no one to seriously challenge their power. Of course that all changed with the advent of multiculturalism and mass, dissimilar immigration, and now I think many old-stock Australians are looking to recreate an ethnic identity of their own, forcing them to look back into their own northern European heritage in order to replicate the kind of strong ethnic identity that newly-arrived minority groups hold so dear.
This is a mixed blessing, though, if one of our goals is the preservation of Western culture in full. Based on my experience, what many of these folks desire is a connection to an idealized pagan European past, a romanticized projection of their own wishes similar to the role Asian culture/religion plays for many Westerners. (It's revealing that Mr. Cheney first toyed with Asian spirituality.) They have far less interest in connecting with our Christian and classical heritage, and may in fact be openly hostile toward it. It's a promising sign, but not an unambiguously positive one.
ReplyDeleteDo you not have many Rennaissance Fairs or battle reenactments Down Under? I thought they were a staple all over the Western World not just in the US.
ReplyDeleteThese people often find themselves a poor match for the modern world. The one's interviewed seem to understand the yearning for a connection to culture and tradition. Others are just looking for escapism like the other poster mentioned.
Liesel, we don't have Renaissance Fairs or battle reenactments as I know you do in the US. We do have some professionally run family tourist attractions such as Sovereign Hill. There's also a focus on history on ANZAC day, a commemoration day for Australian soldiers that is important within Australian culture.
ReplyDeleteI would like to point out that I don't think that re-enactment offers a way forward. I wrote the post because I thought that these particular history players had a more sophisticated view of what they were doing than is usual. It didn't come across as nerdy or weird and was featured respectfully in a mainstream publication.
I expect that the liberal order can easily tolerate a group of people nostalgically dressing up in ancient clothes and reenacting the past. Even though this expresses a more conservative and traditional sense of connection to the past, it doesn't interfere with the turning of the liberal wheel.
Based on my experience, what many of these folks desire is a connection to an idealized pagan European past, a romanticized projection of their own wishes similar to the role Asian culture/religion plays for many Westerners.
ReplyDeleteThis must have been going on for quite a while. Walter Scott's early novels caught a wave of interest in the feudal history of Scotland (and to a lesser degree medieval history in general). Similar themes occured in Keats' poetry. And later on the Victorian poets and painters (pre-Raphaelites in particular, but also Tennyson) also wrote about an idealised medieval past.
I find the idealised histories of even earlier artists the most interesting: in Spencer's 'The Faerie Queene', Spencer repeatedly - and I think he's being completely serious - invokes the roots of Ancient Britian in the siege of Troy: ie, Britons are latter-day Trojans!
RJ Stove wrote: Does anyone know if The Independent Australian is still being published? I haven't received a copy for a long time (though I gather my subscription is still valid) and any E-mail I have sent to the editor has bounced back, unread and presumably undelivered. It would be unfortunate if this periodical had altogether ceased to exist.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering the same thing myself.
Although a bit rough around the edges, The Independent Australian is effectively the only conservative publication in this country that has demonstrated a willingness to tackle the issues of immigration and multiculturalism. It would indeed be a great shame if this courageous and refreshingly honest publication had quietly disappeared into oblivion.
By the way, Mr. Stove, I recently purchased a copy of your book The Unsleeping Eye. I'm very much looking forward to reading it.
I know this is an old thread, but felt I should say something about TimT's comments.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, 'The Faerie Queene' linking Elizabethan England to Troy, clearly is based on the Aeneid, Virgil's masterwork. Virgil's work recounted the legend that Romulus was descended from Aeneas, who fled from the fall of Troy and after many adventures arrived in Latium. This clearly, and heroically, links Rome's origins to the age of heroes and demigods, firmly establishing the divine plan for Rome to rule the world, it's obvious destiny! Virgil loomed very large in the Medieval and Renaissance imagination, knowledge of his works was one of the defining marks of an educated man, so it shouldn’t be any surprise that a work eulogising the achievements and destiny of Elizabethan England would follow similar lines.
Sir Walter Scott’s works fit in very much with the Romantic Tradition of the late 18th and 19th Centuries – a movement of which Sir Kenneth Clark described ourselves as the “almost bankrupt heirs”. They were something of a reaction to the Classicists which had dominated since the Renaissance, harking back to the purity of Medievalism etc. There was also the work of Rousseau with his ideas of the “Noble Savage” and that civilisation is slavery with “man is born free but is everywhere in chains” – very much part of the romantic ideal. Scott was a very popular author, but the main theorist of this was Thomas Carlyle – written off by WS Gilbert as one of those who eulogised “every century but this and every country but his own”, and it made a visual appearance in the Victorian Gothic Revival. I certainly see links between this sort of activity and these people, certainly historical societies and the fascination with medievalism and prehistoric Europe stem from them. However I think motivations have changed over the years. In the 19th century it was recoiling from things like industrial society (a new phenomena) and new political orders (seen as base, corrupt or venial), which were the main motivating factors. Today it is loss of a sense of any kind of belonging to an ethnic group, indeed the fact that Anglo Australians (and those of northern origin in general) are specifically discouraged from so identifying – alone of all significant ethnic groups. This latter reality exposes the base dishonesty of multiculturalism, in that it actively denigrates and seeks to diminish Anglo identity in Australia, and diminish it’s role and discourage members from so self-identifying, whilst all other groups (including the Irish, at least during the time of Keating) are actively encouraged to see themselves in this light. It isn’t the fact of these type
I know this is an old thread, but felt I should say something about TimT's comments.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, 'The Faerie Queene' linking Elizabethan England to Troy, clearly is based on the Aeneid, Virgil's masterwork. Virgil's work recounted the legend that Romulus was descended from Aeneas, who fled from the fall of Troy and after many adventures arrived in Latium. This clearly, and heroically, links Rome's origins to the age of heroes and demigods, firmly establishing the divine plan for Rome to rule the world, it's obvious destiny! Virgil loomed very large in the Medieval and Renaissance imagination, knowledge of his works was one of the defining marks of an educated man, so it shouldn’t be any surprise that a work eulogising the achievements and destiny of Elizabethan England would follow similar lines.
Sir Walter Scott’s works fit in very much with the Romantic Tradition of the late 18th and 19th Centuries – a movement of which Sir Kenneth Clark described ourselves as the “almost bankrupt heirs”. They were something of a reaction to the Classicists which had dominated since the Renaissance, harking back to the purity of Medievalism etc. There was also the work of Rousseau with his ideas of the “Noble Savage” and that civilisation is slavery with “man is born free but is everywhere in chains” – very much part of the romantic ideal. Scott was a very popular author, but the main theorist of this was Thomas Carlyle – written off by WS Gilbert as one of those who eulogised “every century but this and every country but his own”, and it made a visual appearance in the Victorian Gothic Revival. I certainly see links between this sort of activity and these people, certainly historical societies and the fascination with medievalism and prehistoric Europe stem from them. However I think motivations have changed over the years. In the 19th century it was recoiling from things like industrial society (a new phenomena) and new political orders (seen as base, corrupt or venial), which were the main motivating factors. Today it is loss of a sense of any kind of belonging to an ethnic group, indeed the fact that Anglo Australians (and those of northern origin in general) are specifically discouraged from so identifying – alone of all significant ethnic groups. This latter reality exposes the base dishonesty of multiculturalism, in that it actively denigrates and seeks to diminish Anglo identity in Australia, and diminish it’s role and discourage members from so self-identifying, whilst all other groups (including the Irish, at least during the time of Keating) are actively encouraged to see themselves in this light. It isn’t the fact of these type of gatherings that’s significant, but rather the motivations for doing so.
Sorry, I accidentally cut off the last line.