ABC indigenous affairs editor Stan Grant is out to get our Aussie statues, which makes him all manner of deplorable, according to Thursday’s tabloids.
Last week Grant wrote a piece inspired by the recent statue drama in the US, interrogating how Australia interacts with the commemoration of some of the more troubling aspects of its history. Yesterday he wrote a piece about the “damaging myth” that Captain Cook had discovered Australia, observing “and to dare challenge this ‘discovery’; how impertinent. I can hear someone saying ‘know your place’.”
Grant is not being rhetorical there — people immediately started saying words to that effect. Broadcaster Alan Jones tweeted today: “If Stan Grant keeps going the way he is in relation to AUS history and monuments he’ll go the same way as Yassmin Abdel-Magied”. If Jones means that Grant will encounter a disproportionate, hysterical response aimed at silencing him, it would seem he’s bang on the money. Behold the considered, thoughtful response:
It’s Talibanesque!
The Daily Telegraph quotes New South Wales Shooters and Fishers MP Robert Borsak describing the proposal as “Taliban-like” and uses the word in the headline of its front page story on the matter, thus combining the Tele‘s two favorite topics: politically correct lefties and Islamic radicals. Shame no dole bludgers found a way to get involved.
It’s Stalinist!
Joseph Stalin was a particularly popular choice for comparison in the Tele piece. Indigenous leader Warren Mundine had this — “All this nonsense about changing things — we cannot look back at history with our modern minds otherwise we would have to tear down the pyramids because they were built by slaves”.
“Trying to have a Stalinist approach and whiting out people’s names is false history.”
NSW Liberal MP Peter Phelps hailed Captain Cook and Arthur Phillip as heroes and said “attempts to rewrite our public history for the sake of political correctness — which is what these activist want to do — is little better than Stalin erasing his political opponent from photographs”.
It’s Maoist! (And Stalinist. And French revolutionary…ist)
Andrew Bolt’s column, also in today’s Tele attacks the task of historical comparisons with pick’n’mix enthusiasm — he simply couldn’t stop at one:
“Blanking out history is a true sign of the totalitarian. Stalin did it by having photographic records doctored to remove images of his enemies. The French revolutionaries behind the great Terror did it by destroying monasteries and restarting the calendar as if history started with them.
Mao did it by declaring war on the “’Four Olds’ — including old culture — and tearing down reminders of China’s past, from the old walls of Beijing to the cemetery of Confucius.”
It’s SHORTENIST!
Perhaps most terrifying of all…Tony Abbott told 2GB‘s Ben Fordham on Wednesday that a Bill Shorten-led government would bring about “political correctness on steroids”.
“You can just imagine all the statues of Captain Cook being taken down, all the statues of Governor Phillip being taken down.”
It’s a beat-up!
But, as the Tele points out, Grant’s piece never once suggests that a monument be torn down. Surely the minimum requirement for a proposal to be “Stalinist” is that it actually exist.
Mundine says rather than tear down existing monuments, we need more memorials to first Australians. And that seems to be exactly what Grant actually argues for in his original piece:
“America is tearing down its old monuments; it is hard and it is painful. Captain Cook’s statue stands in the centre of our biggest city. There are Indigenous people who for good reason would prefer to see it removed. Personally I accept that it remains; Cook is part of the story of this nation. But surely we need no longer maintain the fiction that he “discovered” this country. It dishonours the people who reached this continent 60,000 years before Cook.”
Keith Windschuttle, whose column in The Australian was the first return of fire from the culture described Grant’s column as “sheer journalistic opportunism”, concluding “Grant and others in the media are encouraging racial conflict for no good reason, except for the dramatic news reports they would like to see generated. They should be ashamed of themselves for their wanton provocation.” We look forward to a similar rebuke aimed at the response.
Even if Australia had been “missing”, Cook was not the first white man to “discover” it.
Stan Grant needs to try a lot harder if he’s attempting to ‘encourage racial conflict’ (as Windschuttle alleges). Stan may require a mentor with experience & impressive form eg: Alan Jones. His CV can boast inflaming the Cronulla riots.
In 2009 the New South Wales Administrative Decisions Tribunal found Jones “incited hatred, serious contempt and severe ridicule of Lebanese Muslims” during on-air comments in April 2005. His employer, Harbour Radio, appealed the decision but it was upheld.
Warren Mundine is a bit of a numbskull. Slaves did not build the pyramids. However I don’t like Warren so I am biased. However more recognition of the first nations matters, but don’t tell Windschuttle the Windbag, he doesn’t like to be reminded they were here. James Cook was not even the first European to see Australia and probably not even the first to see the East coast. He never claimed to have discovered anything, just to have cleared up doubtful points. There are however statues to murderous scum, such as Batman, which are problematic. John Simpson Kirkpatrick was a brawling Geordie ship jumper and not even an Australian by any measure. But for one time in his life, the circumstances matched his skills and he is now a hero. To look at the US, would you put a statue of William T Sherman in Atlanta? Robert E Lee himself did not want such things. Context and honesty is a part of this and our retelling of our history is often dishonest.
It seems to be an Aboriginal “leader” you merely have to be prominent. Mundine is merely prominent, not a leader. Why do the media constantly quote him?
Perhaps for the same reason they appoint other self-styled Aboriginal leaders who hold opinions that are out of step with most Aboriginal people, but curiously in step with the dregs of Limited News opinionistas.
“Surely we need no longer maintain the fiction that he discovered this country. It dishonours the people who reached this continent 60,000 years before Cook.”
Surely that would be replacing one fiction with another. The date of so-many thousands of years ago is quite temporarily, as it is derived from science based on the current evidence. Further evidence will certainly move the date! And of all the many waves of people who arrived in Australia before half that date, few if any will have modern descendants over such an enormous span of time.
In the present construction of history, it is indeed Cook who provides us with a useful date. Anyone who arrived in the country before Cook can be labelled “first”, and anyone who arrived after Cook can be labelled “invader”.
At least it is history, which can be rewritten whenever the previous version becomes ridiculed. But please don’t put it in the constitution, we would sound like idiots in a hundred years’ time.
Clifton, you’ve argued very effectively against arguments that weren’t put. Thought of applying for a job with Limited News?
Give Cliffy a break – we can’t ALL understand this sciencey stuff. Not if one aspires to don the flag cape to celebrate Long Weekend (the sole reason for “Australia Day”s longevity) while sitting on a piece of Egyptian furniture (couch), drinking an Iraqi beverage (beer), dining on English cuisine (fish’n’chips), complaining if they include the only Australian item on the menu (Dim Sims), and watching the PM fawn about “our young and vibrant nation” (in probably the oldest nation on Earth).
PING!
Dodger – “… few if any will have modern descendants over such an enormous span of time” – if you could put away your beloved nukes for a moment, perhaps someone will tell you about the birds & bees.
AR – Populations die out in the long run, depending on the behaviour of their (ecological) niche and their size. Browse for “Minimum Viable Population”, (a few thousand individuals), below which a (human) group would likely die out within a thousand years. Larger takes longer. It is quite possible that Australia has been intermittently empty of humans or hominids across most of the last 100,000 years.
It may be possible, but the evidence that’s freely available points the other way.
It’s entirely possible that Europe was entirely unpopulated over the last two thousand years, but so what?
What a fatuous statement. Written history (which would once have been considered tautological) is a damn sight stronger set of evidence than the other variety.
As BtB wondered, for what tawdry purpose would you throw this nonsense into an utterly unrelated thread?
@Mark Duffett you’d preference the accuracy of the Bible and Koran over biological and ecological evidence would you?