Australia, The Anzac Myth and the Thought Police

The above quotation is often attributed to Voltaire, but probably comes from 1993. It's author appears to be Kevin Strom. So it's a myth that Voltaire wrote that quote. Myth Busted. To have a myth about Voltaire busted is one thing, but what if someone were to bust a myth you held dear to you. Like The Anzac Myth?

The Anzac's have been sanctified in Australia. Every Anzac day we remember their sacrifice on the beaches of Anzac Cove. Their bravery and honour is revered as a role model for young men and women all over the country. The values of mateship, irreverence, distrust of authority, audacity, fair play and classlessness have become synonymous with Australian culture.

Much of this is even true! But many legends are just that. The story of Simpson and his Donkey are an amalgam of a few different men.

I was taught in school that the incompetent English sent the Anzac's to the wrong beach to land. It's a lie.

Peter Weir's film Gallipolli taught me that we were treasonously abandoned by the English at Suvla Bay. It's a lie.

Much of the popular understanding of Gallipolli was created by Charles Bean, the army's official war correspondent. Bean, like all journalists and historians had an agenda. Bean saw the story of glorious defeat in Gallipolli. The story of powerful, natural soldiers brought down by a dastardly (British) command staff who failed to see the potential and the brilliance of the soldiers at their command. 

The truth was a little more run of the mill. The Gallipolli offensive was a mess. The Anzac's performed as an inexperienced force often does at the start of a campaign. Everything and everyone was untried and untested. Some things and people performed well, others failed. It is only through the crucible of combat that systems and men are tested and honed. Green armies inevitable struggle in their first engagements.

Why would Bean report differently? Remember that Charles Bean was embedded with the army in a similar way that the press were embedded in the US army for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Except that Bean wasn't employed by the press, he was army through and through. His agenda at the time was to paint the army as desirable place to serve as possible to increase recruitment numbers at home. He succeeded greatly and the Anzac Myth was born. It holds to this day.But there are certain things we weren't told. Which brings us to Scott McIntyre. 

Last Anzac Day Scott McIntyre, a football (the round-ball version) journalist with SBS criticised the Anzac Myth in public by tweeting some very distressing ideas that run counter to Bean's agenda.

Tweet 1

"The cultification of an imperialist invasion of a foreign nation that Australia had no quarrel with is against all ideals of modern society."

Tweet number one puts the rest of the tweets into the context Mr McIntryre intended. While I can't speak for him, McIntyre seems to have been disturbed at the jingoistic interpretation of a war of Imperial acquisition he called a cultification.

The factual assertion of McIntyre's tweet here is accurate. Britain targeted the Ottoman

Turks in a bid to open a warm water port for Russia. Success may have postponed the Russian Revolution, but the added side effect was that Turkey would be too weak to hold it's territories which would become Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Jordon. Many of today's problems can be directly traced to the 1919 treaty of Versailles, which gave much of the the middle east to Britain and France and was the result of the collapse of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. That's what they died for. The British Empire. To expand it's border. Unfortunately those troops great grandchildren had to go back to the region to fight ISIS in 2015. Had the landings in Gallipolli never taken place, the nation of Iraq may have never existed. This might be an offensive fact, but it's only offensive if we value myth over reality.

The Middle East before the Anzacs Came

The Middle East after WWI

 

Tweet 2

"Wonder if the poorly-read, largely white, nationalist drinkers and gamblers pause today to consider the horror that all mankind suffered."

Tweet number two is offensive if you are poorly read, white nationalists who fall for the

myth of Anzac and the glorification of soldierly values. Very few people would self identify with this group, therefore, I cant see how this tweet is offensive. However I have corresponded with literate, intelligent people who felt this tweet was offensive. People who pause to consider the suffering and horror of war. So lets talk about Nationalism. Patriotism is a fine virtue in moderation. Pride in ones identity is clearly beneficial, however patriotism/nationalism is often subverted into a hatred of outsiders. I well remember the nationalistic fervour that preceded the Cronulla riots. Malignant radio shock jocks stirred up anti-Lebanese sentiment among the type of nationalistic drinkers and gamblers Scott McIntyre referred to.

Tweet 3

"Remembering the summary execution, widespread rape and theft committed by these ‘brave’ Anzac's in Egypt, Palestine and Japan."

This is painful to confront. However it is necessary for an adult nation. Australians certainly summarily executed enemy soldiers in both world wars.

Take this excerpt from the Diary of Eddie Stanton who was posted to Goodenough Island in PNG:

“Japanese are still being shot all over the place, The necessity for capturing them has ceased to worry anyone. From now on, Nippo survivors are just so much machine-gun practice. Too many of our soldiers are tied up guarding them.”

This is the reality of war. To believe it isn't is naive. As for rape, I offer the following testimony from Australian officer and translator in Hiroshima:

"I stood beside a bed in hospital. On it lay a girl, unconscious, her long, black hair in wild tumult on the pillow. A doctor and two nurses were working to revive her. An hour before she had been raped by 20 soldiers. We found her where they had left her, on a piece of waste land. The hospital was in Hiroshima. The girl was Japanese. The soldiers were Australians.

The moaning and wailing had ceased and she was quiet now. The tortured tension on her face had slipped away, and the soft brown skin was smooth and unwrinkled, stained with tears like the face of a child that has cried herself to sleep."

Of course Australians at war have raped, stolen and summarily executed the enemy. All army's do. So lets remember the victims of war, not just the the soldiers but the civilians, the children, the women and the families of those left behind.

Anyone contesting the thieving claim McIntyre makes need only look to the battle of Wazzir in 1915. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Wazzir

Coming from the explicitly white Australia to Cairo was quite the culture shock and the "Master Race" was quite keen to maintain dominance over the "Niggers" as Victor Ault wrote:

"we thrash the black fellows with whips … Every nigger who is impudent to a soldier gets a hiding … I can’t say how many I’ve belted and knocked out.”

in Palestine Anzac's massacred the village of Surafend. No-one knows the death toll, (but near 100) and both Australia and New Zealand were forced to make (pathetically meagre) reparations to Britain (who ran Palestine at that time).

Tweet 4

"Not forgetting that the largest single-day terrorist attacks in history were committed by this nation & their allies in Hiroshima & Nagasaki"

To regard the Nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes may not be a sentiment that you agree with, but it is undeniably a mainstream sentiment. To air that sentiment on Anzac day suggests a link. It's there. War is horrific. If we are to remember war, please remember it all, the waste of young life, the killing of innocents, the misery of the survivors and those who linger too long.

Tweet 5

"Innocent children, on the way to school, murdered. Their shadows seared into the concrete of Hiroshima.”

The image is the one he uploaded. It speaks for itself.

Back to  Pretend Voltaire

Scott McIntyre discovered at the  cost of his job that you are not allowed to criticise the Anzac's. Why is that? Clearly the Anzac's do not rule over us. So who does?

The truth is that we are the ones who police the Anzac myth, not pretend Voltaire's

imaginary rulers. We police it, because it is a comfortable, lazy way of viewing the world. It neatly explains our high living standard because we deserve it.

It leads us to persecute those who hold differing opinions than the status quo. Free speech is dying in this country and it isn't the craven politicians killing it. it's us We have become the "Thought Police". In a democracy we are the rulers who decide who can be criticised and who cannot.

Sacrifice of Angels

My fervent hope is that as a society we can maturely discuss our foundation myths, because Bean wasn't wrong. Far too many young men were killed needlessly. Bean went on to found the Australian War Memorial. To commemorate and remember the sacrifices our troops made. McIntyre would like us to remember the horror of war. The indiscriminate killing of innocents and soldiers alike. For me those two goals are not mutually exclusive. Soldiers go through the type hell in war I cannot fathom. But war of course doesn't stop at soldiers. The mother losing her son/daughter on a distant front, the loss of a child in the rubble of your home, the trauma of rape that women bear when a rampaging army conquers new territory, The horror of a child waking to find their parents are dead, or the second sun flaring brightly in the sky, reducing children to a shadow on a wall.

So next Anzac day spare a thought for our brave soldiers sent by politicians to enforce the national will. But also spare a thought for the victims of solders, the ones who suffer to survive, and the ones who weren't so lucky.