Now that Blaney is getting on he would have to be our greatest working historian. Wherein he has clashed with his critics they have all been wrong and he has been right.
Why would we not appoint our best historian to the board of our national socialist broadcaster?
Especially ESPECIALLY!!!!! since Windschuttle is now an anti-socialist. Its the best decision the ABC could have made. And its like someone must have made them an offer they cannot refuse.
I’d want to save the money of course. But shipping out aside, shaping up is the next best thing.
There couldn’t possibly be a better man for the job. How could this have come about? In this way Laura I’m just as mystified as you. Its so strange to see thieves actually doing the right thing.
Happy days.
Maybe I can petition him to take that old buggers job. You know that old bugger…..
The next time someone accuses the ABC of being run by lefties I’m going to reach for my pistol. I still can’t believe this. But of course, it was inevitable. Alan Jones and Miranda devine will be the next ABC appointees; David Flint will be the next Governer-General etc etc etc
Well, if the ABC board cannot now “turn the ABC away from leftism” (my own invented quote) with all its anti-left members, the board members should admit that they’re incompetent and resign!
The directors have five year terms. I’m in two minds as to whether the ALP, if it wins government next year, shouldn’t legislate to sack them all since the appointments are so blatantly politicised, or whether it would be best not to because the appointments are so blatantly politicised so as to demonstrate that you can do things properly over time.
A quote from Keith Windschuttle, “The Fabrication of ABC History”, Sydney, RWDB Press, 2006, p. 457:
“In fact, the Right always owned the ABC. This is the case because Leftists have no concept of ownership. Instead Leftists wandered the countryside committing depredations on right wingers, otherwise known as property owners.
“There are no Leftists any more because they have eaten each other.”
And about time too. If anyone knows how this all came about do let us know.
Even with its leftist bias the ABC was an amazing institution.. Like a free university. We don’t need it now if we ever did. We can go to Milt Rosenberg or the Mises.org site or LEARNOUTLOUD (which I just found yesterday).
But those lefties did a fine job and I’m the first to admit it.
But they let us down in the lead-up to the war. They let us down bad. And we cannot have that sort of dagger hanging over our heads.
My favourite interviewer for many years was Terry Lane. The journalist is not the story.
Except of course if its a Gonzo Hunter Thompson sort of deal. But no if Milton was speaking I’d be like the rest of you. Just trying to find out what it is the man wants to say.
Bird, that’s a no-brainer argument. The most popular source of web news isn’t alternative sources, but NineMSN. Diversity doesn’t mean changes of audience (or “market”) behaviour. It doesn’t automatically mean more democratic distribution of news.
I wish to help sustain LP as a collectively-sentient site, one my own individual sentience finds pleasing and useful, by temporarily subjugating my own individual sentience to that of teh collective sentience and embracing and endorsing as my own the ideas expressed in this (and only this) sentence, at this (and only this) recorded time, in order to earn the site that carries it a thousand dollars to help towards practical running costs.
at this post then I will personally ban you from the entire internets. I’m that powerful. You have been warned.
At a superficial level, this appointment seems the height of political stupidity.
But at a deeper and more significant level, it should be realised that those who are appalled or elated are those who know who KW is and what he represents.
Those voters are not going to swing.
The average punter does not watch the ABC; does not know who JA, RB and KW are; and has never heard of the Culture Wars.
They do understand however what overtime, penalty rates, holiday pay etc are. That’s the ‘hip pocket’
While the ALP should not ignore this outrage, they should stick to the main game - IR. Be careful of distractions.
Is it simply about another smokescreen to hide the tinderbox of IR? (sorry - twas the earlier mention of Miranda Devine…) Howard has systemically shut down all forms of criticism of his government, whether by reducing funding for organisations such as the Human Rights Commission, ATSIC & has been slowly strangling the ABC with inadequate funding. Not dissimilair to the treatment handed out to unis. Make the buggers beg and they’ll be very careful about what they say and do.
So, this then… does Howard feel the staff so demoralised that they will be further cowered by such appointments? Or does this give the Evil Ones enough nos on the board to push for a systematic review of all ABC activities which will find:
1. RN is a threat to national security, & all staff should be immediately detained at Baxter, for processing & re-location to the Happy Punter Holiday Club (formally known as Nauru)
2. Liz Jackson is the daughter of Satan
3. ABC stands for Anarcho Bolshevic Club and must be immediately taken over by Channel Nine, whose skill at rendering anything of import to previously unimagined heights of banality will make us all safe again.
4. That the Argonauts must be immediately re-instated but with no funny leftie business - OK?!!! They can tell. Just ask Keith.
I think i might start banking my 8 cents. It might come in handy.
Bernice, it is sad to think that after all this time The Icon is only worth 8 cents to you. If it had been privatised it might be worth more, say 25 cents?
maybe I should have said “Another Icon”, the place is getting to look like Jurasssic Park with all these creaking groaning dinosaurs (John Quiggin would be happy because it gives him another opportunity to wear his Safari Suit, the one with Short Pants).
‘Yes, Brunton, Albrechtsen and Windschuttle - they’ve got the trifecta of Stolen Generation deniers.’
More like Stolen Generation debunkers Mark. That’s been the problem with the ABC and it will take a long time to turn the Titanic around. You don’t still believe in ATSIC and aboriginal apartheid do you Mark?
What, no one’s made the ‘It’s like appointing Michael Jackson to a childcare centre’ one yet? I’m shocked. Utterly shocked. I don’t agree, but it’s just such an OBVIOUS thing to say.
And really, this is just silly. The ABC doesn’t NEED ideologues of either side; by appointing Windshuttle, Howard is saying that it’s not the fact that the ABC is biased that he’s worried about, it’s the fact that it’s left wing bias. Appointing someone who’s right-biased isn’t going to work, because you just end up getting more bias. Two wrongs and all that.
Why don’t we try appointing people who DON’T have a record of bias for a change?
Optimist speaking: but perhaps by being immersed in the ABC culture Windschuttle may be forced into a dialogue that reshapes some of his views and forces others to be clearer about theirs.
I wish to help sustain LP as a collectively-sentient site, one my own individual sentience finds pleasing and useful, by temporarily subjugating my own individual sentience to that of teh collective sentience and embracing and endorsing as my own the ideas expressed in this (and only this) sentence, at this (and only this) recorded time, in order to earn the site that carries it a thousand dollars to help towards practical running costs.
at this post then I will personally ban you from the entire internets. I’m that powerful. You have been warned.”
Well that’s wonderful Anna. And its neat to see you having such a good time and what a good idea you have going here? I would commend it to all Goddesses of Reason but to tell you the truth I was a bit mystified.
But I’m touched and flattered that you thought of me now that I know what’s going on.
I only just figured it out. You are having one of those nostalgic pajama parties. That’s where all the girls get together just like they would when they were ten or eleven.
And to make it work just as exciting as the young days you girls have got a lot of cocktails and other recreational enhancements happening.
And good on you. I only wish that I could be there. Though I’m not the same age I was the last time you had these pajama parties and so I feel I’d be better off with a nap and some strong coffee before I joined in.
What a load of piffle. Windschuttle is merely a traditional academic historian, that debunked a silly episode of postmodern fairies in the garden who took history off into la la land. He just put its feet back on the ground by saying he thought the emperor had no clothes(facts) on. If that’s your idea of radicalism, then you’re still off with the fairies.
Mark wrote “The directors have five year terms. I’m in two minds as to whether the ALP, if it wins government next year, shouldn’t legislate to sack them all since the appointments are so blatantly politicised, or whether it would be best not to because the appointments are so blatantly politicised so as to demonstrate that you can do things properly over time. ”
A succinct demonstration of how thinking about doing the right thing is less effective than doing the things that suit your agenda best.
Better to just appoint and be damned.
I agree he’s worthier than Janet. But like a lot of zealots, he’s a political turncoat. This isn’t in and of itself a bad thing (I was once a Liberal voter!), but it does suggest his earlier flawed though interesting writings dealing with structural influences on media, might no longer hold for him.
What’s interesting to me about this grossly political appointment is that, in the same way that Brunton has absolutely no credibility among his anthropological peers, Windschuttle has no intellectual standing at all within the discipline of history in Australia. Albrechtsen’s just a joke.
I truly hope that this latest example of neocon anti-intellectual bastardry cames back to bite the bastards.
Everyone:
Repent all you who do not believe in ghosts. Ghosts do exist and this is proof positive. The ghosts of Salazar and Brezhn’ev now make appointments to the ABC Board.
Once Windshuttle actually gets into the slot, I wonder if he will bite the hand that put him there? It’s happened before …..
And the sister-in-law of the satanic Morag Fraser.
MH, that is a brilliant observation about Windy needing to construct himself as an outsider. Any day now he’s going to have another Road to Damascus moment and swing round yet again. With any luck it’ll be while he’s still on the ABC board. Heh.
Comrade Bird has cleared up something that was puzzling me — I’d never managed to see any of the naked fear of the nonexistent FEMINIST HIVE MIND before, but I think I can see it peeking through the banisters tonight.
Would you right-wing ravers PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE learn the correct meaning of ‘postmodern’ before you throw it around any more? It’s not that I don’t enjoy watching you make doofuses of yourselves, but you’re making my teeth ache.
rog, yes, if Guy Rundle or Paul McGeogh were appointed to the board, just imagine the responses hereabouts.
Windschuttle is currently Australia’s most influential (truly) public intellectual — though he would probably hate the phrase. Being a Board member is largely symbolic, though: Michael Kroger didn’t make any difference to the house culture during his term, despite the fury it generated on TEH LETF.
Whatever cachet the appointment may confer, I think Windschuttle has more important work to do. Will this appointment hobble him? I’ve not seen much of Ron Brunton’s work since he was similarly annointed.
‘Windschuttle has no intellectual standing at all within the discipline of history in Australia.’
That’s because the discipline of history along with a whole lot of other arts disciplines has no intellectual standing anymore and why would that be? Well for starters its intellectual might cobbled together black armband history using the genocide word which Windschuttle quickly debunked and had them backpedalling over. In fact the closest thing I’ve seen to aboriginal genocide, has been since the products of Whitlam’s expansion of the university sector, unleashed a whole generation of the new intelllectual social workers on our indigenous population. Move over priests and nuns the new Creationists are coming through. Nothing I’ve read or heard corroborated about aboriginal history, goes close to their attempts at simulating genocide. Even old Aunty had had enough with toddlers being raped and couldn’t keep quiet any longer. Windschuttle sounds like just the bloke to get them asking the right questions which might lead to some appropriate answers.
The only thing I’d say to this social worker class and their loopy offspring is- don’t forget to give Operation Iraqi Freedom the same period you’ve had with aboriginals, to get it right for Iraqis. That’ll be the day eh?
If by ‘influential’ you mean that he is helping with the PM’s dirty work by legitimising and given oxygen to some of the less admirable traits in human nature, then you’re quite right, Rob. No arguments here.
His time might be sufficiently taken up by board work for him to write fewer books? Gee, you say that like it’s a bad thing. I can’t speak for Guy, but I bet Paul McGeogh knows he has more important work to do than sit around the big kids’ table faffing on with the like of la Albrechtsen.
No, PC, I mean he has single-handedly altered the course of Australian historiography. Agree with him or not, that’s no mean feat, and is, I think, undeniable. The history of Aboriginal Tasmania will never be the same, that’s for sure. And he’s finishing up his second volume of Fabrication, apparently. God knows what storms that will bring in its wake. Can you say that of any other contemporary historian?
Actually some of you should read the man himself and his criticism of pomo historians http://www.sydneyline.com/Return of Postmodernism.htm?article_id=1959
Not buying into the debate over whether Windschuttle is or isn’t respected as an historian, his appointment does demonstrate incumbency problems with the Commonwealth Government, and seriously.
I look forward to the squeals when, upon the same principles in use here, Greg Combet is appointed Fair Pay Commissioner.
Oh c’mon, Rob, single-handedly altering the course of Australian history is de rigeur among Australian historians. Bean did it, and so did Manning Clark and Blainey and Macintyre and Atkinson and Teh Australian Feminist Historian Hive Mind and, perhaps most of all, Greg Dening. (Rob spits mouthful of red clear across room. Heh.)
In fact, not to alter the course of Australian historiography is not to be recognised or remembered as an Australian historian at all. Have you read T.S. Eliot’s essay ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’?
did Windschuttle achieve prominence on his own merits or because his historical revisionism was pushed by the Murdoch press and a (publicly funded) conservative rag by the name of Quadrant?
Having said that, a mate of mine who is a life long WWII buff assures me that the work of Holocaust revisionist David Irving has produced a net benefit in the quality of WWII historical scholarship as he has forced mainstream historians to dot their “I”s and cross their “T”s and to correct some minor omssions and errors. Hopefully Windschuttle’s work will have a similarly beneficial upshot.
Rob and observa *you’re weird, dude* can talk all they like about Windy’s qualifications or standing as a historian, but that’s irrelevant. There are criteria for the appointments to the Board under the statute which the Minister has had to argue have been met, and they don’t relate to being an academic or supposedly changing historiography, but to relevant organisational, business or media experience:
HELEN COONAN: He meets the criteria perfectly. I think many people may not realise… that is the criteria for a board appointment to the ABC… What I think a lot of people may not realise is that besides being a historian, he’s got a very strong background in the media, having started out as a journalist, and he worked as a journalist throughout he’s career. He’s been a lecturer in journalism and has a very strong interest in the media.
Indeed. He wrote a book which criticised the Australian media for its right wing structural biases, published by Penguin.
But Coonan seems quite embarrassed by the appointment (perhaps it wasn’t her idea…):
MARK COLVIN: Both Ron Brunton and Janet Albrechtsen had been very critical of the ABC as being too left-wing before they joined.
Now Keith Windschuttle gave a lecture last year in which he said that the ABC had been effectively taken over by a small group of Marxists and radicals, which had really taken control of the ABC over the last 30 years.
HELEN COONAN: Well, I mean that’s his view, but he’s one voice of course on the ABC. And I think it’s appropriate to acknowledge that he has put forward different views and no doubt, to some, quite provocative views, but really the ABC shouldn’t be…
MARK COLVIN: Do you agree with him that…
HELEN COONAN: (inaudible) debate, it needs to take part in these debates, I would have thought. And I mean, it’s not as if he will carry the entire board I would think.
I mean, there’s a very diverse background there, it’s not as if Mr Windschuttle has been appointed Chairman.
MARK COLVIN: Do you agree with him?
It’s known that other colleagues of yours do agree with him that a group of Marxists and radicals have dominated the ABC and that, even a board now dominated by conservatives has been unable to displace that, to quote him.
HELEN COONAN: Well, I think you can see from my record of having been in charge of this portfolio, that I’ve taken a very constructive attitude to the ABC.
And in terms of those sorts of issues, that can sometimes be manifested in angst from my colleagues, the view I take is that it’s appropriate in a democracy for people to have a range of views, including my colleagues, and I think that my job is to make sure that the ABC runs effectively, that it’s got a good board, that it’s appropriately funded, and that the complaints mechanism is there as a proper safeguard if there really egregious editorial divergence.
“Not buying into the debate over whether Windschuttle is or isn’t respected as an historian,”
Respected?
Respected by whom? Are you some sort of nutty subjectivist or something? No wonder its so easy for your crowd to go off the beam en masse. You are all watching eachother.
did Windschuttle achieve prominence on his own merits or because his historical revisionism was pushed by the Murdoch press and a (publicly funded) conservative rag by the name of Quadrant?
Yes, indeed. Spot on. Windshuttle is the perfect Murdoch commodity: he sends both the left and the right into their respective paroxisms, selling more copies of The Oz all the way.
I’ll buy Manning Clark, PC, but not your other examples. As for Greg Dening — well, Greg was a brilliant and inspiring teacher (I should know, he supervised my honours thesis) and I’m very fond of ‘Islands and Beaches’, but as a public historian he is too metaphysical and, worse, far too self-referential.
The appointment of Windschuttle to the ABC board is in some ways similar to the election of Japan to the chair of the International Whaling Commission.
If Adam Goodes wins the Brownlow Medal this year, will the ABC Sports Department be ordered to not report the fact, will they be required to report that it was actually won by an Anglo-Celt like Chris Judd, or will there be a Four Corners special investigation into the takeover of the AFL by neo-Marxist postmodernist proponents of the adversary culture?
“a mate of mine who is a life long WWII buff assures me that the work of Holocaust revisionist David Irving has produced a net benefit in the quality of WWII historical scholarship as he has forced mainstream historians to dot their “Iâ€?s and cross their “Tâ€?s and to correct some minor omssions and errors. Hopefully Windschuttle’s work will have a similarly beneficial upshot.”
Yes, I’m sure the greenhouse denialists, Lysenkoists, creation scientists and tobacco lobby shills have rendered a similar service to climate science, genetics, biology and epidemiology.
Are you some sort of nutty subjectivist or something? No wonder its so easy for your crowd to go off the beam en masse. You are all watching eachother.
Subjectivist, moi? Depends which way you look at it.
Now, back to watching my navel…
but as a public historian he is too metaphysical and, worse, far too self-referential.
Too metaphysical and too self-referential for what, Rob? The writing of Australian History’s Grand Narrative? Yep, there’s a worthy project, one the PM has been trying to stitch back together for ten years. Too late, happily.
And anyway, you reckon Windy isn’t self-referential, with his banging on about being a champion of Truth (the one, the only) and his amazing self-promotional strategies (that link that observa struggled so manfully to get right goes to a gobsmacking shot of him addressing thousands of adoring fans; I wonder who he lined up to take it, and why he thought it was in good taste to use it as self-advertisement)?
Your remarks about Greg Dening illustrate my point exactly: that’s precisely what I meant. He was and is an astonishingly influential teacher and writer and his effects will go on being felt for generations among the historians who have learned from him. If that isn’t single-handedly altering the course of Australian historiography then I don’t know what is. Certainly not a lot of woolly bleating about postmodernism.
Did Helen Coonan really say ‘that is the criteria’?
Greg Dening is after all an ex-Jesuit, you can hardly expect him to stint on the metaphysics. It’s a bit like expecting Windschuttle as an ex-Marxist to go easy on the bitterness about traitors and enemies.
Personally I find Islands and Beaches tedious and enjoy far more Dening’s more famous chapter on Cook and the Hawaiians, When Sharks Walked the Land, but that’s pure unadulterated subjectivity.
…
Since we’re pitching names of Australian canon-bashing historians, I submit also one of my favourites, Graeme Davidson.
If this is an example of how you thwart the dreaded “conservatives” in your classroom sermons on the primacy of politics over art, please alert us all where you teach, so that I can make sure my own children go nowhere near the place!
The issue of ABC Board appointments is a fart in the bath. What IS the issue is the visceral reflexivity of bourgeois left hissing, huffing, and puffing.
How pathetic of you all. Listen to you flaunt your ignorance on Widschuttle, the criminal abyss of orthodox Australian historiography, and the really scary emptiness of Australian public intellectuals!
There’s a role for gadflies like Windshuttle. You need some outsiders throwing rocks at people’s heads, so those people can remember where their heads are.
It’s another thing to put the gadflies in charge of an institution.
Seems to me to point to a perilous lack of depth in the ranks of intellectual conservatives, and a real disconnect between the Howard government and the real sources of conservative thought in Australia.
“Yes, I’m sure the greenhouse denialists, Lysenkoists, creation scientists and tobacco lobby shills have rendered a similar service to climate science, genetics, biology and epidemiology.”
You are letting your emotions cloud your judgement, Paul. Like it or not, Windschuttle has picked up some very significant errors in the works of other historians. Even his main detractors acknowledge this. Windschuttle’s conclusions are as odious as David Irving’s but he has nonetheless forced mainstream historians to be more rigorous. Surely this is a good thing.
Ironically, Windshuttle is still playing out the same Communist rhetorical and ideological styles he was thirty years ago. The FofAH is not really about Aboriginal history at all, but an old-fashioned denunciation of his class enemies. Aborginal Australia is merely a tool for his ideological goals.
Rog, tis worth far more than 8 cents to me, but in these days of AWAs & declining wages & conditions, it would seem churlish to grant them anymore. & as for Windbuttle as a paragon of historic virtue - even the most cursory examination of primary sources from the first 50 years of Tasmanian settlement wold have a Grade 6 student scratching their head at Windybutt’s “historical truths”. Not that that matters at Quadrant. Or the Oz. But it just might at the ABC.
It is no longer possible to regard the British colonisation of Tasmania as genocidal on the evidentiary basis of the primary sources. There’s been a lot of backsliding of the subject by mainstream historians, including Reynolds, on this subject, but as KW demonstrates in a recent article for the dreaded Quadrant, much of it is patently disingenuous. Contemporary historians remain content to draw parallels with the Holocaust, with some even contending that the British were morally even worse than the exterminatory Nazis. We know now, contra Reynolds, that Lt Governor Arthur was concerned to preserve the Aboriginals from extirpation, not the colony, as claimed by Reynolds — whom KW exposed in a truly unforgiveable historiographical error of misquoting Arthur to the extent of reversing what he actually said.
We know now that the death toll among Aborigines was low. We know most of the violence perpetrated by the settlers was in retaliation for raids or muders by the indigenes. We know some of the massacre stories were false. And we know, if we follow the debate, that mainstream historians have twisted and turned but have neither been able to put Windy down nor shut him up.
OK, a lot of the debate has been in the pages of Quadrant, which many here would pick up only with shrinking fingers — but Paddy McG has given Windschuttle’s opponents a lot of space, both in column inches and Letters to the Editor, and they have not been able to shake his case. Bain Attwood has even conceded that James Boyce, whose essay in Whitewash was that Robert Manne-edited volume’s centrepiece, failed signally to demonsrate that there was greater evidence than Windy claimed for violence against Aboriginals in Tasmania from sources he claimed KW had overlooked (he hadn’t). In all the clashes I’ve witnessed or read about, Windschuttle has shown a most regrettable tendency to know more about the subject than his opponents.
No recent historian has had an comparable impact on the (previously) agreed version of the national story, IMHO.
How many historians actually claimed that the situation in Tasmania was genocidal, Rob, and to what degree does he make straw people of the historians he attacks?
Why is it necessary for him to attack so personally rather than criticise?
And what sort of uber-positivism is it that regards only the testimony of those who actually killed people as proof?
How many other historical events could be proven on Windschuttle’s methodological criteria?
Those seem to me to be the four key questions about his work.
In the early nineteenth century, the Aboriginal people of Tasmania were all but wiped out, I mean it was one of the clearest cases of genocide and was recognised as such at the time.
Lyndall Ryan:
[My book] sserts that the Tasmanian Aborigines did indeed constitute a threat to British settlers, that the Black War was ‘a conscious policy of genocide’, though not in the end a successful one, as the Aborigines survived.
Dirk Moses:
Australia has had many genocides, perhaps more than any other country.
Point two:
KW is a fierce polemicist and you’d hardly expect him to pull his punches instead of landing them. Besides, he mainly attacks his critics’ arguments and the politics underlying them, not the personal individuals. Unlike his opponents:
[T]he extremism of statements by Brunton, Morgan and Windschuttle suggests that this analysis should be extended whether such figures experience castration anxiety; that is, a fantasised danger to their genitals symbolised by the national ideal that makes them feel powerful and good about themselves.
Point three:
Because the written testimony of the time — and not only by ‘those who killed people’; those who sympathasised with the Aboriginals as well — is the only meaningful evidence there is.
Yes, but Windshuttle isn’t about historical facts or the application of the label “genocide” to Australia’s past. His work is really about the morality tale which is contemporary Australian nationalism, and the vicious fight over how the story is told and who tells it. Windshuttle thinks he believes in “objectivity” and “truth” but he is simply an ideology warrior. The losers, the silenced, are yet again Australian Aborigines. And Windshuttle has shown himself to be utterly unable to understand the conditions of the their disenfranchisement, or have any interest at all in hearing their voices.
The Aborigines attacked the settlers because they wanted goods such as sugar, flour, blankets, tea and tobacco. They resorted to plunder, rather than “legal forms of acquisition� for two reasons: there had not been sufficient time for them to “adopt the customs and work ethic required to join the colonial labour force� and relying on charity left them at the mercy of white generosity, whereas “outlaw status left them in charge of their own fortunes� [Fabrication, p. 127]. In short, they preferred to remain free.
According to Windschuttle, “Aboriginal thieves had little compunction about killing anyone they found in their wayâ€? because “their own culture had no sanctions against the murder of anyone outside their immediate clan. Internecine warfare was rife in indigenous society and killing others was a common and familiar practice among Aboriginal males. … The whites were unarmed and posed no deterrent to the Aborigines’ main objective. They were killed simply because they could be.
“Overall, then, the spread of white settlement in the 1820s was certainly a major cause of the increase in black violence, but not for the reasons the orthodox school proposes. Far from generating black resentment, the expansion of settlement instead gave the Aborigines more opportunity and more temptation to engage in robbery and murder, two customs they had come to relish� [Fabrication, pp. 128-129].
The tragedy of this period, Windschuttle continues, is that the Aborigines “adopted such senseless violence� because “their principal victims were themselves� [Fabrication, p. 130].
And to expand on my points three and four, here’s Stuart Macintyre:
To drive home his denial of massacres Windschuttle made a count of all interracial homicide in the first 30 years of settlement. He used a book by Brian Plomley that listed clashes from 1803 to 1831, added some of his own, took out others, and then estimated the number of Aboriginal casualties (allowing just one in most cases and giving ten as the highest toll from any clash) to come up with a total of 118. Since the European death toll for the ‘Black War’ of 18
Now that Blaney is getting on he would have to be our greatest working historian. Wherein he has clashed with his critics they have all been wrong and he has been right.
Why would we not appoint our best historian to the board of our national socialist broadcaster?
Especially ESPECIALLY!!!!! since Windschuttle is now an anti-socialist. Its the best decision the ABC could have made. And its like someone must have made them an offer they cannot refuse.
I’d want to save the money of course. But shipping out aside, shaping up is the next best thing.
There couldn’t possibly be a better man for the job. How could this have come about? In this way Laura I’m just as mystified as you. Its so strange to see thieves actually doing the right thing.
Happy days.
Maybe I can petition him to take that old buggers job. You know that old bugger…..
Adams.
You cannot be serious.
So the ABC really is being run by old Marxists.
http://www.abc.net.au/corp/board/windschuttle.htm
Windy is an embarrassment…good grief.
I’m gobsmacked.
OMG!
I hope he wasn’t installed on the board on intellectual grounds. As a conservative, sure, but not an intellectual.
Quadrant is now well represented.
The next time someone accuses the ABC of being run by lefties I’m going to reach for my pistol. I still can’t believe this. But of course, it was inevitable. Alan Jones and Miranda devine will be the next ABC appointees; David Flint will be the next Governer-General etc etc etc
Well, if the ABC board cannot now “turn the ABC away from leftism” (my own invented quote) with all its anti-left members, the board members should admit that they’re incompetent and resign!
The directors have five year terms. I’m in two minds as to whether the ALP, if it wins government next year, shouldn’t legislate to sack them all since the appointments are so blatantly politicised, or whether it would be best not to because the appointments are so blatantly politicised so as to demonstrate that you can do things properly over time.
“The next time someone accuses the ABC of being run by lefties I’m going to reach for my pistol.”
FILL……….. YOUR………….HAND young lady.
This is the exception not the rule. The ABC is indeed filled with leftists. The empirical evidence is that we all are shocked by this development.
Now you bigshots don’t forget me when Phils job comes up.
Oh, fuck, Ron Brunton is on the board, too. He’s of course on the anti-ABC Institute of Public Affairs.
A quote from Keith Windschuttle, “The Fabrication of ABC History”, Sydney, RWDB Press, 2006, p. 457:
“In fact, the Right always owned the ABC. This is the case because Leftists have no concept of ownership. Instead Leftists wandered the countryside committing depredations on right wingers, otherwise known as property owners.
“There are no Leftists any more because they have eaten each other.”
hell, it’s not like the ABC has any money to do anything important anyway…
Yes, Brunton, Albrechtsen and Windschuttle - they’ve got the trifecta of Stolen Generation deniers.
Weathergirl.
Clearly this is a deliberate conspiracy.
And about time too. If anyone knows how this all came about do let us know.
Even with its leftist bias the ABC was an amazing institution.. Like a free university. We don’t need it now if we ever did. We can go to Milt Rosenberg or the Mises.org site or LEARNOUTLOUD (which I just found yesterday).
But those lefties did a fine job and I’m the first to admit it.
But they let us down in the lead-up to the war. They let us down bad. And we cannot have that sort of dagger hanging over our heads.
No, TAK, but it might explain why they got more money in the last handout.
Did Windschuttle replace the staff rep?
Bird, you could interview Milton Friedman, and we still wouldn’t hear his point of view. I don’t think Phil needs worry.
That’s total bullshit Michael G.
My favourite interviewer for many years was Terry Lane. The journalist is not the story.
Except of course if its a Gonzo Hunter Thompson sort of deal. But no if Milton was speaking I’d be like the rest of you. Just trying to find out what it is the man wants to say.
Bird, that’s a no-brainer argument. The most popular source of web news isn’t alternative sources, but NineMSN. Diversity doesn’t mean changes of audience (or “market”) behaviour. It doesn’t automatically mean more democratic distribution of news.
Comrade Bird - if your next comment isn’t:
at this post then I will personally ban you from the entire internets. I’m that powerful. You have been warned.
OK Bird I withdraw. I’ll take your word on it.
At a superficial level, this appointment seems the height of political stupidity.
But at a deeper and more significant level, it should be realised that those who are appalled or elated are those who know who KW is and what he represents.
Those voters are not going to swing.
The average punter does not watch the ABC; does not know who JA, RB and KW are; and has never heard of the Culture Wars.
They do understand however what overtime, penalty rates, holiday pay etc are. That’s the ‘hip pocket’
While the ALP should not ignore this outrage, they should stick to the main game - IR. Be careful of distractions.
My two cents worth
1. I would pay to get an invite to the ABC caf for a few days.
Can I reclaim my previous suggestion that the Aunt ough to be privatized? This is a shit fight I don’t want to miss. Makes me proud to be an Aussie.
Is it simply about another smokescreen to hide the tinderbox of IR? (sorry - twas the earlier mention of Miranda Devine…) Howard has systemically shut down all forms of criticism of his government, whether by reducing funding for organisations such as the Human Rights Commission, ATSIC & has been slowly strangling the ABC with inadequate funding. Not dissimilair to the treatment handed out to unis. Make the buggers beg and they’ll be very careful about what they say and do.
So, this then… does Howard feel the staff so demoralised that they will be further cowered by such appointments? Or does this give the Evil Ones enough nos on the board to push for a systematic review of all ABC activities which will find:
1. RN is a threat to national security, & all staff should be immediately detained at Baxter, for processing & re-location to the Happy Punter Holiday Club (formally known as Nauru)
2. Liz Jackson is the daughter of Satan
3. ABC stands for Anarcho Bolshevic Club and must be immediately taken over by Channel Nine, whose skill at rendering anything of import to previously unimagined heights of banality will make us all safe again.
4. That the Argonauts must be immediately re-instated but with no funny leftie business - OK?!!! They can tell. Just ask Keith.
I think i might start banking my 8 cents. It might come in handy.
WTF means
Whipping Tiresome Fairies?
Bernice, it is sad to think that after all this time The Icon is only worth 8 cents to you. If it had been privatised it might be worth more, say 25 cents?
maybe I should have said “Another Icon”, the place is getting to look like Jurasssic Park with all these creaking groaning dinosaurs (John Quiggin would be happy because it gives him another opportunity to wear his Safari Suit, the one with Short Pants).
Anna is TEH GODESS OF REASON, let’s not forget.
Holy shit! Did Birdman just say he liked the ABC?
Yes he did. Its days are clearly numbered …
‘Yes, Brunton, Albrechtsen and Windschuttle - they’ve got the trifecta of Stolen Generation deniers.’
More like Stolen Generation debunkers Mark. That’s been the problem with the ABC and it will take a long time to turn the Titanic around. You don’t still believe in ATSIC and aboriginal apartheid do you Mark?
Comrade Bird is under the compelling spell of TEH GODDESS OF REASON and her secret powers!
What, no one’s made the ‘It’s like appointing Michael Jackson to a childcare centre’ one yet? I’m shocked. Utterly shocked. I don’t agree, but it’s just such an OBVIOUS thing to say.
And really, this is just silly. The ABC doesn’t NEED ideologues of either side; by appointing Windshuttle, Howard is saying that it’s not the fact that the ABC is biased that he’s worried about, it’s the fact that it’s left wing bias. Appointing someone who’s right-biased isn’t going to work, because you just end up getting more bias. Two wrongs and all that.
Why don’t we try appointing people who DON’T have a record of bias for a change?
Is that even possible? - to not have bias per se.
Optimist speaking: but perhaps by being immersed in the ABC culture Windschuttle may be forced into a dialogue that reshapes some of his views and forces others to be clearer about theirs.
“Comrade Bird - if your next comment isn’t:
I wish to help sustain LP as a collectively-sentient site, one my own individual sentience finds pleasing and useful, by temporarily subjugating my own individual sentience to that of teh collective sentience and embracing and endorsing as my own the ideas expressed in this (and only this) sentence, at this (and only this) recorded time, in order to earn the site that carries it a thousand dollars to help towards practical running costs.
at this post then I will personally ban you from the entire internets. I’m that powerful. You have been warned.”
Well that’s wonderful Anna. And its neat to see you having such a good time and what a good idea you have going here? I would commend it to all Goddesses of Reason but to tell you the truth I was a bit mystified.
But I’m touched and flattered that you thought of me now that I know what’s going on.
I only just figured it out. You are having one of those nostalgic pajama parties. That’s where all the girls get together just like they would when they were ten or eleven.
And to make it work just as exciting as the young days you girls have got a lot of cocktails and other recreational enhancements happening.
And good on you. I only wish that I could be there. Though I’m not the same age I was the last time you had these pajama parties and so I feel I’d be better off with a nap and some strong coffee before I joined in.
Being as there is at least three of you there.
He won’t be immersed in ABC culture, clif. He’ll be regulating it.
clif’s point is useful. Windshuttle has built his career as an “historian” on populist opposition to imagined dominant histories. He is literally a reactionary. But when these people are put in charge of something, when they cannot appropriate the language of “oppression” or “marginality” to legitimize themselves, they are left painfully exposed. Imagine if the ABC actually produced a series on Aborginal Australia based on Windshuttle’s views of Aboriginality (as distinct from his views about himself). Even the hardiet right-wingers might look away in embarrassment, epecially after the recent coverage of the crises in Aborginal communities.
Good old Windy. I say — woohoo! Now to watch the feathers fly.
What a load of piffle. Windschuttle is merely a traditional academic historian, that debunked a silly episode of postmodern fairies in the garden who took history off into la la land. He just put its feet back on the ground by saying he thought the emperor had no clothes(facts) on. If that’s your idea of radicalism, then you’re still off with the fairies.
Mark wrote “The directors have five year terms. I’m in two minds as to whether the ALP, if it wins government next year, shouldn’t legislate to sack them all since the appointments are so blatantly politicised, or whether it would be best not to because the appointments are so blatantly politicised so as to demonstrate that you can do things properly over time. ”
A succinct demonstration of how thinking about doing the right thing is less effective than doing the things that suit your agenda best.
Better to just appoint and be damned.
MH–thanks for posting that. Windschuttle hangs himself in that interview.
Before he became a history warrior, Windschuttle studied and wrote about the media/journalism for many years. He’s worthier than Janet, anyway.
I agree he’s worthier than Janet. But like a lot of zealots, he’s a political turncoat. This isn’t in and of itself a bad thing (I was once a Liberal voter!), but it does suggest his earlier flawed though interesting writings dealing with structural influences on media, might no longer hold for him.
What’s interesting to me about this grossly political appointment is that, in the same way that Brunton has absolutely no credibility among his anthropological peers, Windschuttle has no intellectual standing at all within the discipline of history in Australia. Albrechtsen’s just a joke.
I truly hope that this latest example of neocon anti-intellectual bastardry cames back to bite the bastards.
Everyone:
Repent all you who do not believe in ghosts. Ghosts do exist and this is proof positive. The ghosts of Salazar and Brezhn’ev now make appointments to the ABC Board.
Once Windshuttle actually gets into the slot, I wonder if he will bite the hand that put him there? It’s happened before …..
I know, Naomi. After screaming myself, you’re the first person I thought of.
And the sister-in-law of the satanic Morag Fraser.
MH, that is a brilliant observation about Windy needing to construct himself as an outsider. Any day now he’s going to have another Road to Damascus moment and swing round yet again. With any luck it’ll be while he’s still on the ABC board. Heh.
Comrade Bird has cleared up something that was puzzling me — I’d never managed to see any of the naked fear of the nonexistent FEMINIST HIVE MIND before, but I think I can see it peeking through the banisters tonight.
Would you right-wing ravers PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE learn the correct meaning of ‘postmodern’ before you throw it around any more? It’s not that I don’t enjoy watching you make doofuses of yourselves, but you’re making my teeth ache.
But of course the ALP should sack the board, and instal its own non politicised lefty luvvies.
rog, yes, if Guy Rundle or Paul McGeogh were appointed to the board, just imagine the responses hereabouts.
Windschuttle is currently Australia’s most influential (truly) public intellectual — though he would probably hate the phrase. Being a Board member is largely symbolic, though: Michael Kroger didn’t make any difference to the house culture during his term, despite the fury it generated on TEH LETF.
Whatever cachet the appointment may confer, I think Windschuttle has more important work to do. Will this appointment hobble him? I’ve not seen much of Ron Brunton’s work since he was similarly annointed.
‘Windschuttle has no intellectual standing at all within the discipline of history in Australia.’
That’s because the discipline of history along with a whole lot of other arts disciplines has no intellectual standing anymore and why would that be? Well for starters its intellectual might cobbled together black armband history using the genocide word which Windschuttle quickly debunked and had them backpedalling over. In fact the closest thing I’ve seen to aboriginal genocide, has been since the products of Whitlam’s expansion of the university sector, unleashed a whole generation of the new intelllectual social workers on our indigenous population. Move over priests and nuns the new Creationists are coming through. Nothing I’ve read or heard corroborated about aboriginal history, goes close to their attempts at simulating genocide. Even old Aunty had had enough with toddlers being raped and couldn’t keep quiet any longer. Windschuttle sounds like just the bloke to get them asking the right questions which might lead to some appropriate answers.
The only thing I’d say to this social worker class and their loopy offspring is- don’t forget to give Operation Iraqi Freedom the same period you’ve had with aboriginals, to get it right for Iraqis. That’ll be the day eh?
If by ‘influential’ you mean that he is helping with the PM’s dirty work by legitimising and given oxygen to some of the less admirable traits in human nature, then you’re quite right, Rob. No arguments here.
His time might be sufficiently taken up by board work for him to write fewer books? Gee, you say that like it’s a bad thing. I can’t speak for Guy, but I bet Paul McGeogh knows he has more important work to do than sit around the big kids’ table faffing on with the like of la Albrechtsen.
No, PC, I mean he has single-handedly altered the course of Australian historiography. Agree with him or not, that’s no mean feat, and is, I think, undeniable. The history of Aboriginal Tasmania will never be the same, that’s for sure. And he’s finishing up his second volume of Fabrication, apparently. God knows what storms that will bring in its wake. Can you say that of any other contemporary historian?
Good point, your last, observa.
Actually some of you should read the man himself and his criticism of pomo historians
http://www.sydneyline.com/Return of Postmodernism.htm?article_id=1959
Try here
http://www.sydneyline.com/Return of Postmodernism.htm?article_id=1959
That has made my night.
effing Brilliant.
Watching the LLLs go into a flat spin over this is marvellous.
Would Paul McGeogh really be a politicise appointment, Rob?
Try here http://www.sydneyline.com/ particularly the article - The return of pomo in aboriginal history
Not buying into the debate over whether Windschuttle is or isn’t respected as an historian, his appointment does demonstrate incumbency problems with the Commonwealth Government, and seriously.
I look forward to the squeals when, upon the same principles in use here, Greg Combet is appointed Fair Pay Commissioner.
Oh c’mon, Rob, single-handedly altering the course of Australian history is de rigeur among Australian historians. Bean did it, and so did Manning Clark and Blainey and Macintyre and Atkinson and Teh Australian Feminist Historian Hive Mind and, perhaps most of all, Greg Dening. (Rob spits mouthful of red clear across room. Heh.)
In fact, not to alter the course of Australian historiography is not to be recognised or remembered as an Australian historian at all. Have you read T.S. Eliot’s essay ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’?
Rob,
did Windschuttle achieve prominence on his own merits or because his historical revisionism was pushed by the Murdoch press and a (publicly funded) conservative rag by the name of Quadrant?
Having said that, a mate of mine who is a life long WWII buff assures me that the work of Holocaust revisionist David Irving has produced a net benefit in the quality of WWII historical scholarship as he has forced mainstream historians to dot their “I”s and cross their “T”s and to correct some minor omssions and errors. Hopefully Windschuttle’s work will have a similarly beneficial upshot.
Rob and observa *you’re weird, dude* can talk all they like about Windy’s qualifications or standing as a historian, but that’s irrelevant. There are criteria for the appointments to the Board under the statute which the Minister has had to argue have been met, and they don’t relate to being an academic or supposedly changing historiography, but to relevant organisational, business or media experience:
Indeed. He wrote a book which criticised the Australian media for its right wing structural biases, published by Penguin.
But Coonan seems quite embarrassed by the appointment (perhaps it wasn’t her idea…):
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2006/s1664194.htm
“Not buying into the debate over whether Windschuttle is or isn’t respected as an historian,”
Respected?
Respected by whom? Are you some sort of nutty subjectivist or something? No wonder its so easy for your crowd to go off the beam en masse. You are all watching eachother.
Yes, indeed. Spot on. Windshuttle is the perfect Murdoch commodity: he sends both the left and the right into their respective paroxisms, selling more copies of The Oz all the way.
I’ll buy Manning Clark, PC, but not your other examples. As for Greg Dening — well, Greg was a brilliant and inspiring teacher (I should know, he supervised my honours thesis) and I’m very fond of ‘Islands and Beaches’, but as a public historian he is too metaphysical and, worse, far too self-referential.
‘WTF’ is just the beginning.
Why Windschuttle?
Because Hitler is dead and Derryn Hinch is too obsessed with his colorectal health.
The appointment of Windschuttle to the ABC board is in some ways similar to the election of Japan to the chair of the International Whaling Commission.
…or the appointment of John Bolton as the US ambassador to the UN.
Well, everything except that - the Oz’s circulation is still very poor, despite Windy’s best efforts.
If Adam Goodes wins the Brownlow Medal this year, will the ABC Sports Department be ordered to not report the fact, will they be required to report that it was actually won by an Anglo-Celt like Chris Judd, or will there be a Four Corners special investigation into the takeover of the AFL by neo-Marxist postmodernist proponents of the adversary culture?
“a mate of mine who is a life long WWII buff assures me that the work of Holocaust revisionist David Irving has produced a net benefit in the quality of WWII historical scholarship as he has forced mainstream historians to dot their “Iâ€?s and cross their “Tâ€?s and to correct some minor omssions and errors. Hopefully Windschuttle’s work will have a similarly beneficial upshot.”
Yes, I’m sure the greenhouse denialists, Lysenkoists, creation scientists and tobacco lobby shills have rendered a similar service to climate science, genetics, biology and epidemiology.
Paul, you’re a Marxist, aren’t you? What have you got against the old dialectic?
Bismarck, I’m a post-Marxist. The difference is not trivial.
Subjectivist, moi? Depends which way you look at it.
Now, back to watching my navel…
but as a public historian he is too metaphysical and, worse, far too self-referential.
Too metaphysical and too self-referential for what, Rob? The writing of Australian History’s Grand Narrative? Yep, there’s a worthy project, one the PM has been trying to stitch back together for ten years. Too late, happily.
And anyway, you reckon Windy isn’t self-referential, with his banging on about being a champion of Truth (the one, the only) and his amazing self-promotional strategies (that link that observa struggled so manfully to get right goes to a gobsmacking shot of him addressing thousands of adoring fans; I wonder who he lined up to take it, and why he thought it was in good taste to use it as self-advertisement)?
Your remarks about Greg Dening illustrate my point exactly: that’s precisely what I meant. He was and is an astonishingly influential teacher and writer and his effects will go on being felt for generations among the historians who have learned from him. If that isn’t single-handedly altering the course of Australian historiography then I don’t know what is. Certainly not a lot of woolly bleating about postmodernism.
Did Helen Coonan really say ‘that is the criteria’?
*Sigh*
Greg Dening is after all an ex-Jesuit, you can hardly expect him to stint on the metaphysics. It’s a bit like expecting Windschuttle as an ex-Marxist to go easy on the bitterness about traitors and enemies.
Personally I find Islands and Beaches tedious and enjoy far more Dening’s more famous chapter on Cook and the Hawaiians, When Sharks Walked the Land, but that’s pure unadulterated subjectivity.
…
Since we’re pitching names of Australian canon-bashing historians, I submit also one of my favourites, Graeme Davidson.
Laura
If this is an example of how you thwart the dreaded “conservatives” in your classroom sermons on the primacy of politics over art, please alert us all where you teach, so that I can make sure my own children go nowhere near the place!
The issue of ABC Board appointments is a fart in the bath. What IS the issue is the visceral reflexivity of bourgeois left hissing, huffing, and puffing.
How pathetic of you all. Listen to you flaunt your ignorance on Widschuttle, the criminal abyss of orthodox Australian historiography, and the really scary emptiness of Australian public intellectuals!
There’s a role for gadflies like Windshuttle. You need some outsiders throwing rocks at people’s heads, so those people can remember where their heads are.
It’s another thing to put the gadflies in charge of an institution.
Seems to me to point to a perilous lack of depth in the ranks of intellectual conservatives, and a real disconnect between the Howard government and the real sources of conservative thought in Australia.
McKenzie Wark
Gadfly? Oh puhleez! he is the most rigorous historian currently working on Australian history. Have you actually read any of his work?
The only word that comes to mind here is hubris. Unbelievable.
I expect Peter Hendy will shortly announce his appointment as the Even More Fair Pay Commissioner.
McKenize Wark
While I agree that Australia is woefully lacking in conservative depth, surely the total emptiness of the “left” is even more perilous!?
Neocommie:
“Emptiness” may cover a huge (perhaps even infinite)range of shortcomings.
Care to be a little more specific?
Paul Norton says:
“Yes, I’m sure the greenhouse denialists, Lysenkoists, creation scientists and tobacco lobby shills have rendered a similar service to climate science, genetics, biology and epidemiology.”
You are letting your emotions cloud your judgement, Paul. Like it or not, Windschuttle has picked up some very significant errors in the works of other historians. Even his main detractors acknowledge this. Windschuttle’s conclusions are as odious as David Irving’s but he has nonetheless forced mainstream historians to be more rigorous. Surely this is a good thing.
Steve Munn is correct about Windschuttle exposing several name historians with their daks down to their knees.
The truth should never rely on lies.
Ironically, Windshuttle is still playing out the same Communist rhetorical and ideological styles he was thirty years ago. The FofAH is not really about Aboriginal history at all, but an old-fashioned denunciation of his class enemies. Aborginal Australia is merely a tool for his ideological goals.
Rog, tis worth far more than 8 cents to me, but in these days of AWAs & declining wages & conditions, it would seem churlish to grant them anymore. & as for Windbuttle as a paragon of historic virtue - even the most cursory examination of primary sources from the first 50 years of Tasmanian settlement wold have a Grade 6 student scratching their head at Windybutt’s “historical truths”. Not that that matters at Quadrant. Or the Oz. But it just might at the ABC.
I stick by my claim, Naomi and Pavlov’s Cat.
It is no longer possible to regard the British colonisation of Tasmania as genocidal on the evidentiary basis of the primary sources. There’s been a lot of backsliding of the subject by mainstream historians, including Reynolds, on this subject, but as KW demonstrates in a recent article for the dreaded Quadrant, much of it is patently disingenuous. Contemporary historians remain content to draw parallels with the Holocaust, with some even contending that the British were morally even worse than the exterminatory Nazis. We know now, contra Reynolds, that Lt Governor Arthur was concerned to preserve the Aboriginals from extirpation, not the colony, as claimed by Reynolds — whom KW exposed in a truly unforgiveable historiographical error of misquoting Arthur to the extent of reversing what he actually said.
We know now that the death toll among Aborigines was low. We know most of the violence perpetrated by the settlers was in retaliation for raids or muders by the indigenes. We know some of the massacre stories were false. And we know, if we follow the debate, that mainstream historians have twisted and turned but have neither been able to put Windy down nor shut him up.
OK, a lot of the debate has been in the pages of Quadrant, which many here would pick up only with shrinking fingers — but Paddy McG has given Windschuttle’s opponents a lot of space, both in column inches and Letters to the Editor, and they have not been able to shake his case. Bain Attwood has even conceded that James Boyce, whose essay in Whitewash was that Robert Manne-edited volume’s centrepiece, failed signally to demonsrate that there was greater evidence than Windy claimed for violence against Aboriginals in Tasmania from sources he claimed KW had overlooked (he hadn’t). In all the clashes I’ve witnessed or read about, Windschuttle has shown a most regrettable tendency to know more about the subject than his opponents.
No recent historian has had an comparable impact on the (previously) agreed version of the national story, IMHO.
How many historians actually claimed that the situation in Tasmania was genocidal, Rob, and to what degree does he make straw people of the historians he attacks?
Why is it necessary for him to attack so personally rather than criticise?
And what sort of uber-positivism is it that regards only the testimony of those who actually killed people as proof?
How many other historical events could be proven on Windschuttle’s methodological criteria?
Those seem to me to be the four key questions about his work.
Point one:
Cassandra Pybus:
Lyndall Ryan:
Dirk Moses:
Point two:
KW is a fierce polemicist and you’d hardly expect him to pull his punches instead of landing them. Besides, he mainly attacks his critics’ arguments and the politics underlying them, not the personal individuals. Unlike his opponents:
Point three:
Because the written testimony of the time — and not only by ‘those who killed people’; those who sympathasised with the Aboriginals as well — is the only meaningful evidence there is.
Point four:
Any that actually occurred.
Yes, but Windshuttle isn’t about historical facts or the application of the label “genocide” to Australia’s past. His work is really about the morality tale which is contemporary Australian nationalism, and the vicious fight over how the story is told and who tells it. Windshuttle thinks he believes in “objectivity” and “truth” but he is simply an ideology warrior. The losers, the silenced, are yet again Australian Aborigines. And Windshuttle has shown himself to be utterly unable to understand the conditions of the their disenfranchisement, or have any interest at all in hearing their voices.
Point one
Is Pybus actually a historian? And Moses was writing after Windschuttle, was he not?
Doesn’t Windschuttle infer that people like Reynolds spoke of genocide when they ever did?
Point two
What use is polemic to history? How does Windschuttle reconcile this with his call for objective scholarship?
That’s a very silly quote. Who said it? Where’s your footnote, Rob?
Point three
Nonsense. The fact to be explained is the virtual disappearance of the population.
Point four
I’m just going to hunt around for something Stuart Macintyre wrote which goes to this one and the previous one.
On MH’s point:
And to expand on my points three and four, here’s Stuart Macintyre: