I can hardly believe my ears….Mark Colvin on PM is reporting that Keith Windschuttle has been appointed to the Board of the ABC.
W.
T.
F.
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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:
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lab/85/macintyre.html
Kim, the ’slly’ quote is from Dirk Moses, Aboriginal History, 2001, p.102.
It is a very silly quote indeed!
Rob, it’s a pity that you weren’t also appointed to the ABC Board btw – since I’ve now discovered that there was another vacancy. Rather than go with a faceless Liberal donating Adelaide businessman, they could have further bolstered the Quadrant long march through the institutions…
1. Ryan is a historian, no? One often often described as the pre-eminent historian of Aboriginal Tasmania. I’ll hunt around for Reynolds quotes.
2. I don’t contest that Windschuttle’s polemic to some extent disfigures his history. But it emerges as a strong component of his argument only towards the end of the book, when he’s done with his hatchet work on particular historians. He’s as much entitled to make polemical points as Hobsbawm is, for example.
3. Not following you. Windschuttle catalogues in great detail — relying on documentary sources — the process that led to the exile and eventual deaths of the surviving Tasmanian Aboriginals. He does so with an unsympathetic eye — to the extent one wonders if he even saw the tragedy taking place before his eyes (historically speaking). Then again, he has claimed the historian’s task is to be dispassionate, not compassionate. He over-errs on the side of the former, IMO, but that doesn’t make his factual reading wrong.
4. Hardly so, Kim. Both during and after the war there emerged a huge amount of evidence — captured in contemporary records — about the Nazis’ determination to exterminate European Jewry. The proceedings before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg make a useful start. (I think the 6 million figure for Jews emerged at that time.)
Rob – I’ve posted Macintyre as something of a riposte above. Here’s what Lyndell Ryan had to say:
http://backpagesblog.com/weblog/archives/000046.html
I think the point that’s been made is that Windschuttle conflates Ryan’s work with an “orthodox school” and attributes to others views only held by Ryan.
On 3 and 4, see Macintyre above.
Nice one, Kim at 12:03.
On the later comment, I’m none the more persuaded. Macintyre does not refute Windschuttle, he merely rebuts him. He doesn’t like the arguments so he criticises them without refuting them. Bad tactics. It merely makes him look stupid (which i’m sure he’s not).
And spare me Chris S.
Let’s not forget that along with Windschuttle’s activities in the field of history he is also on record as saying he thinks the national broadcaster should carry advertising.
Oh, the horror
Anything to replace the interminable station breaks.
In his remarkable essay ‘On the uses of history’, Nietzsche talks about three kinds of historian: the antiquarian, the monumental and the critical. Most conservative historiography in Australia has indeed been antiquarian. It values the past as past. Radical nationalism favoured a more strongly monumental version. It wanted heroes to put on pedastals. Leftist historiography from the 80s onwards took a critical turn. It was more interested in a moral accounting for past misdeeds.
Windshuttle has certainly had a lot of success attacking the critical school of historiography. But it can’t be said that he has put anything in its place. This is why, as i said above, he is a gadfly to the historical establishment.
As Nietzsche pointed out, how one things about the past determines what kind of action one thinks is possible in the present. He strongly disliked critical historiography because it lead, not to action in the present but moralising. This was always my objection to the critical turn in Australian history. It left us with a sense of moral worth but without much sense of how one can become a political actor. This was rather the strength of what i am very broadly calling the radical nationalist tradition, which in FN’s terms was monumental history.
KW has done the left a favour, really. It provides an opportunity to re evaluate what history is and who it is for. is it possible to incorporate the ‘others’, those from the margins that critical history championed, back into narratives about actions through which a people seize control over their fortunes?
He may end up being harmful to the conservative cause. They’ve caught a tiger by the tail, there. Nothing he writes really props up or re-invents a real conservative historiography. His writings are dependent on the very efforts of historians who KW would have us believe are so bankrupt.
The following is a quote from West’s The History of Tasmania of 1852 (A&R ed 1981, RAHS 1971)
“On the 3rd of May, 1804, during the absense of Lietenant Bowen, the officer in command, the first severe collision occurred. Five hundred blacks, supposed to belong to the Oyster Bay tribe, gathered on the hills which overlooked the camps: their presence occasioned alarm, and the convicts and soldiers were drawn up to oppose them. A discharge of fire-arms threw them into momentary panic, but they soon re-united. A second, of ball cartridge, brought down many; the rest fled in terror, and were pursued: it is conjectured that fifty fell.”
Or this:
“The natives, who have been rendered desperate by the cruelties they have experienced from our people, have now begun to distress us by attacking our cattle. (then in relation to the killing of one William Russell who boasted of his torturing & killing of blacks)…This unfortuante man, Russell, is a striking instance of divine agency, which has overtaken him at last, and punished him by the hands of those very people who have suffered so much from him: he being well known to have exercised his barbarous disposition in murdering or torturing any who unfortunately came within his reach.”
Pg 264 from a contemporary newspaper report, Derwent Star 29 Jan 1810
There at times problems with West’s record – his account of Musquito for example is inaccurate, except for the period after 1820. But the quotes above are taken from governors dispatches or reportage at the time.
Walk the landscape of Tasmania, and talk to the farming families such as the Dunbabins & Lesters, and they will show you places where their family histories remember conflict and killings, creek beds where bodies were piled and burnt. How disingenious of Windshuttle to imagine that people responsible for killing which was not directly state sanctioned, would then incriminate themselves by publishing accounts. That so much is recorded is the wonder. Windshuttle’s denial of the veracity of oral tradition is also poor history – particularly for a people who did not write, whether they were Aborigines or the average illiterate white. This i find particularly insidious – many land claims rest on proving continuity of connection to land & much of that rests in Aboriginal oral tradition – if Windshuttle can undermine the premise in mainstream Australian history, what then hope for future claims?
As Bernice writes: “if Windshuttle can undermine the premise in mainstream Australian history, what then hope for future claims?”
Which is of course exactly why KW found powerful backers for his revisionism. The whole affair is only partly about ‘history’. It is about politics.
When Paul Keating tried to make Kokoda Trail a fulcrum for Australian popular historical consciousness, Geoffrey Blainey said publicly that history ought not to be policised. One listens in vain for that voice now.
damn, so that is what foucault was talking about with his ‘i don’t study documents as much as i produce monuments’ comment.
Not exactly, but if you know this bit of FN then MF seems a lot less original!
Conceivably KW could somehow use his position to get his ridiculous and extreme idee fixe aired on the ABC. I don’t know how much direct influence board members can have on programming and associated decisions. In the immediate present it is more that this appointment is an incredible gesture of insult to those who give a shit about truth and reconciliation.
If the ABC is opened up to advertising and thus made commercially beholden to advertisers and their wishes then independence and standards are lost causes. If the board want to do this there is not much to stop them. Certainly nothing in Canberra.
Katz
If you still need anymore explanation of the emptiness of the Australian Left after reading MCKenzie Wark’s sophomoric sermon of vapidity cut and pasted from the lecture notes of any first year Dawkins University “Histocrical Studies” class, let me know.
Laura
“I don’t know how much direct influence board members can have on programming and associated decisions.”
The more pressing question is do you know anything about history, historiography or Keith Windschuttle’s scholarship? If not, don’t you fell a bit foolish spraying us all with your moral vanity?
McKenzie
Any historical “monument” or “critique” that is built on fabricated quotes, lies about what records say, clumsy metonymic and synechdocal invocations of the Holocaust, genocide and such, surely must be exposed and ridiculed!?
Surely if you think the implications of historiography are grave for current and future politics, the case for scupulous attendance to cotemporal evidence is water tight.
Relegating evidence may be fine to create some myth whose influence is merely metaphysical, but if the aims of history being written are not metaphysical but are very real and are to be exploited for legal, political, and material gain, the surely we, as citizens, owe a duty to make sure that outright lies are ejected from the history.
You would not wish lies, unethical twists, and meer wish-lists to form the basis of legal decision-making would you? Then why do you seem to excuse them in history writing?
I hope this helps.
Dunno Neocommie.
If Wark is the intellectual Left, then why have various branches of the right taken so long knock the intellectual Left over? Is Wark all there is ofthe intellectual Left? If not, in what ways is he symptomatic of the IL?
Perhaps MW’s discussion of Neitsche is ideosyncratically MW rather than archetypically IL.
Maybe MW just had a bad day when he wrote that.
Then again, even though it may be an Intro to history 101, he may have something. After all, the various Rights in Australia does have a bit of a problem with Australia’s past.
Paleo-conservatives are fairly firmly shackled to the somewhat embarrassing legacy of British imperialism. Now don’t get me wrong here, there is much worth valuing about british inheritances. Problem is, Australian paleo-conservatives don’t know when or how to stop.
Rightist Catholic thinkers like Santamaria, James McAuley, Christopher Pearson and Gerard Henderson are not immensely cheered by Australia’s longrecord of godlessness and secularism.
And neo-liberals who survey the sweep of Australian history find little to cheer them up. They call for a more or less thoroughgoing cultural revolution in Australia to root out collectivist practices and memories of collectivist practices. They are working towards achieving a great disjunction in Australian life and Australian culture. This may necessitate a great disjuncture in Australian public memory. History for them is full of bad memories and bad examples.
It’s tough to sell that message to the kiddies. That’s why pioneers and Anzacs monopolise the Right’s vision of a “proper” history curriculum.
errr, neocommie, you have failed to understand wark’s substantial point that whatever power windschuttle has it has been derived from his parasitic function on the body of critical academic scholarship. Windschuttle has produced the tiniest amount of commentary on historical scholarship, this has fed back into the academic scholarly system like a colon cleansing, which is a good thing. Wark then outlines why he thinks critical academic scholarship is problematic from a Nietzschean POV (ie because it is ‘moralising’, of ressentiment).
the focuault line I was thinking of comes from _The Archaeology of Knowledge_:
“In our time, history is that which transforms documents into monuments. In that area where, in the past, history deciphered the traces left by men, it now deploys a mass of elements that have to be grouped, made relevant, placed in relation to one another to form totalities; it might be said, to play on words a little, that in our time history aspires to the condition of archaeology, to the intrinsic description of the monument.” (7)
I am going to have to track down the Nietzsche essay.
Glen, here it is.
Impressive vocabulary you’ve got there NeoCommie. Pity you can’t deploy it with precision. Metonymic and synechdochal invocations of the Holocaust & genocide? Windschuttle’s argument on Aboriginal history is that the use of the words Holocaust and genocide are inappropriate hyperbole, if anything – certainly not that the Holocaust and genocide comprise an attribute of aboriginal history (metonymy) or even a significant part of it (synchdoche).
To the best of my knowledge, not one of the historians went after ever asserted that the Holocaust was just part of the killing inflicted on aboriginals by white settlers (synechdoche again).
As for Windschuttle’s historiography – of what relevance is that to his appointment to the ABC board. I’ve read it and it’ s tripe. Buggered if I can be bothered going down to the library to re-borrow their copy of The Killing of History though, because I don’t reckon it’s worth it, when your style of intellectual bullying with big words can be handled quite easily with the OED that’s already in the house.
Gummo Trotsky/Glen
I leave it for others to point out you are hoist on your own petard. But for now, all you need to know is that I do not fling around terms without a precise understanding of their meaning. You can apologize late. I must fly for now.
Another Saturday, another troll. Is it too much to ask for the occasional Norn?
Katz points to the real incoherence of the various longstanding kinds of conservatisms in Australia. After the cold war, it got harder and harder to keep up a united front. They lost their bottle, and started consorting with the kinds of people who would have gotten a quick brush off in the good old days. Overt racists, opportunists, media whores, etc.
Not that i am putting KW in any of those catagories. But he ain’t no Leonie Kramer. Where’s James McAuley when you need him?
One would expect a Tory government to make conservative appointments, and not only to the ABC board. But this points more to (a) a lack of respect for the institution itself and (b) a bit of a sea change in what constitutes a right wing intellectual.
In short, the trolls are in.
Hi Katz
Good points! I’ll respond off teh top of my head to a few.
For Windschuttle his early 1990s book “The Killing of History” [BTW, what is the HTML for italics?] provided a very good skewering of the insidious influence of Cultural Studies and poststructuralism that has started stinking out thought and scholarship in history and the social sciences more broadly.
Of course, a great irony of this book was its unreserved praise of Craig Rowley and Henry Reynolds. Now, Windschuttle was praising their commitment to traditional empiricist historiography against the travesties of Cultural Studies meets the History of Empire that were emerging and lionized by pomo wankers like Susan Sontag.
The reason that Windschuttle turned “feralâ€? was not out of some conspiracy with Howard, the RSL, and David Flint! It happened accidentally when he was asked to write a review of Phillip McKnightly’s “Australia: A biography of a Nation” in 2000. In doing so, he followed up some of Knightley’s refernces (something which a whole generation of tenured Australian historians had never bothered to do) and alarm bells started ringing. It was at this point that he realized something stunk in the lands of university history and politics departments, and that something was being swallowed hook, line, and genocide by everybody from the high Court to HREOC to the Prime Minister and Governor General.
So I would say that it is not really an issue of “the Right having taken so longâ€? I think it is a more a case of respect that distinguished Professors of History would not be “cooking the books!â€? I mean I have always presumed that research and evidence were scrupulously rendered whenver I have read a book or article by a distinguished academic, haven’t you?
OK, I’ll retract my comments against McKenzie I don’t know him, have never met him nor even heard of him, apart from here; so I do not want to give the impression that he is “the Left� in this country, even as a synecdoche! Neverthless his post IS symptomatic of the Left in the way in which the Left in the 21st century has totally surrendered its credulity and analytical tools to the linguistic turn of poststructuralism. Out with class and the enabling state, politics is all about “shopping and fucking,� girlfriend!
I’m a little uncomfortable at the way “the Right� is invoked in Leftist media, such as this, by the way excellent, blog. For me, the “Right� is the US Republicans, Hamas, and so on. Having said that I think we ALL “have a problem with Australia’s past.� History is a marvellous discipline with its intricacies of evidence, empiricism, implications of narrative structure, use in current political conflicts and so on. And I doubt this intricacy is lost on the Left, the conservatives, the liberal, etc.
I’ll be blunt here. I couldn’t give a rats about these lightweights. Could you?
Neoliberals, like Malocolm Turnbull, Mark Latham, Paul Keating, etc. are calling for a rooting out of memories of collectivist practices???� I’ll have to go and get some popcorn so I can watch you prosecute this one! Also I have never really heard of a “neoliberal� school of historiography: perhaps you can explain it to me?
This is a somewhat ironic comment given our current topic. Disjuncture is EXACTLY what motivates poststructuralist historiography, NOT neoliberalism. Also it is the BlackArmbandits who are obsessed with “bad memories and examples.� You, yourself, said earlier that it is paleocons who seek to deny the truthfulness such bad memories.
I don’t think this is accurate of all non-Leftist thought. Besides, this vision of history gets no play in schools and universities in Australia, and has not for at least a generation!
I hope that helps.
All this ignores the fact, of course, that the tide of poststructuralism has washed over a lot of disciplines and receded, leaving some worthwhile epistemological and methodological insights. But history was never one of the disciplines (at least in Australia, one could always point to people like Hayden White in the US) where it had any strength. People like Reynolds are certainly not and never were poststructuralists.
The terms in which you characterise past events are important, regardless of what your view on the referentiality of language is.
No I didn’t. I said nothing about what they did. I suggested what they were, i.e., “shackled”. Mostly these folks get angry and harrumph a lot. Denial isn’t a major emotional strategy.
James McAuley was no light-weight. And Santamaria had a sinuous mind. Neither of them were historians in the narrow, professional sense. But it is fascinating that there are no rightist Catholic historians. The best historian with a Catholic sensibility was O’Farrell, but he could never be called rightist.
The same paucity pertains to neoliberal historians. Blainey has done much interesting work on businesses and leading business figures. But he is loath to suggest that the free enterprise spirit is the dominant one in Australian life. And for much of Australian history he’d be right.
NeoCommie, the HTML for italics is <i>italic text</i>.
…
Kim is quite correct to say that poststructuralism hasn’t ever had much of a foothold in history in Australia. What you’re describing as the ‘linguistic turn of poststructuralism’ is really just the influence of the cultural turn. Cultural and social history can coexist happily and they do best when they do.
In terms of twentieth-century history, the best example I can think of off the top of my beret is McCalman’s Struggetown, which is cultural history par excellence, but hardly neglects class!
Get thee behind me, strawgirlfriend.
There are a number of Catholic rightist historians such as Robert Murray on The Split, and a few others who wrote biographies of Mannix and Santamaria himself, but their attention has been very much on internal church matters and the Grouper controversies themselves.
Kim
I agree with you that Henry Reynolds was not even remotely in poststructuralist historiography when he wrote his books in the 1970s and 1980s; however in his recent media turns the poststructuralist bacilli have defintely made a home in Reynolds’ thinking.
You are correct about the delayed transmission of Hayden White’s thinking to Australian historiograhpy. One of the reason for this is history has been unique among academic disciplines to be highly resistant to theory of any sort, except marxism in the mid twentieth century.
In Australia, like the US, Foucault was the big news from the mid 1980s onwards. This made sense as Foucault is immensely useful in gender studies and the Foucault-inspired Edward Said’s “Orientalism” gave former Marxists and Communists enough new ammo to fight their war against Israel.
Slowly, all the former marxists and communists dropped their career-limiting structuralism and took to the “linguistic turn.” The English departments found more use for White and other literary theorists (ss much as I find White incredibly stimulating and provocative, I don’t class him as an “historian.” That is a personal view, which of course, you are more than justified not to share!).
I think the Leftist historians discovered poststructuralism around the time of Mabo, the Bringing Them Home Report, etc. Ann Curthoys, Bain Attwood, and more recently Dirk Moses, etc. have found these approaches very powerful and useful tools with which to fight their culture and broader political wars.
And I agree with you 100% that poststructuralism has fantastic power epistemologically; however, in the hands of lightwieghts and ideologues it has so far been sorely absued. That is why we must vigilantly monitor these people.
Having read Attwood’s book, I’m not sure I agree with you in his case. I don’t really know Moses’ or Curthoys’ work.
However, your call for ‘vigilance’ is susceptible of varying interpretations. The best form of vigilance is peer review and vigorous but impersonal academic debate. That’s where Windschuttle to me goes wrong – if his only aim were to correct/contest Ryan’s work, why was it necessary for him to conduct such an abusive public polemic which included so much stereotyping and imputation of motives?
Kim, Dirk Moses’ ‘very silly’ remark above appeared in a duly peer-reviewed article in a respectable academic journal.
Kim
The description fits Atwood perfectly. He is a disciple of Dominck LaCapra whose work I greatly admire. However in the hands of the not-up-to-it mediocrities a la Attwood, LaCapra’s thought emerges as Frankenstein. For example, Attwood argues that Aborigines have a unique and special access to truth through their powerful memories. This access to truth is not available to normal empiricist historians.
Not surprisingly, Attwood is silent on whether this unique access to truth is diluted for every new generation that includes an admixture of teh white-man’s genes, let alone how this unique access to truth plays out in communities like Wadeye! I don’t know about you, but where I come from Attwood is being a common graden variety racist in this line of thinking!
You are being extremely naive if you think that the “peer review” process is acceptable in these fields. Ann Curthoys edits a journal called “Aboriginal History” where the real dregs of poststructuralism agitprop reign, including this howler from Dirk Moses:
Moses is a tenured lecturer at Sydeny Uni. Curthoys is the Manning Clark Professor of History at ANU. Is this the work of a scrupuloulsy peer-reviewwed journal to you? I think it is when we take account of just how base and lacking in credibility the orthodox Australian history politburo is. Oh, and by the way, Curthoys was (maybe still is) a rabid Communist.
You may find, comrade, that if you read the footnotes, ‘post structuralism’ is one of those things that doesn’t exist.
Yes, its a good thing to independently verify historical evidence. But does your man KW do anything other than offer different inerpretations of the same archive?
Of course you are entitled to assign magical powers to him if you want, as the one in possession of TEH TRUTH. The irony is that you seem of all the people here the one who most wants to prevail by sheer force of rhetoric.
If I’d been refereeing the article, Rob, I certainly would have challenged that quote.
Nevertheless, I wonder whether Moses ought to be hung solely on that particular petard. It seems to me that the Windschuttle syndrome of picking outrageous quotes out of their context doesn’t do anything for debate generally. What is your considered view and response to Moses’ work generally?
Disclaimer: I know Dirk quite well.
Neocommie, I don’t read Attwood as saying that. He’s making a point about the value of oral tradition, which Windschuttle denies.
I very much doubt that she still is. Of course, Windschuttle was a rabid Communist before he became a rabid Rightist. But political affiliations, while they might colour how people approach evidence, are not crucial to the evidence itself. Windschuttle falls into contradiction when he claims that they are, and by contrast he’s just being “objective” whereas it’s clear that his conclusions came before his research.
I only have his essay in Whitewash, Mark. I’ll re-read it and get back to you.
NeoCommie, I don’t think I agree at all with the way you’re using the term ‘poststructuralism’ in the sense of an historical school. You said earlier that;
Surely a poststructuralist historiography aims to find more continuities in the past, just not continuities that conform to Whig, Marxist or other grand narratives.
I think you’re conflating historical ‘poststructuralism’ with the separate ‘postmodern’ concern with language, text and deconstruction.
It’s a common conflation, Liam.
Thanks, Rob, it’s a long time since I read Whitewash myself.
Mark
I am sorry but you will have to stop reading frauds like Robert manne. Windschuttle was never a “rabid Communist.” Please. And even if were it is irrelevant as he does not hide his Communism behind the gobbledegook of poststructuralism in 2006!
Mark, on a quick revisit to the article I am quite troubled by Moses’ attempt to parallel Windschuttle’s revisionism with Holocaust denialism. He doesn’t accuse W of being a holocaust denialist, but he likens his methodology to those who denied the Jewish and Armenian genocides, and japanese war crimes. I find that emprically unsatisfactory and morally disturbing.
Moses’ answer is that he does. As he’s a friend of yours I’ll do no more than say that I find his argument unconvincing and intellectually messy.
Liam, Mark -
I think it might be more of a play with the Saussurian notion of language comprising a system of arbitrary signs where there is no neccessary relationship (such as that of onomatopaea) between signifier and signified. Which would make it something like a pre-post-structuralist exercise in deploying arbitrary signs for poetic effects such as gradiloquence and euphony without having to worry about outdated notions, such as Frege’s idea of “reference”.
“Let me also say, postmodernism has barely touched Aboriginal or any other form of Australian history and where it did, it slipped away in the early 1990s.”
Not true. Check out Greg Lehman’s essay in Whitewash.
Alzo, grit your teeth and read this.
ASIO thought so at the time! Ian Syson posted some pdfs of Windschuttle and McGuiness’ files on his blog a while back. I didn’t think Windy denied or tried to minimise his Marxist past. In fact it’s part and parcel of his rhetorical strategy.
And Naomi, there’s no difference there from conservative English historians who praise “narrative history”. Well there is, but you know what I’m getting at.
Check out the link above for Windschuttle’s own account, Kim.
When I get a chance, I will, Rob, but I’m heading out soon.
Here ‘t is, then:
Fair enough, Rob. I’ll happily retract my comment in light of that.
ASIO of course could have been paranoid fools who wouldn’t know a communist if they fell over one.
Notes from the Left underground resistance 2026:
What it means is this: that you are to take over every institution, whatever it may be, and empty out everything which distinguishes it from other institutions, and turn it into yet another loudspeaker for repeating “the general line”. Destroy the specific institutional fabric of — a university, a trade union, a sporting body, a church — and give them all the same institutional content, viz. a political one. Contrapositively, the essence of resistance to this process by liberal-democrats must consist in trying to maintain the specific institutional integrity of different institutions.
All that talk about “liberation” twenty, thirty years ago, all the plotting, all the bodies, produced this, this impoverished broken-down country led by a gang of cruel and paternalistic half-educated theorists.
For two centuries, the very important people who managed the affairs of this society could not believe in the importance of ideas — until one day they were shocked to discover that their children, having been captured and shaped by certain ideas, were either rebelling against their authority or seceding from their society. The truth is that ideas are all-important. The massive and seemingly solid institutions of any society — the economic institutions, the political institutions, the religious institutions — are always at the mercy of the ideas in the heads of the people who populate these institutions. The leverage of ideas is so immense that a slight change in the intellectual climate can and will — perhaps slowly but nonetheless inexorably — twist a familiar institution into an unrecognizable shape.
How true – just look at the way the Federal Parliament is doing business these days.
Otherwise, nice little spoof of The Turner Diaries, Ag.
Not really a spoof Gummo but a few of what Keith Windschuttle has selected as his talismanic quotes on his
Sydneyline website.
The last quote is from the neo-con’s leading light Irving Kristol.
I’ve never been able to get past Windshuttle’s mind-bending review of Said’s Orientalism:
And especially this:
He simply doesn’t understand it.
Edward Said’s “Orientalism revisited� by Keith Windschuttle
http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/17/jan99/said.htm
Out of context, sounds suspiciously Deleuzian? Wasn’t Deleuze some sort of Marxist and poststructuralist?
Hell, Im ready to denounce my former comrades for a guaranteed OZ column at $2 a word, a plum gig on an Arts funding body, some Thintank action, and a couple of well-paid US conference junkets.
I think I’ll pick on single Mums. Or maybe the disabled. Yes, there’s been far too much PC mollycoddling of those two-wheeled whingers. And why are the homeless so malodorous? My tax dollars are being sprinkled all over public parklands by night, and they’re just TOO LAZY to go stand under one.
But no – its has to be Tasmanians. Those ponces Windy and McGuiness always baulk at this one. but not me. WHo gave them self-government when they clearly weren’t ready? Bloody UN-inspired anti-colonial notions blinding us to the fact that their culture is primitive, their institutions immature, their leaders corrupt tribal demogogues with no respect for individual freedom. Yes, ‘free Tasmania’, the left cried sure, and I was among them – all fine till we found they had no viable industry, and the Oz taxpayer was footing the bill while they sat around in Hobart bagging us for our trouble. I say we intervene, and insist on adequate governance and accountability before they get another mainland red cent etc etc
Thank God! At last we just may have a reasonably balanced board.
For too many years we have suffered the far-Left views of ABC-ers.
Aunty could take a lesson from Fox News and try presenting some genuine balance in content, instead of pushing the anti-US/West/Australian/Israel line and promoting the now-dead idea of “multiculturalism”, a Keating legend-in-his-own-lunchbox idea that never worked anyway.
Go sic ‘em, Keith!
Err… if you think Windschuttle is an “Aussie Bloke”, you should think again. Just sayin..
Historical polemicist & revisionist Keith Windschuttle appointed to ABC Board denounced by COSSAMAP (Concern over the sale of Sydney Airport to mAP)
We are appalled that the former member of the ultra leftist troskyite ’spartacist party’ and now ultra right wing historical polemicist and revisionist Keith Windschuttle has been appointed to the ABC board for 5 years by the Howard government.
His writings on Aboriginal are particularly offensive particularly his ludicrous claims that only 120 aboriginal people were killed in conflict during colonial times in Australia.
He needs just to read the historical record of William Buckley – Victoria’s first long term European inhabitant. Buckley, an escaped convict who survived in the bush with the Watourang people in the Geelong region for 32 years before giving himself up in 1835.
Appointed by Batman and Faulkner’s in 1836 as a go between the settlers in Port Phillip and the local aboriginals he evidenced hundred of killings in that part of Australia alone in the decade after settlement by what were mainly ticket of leave ex convicts from Launceston and other parts of Tasmania many of whom had taken part in the so called Black wars in Tasmania which destroyed almost the entire Tasmanian aboriginal population.
A man or woman who denied the holocaust would never be allowed on the ABC board. How come a man who denies the scope of the conflict within frontier Australian society in the early years after settlement and beyond is allowed to be put on such an important cultural icon as the ABC?
Michelle Grattan says his “appointment is beyond controversial. It is highly provocative, suggesting that those in the Government determined to strike a decisive blow at the ABC’s culture have won out.”
We believe that the Howard Government agenda in appointing the likes of Windschuttle, the right-wing news limited columnist Janet Albrechtsen, arch conservative anthropologist Ron Brunton and Peter Hurley the national senior vice-president of the Australian Hotels Association is to debase and politically control the ABC.
As one of the most important institutions in Australia its independence is vital for the health and maintenance of democracy in this country!
By making these appointments John Howard has shown himself to be a totalitarian at heart:
His governments anti democratic bent can also be clearly seen in its Big F Federalist agenda its radical reduction of the powers of the Senate and in its attempt to stiffle free trade unions with its new repressive IR regulations and by its legislative agenda which has severely restricted the freedom of expression and right of dissent in Australia since coming to office in 1996.
Finally we ask if Howard wants to greatly diminish the role of ABC (by appointing these political hacks), why does he not have the courage to say he is doing so openly?
Is it because so many liberal voters value the independence of the ABC (as do most other Australians) and enjoy its services so much!
The Aussie Bloke:
Don’t start cheering too loudly just yet; you mightn’t really like a broadcasting and news system dominated by a single clique of whatever stripe. Have a yarn with people who have lived under regimes without an unmuzzled bruadcasting system; you may find you would prefer to put up with the occasional annoying Lefty pushing his own creaky barrow; (they annoy me too).
When you throw a stone in amongst some hogs, the one which sqeals the loudest is the one you hit.