Invasion Day/Australia Day: Unity/Disunity
I think everyone of a certain age can remember a certain mantra from John Howard. Symbols, he intoned, are not important. “Symbolic Reconciliation” is not important, he couldn’t say Sorry. The Republic was just a symbol, of interest to “elites”. [...]
Quick link – 60th anniversary of the Slansky Trial: Stalinism, anti-semitism and “anti-Zionism”.
Here is a very interesting article about the emergence of anti-semitism (parading as anti-Zionism) as a key element of Soviet and Eastern European Stalinism after WWII.
Culture Wars: Self fulfilling prophecy time
The peak body representing Australian Universities has adopted The National Best Practice Framework for Indigenous Cultural Competency in Australian Universities. Not something, if you read the key points, I’d have thought should be overly controversial.
Julian Assange, Andrew Bolt: political celebrity and the ‘free speech’ of privilege
Julian Assange, a little late to the party, penned an op/ed for Fairfax last week defending Andrew Bolt’s ‘right to free speech’. It’s an odd piece of writing. Assange asserts, all John Stuart Mill-like, that: The best policy decisions result [...]
My piece in The Drum on the plaintiffs’ motives in Eatock v. Bolt
After writing on the case of Bolt v. Eatock in a couple of posts, I had the good fortune to speak to one of the plaintiffs about their motivations in taking the case. To me, one of the most significant [...]
Bolt found guilty under Racial Discrimination Act
Age article here.. While the specifics of the legalities are different, my view remains the same as in 2010: Bolt is a an ugly blot on the media landscape, but that doesn’t mean that anything he wrote in those articles [...]
Must read link: #liz_beths on class, culture and ‘humour’
Cultural disdain is about more than humour. It’s the new politics.
London burning IV: Tory authoritarianism triumphant
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech to the House of Commons in the aftermath of the English riots set the tone for a bizarre crackdown: Responsibility for crime always lies with the criminal. But crime has a context. And we [...]
London burning: Why here, why now? The sociology of civil disorder
Underlying all this is deep inequality, which creates the subcultures where setting the town alight can be perceived as a rational action. Addressing those causes would require a different form of society altogether, and a politics which would take us there.
Hairspray the Musical: Cultural politics of the 60s, now, and race
What interests me in this post is the cultural politics of Hairspray. One of its marketing themes is 60s nostalgia. That nostalgia is by necessity a collective re-imagining of what the 60s ‘meant’, whether or not we were around to form our own judgements.
Quick link: Engage in the struggle against anti-Jewish racism
Engage is a website originally formed by left-wing activists in Britain’s University and College Union opposed to proposals for an academic boycott of Israel. Engage’s current focus is as follows: Engage is a single issue campaign. It focuses on one [...]
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