"The past is not sacred: the ‘history wars’ over Anzac" Topic

"The term "history wars" is best known in Australia for summing up the fierce debate over the nature and extent of frontier conflict, with profound implications for the legitimacy of the British settlement and thus for national legitimacy today.

That debate, though hardly resolved, is now taking something of a back seat to a public controversy focused on Australia's wars of the 20th century and particularly on the war of 1914–18, called the Great War until the Second World War redefined it as the First.

If "history war" is a public controversy about past events that raise disturbing contemporary questions about national legitimacy and identity, then this Great War controversy also qualifies as such. The polemic unfolded in a familiar fashion. "History warriors" from the political right have publicly insisted that historians and left-wing commentators were distorting the past and violating cherished understandings about the First World War…"
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Armand

G'day, Armand.

That article is less about history and more about politics. The two extremes in the debate, which the article avoids, are "All ANZACs are heroes" and "All ANZACs are baby-killing rapists (except the women)". The article is right- lauding the ANZAC makes good money for people like Peter Fitzsimons (whose political beliefs are with the other side of the argument, but who has discovered that ANZAC mythology books sell well, here) and the "Invincible Bill-Jim" myth is on a crest at the mo'. Any criticism of Bill-Jim and his heroism is met with a tirade of abuse from those that believe the mythology of the Invincible ANZAC.

At the other end there's those that believe Australia in just a lackey to the super-power du jour and will force ill-disciplined, uneducated men* overseas, to fight unjust wars and commit atrocities, at the drop of a hat. That apparently justified ADF personnel getting attacked individually (short hair was a good marker), or being the target of buckets of pig's blood or human dung wrapped in toilet paper (not a myth, it happened to me), on ANZAC Day or Remembrance Day parades in the late 1960's, '70's and early '80's- all in the name of Peace.
*and women, these days, though they tend to get white-washed out of the argument.

ANZAC history isn't what the argument is about, ANZAC history is just another re-useable bullet fired in the perpetual political battle. I'd be surprised if very country in the world, which allows free or reasonably free speech, doesn't have it's own versions of the same never-ending BS.

Cheers.

Thanks!.

Armand

+1 Dallas

+1 Dal …

+2 Dal. As a US veteran and retired soldier whose politics are just left of center, I have the utmost respect for the valor and dedication of ANZACS in the life and death struggle of WWII. I spent a lot of my service with the32d Infantry Division which fought side by side with the Diggers in Buna, Gona, and beyond. The were relegated to the less glamorous "mop up" operations by the supreme egotist—Douglass MacArthur. But this operations were grueling fights to the death against a fearful foe. You Aussies have all my respect. Three cheers for the Diggers!

+2 Dal. As a US veteran snd retired soldier whose politics are just left of center, I have the utmost respect for the valor and dedication of ANZACS in the life and death struggle of WWII. I spent a lot of my service with the32d Infantry Division which fought side by side with the Diggers in Buna, Gona, and beyond. The were relegated to the less glamorous "mop up" operations by the supreme egotist—Douglass MacArthur. But this operations were grueling fights to the death against a fearful foe. You Aussies have all my respect. Three cheers for the Diggers!

Well put Dal.

My father, who did 23 years in the Marines and retired in 1978, told me that when they went to Australia for shore leave in the 50s, senior Marine enlisted men would desert to stay behind. Australia not only treated Marines very well back then, they had a high ratio of women to men because so many men were killed in the war.

Thanks!.

Armand