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Crikey, Australia
April 16, 2015 Thursday 12:59 PM GMT
The Right really do not want to open the Anzac can of worms
by Guy Rundle
ABSTRACT
Insisting that Turkey hold a truth and reconciliation commission into
the slaughter of Armenians around the time of the Gallipoli landing
will raise some very uncomfortable questions about Australia's own
behaviour.
FULL TEXT
http://media.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/anzacmedals.png
As Anzac Day approaches, the World War I wars have started up again!
About ten years ago, WWI ceased to be a futile struggle and became a
struggle against German militarism. The reason was obvious: as the
Iraq War bogged down, the usual historical argument for war - the
failure of "appeasing" Hitler - stopped working. We needed the example
of a meaningful quagmire, and so WWI was it, the revision starting
almost to the day that the last living witnesses of the conflict died.
But Turkey has always been a problem in this - there was nothing to
pin on the rather torpid empire, which was attacked purely as a way to
cut through to central Europe and open a second front (and then carve
up its provinces into colonies). That problem has become especially
acute now that we are attempting to turn Gallipoli into something
other than meaningless slaughter.
Cue Paul Monk's article in The Age and TheSydney Morning Herald
demanding that the Turkish government hold a truth and reconciliation
commission for the Armenian genocide, which began in 1915, the day
after the Gallipoli landings, and was in part sparked by them (the
Turks feared the Christian Armenians would be established as an
independent state by the Allies). Yeah, right, because we've already
had truth and reconciliation commissions for the Belgian Congo
genocide, the market-caused famines in British India in the 1890s, the
Bengal famine that occurred under Allied command in the '40s, the
genocidal assault on Vietnam, and the destruction of neutral Cambodia.
Don't recall them? Better call Paul, he'll fill you in. About time
these Muslims owned up to their crimes, as we don't.
The sole reason for this push is to propagandise for the current
attacks on Islamic State, which enjoyed some Turkish support a few
years ago, and to legitimise continued Western presence in the region.
The article is subtle compared to the accompanying cartoon by John
Spooner - which suggests that the Gallipoli landings were staged to
prevent the genocide, and which has hit a peak of asininity that the
Spoon only managed to achieve during the Iraq War. It is, needless to
say, complete bullshit. The cartoon distills the need to give
Gallipoli a retrospective meaning at its most infantilised and
pathetic.
The fact is, had the Allies left the Ottoman empire alone, the
Armenians, Greeks and other nationalities within its borders would
have fared far better. War supercharged the push towards nation-state
status and licensed mass murder, as wars usually do. Prior to that,
the Ottoman empire was a reasonably multicultural society at a time
when the Western empires had become obsessed with virulent eugenic
racism; the war gave its "Young Turk" rulers a chance to put Western
ideas of racial and national purity into action.
The deeper you go in, the less the Right is going to like the truth of
this period - such as the influence of Zionism on Turkish ethnic
cleansing, with both Herzl and Jabotinsky having acted as advisers to
the Young Turks, suggesting that the Young Turks adopt the Zionist
model of statehood - and grant the Jews a Zionist state as an enclave
within it. To this day, the one state that goes out of its way to say
officially that there was no Armenian genocide is ... Israel. In 1948,
the Zionist insurgents would use the Turkish model to create their own
state through violent ethnic cleansing. Still waiting for the truth
and reconciliation commission on that. Oi, oi, oi.
Meanwhile, there's probably at least one truth and reconciliation
commission that Australians should be more interested in, and that's
to do with a war closer to home - the frontier massacres of
Aborigines, which continued right up to and beyond WWI, and which
shaped the attitudes of many of the country kids who became the
Diggers. There's a link there, too. The larrikin image of the Anzacs
that we celebrate may have come from an irreverence to authority in
the face of British disdain, but much of that disdain came from the
fact that some, perhaps many, Australian troops were far more willing
to kill Arab civilians than British soldiers were, and Australian
troops were notorious for it. Why? Because they'd already become
comfortable and relaxed about killing brown people at home, and Arabs
were just a different shade. If pompous propagandists like Monk want
to advise Turkey about ways of handling their past, what do they
imagine Turkey might suggest to us?
Good God, the Right, and their capacity for delusion and
mythologisation, especially around the doings of white people. As
their project becomes ever more chaotic, its justifications become
ever more absurd. That mix of incuriosity, lack of self-reflection,
and clueless self-satisfaction. Someone should find a way to bottle
it. Though I doubt it will be in short supply in the weeks and months
to come.
April 16, 2015 Thursday 12:59 PM GMT
The Right really do not want to open the Anzac can of worms
by Guy Rundle
ABSTRACT
Insisting that Turkey hold a truth and reconciliation commission into
the slaughter of Armenians around the time of the Gallipoli landing
will raise some very uncomfortable questions about Australia's own
behaviour.
FULL TEXT
http://media.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/anzacmedals.png
As Anzac Day approaches, the World War I wars have started up again!
About ten years ago, WWI ceased to be a futile struggle and became a
struggle against German militarism. The reason was obvious: as the
Iraq War bogged down, the usual historical argument for war - the
failure of "appeasing" Hitler - stopped working. We needed the example
of a meaningful quagmire, and so WWI was it, the revision starting
almost to the day that the last living witnesses of the conflict died.
But Turkey has always been a problem in this - there was nothing to
pin on the rather torpid empire, which was attacked purely as a way to
cut through to central Europe and open a second front (and then carve
up its provinces into colonies). That problem has become especially
acute now that we are attempting to turn Gallipoli into something
other than meaningless slaughter.
Cue Paul Monk's article in The Age and TheSydney Morning Herald
demanding that the Turkish government hold a truth and reconciliation
commission for the Armenian genocide, which began in 1915, the day
after the Gallipoli landings, and was in part sparked by them (the
Turks feared the Christian Armenians would be established as an
independent state by the Allies). Yeah, right, because we've already
had truth and reconciliation commissions for the Belgian Congo
genocide, the market-caused famines in British India in the 1890s, the
Bengal famine that occurred under Allied command in the '40s, the
genocidal assault on Vietnam, and the destruction of neutral Cambodia.
Don't recall them? Better call Paul, he'll fill you in. About time
these Muslims owned up to their crimes, as we don't.
The sole reason for this push is to propagandise for the current
attacks on Islamic State, which enjoyed some Turkish support a few
years ago, and to legitimise continued Western presence in the region.
The article is subtle compared to the accompanying cartoon by John
Spooner - which suggests that the Gallipoli landings were staged to
prevent the genocide, and which has hit a peak of asininity that the
Spoon only managed to achieve during the Iraq War. It is, needless to
say, complete bullshit. The cartoon distills the need to give
Gallipoli a retrospective meaning at its most infantilised and
pathetic.
The fact is, had the Allies left the Ottoman empire alone, the
Armenians, Greeks and other nationalities within its borders would
have fared far better. War supercharged the push towards nation-state
status and licensed mass murder, as wars usually do. Prior to that,
the Ottoman empire was a reasonably multicultural society at a time
when the Western empires had become obsessed with virulent eugenic
racism; the war gave its "Young Turk" rulers a chance to put Western
ideas of racial and national purity into action.
The deeper you go in, the less the Right is going to like the truth of
this period - such as the influence of Zionism on Turkish ethnic
cleansing, with both Herzl and Jabotinsky having acted as advisers to
the Young Turks, suggesting that the Young Turks adopt the Zionist
model of statehood - and grant the Jews a Zionist state as an enclave
within it. To this day, the one state that goes out of its way to say
officially that there was no Armenian genocide is ... Israel. In 1948,
the Zionist insurgents would use the Turkish model to create their own
state through violent ethnic cleansing. Still waiting for the truth
and reconciliation commission on that. Oi, oi, oi.
Meanwhile, there's probably at least one truth and reconciliation
commission that Australians should be more interested in, and that's
to do with a war closer to home - the frontier massacres of
Aborigines, which continued right up to and beyond WWI, and which
shaped the attitudes of many of the country kids who became the
Diggers. There's a link there, too. The larrikin image of the Anzacs
that we celebrate may have come from an irreverence to authority in
the face of British disdain, but much of that disdain came from the
fact that some, perhaps many, Australian troops were far more willing
to kill Arab civilians than British soldiers were, and Australian
troops were notorious for it. Why? Because they'd already become
comfortable and relaxed about killing brown people at home, and Arabs
were just a different shade. If pompous propagandists like Monk want
to advise Turkey about ways of handling their past, what do they
imagine Turkey might suggest to us?
Good God, the Right, and their capacity for delusion and
mythologisation, especially around the doings of white people. As
their project becomes ever more chaotic, its justifications become
ever more absurd. That mix of incuriosity, lack of self-reflection,
and clueless self-satisfaction. Someone should find a way to bottle
it. Though I doubt it will be in short supply in the weeks and months
to come.