Anzac Backlash

Wednesday saw Australia-wide festivites as the nation celebrated Anzac day, a day of remembrance for Australian and New Zealand forces who served in WW1, mostly at Gallipoli.

The day is marked with especially poignant dawn services, games of two-up and all the pomp and solemnity that goes with war memorials. Save for Bathurst, a war memorial where dawn services were due to take place, but was vandalised late on Anzac eve by two teenagers. The girls daubed Anzac murderers and Aussies don’t fight on the walls of the memorial in white paint.

The speed with which their message was erased was stunning, with people heading home from pubs joining a squad of fire brigade members and others in cleaning the memorial before the dawn service. The graffiti artists weren’t given the time of day in most media, save a brief note on the cleanup, scenes of a few tearful vets, and comments on the disgraceful nature of the act.

Crude though it may have been, there was no time to question whether their message contained any validity. The girls faced swift prosecution for criminal damage, and public persecution for offending the memories of those who went to war. There was no place for any message other than that the girls had committed a crime against the nation as a whole. No media had the neck to discuss their motivation.

It could be that the girls felt repulsed by the trotting out of oft-repeated slogans like Lest we forget and Never again on a day that, when stripped down to its bare bones, glorifies war. Anzac day is celebrated with a flag-waving nationalistic fervour unknown to us back home, reminiscning on a time when Australia became a nation, forged in the flames of military involvement. The bravery of those who fought at Gallipoli and elsewhere is beyond doubt, but it does not mean that we should not question the motivations for war as we go ahead.

Judging by current policy, Australia has already forgotten the horrors of war, having gone to Iraq in America’s back pocket as party to the rape of that country.

Never Again also seems fairly redundant in that context, and while Australian troops might not be feeling the onslaught as directly as they did in Gallipoli, Iraqis certainly are.

ends

More:

SMH article on Bathurst desecration

SMH article on Anzac fever