The Wall

I remember the cold war. (The threat of nuclear annihilation... it hasn't really gone away, in fact it is probably more of a threat nowadays, but we just don't talk about it...)

I also remember World War 2 being remembered as much more tangible and understandable history than it obviously is now. (It was vivid... now it seems distant and the further out from it we get the more perilous it becomes that we'll make the same mistakes. Its lessons are fading...) 

That was then this is now. (Popular culture, celebrity culture, consumerism, wage slavery, debt obligation to finance capital, and self-indulgent narcissism, happily distracts from any meaningful contemplative pursuits...)

The world in which I entered adolescence was one where totalitarianism, fascism, Nazism and holocaust were discussed in meaningful ways to contextualize political arguments. (Perhaps it wasn't but I would I like think it was... but at least there were still many in authority - such as business, politics, the media etc - whose lives were informed by the horrors of WW2...) 

They were also used as cheap insults! (Words are so often cheapened by misuse...) 

But I was fully aware of the shadows in which I came to know myself. (Perhaps that gives me a sense of obligation...)  

Political correctness is a much maligned term. Present day 'conservatives' complain about political correctness going mad. Not only is the ABC - the public broadcaster -  accused of being 'leftist' but it is sneered at for being 'politically correct', at least in the minds of the IPA type folk who have peculiarly selective views on 'free speech'. 

But the ABC Charter is simply a response of inclusive democracy to the horrors of fascist selective genocide and mass-murder.  

The ABC Charter - like so much in the public sphere of democracy - does not so much have a left-wing bias as much as a predisposition towards life and diversity and respect and tolerance. (So perhaps it does have a left-wing bias?) (I suspect many 'conservative' commentators use "left-wing" as an insult when what they are referring to is in fact bog-standard historically informed good-sense...)

The best way to understand the role of Australia's public broadcaster - and therefore to make sense of its critics from the Murdoch press and other 'conservatives' - is to consider the people who were targeted by the Nazis. (The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has a page - Victims of the Nazi Era - that is worth checking out.)

The totalitarian desire to crush diversity should always be resisted. 

(food for thought - here is what Trotsky said in response to what is fascism - 

through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat - all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself brought to desperation and frenzy

 from fascism the bourgeoisie demands a thorough job; once it has resorted to methods of civil war, it insists on having peace for a period of years. And the fascist agency, by utilizing the petty bourgeoisie as a battering ram, by overwhelming all obstacles in its path, does a thorough job. After fascism is victorious, finance capital directly and immediately gathers into its hands, as in a vise of steel, all the organs and institutions of sovereignty, the executive, administrative, and educational powers of the state: the entire apparatus together with the army, the municipalities, the universities, the schools, the press, the trade unions, and the cooperatives. When a state turns fascist, it does not mean only that the forms and methods of government are changed... but it means first of all for the most part that workers organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that a system of administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat. Therein precisely is the gist of fascism... (page 7, Fascism: what is it and how to fight it)

In recent years and through reflection on personal experience I have come to view so-called 'neoliberalism' as simply being the means by which fascism is allowed to flourish. (Not such an outrageous claim. Karl Polyani's 'The Great Transformation' - in part - looks at the rise in fascism, the nobbling of the democratic state, and the failures of the 'free-market'. A free pdf download can be viewed here)

History repeats. 

In the words of Tony Benn

Every single generation has to fight the same battles again and again and again. There are no final victories and there are no final defeats. And therefore a little bit of history may help. 

I have this sense of dread that whatever lessons were learned from WW2 will be forgotten...

I worry that we will forget that our modern understanding of human rights is born out of the Nuremberg trials at the end of WW2. (A timeline for the development for human rights can be viewed here and the influence of the Nuremberg trials on international law can be read here)... (All the while corporate capitalism profits from detention centres and prisons...)   

I fear that extremist organisations like the Institute of Public Affairs - who undoubtedly can trace some of its membership lineage through proto-fascist groups like the 'New Guard' - will continue to have purchase on the government of the day and pursue their troubling agenda. 

There are important reasons why racial discrimination - in particular the stirring of race hate - and human rights have repercussion and protection in law. (That really shouldn't be that difficult to understand...) 

Let's finish with a little song. Here is 'In the Flesh' by Pink Floyd. (A celebrity morphing into a demagogue bringing a crowd to a rapture of hate... people can be so easily manipulated). 

And here are the lyrics - (from this website)

In The Flesh (Waters) 1:36 

So ya

Thought ya

Might like to 

Go to the show.

To feel that warm thrill of confusion,

That space cadet glow.

I've got some bad news for you sunshine,

Pink isn't well, he stayed back at the hotel

And they sent us along as a surrogate band

We're gonna find out where you folks really stand.

Are there any queers in the theater tonight?

Get them up against the wall!

There's one in the spotlight, he don't look right to me,

Get him up against the wall!

That one looks Jewish!

And that one's a coon!

Who let all of this riff-raff into the room?

There's one smoking a joint,

And another with spots!

If I had my way, 

I'd have all of you shot!