It should be noted here, of course, that Sky News is owned
by that great champion of right wing nastiness, Rupert Murdoch. And it’s
interesting that Rupert Murdoch is effectively Australian whatever his present
passport says. Interesting because I gather that racist attitudes in Australia are
aimed more at the Chinese these days than they are at the traditional
aboriginal targets (or so I’m led to believe.) They seem to think that the
Chinese are about to invade the Land Down Under and build a Forbidden City next
to Sydney Harbour Bridge, from which edifice all right-thinking Australians
will be governed by a process of mind control exerted by Chairman Xi and his
cohorts. (They don’t seem to have noticed that Mr Murdoch is already performing
that dubious undertaking from his office somewhere in Manhattan. He owns Fox News as well, don’t
forget.)
But what of the claim that socialism is ruining the
Australian way of life? What is the Australian way of life, exactly? I don’t
know because I’ve never been there. I know what image it projects: It projects
an image of a culture obsessed with sun, sea and surf; beaches, barbies, beer
and bunk ups; and then back to seemingly endless suburban jungles where a
sophisticated lifestyle might be defined as gorging on junk food while watching
junk programmes on an expensive TV.
Now, I’m sure that isn’t correct. There’s also the
backpacking tradition, Sydney Opera House and Cate Blanchett to give the lie to
it. And probably plenty more besides. But it does raise the question of how
Australian children are conditioned to view the subject of social justice,
which is the basis of socialism after all.
You see, we common British folk suffered many centuries of
abuse and exploitation at the hands of the Norman-derived landed gentry,
followed by another couple of centuries of abuse and exploitation handed down
by the industrial elite (or ‘noveau riche,’ as the dispossessed landed gentry
liked to style them because it sounded French and therefore properly posh.
Sounding properly posh was the one thing the poor old landed gentry could still
claim for their own after the new money took over.)
British kids are taught from an early age about the
Luddites, the Chartists, the Highland Clearances, the match girls with their
phossy jaw, the inevitable rise of the trades unions, and so on. The selfish
excesses of the landowners, the mill owners and the mine owners are entrenched
in our history and still circulating in our blood (well championed by Mr
Dickens but in a somewhat diluted form since Mrs Thatcher tagged us to America’s free
market coat tails.) And so Socialism is not such a dirty word in Britain as it seems to be in Australia.
We’re pretty much with the French on that one.
I think it reasonable to suggest that this is because Britain has a much longer history than Australia. In
fact, Australia
has very little history at all. A penal colony projected itself with indecent
haste into a 20th century, western-style democracy without an intervening
period of anything very much. I have to wonder, therefore, whether the concept
of social justice is simply missing from the Australian mindset. It would seem
to make sense, and would further seem to explain the strange claim made by Murdoch’s
little brainwashing tool, Sky News.
So am I right or not? Maybe some Australian person will
enlighten me. I do so like to be enlightened.
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