Janet Albrechtsen has long been renowned for her right wing bilge over at the Oz. Her overt support for such grotesqueries in contemporary Australia's social backdrop as the History Wars, the bizarrely militant denial of climate change, Muslims, and pretty much any bigoted position she can postulate have confirmed her as the great voice of quasi fascism in Australia. Albrechtsen is not simply an imbecile like a Piers Ackerman or Andrew Bolt, her arguments are often carefully considered and detailed with occaisionally striking points, but she is very right wing and combined with such intelligence makes for a dangerous mix. On her blog today she takes aim at what she calls the "Orwellian Left".
Now, I am able to put up with her tripe peddling most of the time, despite the fact I believe her polemics to appeal to the very worst in people. But comparing the "left" (which I really consider meaningless these days and seems to be applied to anyone who doesn't spend their spare time beating black people and genuflecting before pictures of the queen) with Stalinism is not only obnoxious and vile in the force of comparison but is an utterly putrid reading of Orwell. Albrechtsen believes that "left" columnists such as Guy Rundle, who have called for her sacking to be akin to the pigs in Animal Farm:
" By calling for a purge of this conservative columnist and all like her, Crikey contributor Guy Rundle has compressed Animal Farm by going straight to the last chapter and skipping the irony."
I take issue with her statement that she is a "conservative" columnist. Conservatives, in the true meaning of the word, are concerned with maintaining the status quo, with not reforming, but opting for change in society through small gradual modifications. Albrechtsen "and her like" are radicals, seeking to completely turn on its head the accepted wisdom that white Europeans stole this country and proceded on a programme of cultural destruction for the better part of 200 years. This is radical, right wing revisionism at its worst and the word "conservative" hides the true drive behind their polemics.
The final chapter of Animal Farm is the best in what is not Orwell's most subtle book. Albrechtsen's analysis follows:
"Animal Farm subtly portrayed the big risks of totalitarianism. Over time, the pigs who had overthrown the human oppressors (remember the motto: “four legs good, two legs bad,") became the two-legged tyrants. At least Orwell’s classic allowed the passage of time to obscure the pigs’ hypocrisy a little. We could enjoy the slow descent into anarchy.
Deeming themselves the brainworkers, the pigs keep all the milk and apples for themselves. They steal the puppies and raise them as their vicious secret police, allowing the pigs to finally take over the farm declaring that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. "
Predictably, Albrechtsen makes the comparison with her own situation, claiming Rundle, in petitioning the Australian for her dismissal is as totalitarian as the pigs in Animal Farm. She points to the "slow decent into totalitarianism" on Orwell's farm as proof of Rundle's danger to Australia. But Orwell was not talking about pigs. He was talking about Stalin. Albrechtsen believes that trying to kick her off the pages of the Oz is tantamount to the beginnings of a slow decent into Stalinism. Albrechtsen is drawing an extremely long bow. To those of us who may have studied or taken some interest in Stalinism, it is not only a long bow, but an extremely disturbing claim.
But Albrechtsen goes further, directly comparing Rundle with Orwell's Napoleon, the personification (or should that be cochonification? Swinification? or pigification?) of Stalin himself. Guy Rundle is, apparently, Stalin waiting to happen right here in 21st Century Australia. I can already see the gulags, full of people not guilty of anything, living out in the desert somewhere. Rundle will, no doubt, engineer a famine, killing all the Liberal voting West Australians. He will doctor photographs which had featured people who had fallen out of favour with him and turn Australia into a society of fear, insisting that children turn against their parents if they speak against him, murder artists and destroy freedom of speech forever.
Of course, it is the last point which Albrechtsen is getting at. She is appalled that it seems no longer to be acceptable to say things which are seen as morally offensive. When a prominent scientist recently suggested that there was some evidence to suggest that African blacks were genetically disposed to being less intelligent than Caucasians, the British press came down like a tonne of bricks on him and most of his public engagements were cancelled. Is this stifling freedom of speeck? No, of course not. Sitting interestingly alongside this is democracy. The weight of public opinion came down upon Dr. Watson, deeming it to be offensive. Those who had engaged him to speak withdrew their offers because of how it may reflect on them. This is the premise of our system of law. It used to be permissible in England to beat one's wife with a rod no thicker than the man's thumb (hence the expression "rule of thumb"), and invariably the social norms changed and this is now not only illegal, but considered abhorrent. The notion of the right to freedom of speech is one which is constantly questioned anyway, with it now being illegal in most countries to praise terrorists. I don't seek to excuse the actions of such people at all, but point out the difficulty with such rights. Similar issues are raised when David Irving does anything at all and Louis Farrakhan travels. Rights are contradictory in that in exercising them may lead to an infringement on someone else's. Albrechtsen trivialises the 30 or more million deaths attributed to Stalinism, the horrific reality thereof and displays a contempt for freedom of speech in denouncing Rundle's right to petition for her sacking. It seems her own right to make preposterous comparisons trumps the right to appeal for her sacking.
The big J's article goes on and gets stuck into Robert Manne over the History Wars, then insults people at the University of Melbourne for getting rid of Geoffrey "Australia's greatest living historian" Blainey as dean of arts for his puerile interpretation of Aboriginal history. There is way too much for me to tackle here and I may do so some other day, the point on freedom of speech is an interesting one and I would be interested to here peoples' views on the contradictory nature of rights.
Now, I am able to put up with her tripe peddling most of the time, despite the fact I believe her polemics to appeal to the very worst in people. But comparing the "left" (which I really consider meaningless these days and seems to be applied to anyone who doesn't spend their spare time beating black people and genuflecting before pictures of the queen) with Stalinism is not only obnoxious and vile in the force of comparison but is an utterly putrid reading of Orwell. Albrechtsen believes that "left" columnists such as Guy Rundle, who have called for her sacking to be akin to the pigs in Animal Farm:
" By calling for a purge of this conservative columnist and all like her, Crikey contributor Guy Rundle has compressed Animal Farm by going straight to the last chapter and skipping the irony."
I take issue with her statement that she is a "conservative" columnist. Conservatives, in the true meaning of the word, are concerned with maintaining the status quo, with not reforming, but opting for change in society through small gradual modifications. Albrechtsen "and her like" are radicals, seeking to completely turn on its head the accepted wisdom that white Europeans stole this country and proceded on a programme of cultural destruction for the better part of 200 years. This is radical, right wing revisionism at its worst and the word "conservative" hides the true drive behind their polemics.
The final chapter of Animal Farm is the best in what is not Orwell's most subtle book. Albrechtsen's analysis follows:
"Animal Farm subtly portrayed the big risks of totalitarianism. Over time, the pigs who had overthrown the human oppressors (remember the motto: “four legs good, two legs bad,") became the two-legged tyrants. At least Orwell’s classic allowed the passage of time to obscure the pigs’ hypocrisy a little. We could enjoy the slow descent into anarchy.
Deeming themselves the brainworkers, the pigs keep all the milk and apples for themselves. They steal the puppies and raise them as their vicious secret police, allowing the pigs to finally take over the farm declaring that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. "
Predictably, Albrechtsen makes the comparison with her own situation, claiming Rundle, in petitioning the Australian for her dismissal is as totalitarian as the pigs in Animal Farm. She points to the "slow decent into totalitarianism" on Orwell's farm as proof of Rundle's danger to Australia. But Orwell was not talking about pigs. He was talking about Stalin. Albrechtsen believes that trying to kick her off the pages of the Oz is tantamount to the beginnings of a slow decent into Stalinism. Albrechtsen is drawing an extremely long bow. To those of us who may have studied or taken some interest in Stalinism, it is not only a long bow, but an extremely disturbing claim.
But Albrechtsen goes further, directly comparing Rundle with Orwell's Napoleon, the personification (or should that be cochonification? Swinification? or pigification?) of Stalin himself. Guy Rundle is, apparently, Stalin waiting to happen right here in 21st Century Australia. I can already see the gulags, full of people not guilty of anything, living out in the desert somewhere. Rundle will, no doubt, engineer a famine, killing all the Liberal voting West Australians. He will doctor photographs which had featured people who had fallen out of favour with him and turn Australia into a society of fear, insisting that children turn against their parents if they speak against him, murder artists and destroy freedom of speech forever.
Of course, it is the last point which Albrechtsen is getting at. She is appalled that it seems no longer to be acceptable to say things which are seen as morally offensive. When a prominent scientist recently suggested that there was some evidence to suggest that African blacks were genetically disposed to being less intelligent than Caucasians, the British press came down like a tonne of bricks on him and most of his public engagements were cancelled. Is this stifling freedom of speeck? No, of course not. Sitting interestingly alongside this is democracy. The weight of public opinion came down upon Dr. Watson, deeming it to be offensive. Those who had engaged him to speak withdrew their offers because of how it may reflect on them. This is the premise of our system of law. It used to be permissible in England to beat one's wife with a rod no thicker than the man's thumb (hence the expression "rule of thumb"), and invariably the social norms changed and this is now not only illegal, but considered abhorrent. The notion of the right to freedom of speech is one which is constantly questioned anyway, with it now being illegal in most countries to praise terrorists. I don't seek to excuse the actions of such people at all, but point out the difficulty with such rights. Similar issues are raised when David Irving does anything at all and Louis Farrakhan travels. Rights are contradictory in that in exercising them may lead to an infringement on someone else's. Albrechtsen trivialises the 30 or more million deaths attributed to Stalinism, the horrific reality thereof and displays a contempt for freedom of speech in denouncing Rundle's right to petition for her sacking. It seems her own right to make preposterous comparisons trumps the right to appeal for her sacking.
The big J's article goes on and gets stuck into Robert Manne over the History Wars, then insults people at the University of Melbourne for getting rid of Geoffrey "Australia's greatest living historian" Blainey as dean of arts for his puerile interpretation of Aboriginal history. There is way too much for me to tackle here and I may do so some other day, the point on freedom of speech is an interesting one and I would be interested to here peoples' views on the contradictory nature of rights.
4 comments:
Careful there tiger, or you might end up on the end of an Overington-esque phone call from Janey-A. Seems to be the way they do thing over at the Oz these days.
Very well written.
Thanks Tom!
Frankly, I'd love a phone call barrating me. It would be the ultimate indication of the extent to which the radicals in this country have lost the plot.
I agree. If Guy Rundle had actually managed to get Albrechtson sacked, that would be problematic (if not 'Stalinist'). But it's clear he was merely calling for her sacking as a rhetorical ploy (and, knowing Rundle, I assume he also rebutted her ideas as well).
Burn the witch!
very well written indeed.
i recently stumbled upon some albrechtsen old gold - a radio national interview from 2004 with julie mccrossin (possibly the most family-friendly lesbian in the history of lesbians) about an apparently scandalous 'play school' episode depicting a child in a playground being supervised by its 'two mums'. in addition to a full-feathered display of her role as a gleeful reactionary masquerading as a 'conservative', janet was led by the bit into the following meditation on both 'the saddle club' and the 'normality' or otherwise of gay relationships (the latter featuring many pertinent "you know"s, and a final, staggeringly desperate recourse to the sanctity of marriage (no offense intended hughbie):
"Julie McCrossin
Janet would you feel as strongly if The Saddle Club, is that the one, you know where the girls ride the horses?
JANET ALBRECHTSEN
Yeah.
Julie McCrossin
Would you feel as strongly if that target audience – say a girl who came to ride the ponies – had two mums?
JANET ALBRECHTSEN
I again would think that inappropriate, but again remember that The Saddle Club is aimed at older children.
Julie McCrossin
Just on a point of clarification Janet, you say as a matter of fact that there is not legal recognition. That’s not wholly true is it because many states now have got de-facto status and recognition for same sex couples in relation to many aspects of property, and indeed the Federal Government has just recommended to super recognition.
JANET ALBRECHTSEN
That’s right, there is equivalent, but we haven’t yet, you know, reached a position where homosexual relationships are regarded as equal as heterosexual relationships in terms of recognising it, you know, as a marriage."
how can you argue with that?
Post a Comment