Australia, Reeling from the Woke Assault By James Reed
A very thought-provoking article appeared by Konstantin Kisin, "Can Australia Endure the Woke Onslaught?" He points out, what readers to this blog will well know, that Australia is being subjected to the same mind virus as the rest of the West; identity politics, the black armband view of history (seen in the Voice referendum), and all the other diseases of Leftism. However, he observes that life in Australia is still comfortable, compared to cities in America and the UK, which are coming to resemble war zones. "Unlike major American and, increasingly, British cities, the streets and parks here are not overrun with people suffering from the scourges of addiction, homelessness and crime." But that is fast changing with the accommodation crisis, which is turning out tent cities such as in the Brisbane CBD. It takes very little time for even a rich society, a lucky country, so called, to crumble.
Kisin seems to have some awareness of this: "It seems to me that Australia is in danger of making many of the same mistakes. Getting ordinary Australians to recognise the threat before the dangerous threshold is reached is the big challenge for the country's sensible elite. Whether they can succeed remains to be seen." That is the problem, for the ruling elites have abandoned the social contract to protect mainstream Australia and are now fully committed to the globalist New Class. This is a level of betrayal seldom seen in history.
https://www.konstantinkisin.com/p/can-australia-endure-the-woke-onslaught
"For the past two weeks, I've had the great pleasure of travelling around Australia and speaking at various events.
While a terrific honour for me, this is undoubtedly a bad sign for Australia: the tragedy of my career is that I say obvious things that everyone knows and am lavished with entirely unmerited praise in response. It pains me to point this out but if I have been invited to give a series of talks in your country, all is not well.
This is the bad news for Australia: it appears to have been infected with the same mind virus as the rest of the Anglo-sphere.
The symptoms are all too familiar. Identity politics fuelled by the false teaching of history. Political polarisation. Two-tier policing with anti-lockdown protests brutally suppressed, followed by the police standing by as crowds shout anti-Semitic chants outside Sydney Opera House due to fears of upsetting "social cohesion".
The number of children being treated for gender dysphoria at Victoria's Royal Children's Hospital gender clinic has increased by over 1000 per cent in less than a decade. Some journalists at the ABC, the country's national broadcaster, avoid revealing their nuanced political views to colleagues for fear of appearing insufficiently woke. Corporations jump on every progressive cause with enthusiasm. Activists want to cancel Australia Day: instead of being a day of national unity, they want to turn it into one of shame and self-flagellation.
It is all happening for the same reasons too. While the centre left appeases its extremist fringe, many on the centre right hesitate to challenge the cultural vandalism they observe for fear of being described as "culture warriors". And with good reason: while symptoms of the mind virus are visible to outside observers and those in media and politics, in truth, for the moment, the infection remains comparatively asymptomatic.
This is the good news: as things stand, Australia's biggest challenge is not extremism, it is apathy born of comfort. Life here is good and the differences to the rest of the Anglo-sphere are remarkable.
Unlike major American and, increasingly, British cities, the streets and parks here are not overrun with people suffering from the scourges of addiction, homelessness and crime.
With mining, drilling and agriculture responsible for over 70 per cent of the country's exports, Australia has highly paid jobs for those outside the laptop class.
While many will tell you political polarisation is the worst it's ever been, they'll often do so while sitting around a table with people of different political viewpoints. As a senior politician put it at one such gathering: "I don't want the other party to be elected. But I know they eventually will be and I want them to be the best possible government for Australia when they are." It is hard to put into words how much this is not the case in Britain and America.
While apathy is how woke activists are able to continue hollowing out Australia's institutions, when forced to step away from the barbie and vote in the voice referendum last year, ordinary Australians made their feelings clear. Fronted by the courageous Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the No campaign overturned a one-sided onslaught from the country's media, corporate and political elite.
On immigration, Australians engage in debates many of us would give our right arms to have. While tens of thousands of people come to the UK on small boats illegally every year, and millions stream in through the porous southern border of the US, Australia has comprehensively solved this problem. Far from being some sort of voodoo magic, all that was needed was for then prime minister Tony Abbott to stare down a resistant civil service and legal challenges to deliver Operation Sovereign Borders in 2013. While Abbott still attracts criticism and protests, the facts of the matter are simple: 74 people came to Australia illegally on boats in 2023, down from 17,202 in 2012. It can be done. It just takes b*lls and, miraculously, some Aussie politicians still have them.
In many ways, travelling to Australia from Britain feels like a journey 10 years into the past. In previous decades, this would have read like a hack joke meant to paint Aussies as provincial, unsophisticated people. But today it is both a compliment and a warning.
Australians talk proudly of having the "most successful multicultural country in the world" because they have yet to discover what both David Cameron and Angela Merkel were forced to confess many years ago: multiculturalism doesn't work.
Neither Cameron nor Merkel were "hard-right culture warriors" but the reality of what they saw in their respective countries forced them to acknowledge the truth: immigration, when carefully managed and highly selective, can offer tremendous benefits.
But the higher the level of migration and the more divergent the cultural and religious backgrounds from which people come, the more punitive the diminishing returns.
When I came to Britain in the mid-1990s, the public were entirely unconcerned about immigration, with just 3 per cent describing it as a major issue. Back in the early 1990s, net migration was running at about 54,000 people.
This was followed almost immediately by the hugely popular election of Tony Blair, who abandoned all caution with Britain welcoming more people during his premiership than had come between the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and 1950. Cameron, his Conservative successor, and his innumerable replacements, failed to stem the tide. Despite the popular uprising that we call Brexit, the latest net migration figures up to June 2023 were 672,000.
The result? Sectarian clashes in major British cities, parliament abandoning its own rules to appease Islamists and rising ethnic tensions. Concerns about "social cohesion" so widely shared by police chiefs and politicians across the Western world have actually contributed to its decline.
It seems to me that Australia is in danger of making many of the same mistakes. Getting ordinary Australians to recognise the threat before the dangerous threshold is reached is the big challenge for the country's sensible elite. Whether they can succeed remains to be seen."
Comments