From Class War to Race War

During the past forty years or so, a major transformation has occurred on the far Left, both in Australia and internationally, which might be characterised in one sentence as the replacement of Class War by Race War as the primary vehicle of the Left’s attempts to destroy existing society. This change has been evident in many ways, and appears to be ubiquitous around the world.

One might begin by looking at the rise and fall of left-wing critiques of Australian history, by well-known Australian historians, as a clear-cut example of this process. From the 1930s until the 1990s or later Australia had a significant volume of important works by avowedly left-wing historians, which focused on the plight of Australia’s working classes, urban and rural, and their alleged exploitation by the British-oriented upper classes. Probably the doyen of this school was Brian Fitzpatrick, whose British Imperialism and Australia, 1783–1833 (1939) was followed by his The British Empire in…