Weakness at the Centre

Sir: The discussion of the nature of ideologies, contained in the article by Mark Durie (“The Eco-Fascist Ideology of the Christchurch Killer”, May 2019) made me think. It called to mind the times I have listened to the Aboriginal radio station 98.9FM in Brisbane, and its one-hour weekday program Let’s Talk. The station presents mostly advertisement-free country and western music, and I have enjoyed listening to it for years when driving; when Let’s Talk is on I usually continue listening. But many times over the years, on returning home, I have said to my wife, with good humour, that I have once again been called an “invader”, a “coloniser” and a “settler”; as well, the terms “white science” and “white centric” have had a good run. These words and phrases are, of course, the language of an ideology. The question for me as a member of the quiet majority of Australians who love, respect and value their country is this: Should I continue to do what I have always done, and laugh it off when this language is voiced? Or, am I being too complacent, thinking our democracy can contain this ideology? 

Times are changing. The statement by Ken Wyatt, shortly after being sworn in, about what this ideology means for our 118-year-old constitution, heralded the change. The implications of this ideology for me, and my extended family, and future generations of them is quite obvious. And who can I rely on to protect what has taken centuries to build? At the present time, there is a strange weakness in the West, a lack of vision for the future, and an inability to even recognise how our great society was built, let alone build further on it. This weakness has its centre in the type of people that aspire to be politicians today; this was clearly demonstrated, for all to see, when the members of our new government, on their first day, gave Wyatt a standing ovation. Where do we go from here?

Richard Forrest
Pacific Pines, Qld

Naming a Killer

Sir: I found Mark Durie’s essay on the Christchurch killer offensive and lacking in respect. In a direct rejection of Jacinda Ardern’s vow to deny the killer a platform or use his name, Durie makes deliberate use of it more than forty times and imbues him with intelligence not evidenced elsewhere.

Jacinda Ardern’s vow not only robbed the killer of a platform, it freed from ongoing finger-pointing and ridicule a large group of people in the Clarence Valley who share his surname, some related, some not. She shielded from intense scrutiny the town from which the killer had come and the students from the schools he’d attended.

Durie makes much of the killer’s formulation of an ideology and a manifesto without examination of his ability to do so. His only mention of the killer’s early life before the “manifesto” is that he “had a long history of playing violent computer games” and says “this could have conditioned him to kill”. This is despite American research which has found no such link. In 2017 the American Psychological Association observed:

Journalists and policymakers do their constituencies a disservice in cases where they link acts of real-world violence with the perpetrators’ exposure to violent video games or other violent media. There’s little scientific evidence to support the connection, and it may distract us from addressing those issues that we know contribute to real-world violence.

When Durie says the killer had “nothing to say about Islam” and “knows nothing of the historical influence of Christian ideas on ‘white’ Europe” he came closer to plumbing his intellectual depths, certainly his worldly knowledge. The killer’s “ideology” can be summed up as ravings, his “manifesto” a hotchpotch of the shallow pickings of a first-time traveller. His killing spree was a direct consequence of his lack of ability or desire to look below the surface of his scant readings to discover or absorb the genocidal acts of barbarism perpetrated against Muslims and non-white races.

The men whose graves he claims to have cried over would be reeling in them if they knew he used them as an impetus for his killing spree of innocent people. Soldiers do not, as a rule, kill for pleasure or to indulge a whim as he did.

The killer was a man who armed himself with a gun and a little learning to justify his actions, then set about making a name for himself. Jacinda Ardern took that away from him.

Mark Durie’s flagrant use of his name ignores the wishes of the country that bore the brunt of the killings and will rekindle the pain of many. He could have probed the killer’s motives without using his name at all.

Annette Johnson
Brighton le Sands, NSW

Resurgent Marxism

Sir: William Rubinstein reviewed the recently published biography of Eric Hobsbawm in the May edition of Quadrant. Hobsbawm’s ideology was established by his exposure to fascism in 1930s Nazi Germany and he was the last of the pre-war British communists, dying at a ripe old age in 2012. Most of his fellow travellers reneged and faded into obscurity in the 1950s and 1960s with the treatment of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and other mass murders, but he remained committed to the cause. Even the more recent examples of communist-induced dysfunction in Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and Nicaragua failed to change his views, although they did perhaps moderate.

It is interesting to speculate how he might have viewed the potential rebirth of communism, (now rebadged as socialism), as proposed by the likes of Corbyn in the UK, Sanders in the US, and the Greens in this country. The modern generation, who do not study history and are indoctrinated during their education, fail to appreciate the fundamental pitfalls of the ideology—it does not take account of human nature. The Marxist philosophy, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, just doesn’t work. Wealth can only be redistributed if a capitalist system creates it; the central takeover of the means of manufacturing has been shown time and again to be a complete failure, with Venezuela as the current example. The old phrase, “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us”, is the reality.

Should history repeat itself and the communist philosophy once more prevail this could prove to be the final nail in the coffin of Western civilisation. With the decline of Christianity perhaps Islam will be the next contender for world domination.

Graham Pinn
via email

Just William

Sir: I have just re-read John Whitworth’s article in Quadrant of April 2016 titled “Ever William”, where he discusses the books of Richmal Crompton. This year is significant in the William saga. It is the centenary of the publication of the very first William story, “Rice-mould”, in Home Magazine, a UK monthly, in August 1919. Later, from 1922, the books began to be published, continuing until the 1970s, as John Whitworth mentions. There are 385 stories collected into thirty-nine books, which were translated into seventeen languages and at one stage were outsold only by the Bible.

I read the hilarious William books as a child and still have a wallow every few years. William is an eleven-year-old anti-hero in a typical English village, who, like Bart Simpson, remains the same age through the decades. His creator is the J.K. Rowling of her day. Hypocrisy and self-importance in the adult world are exposed through William’s exploits.

They were not written as children’s books; the language is sophisticated and obviously for grown-ups. When it became clear that children had discovered the books, Richmal Crompton didn’t change her style or write down to her younger readers. I remember, as a twelve-year-old, asking my mother what “ejaculated” meant. I wondered why she was embarrassed.

Even today there are five Australian members of the Just William Society. Many more Australians would have fond memories of the young tear-away. Writers Paul Jennings, Terry Pratchett and Morris Gleitzman certainly do.

Liz Middleton
Clematis, Vic