Topic Tags:
14 Comments

As Lidia Thorpe so Eloquently Said, ‘It’s War’

David Barton

Apr 06 2023

9 mins

Most people don’t realise that Australia is at war – with itself. In a sense we are already engaged in an internal ‘us and them’ civil war which shows every sign of becoming much worse. This will be especially true if the ‘Voice’ referendum is successful. Indeed, the democracy of Australia has not been under such threat since World War II.

In 1940 Great Britain was under attack by Germany and losing heavily on all fronts. British forces hastily evacuated the beaches of Dunkirk, and France surrendered. The great battleship Hood was sunk by the Bismarck in early 1941 and with Japan entering the war in late 1941 the Prince of Wales and Repulse were both sunk and Singapore fell in early 1942. Things could not have looked worse. It was not until the Battle of El Alamein in November 1942 that the British had their first serious win and from then on there were many victories.

The ‘Voice’ referendum is Australia’s El Alamein. Let me explain why.

In many respects, Aboriginal activists have declared war on the rest of Australia and they did so many years ago. Senator Lidia Thorpe made this clear by declaring on January 26 “this is war” to the crowd at the Melbourne ‘Invasion Day’ Rally.Arguably, she is right. We, the citizens of Australia ought to consider ourselves at war with those who would seek to take over and reshape Australia in their own image and for their own purposes. Most Australians probably haven’t noticed, but we’ve been at war with ‘Aboriginal interests’ for a long time now, and over the last few decades it’s not been going well, to name but a few here:

♦ We have lost and given up vast tracts of land under spurious ‘Native Title’ legislation, now “formally recognised to be about 50% of Australia’s land mass”.2

♦ We have lost and given up to the now obligatory ‘Welcome to Country’, which in reality is a statement about who really owns Australia.

♦ We are now surrendering our language so that many English place names are being replaced with Aboriginal names.

♦ We have lost and given up to mountains, beaches and waterways being closed and ‘non-indigenous’ access denied or new access fees charged.

♦ We have lost and given up freehold title to National Parks now handed over to localised Aboriginal Corporations.

♦ We have lost and given up to having our children’s education about early Australian history now revised, distorted and perverted into self-loathing.

♦ We have lost and given up to our universities being run by socialist academics hell-bent on revising our history, society and culture.

We have lost so much, especially in the last five years; we have voluntarily given up so much at the hands of black and white racial oppressors. And they are oppressors, because no-one has ever asked us if we wanted any of this stifling treatment. All of what we have lost, of what has been forced upon us, has all been done to us without any consultation and without our permission or consent. Who gave them the right to do that?

And all the while our politicians, governments and bureaucrats just keep on giving away our country to an ever-increasing band of people who at the moment compose a mere 3.2% of the population, many who choose to identify as ‘Aborigines’, rather than just as ‘Australians’, perhaps identifying for no other reason than because of the public financial largesse, employment opportunities, medical benefits and the prestige now attached to being an ‘Aborigine’. This race-based unfairness cannot end well. It’s not just a ‘culture’ war. No, it’s so much more than that – this is a fight against the reshaping of our whole society. How much more ‘white guilt’ do we need to feel before those of distant Aboriginal descent feel assuaged and gratified by our obsequiousness? How much more do we need to concede before so-called ‘reconciliation’ is achieved?

Defeating the Voice referendum is only the first part of turning the tide in this long battle. Whatever the referendum outcome, the war will rage on, not only in this attempted coup by Aboriginal élites, but also the ongoing fantasy of climate change, our shrinking energy security, wokeism, the cost of living and interest rate rises, these are the real threats to Australia right now.

Many people have already surrendered to the Aboriginal juggernaut. Yet how can we explain the enthusiasm with which so many others have now become supporters of the Voice? There are three factors to be considered: ignorance combined with cognitive dissonance overlaid with an unhealthy dose of confected White Guilt.

Ignorance is the simple part. Given decades of propaganda and revisionist education that has been an integral part of the socialist long march through the institutions now bearing its ugly fruit, many people simply don’t know the truth. We’re  told, for example, that Aborigines were classified as fauna until 1967, and people accept this as fact. Hence they remain readily susceptible to propaganda, especially the type of propaganda drilled into them on a daily basis by the likes of the ABC and SBS television.

Cognitive dissonance is a little more complex, occurring when a person is in a situation where their beliefs are in conflict with the reality they encounter — two mutually contradictory beliefs maintained simultaneously. This is especially true when there is forced compliance, which occurs when an individual performs an action inconsistent with his or her beliefs.3 In other words, if a person is pressured to comply with certain situations, actions or events (like a ‘Welcome to Country’), then in an effort to overcome and resolve the dissonance they may well choose the easier option, which is to submit and accept.

Regarding White Guilt, as a population we have now for decades been subjected to a barrage of propaganda accusing ‘us’ (principally white Anglo-Saxon males) of all the alleged distant crimes against Aboriginal people. Despite the fact that we personally had and have nothing to do with such activities – exaggerated, distorted and misrepresented as they are –  we ‘colonists’ are still regarded as racists, perpetrators of massacres and of Aboriginal ‘genocide’. Nowhere is this worse than what we see in our education system, which teaches children to actually despise our origins. This is a disgrace.

Of further concern is the position of many mainstream churches that seem to be fully supportive of the Voice. How has that come about? Simply add to the above three factors of ignorance, cognitive dissonance and confected white (middle class) guilt, a mixture of a misplaced and misunderstood sense of ‘social justice’ and a general ignorance of the Gospel and the Epistles, and there you have it.

It would appear most Voice supporters exist in complete ignorance of Australia’s real Aboriginal and colonial history, of constitutional law, of the role of the High Court, of the influence of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the literally hundreds of existing myriad Aboriginal organisations already speaking on behalf of Aboriginal people. But don’t worry about any of that – just think of the ‘invitation’ of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and our Prime Minister’s ‘modest’ vibe!

In addition, so many ‘Voice’ supporters seem to be sticking their heads in the sand about what is already plainly acknowledged to follow after the ‘Voice’; the Treaty (aka: sovereignty) the Makarrata (aka: so-called ‘truth-telling’, where white Europeans are instructed to hate themselves) and finally the ‘reparations’ (aka: compensation). Australia as we know it cannot survive this onslaught. Why would and how could any sound thinking Australian believe that any of these things could be or would be good for Australians, let alone for Aborigines? How will any of these things improve the misery and poverty of Aboriginal people stuck in ‘culture’, trapped on their homelands and unable to advance themselves? Indeed, it is many of the existing Aboriginal organisations, like the Land Councils, that keep Aboriginal people trapped in the cycle of poverty and misery! How will the ‘Voice’ stop that? Of course it can’t, and it won’t.

In the end, this de-facto war, as in any war, is about ownership. Who is going to own the country of Australia? Will it be all Australians through their democratically elected parliaments, or will it soon be owned by people who identify as ‘Aborigines’. Ultimately, it will be the Voice referendum that determines the answer those questions.

And what then of the future? As Barbara Walter notes in her excellent book How Civil Wars Start:

Elites and supporters of a particular group sense an opportunity – perhaps a moment of weakness in the regime, or a demographic change that heightens their sense or grievance or vulnerability. They then encourage loyalty not by rallying people around policy issues but by using words and symbols related to identity … The rhetoric gradually reinforces the group’s separateness, creating tensions in society. 4

Walter talks of ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ who promote division along ethnic lines in a bid to retain or secure their own power. She further says:

For a society to fracture along identity lines, you need mouthpieces – people who are willing to make discriminatory appeals and pursue discriminatory policies in the name of a particular group. They are usually people who are seeking political office or trying to stay in office. 5

The ‘Voice’ is not about improving the lives of remote area Aborigines; it never has been. It’s about changing the way we are all governed, and ultimately, who will own Australia. The ‘Voice’ is simply a springboard to ‘Aboriginal’ sovereignty. How long before ordinary Australians put down their collective foot and say ‘no more’? This referendum may well be our last chance to do so. 

To be clear, the ‘Voice’ referendum is Australia’s El Alamein. If we win this battle that will be the first victory after a long line of losses, but the battles will not end there. The fight to resist the take-over of Australia by a vested-interest group will continue – and it’s not even by stealth anymore, that much is blatantly obvious.

1. Lidia Thorpe screams ‘this is WAR’, brandishes a battle stick.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11677473/Australia-Day-January-26-Division-Day-thousands-flood-cities-rallying-day-mourning.html

  1. National Indigenous Australians Agency – Land and Housing. https://www.niaa.gov.au/indigenous-affairs/land-and-housing#:~:text=Aboriginal%20and%20Torres%20Strait%20Islander%20peoples’%20rights%20and%20interests%20in,importance%20to%20First%20Nations%20Australians.

 

  1. What Is Cognitive Dissonance?

https://simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html

 

  1. Walter, B. F. (2022). How Civil Wars Start, And How To Stop Them. Viking. London, England. p 37.

 

  1. ibid. p 44
Comments

Join the Conversation

Already a member?

What to read next

  • Ukraine and Russia, it Isn’t Our Fight

    Many will disagree, but World War III is too great a risk to run by involving ourselves in a distant border conflict

    Sep 25 2024

    5 mins

  • Aboriginal Culture is Young, Not Ancient

    To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case

    Aug 20 2024

    23 mins

  • Pennies for the Shark

    A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten

    Aug 16 2024

    2 mins