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I had been putting off seeing the film The Darkest Hour for suspicion that it would be just another revisionist hatchet job and anachronistically present Winston Churchill as a climate-change denier, transphobe, uninvited toucher of female thighs or any of the other things the purveyors of contemporary culture dislike. I saw it only when I was told that it’s not and it doesn’t. But if, rather courageously on the part of the producers, the film concedes no ground to contemporary historical revisionism and instead presents Churchill as a somewhat Hamletian hero, neither does it draw a veil over certain elements of the Great Man’s persona that would indeed provoke disapproval in certain circles today.
It shows him as portly enough that, had they lived in the same era, ‘iconic’ comedienne Magda Szubanski in her role of fat-shamer could have signed him up for a slimming course. Magda, it will be remembered, was a somewhat improbable Jenny Craig weight-loss spruiker before she reinvented herself as the Boadicea of gay love. The film reveals his alcohol consumption, starting with whisky at breakfast, to have been such as to send today’s ‘safe drinking’ campaigners into a decline, with their two units a month or whatever they grudgingly allow; while the Quit lobby would demand that its taxpayer funding be tripled to propagandise against Churchill’s marathon cigar-smoking, which must have kept the Cuban export balance in the black for decades.
Britain’s darkest hour, as every schoolboy probably no longer knows, was precipitated by resistance to Hitler’s attempt to impose a prototype European Union with himself as a one-man Brussels. His blitzkrieg, he boasted, would bomb Britain into submission and burn its cities to the ground. All at once I remembered – but what a coincidence! – that exactly the same incendiary aspiration had been expressed for our own country a few weeks before I saw the film, and expressed not by a foreign belligerent but from within the ranks of the publicly subsidised Aboriginal grievance industry. Readers might recall – or not, since she had her flicker of fame and hasn’t been heard of since – that our very own scorched-earth advocate was one Tarneen Onus-Williams, or Dtarneen as she later decided her name was. Tarneen (let’s stick with that to avoid consonant cluster) is a volunteer with that esteemed body the Koorie Youth Council of Victoria and an employee of Oxfam, the snootiest moraliser in the crowded field of global charity self-righteousness (whose sanctimony has lately being fully stretched coping with allegations of sex abuse among its ‘aid workers’). You can refresh your memory about Tarneen at ‘Happy Invasion Day II’ at Quadrant Online.
Somehow the thought of Tarneen’s hope being realised – of our country being burnt to the ground – of its becoming an activist-burnt country rather than Dorothea Mackellar’s sunburnt one – juxtaposed with the film’s underlining of just how desperate was Britain’s plight in 1940 made me wonder: what if in Australia’s darkest hour its enemies had won? How different would life be now?
For a start, Tarneen would have had to make her incendiary address in Japanese, and would probably have been bayonetted before she could finish. In other words we wouldn’t have free speech. But actually we’re doing quite nicely disposing of that ourselves, without the assistance of any invader. Not only do we have Section 18C still on the statute book, the public-utterance Gestapo at the Human ‘Rights’ Commission and the ABC as our own Ministry of Propaganda – about as likely to broadcast a non-leftist view as Dr Goebbels would have been to employ a Jewish communist; we are subject to the browbeating of social-media hordes crouched over their laptops emitting pavlovian spurts of poisonous abuse at everyone in public life they disagree with this week. As if that weren’t bad enough, all sorts of other people one encounters in one’s daily round – even, sad to say, friends sometimes – have been well schooled by our education system to constitute the most effective barrier of all to unwelcome opinions. Try defending Trump or Brexit or the Adani mine at a suburban dinner party or in a teachers’ staff room if you dare.
Foreign occupation would have brought the knock on the door in the small hours, so it’s reassuring we still have the liberty to sleep easy in our beds, our life and property protected by the strong arm of the law. Really? Not if the fruits of multiculturalism are being enjoyed in your locality in the form of, well, foreign occupation, and the police, following orders from on high, are backing off. Report that you saw an African kid take a baseball bat to your car and it’s you who could be in trouble for ‘race hate’. It doesn’t help that the police are adopting uniforms that make them look like totalitarian stormtroopers.
If our Axis enemies had won, wouldn’t there be mobs roaming the streets smashing up shops and synagogues? Funny, we have those too, only we call them “demonstrators”. Politically they combine the Tweedledum of Hitlerian thuggery and the Tweedledee of Marxist groupthink. They don’t yet smash up shops, though it was touch and go with Max Brenner’s, but places of worship that refuse gay weddings may soon feel the brunt of their displeasure.
In the event, we survived our darkest hour, a year or so later than Britain’s, and were probably the freest country in the world until the 1970s when, with the Whitlam revolution, Big Government made its appearance and the Left began to muscle in. Now that it runs pretty well everything, some might say we have another darkest hour in the making.
True, not all leftists would find Tarneen’s conflagratory recommendations to their taste – think how unpleasant it would be to see flames leaping from the solar panel-encrusted roofs of all those lovely homes in Greens-voting suburbs, devouring smart inner-city terraces, reducing the Porsche Cayennes and Audis to twisted contemporary sculptures – but the Left en bloc will never disown Aboriginal irredentism. And here, as has been noted in Quadrant time and time again, there is a very real threat, of the break-up of the nation and the ceding of ever more territory and power to those who demand Aboriginal sovereignty.
Let’s say that Australia is spared a fiery dissolution, if not for the lovely homes then for the sake of the handsome Chicago School edifice in Melbourne (formerly Messrs Ball & Welch’s department store) that houses the Koorie Youth Council. Let’s say that, instead, it is manoeuvred by leftist treachery into political disintegration and becomes two countries, with the ‘indigenous’ one presided over by Tarneen as a sort of Koorie Julia Gillard. Treaties notwithstanding, there would be perpetual tension as Aboriginal activists pursued their claim to the whole continent. Tarneen’s comrades in the ‘Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance’ (don’t laugh at the Richmal Cromptonish name, they’re deadly serious) have made this clear on – of all places – their Facebook page (whitey’s inventions can come in handy even if you can’t stand whitey). There you will find the succinct exhortation: ‘Abolish Australia’.
Of course the Warriors don’t have the numbers, they don’t have the resources to do that. The fire brigades needn’t get their hoses out just yet. But there’s still a lot of damage Aboriginal activists can inflict on the social cohesion which is the essence of every healthy country. In this they can count on the enthusiastic assistance of white leftists who, because they loathe nation states or hate our Western cultural heritage, would not be sorry to see the end of Australia as we know it. For years now, under the pretext or the illusion of undoing past injustice, they have been busily undermining our sense of nationhood through their influence in those institutions prescribed by Gramsci for infiltration and exploiting racial differences to encourage discord.
Tarneen is a product of their efforts. For our country to survive intact, she and those who think like her must be persuaded that their best chance of a satisfying, respected future is in a racially inclusive, unburned Australia of fairness for everyone. Achieving that would turn a dark hour into what could be (with a Churchillian echo) our finest one.
I wonder how many people realise that Blitzkrieg was an Australian invention? Probably about a dozen. It was utilised to its greatest effect on August 8th 1918, the day Germany lost the Great War. Hitler, if nothing else, was a practical historian.
I believe that Blitzkrieg was first trialled, with great success, by Monash at the Battle of Hamel in July 1918. This confirmed confidence in its deployment on 8 August – the darkest day for the German Army.
True, but Hamel was a much smaller battle, and I’m not sure about the wide-scale inclusion of aircraft.
Aircraft were involved supplying forward troops with ammunition, maybe not in an offensive role, I don’t know.
But this was definitely the first offensive ever to coordinate infantry, tanks and aircraft – the definition of Blitzkrieg.
But let’s not argue over how many Blitzkriegs there are on a pin.
I think it may be more accurate to attribute the methodology of ‘combined arms’ to Monash rather than Blitzkrieg. Michael is right in saying (indirectly) that Monash was the first to co-ordinate at least infantry and artillery. Blitzkrieg or ‘lightning war’, involved concentrating overwhelming force at the schwerpunkt (focal point) in order to break through and send large armoured columns deep inside an opponent’s territory with the aim of destroying lines of communication and encircling fighting forces. So while combined arms was definitely a precursor to Blitzkrieg, they weren’t one and the same.
The Germans pretty much went to school on Monash’s 1918 offensives. Ironic, considering he was Jewish.
Blitzkreig was a development of WWI stormtrooper tactics, which in turn was a development from the Oblique Order of Frederick the Great.
The use of combined arms goes back to the bronze age.
The Russians learned more from Monash than the Germans did.
Articles like the above are excellent.
I think our darkest hours are behind us.
The turning point is here right now.
Think the war between , Turnbull and Joyce. It is war between left and right… such has been the leftie invasion of liberalism and conservatism.
If Joyce is dumped the left have won.
If Joyce stays the leftists including Turnbull and his diminishing band of the likes of Brandis and the poodle from Adelaide and their like minded intellectual midgets we’ll be finished.
They haven’t yet realised they only kept government because of Joyce. When that sinks in questions will be asked about Turnbull judgement in attacking Joyce and the nationals. What happens in Qld will be crucial. If the LNP majority backs Joyce. Turnbull is stuffed.
I think this is just another example of the leftie Turnbull undermining conservative opinion and representation in this country.
Sometimes I think Turnbull is a labor party plant. And that would fit with the ideas expressed in the above article.
Keith will love this essay on managerialism:
http://quillette.com/2018/02/19/diversity-managerial-ideology/
To suggest that the leadership of our armed forces would be capable of such an incredible achievement now would be an insult to their self-acclaimed inclusiveness. Blitzkrieg doesn’t care much about inclusions.
You are right pgang.
Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to study Monash’s tactics. The did win the First War.
Christopher Gobbels like Hitler was a socialist. Both were in leadership positions in the National Socialist Party of GrrmNy
Hitler was impressed more by Erwin Rommel’s “Infantry Attacks” (https://www.bookdepository.com/Infantry-Attacks-Erwin-Rommel/9781607963196)
There has always been a gap between the opinions of intellectuals, and those of the rest of the nation, but in recent years the gap has become a chasm. The latte-sipping, Greens-voting residents of inner-Sydney and Melbourne, and the proles of the outer suburbs and rural areas, might as well inhabit different planets.
The Left succeeded with same-sex marriage, but they will have a more difficult task in selling constitutional recognition for Aborigines, and more ‘rights’ for them. Among the people that I know, I can’t think of anyone who is interested in Aboriginal culture, or worries about ‘the Great Australian Silence’ and ‘this whispering in our hearts’, or the need for ‘Reconciliation’. However, most are aware of the gross waste of taxpayers’ money devoted to indigenous affairs, which has had little effect in improving the lives of our so-called First Peoples.
I am sure the Left is aware that a referendum on constitutional recognition has no hope (at present) of succeeding, so I fear that we will be subjected to a barrage of propaganda, from the ABC and the usual suspects, attempting to convince us that Aborigines need more privileges.
Could anyone tell me what we are “reconciling” in 2018? I’m relaxed about Aborigines as well as my other fellow Australian citizens. I must admit I don’t like their ratbag activists but that applies to ratbag activists of any persuasion. “Reconciliation” is one of those emotive slogans but no-one is prepared to set out exactly what has to be done to achieve it, let alone what it is. I think the Warriors need to contact the ABC to borrow a Tardis from Dr Who and go back to 1788 and start from scratch.
Dear Mr. Akehurst, You might not have been correct in stating that, had the Japanese conquered Australia, Tarneen would have spoken that language. I think I am correct in saying that the Japanese plan for Australia was to liquidate the Aborigines. Any contrary thoughts?
Probably not. Although the co-prosperity sphere was pure propaganda, they were happy enough to play along with any locals who believed it: the Burmese and Indonesians especially. Apparently they treated the Taiwanese Aboriginals fairly well – at least in comparison to the Chinese – and according to a book on Taiwan I just read most Taiwanese have a positive opinion of the Japanese.
I’m guessing they’d have left the Aboriginals to live in squalor, and assured them that their problems were the result of the previous century of white settlement. In all honesty, it would have been the shrewd thing to do.
The push-back against the Left – particularly in the institutions – is continuing apace, largely thanks to the bravery of Dr. Jordan Peterson. And when a Lefty Harvard Professor joins the fray you know it’s a death-knell. So keep calm – it’s happening!! Trust me, it’s all unravelling for the Left. There are PLENTY more where this came from:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/steven-pinker-identity-politics-is-an-enemy-of-reason-and-enlightenment-values/article/2011595
> ” Trust me, it’s all unravelling for the Left”
One may certainly hope so, but I’ve literally observed Antarctic glaciers move faster.
While Peterson is certainly combative, if noisy, he has a naivety to him. He seems to be offended, flabbergasted actually, when confronted with rank hypocrisy – yet we all have to deal with it daily in multifarious ways.
Late to the party again. I think its courageous people like Peter Ridd who has taken his employer, the misnamed university of James Cook, to court over its subscribing to correct thought rather than science.
I promulgate your own example when discussing this aboriginal reconciliation and the relative equality of white and black endeavour “when we arrived in 1788 the aborigines had no buildings no clothes and made music by hitting two sticks together meanwhile in Europe Mozart was being played by musicians dressed in tuxedos and ballgowns on beautiful instruments in magnificent opera houses”. No matter how they campaign without the whites they would still be living in the open and still making music hitting two sticks together.
Thanks Jody – a good read. Equally hopeful are the messages in Roger Scruton’s latest book “Where We Are”. It should be compulsory for all undergraduates and that could help turn the tide.
Pinker is more influential since he is at Harvard and in a unique position to attack the religion of universities, political correctness, right at the altar itself.
Jordan Peterson predicts the future of the mainstream media, inter alia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvCLNVZ-2sk
Another not-to-be-missed Jordan Peterson discussion; very relevant to Conservatives. Forward straight to 18 minutes; the speaker before that should be ignored.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyw4rTywyY0