How ironic that mainstream newspapers and conservative commentators should lambast former prime minister Paul Keating for living in the past when he denounced the AUKUS agreement and the Labor government’s fulsome support of it. It was, of course, the AUKUS agreement itself, entered into by Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson and Joe Biden in 2022, that was the real blast from the past. Their declared solidarity in confronting what they defined as Chinese ‘assertiveness’ echoed white men’s defensive transnational identifications of more than 120 years ago when first faced with ‘the rise of Asia’. (more…)
Marilyn Lake
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From Yellow Peril to Red Alert
Although it is in America’s interests that we are urged to prepare for war against China within three years, the graphic image that accompanied the ‘Red Alert’ alert series in the Age and Sydney Morning Herald was designed to speak directly to Australia’s own deep and distinctive historic fears and sense of geographic isolation. (more…)
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Anxious white men look to bonds of ‘blood and history’ in AUKUS
Apprehensive of loss, the leaders of white men’s countries are invoking pride of race to spruik the AUKUS alliance to secure their primacy of place over China in a fast-changing world.
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Anzac and Australasia: war and democracy in our national museums
The paradox of Anzac commemoration in Australia is that an acronym representing a transnational formation – Australia and New Zealand – known collectively as ‘Australasia’ in earlier decades – has come to stand for a nationalist celebration that effectively renders New Zealand invisible. (more…)
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The militarization of Australian history and the myth of ‘shared values’
Fifteen years ago when I wrote an op.ed for The Age newspaper about the militarization of Australian historical memory, amidst the frenzy of war commemoration then careering out of control, the sub-editor gave it the title, ‘The Howard history of Australia’. (more…)