I'm sure there are heaps of different ways to examine our militarist culture, but I think the most obvious one - and please keep an open mind about this - is the way we approach Anzac Day. We all know that Anzac Day, and the "Anzac Legend", have existed ever since the Battle of Gallipoli, but what young people in particular might not realise is how much the meaning of these things has changed over time.
As such a young country trying to find its place in the
world, it makes sense that we'd see the Anzacs and our role in the Great War as
a huge part of our shared national history, and as a source of national
identity (Hoffenberg, 2001). But it
wasn't until quite recently that the whole Anzac Legend came to be treated like
it is today.
It really took off when John Howard starting promoting the
idea of the "digger" as the archetypal Australian, and relating
contemporary Australian values like "mateship" (McDonald, 2010, pp287-293)
to war. Conveniently, this coincided
with his decision to intervene in Iraq
and Afghanistan
More recently, Kevin Rudd has talked about the Anzacs as
"part of our national consciousness" and identity (2008, in McDonald,
p287), and just this year Julia Gillard used phrases like "honour of the
most vivid kind" (in Barker, 2012) and talked about Australia's "tradition
of arms" that has continued to today's "recent conflicts" (in
O'Connor, 2012). This unsettling
sentiment is echoed in the Governor General's description of Australian
soldiers in Afghanistan
Am I the only one creeped out by the fact that the people we
trust to run this country are promoting the Anzac Legend not out of respect to
the Anzacs themselves, but out of a desire to get us all on board with the
conflicts they're engaging in now?
Hoffenberg, P 2001, "Landscape, Memory and the Australian
War Experience", Journal of
Contemporary History, vol 36, no 1, pp111-131
McDonald, M 2010, "'Lest We Forget': The Politics of
Memory and Australian Military Intervention", International Political Sociology, vol 4, pp287-301
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