December 4, 2004
WHITE WASH:
Don't look back in anger: historian (Deborah Snow, December 4, 2004, Sydney Morning Herald)
Controversial historian Keith Windschuttle has opened a new front in Australia's history wars by challenging the view that the White Australia Policy, which severely restricted non-European migration to Australia for more than half a century, was a deep stain on the country's conscience.Instead, he has defended it as a "rational and, in a number of ways, progressive, product of its times". Windschuttle's provocative thesis, set out in his latest book, The White Australia Policy, is likely to unleash a storm of protest from fellow historians when it is launched on Monday.
Besides taking colleagues to task, the book launches a new assault on multiculturalism, which in its more radical or "hard" forms, Windschuttle argues, is more racist than the White Australia Policy. "What I call hard multiculturalism is a doctrine of the intellectual elite, and that's a doctrine which says people should not try to assimilate or integrate, they should preserve their own ethnic cultures intact, that no cultures are better than others," he told the Herald. "It's a form of ethnic separatism which is far more racist than anything being acscribed to the White Australia Policy."
The man does know how to punch their buttons. His book The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists are Murdering Our Past might be subtitled "The Closing of the Australian Mind."
MORE:
-White Australia now has a history shaded grey: Keith Windschuttle is about to touch another raw historical nerve (Deborah Snow, 12/04/04, SMH)
-ESSAY: The fabrication of Aboriginal history (Keith Windschuttle, September 2001, The New Criterion)
The 'White Australia' policy was a natural decision to limit admittance to the nation to immigrants who could be considered assimilable. Due to its large size but small population, Australia was never in a position to absorb large numbers of Asian immigrants, who at that time would have been unskilled labor. All societies have a duty to limit entry to people who can benefit the nation.
The policy lost its raison d'etre after WWII, when the nation needed an increase in unskilled labor. Instead of taking advantage of the Chinese and Indian diasporas, they chose instead to admit large numbers of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, many of whom were collaborators with Hitler unable to gain admittance to the US. They did so on the theory that these people, although backward, were 'White.' It should be no surprise that many of their children are integral to the base of the Labour Party today, especially its anti-American wing.
Posted by: Bart at December 4, 2004 11:42 AMIt is hard to imagine a program which would be more harmful to the disadvantaged than multiculturalism. If the evil wizard Yakooob who first bred the race of White devils returned, or some Elders of the Confederacy thought up protocols for putting down people of color, they could not be doing more harm.
What we have in multiculturalism is intentional, premeditated counter-progress. The case of the Australian Aborigines is illustrative. The cultures of these peoples are well adapted to wandering bare-a**ed through the desert. their very languages, for instance, lend themselves to formation of topographical awareness. Their institutions and customs are not, however, adaptive to life on this planet at this time. Modern science, medicine, and agriculture offer certain survival advantages to those ready to accept them. The multicultrural movement in Australia has set back the acculturation of the Aborgines, limiting their opportunities to make choices about their future.
That's not too bad: Nwe World multiculturalists think that the Mexicans would be better off if they were still haveing their beating hearts cut out and helt before their eyes atop Aztec pyramids.
"If they really need the labor, they ( Western Europe) can bring in under-employed Christians from Eastern Europe..."
Bart--December 4th, 2004
"Instead of taking advantage of the Chinese and Indian diasporas, they (Australia) chose instead to admit large numbers of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe...
Bart--December 4th, 2004
Posted by: Peter B at December 5, 2004 1:39 PMPeter B,
I guess that whole controversy concerning the Vatican Ratline just blows by you.
There may be Nazi collaborators among the current population in Eastern Europe, but election results there since the fall of the Berlin Wall show that anti-semitism is a dog that does not hunt.
The people who fled Eastern Europe to nations other than the US did so because they could not pass muster. They were for the most part collaborators with Hitler and the Vatican Ratline saw that they could move to Australia and Latin America.
Posted by: Bart at December 5, 2004 7:51 PMBart:
We helped to move most of them. No one cared about the Holocaust in the 40s.
Posted by: oj at December 5, 2004 8:01 PMoj,
But they couldn't come to America, as a matter of law, so the fascists and arch-Catholics in the OSS and the corrupt collaborators with Hitler like Prescott Bush and the Dullest Brothers arranged for them to go to Canada, Australia and Argentina.
Posted by: Bart at December 6, 2004 6:27 AMPlenty came here.
Posted by: oj at December 6, 2004 7:16 AMoj,
True. And all of those who did get here, got here under false pretenses, phony passports and other subterfuge, and are here every bit as illegally as some thug from Sinaloa boosting cars in Los Angeles.
Posted by: Bart at December 6, 2004 7:41 PMWorking for NASA.
Posted by: oj at December 6, 2004 10:08 PM