Actual Results May Vary

Patriotism (n): devoted love, support, and defense of one’s country; national loyalty.
Nationalism (n): excessive patriotism; chauvinism.
Chauvinism (n): zealous and aggressive patriotism or blind enthusiasm for military glory.

It’s that time of year again; the rednecks show up, get shitfaced, loudly proclaim their love of beer, the southern cross, and Sam Kekovich, and then declare that those who don’t share their views can get the f*** out of “their” country. The first three I can live with – I love beer, I don’t really care about the southern cross, and I find the way Sam Kekovich equates patriotism with eating Lamb™ to be hilarious (did you know that if you don’t eat lamb on Australia Day, Kekovich comes around and kicks you in the head?). What I want to know is this: when did patriotism, a love of one’s country, become nationalism? When did it become acceptable to tell people “F*** off, we’re full” and call it patriotic? When did we stop caring about our nation, and everyone in it, and start caring only about the people in our country who act, think, and look the way we think Australians should?

I think patriotism–true patriotism–is a beautiful thing. Loving the country where you live makes sense. Why would you live somewhere you don’t love? I love the land, especially the Australian bush and the outback, which take beautiful and sparse to whole new levels. I love the melting pot of cultures here. Somewhere in Australia, I bet you there’s a pizza joint run by a Chinese-Australian family where a Russian family goes for their Saturday lunch. I love the fact that being relaxed and friendly is considered part of our national identity.

Love for your country, like your love for your friends and family, shouldn’t be blind. Blind love is what gets us competitors on Australian Idol who really can’t sing; blind love allows abusive spouses to carry on; blind love lets kids grow up being spoiled brats. Blind love for your country isn’t any different. Blind love for your country means that you ignore it when Indian students are targeted for assaults just because of their country of origin. Blind love means that you ignore it when the “F*** off, we’re full” shirts and stickers are proudly displayed by the racist population. And if we ignore it, we might as well be endorsing it. To say nothing in the face of wrongdoing is to allow it to prosper.

Love for your country can’t be selective, either. After all, you don’t love bits of a person. You love a person. It’s the same with your country. You can’t love the meat pie and cricket, but hate the immigrants. You might not like their food, and that’s fine – not everyone thinks that a vindaloo that sears your eyebrows is tasty, and some people can’t stand Thai Curry. It cuts both ways – not everyone thinks that burnt sausages and overcooked steak are that great (I’m one of them). If you’re going to love this country, though, you have to accept that there’s more than White Australia™ to it.

When you have selective love, and blind love, you end up with patriotism being warped into nationalism. When this happens, a love for your country becomes an overwhelming desire to promote particular aspects of your country, and to eradicate anything you consider to be “un-Australian”§. Who gets to decide what is un-Australian though? I certainly shouldn’t – heck, I’m not sure what being “Australian” really means. I have vague ideas of embracing multiculturalism and being a relaxed and friendly person, but honestly – isn’t that something that all people should be aspiring to? If we all embraced multiculturalism and relaxed a bit, the arse would fall out of the global arms market. If the White Australian™ was asked about Australianism (note that this is not all Australian citizens of Caucasian ancestry) they’d probably say something about cricket, beaches, meat pies, and BBQs. The problem with this is that Cricket was invented by the poms, beaches are better in a whole lot of Pacific island nations, I’m pretty sure the meat pie existed long before the nation of Australia, and BBQs are done with much more flair in America, where they sometimes use flammable liquids to get them started.

Is Australianism an attempt to forge a national identity, or a cultural one? The two are quite different. A cultural identity is what gives you Jewish-Americans, or African-Americans, or Lebanese-Australians, or Irish-Australians; your differentiating feature is not that you are American, or British, or Australian, but rather a cultural group within that nationality. As an example, look at Israel. It was only founded in 1948 – any Israeli citizen over the age of 62 was originally a citizen of another nation. And you know what made them pick up sticks, move to the middle east, and join an entirely new country? It wasn’t their national identity, I’ll tell you that much. It was their cultural identity as Jews. Cultural identity is a powerful thing, and cultural identities make our world a richer place. When you have a mono-cultural country, this cultural identity becomes synonymous with national identity.

This, I think, is where our problem arises. Australia was, for quite a while, trying very hard to be a mono-culture. Aboriginal Australians weren’t allowed to vote until the middle of the 20th century, and for quite a long time we had the “White Australia” policy. For a significant part of Australia’s history, to be Australian was predominantly a cultural identity as well as a national one, even before federation. It’s only been a short while, as history goes, that Australia has been a multicultural society.

So, what do we do about it? Being a complete novice at anthropology and other fields of social sciences, about the only thing I can come up with is to come up with a national identity we can all identify with: how about friendly, relaxed, and multicultural? I’m all for cultural groups creating identities compatible with this. There’s nothing wrong with being proud of your roots, whether those roots are six generations in Australian soil or if they’ve recently been transplanted with the soil of Europe, Africa, or the Middle East into the red dirt in Australia.

What’s wrong is when you think your roots are the only ones that should be there and start squeezing out the others. I don’t know about you, but in my garden it’s usually only the weeds that do that.

§ I hate the term “un-Australian”. It sounds too much like Un-American, and who remembers the House Un-American Activities Committe?

Posted on January 25th, 2010 by Bosun McShiny
Filed under: Pontificating