> Which brings me back to the issue of PC. Once the conservatives
> campaigned against it. Now the boot is on the other foot -- and it's
> a great big army boot. Since September 11, it has become standard
> procedure for the armies of the Right, whose heavy tread thunders
> through our media, to accuse writers like myself of everything up to
> and including treason. Those of us who've been around long enough
> recognise the symptoms. This is McCarthyism revisited.
>
This is very much to the nub of my 'conscious fears'. To my small mind's
limited perceptions, in the last few months something has really 'gone
wrong' with much of public debate. The TV, and most of the Press, have been
merrily pumping out stuff that often verges on incitement to racial hatred,
in politics there is no longer an illusion of choice, the Right is in power
everywhere, whatever name it chooses to call itself, and even on poetry
lists, of all places, we have not been spared the 'heavy tread'.
The one light I have, and its a dim midwinter one, is that in the past week
or so I've started hearing people locally, working class people, beginning
to question the poison they are being fed with. Real change always begins
at the bottom, no matter what those in power imagine. So perhaps there's a
tiny flame there, a match struggling to stay alight in the cold windy
streets.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
www.paintstuff.20m.com/index.htm
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2001 10:27 PM
Subject: By the way
> An interesting article in this weekend's "Australian" newspaper, by
> Phillip Adams. He opens with an account of his opposition to laws
> against racial vilification and to the campaign to keep the
> revisionary historian David Irving out of Australia, out of his
> belief that such laws are not only impotent, but give ammunition to
> those who claim that PC stifles debate, a ridiculous statement given
> the breadth and depth of conservative opinion in our media, and
> status to those who can claim they are "martyred" by them (pace David
> Irving). As has indeed been the case. He also points out that
> Australia has not anything in its Constitution which protects free
> speech.
>
> It finishes:
>
> "However, the real problem in Australia was and remains the
> institutionalised racism that has always been a part of our cultural,
> religious and commercial life. ... I grew up in the era when the
> main division was between Catholic and Protestant, when everything
> from the Commonwenalth Public Service to the police force were
> divided along these lines. When the Melbourne Club was as reluctant
> to admit Catholics as it was Jews. When the Stock Exchange still
> refused Jewish membership.
>
> The present kerfuffle over an eminently reasonable newspaper column
> -- pointing out the bleeding obvious about the US remaining what it
> has always been, "one of the most violent societies on earth", and
> has led to an American initiating actions against me with the Human
> Rights Commission and the Press Council -- is nothing but a sideshow.
> And a piece of political surrealism. ...
>
> Which brings me back to the issue of PC. Once the conservatives
> campaigned against it. Now the boot is on the other foot -- and it's
> a great big army boot. Since September 11, it has become standard
> procedure for the armies of the Right, whose heavy tread thunders
> through our media, to accuse writers like myself of everything up to
> and including treason. Those of us who've been around long enough
> recognise the symptoms. This is McCarthyism revisited.
>
> As an Australian, I feel no obligation to to toe the US line on any
> aspect of public policy, least of all what passes for its foreign
> policy. Readers may recall that we gave the US a blank cheque in the
> Vietnam War. Have we forgotten the lessons? And the so-called war
> against terrorism is in its early days and may, in due course, make
> the Vietnam misadventure seem like a military and diplomatic triumph.
> All in all, it's a time for debate. Not censorship."
> --
>
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Home page
> http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
> Masthead
> http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
>
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