The Banality Of Evil, John Howard Style
Harold Hark
22 April 2003 This is the kind of week John Howard was born for. First off, he's all over chump radio whipping up a patriotic frenzy amongst talkback citizens in Australia's most redneck cities to welcome back our noble troops from the invasion of Iraq. Making the world safe for Dubya's corporate mates deserves nothing less.  We parade-going patriots will hardly have gotten over our laryngitis from that glorious event before we start saluting the ex-noble troops on Anzac Day. Fortunately this militaristic ritual celebrating the guaranteed slaughter of innocents at the behest of past madmen is a sombre occasion. Our throats can leisurely absorb medicinal lozenges while mutely watching the well-meaning elderly fodder of previous John Howard generations. While Iraq continues to descend into the chaos we all knew was coming, but which the champions of aggression (aka the swallowers of propaganda) will want to know nothing of, it is perhaps pertinent to remember that while our government was desecrating democracy on the ground while promoting it in the Murdoch media, Iraqis (and other unfortunates) who had courageously escaped the Saddam regime John Howard so despises, are still languishing behind razor wire. In his review of Dark Victory, (the story of the Tampa rescue) by David Marr & Marian Wilkinson, the former Labor Industry Minister John Button has the following to say about how some of them got behind the wire and who put them there (italics mine): Ultimately, as the authors of Dark Victory point out, "the key to the government's success was the collaboration of the Opposition".
Consider the language. From the mouths of ministers "asylum seekers" became "unlawful entrants", "illegals", "economic refugees", "life-style refugees" and ultimately "queue jumpers", descriptions that laid the foundation for later comments such as "I don't want people like that in Australia... genuine refugees don't do that...", and the suggestion that there were terrorists among the refugees.
It is an interesting and none-too-healthy phenomenon that the Coalition Government in the past few years has more than ever been dominated by lawyers. Of the four ministers who were the frontrunners in the border protection election of 2001, three, Howard, Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock and then defence minister Peter Reith, were former solicitors who made an early transition to politics.
Only Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who had enjoyed a brief stint in the lifestyle cocoon of a junior diplomat in Brussels, had experienced living in a country with a different language and a marginally different culture.
The road from private school (Howard being an exception) to a solicitor's office, to politics is, in the absence of more diverse life and work experiences, usually smooth but narrow. For solicitors, cleverness and attention to detail are important, the focus is on day-to-day victories or defeats and the truth is an irritating and at times dispensable impediment to winning. Little attention is given to the longer term. The larger picture is reduced to pettifoggery.
Perhaps the "narrow-casting" of politicians is ... an explanation of the rudeness, bullying and arrogance that ministers displayed in their dealings with the Norwegian Government, the owners and captain of the Tampa, the Indonesians and, later, the Nauruans. It enabled politics to be put before people in the delivery of medical help to the Tampa. It undermined "years of hard diplomatic effort" by Coalition and Labor Governments in which "Australia had positioned itself as a leader of United Nations' campaigns against racism, poverty and oppression". In a column, for The Australian Magazine, Phillip Adams says (italics mine): In this world with its unprecedented volume and variety of data and dialogue we, as individuals and as the public, remain stupefyingly uninformed, ill-informed, misinformed and, it would seem, blissfully and wilfully ignorant.
While many citizens of the Web seek to inform themselves by exploring the nooks and crannies of dissidence, there are millions who, unprecedentedly wealthy and affluent, prefer to believe the lies that pass for official statements on the war in and against Iraq, remaining blind to the pervasive attempts at censorship. They fail to notice the intimidation and, worse, the recruitment of the media.
Thanks to television, we know what things look like in Iraq - although it's overwhelmingly from the coalition's side. But then we knew what the war looked like in Vietnam from the US's side and went along with it until even Washington could no longer conceal the truth. It is the context of these images that is missing, deliberately obscured by politicians who are, by and large, professional liars.
We saw the same acquiescence to disinformation and deceit in the electorate's reaction to the great beat-up of the asylum seekers, where the debate was manipulated through the abuse of language, through the fictions of "queue jumpers" and "children overboard" and by conflating refugees with terrorists. But Australians bought it because they wanted to buy it. They were complicit in their own ignorance. Otherwise, they'd have had to face awful truths. Not so much about the refugees, but about themselves.
In the case of the war, there's nothing like the same willingness to accept the lies. Nonetheless, we queue up to be conned by false arguments and unconscionable urgings to "back our armed services". Which means that the troops are being used to defend our politicians, not our nation. Hence, John Howard's commercial radio blitz. If you've seen Roman Polanski's film, The Pianist, you will have experienced in Dolby Digital Sound what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil". Or: normalising the unthinkable as it is acted out against everyday people by everyday people. John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister who may be history's quintessential example of the pre-violent form of this banality, is the man who is exhorting us to defend his amoral expedience by coming out to wave our kerchiefs, extend our arms and shout slogans of patriotism for returning Aussie troops. Like the Nazi troops before them, our boys and girls are mere fodder, unthinking and unformed, who always do the bidding of the deranged politician, the abuser of innocence. Shaun Carney describes Howards modus operandi perfectly (italics mine): The Prime Minister's way of going about his business is sometimes questionable; the cat-and-mouse game involving the so-called pre-deployment of troops to the Gulf and the unbelievable denials that the troops were already committed to any conflict is an example. The same goes for the lies about the children overboard.
But it is that murmured, understated method that allows Howard to maintain his authority. Let it run, let the critics have their say, get huffy if your integrity is questioned - but otherwise sit out the rough times: the public and the media will tire of it all soon enough and want to move on to something else. This is a key to Howard's effectiveness. He knows that a largely affluent society with a growing economy is not constantly engaged with political debate. If you don't bother the people, they won't be too bothered about you.
Not for Howard the memorable, crystalline phrase or the galvanising, inspirational call to higher principles. John Howard planted the seeds of racism and disunity early in his political career. Since coming to power in 1996, the seeds have been nourished with assiduous care. Now, with Australia's commitment to the Bush junta's pre-emptive strike policy of empire building, he has dealt a dangerous blow to the Australian psyche. We are traumatised just as the Germans were while they watched in horror as Hitler consolidated power. What is most frightening today for those of us opposed to Howard is that, just like the Germans who opposed Hitler, we will gradually be worn down by a hammered (or murmured) rhetoric of patriotism combined with a spin on dissent as traitorous. The seeds of this evil are well under way in the United States. Actor and film director Tim Robbins (Cradle Will Rock, Bob Roberts) describes the crackdown on dissent and the return of McCarthyism: A Chill Wind Is Blowing In This Nation: A relative tells me that a history teacher tells his 11-year-old son, my nephew, that Susan Sarandon is endangering the troops by her opposition to the war. Another teacher in a different school asks our niece if we are coming to the school play. They're not welcome here, said the molder of young minds.
Another relative tells me of a school board decision to cancel a civics event that was proposing to have a moment of silence for those who have died in the war because the students were including dead Iraqi civilians in their silent prayer.
A teacher in another nephew's school is fired for wearing a T- shirt with a peace sign on it. And a friend of the family tells of listening to the radio down South as the talk radio host calls for the murder of a prominent anti-war activist. Death threats have appeared on other prominent anti-war activists' doorsteps for their views. Relatives of ours have received threatening e-mails and phone calls. And my 13-year-old boy, who has done nothing to anybody, has recently been embarrassed and humiliated by a sadistic creep who writes -- or, rather, scratches his column with his fingernails in dirt.
Susan and I have been listed as traitors, as supporters of Saddam, and various other epithets by the Aussie gossip rags masquerading as newspapers, and by their fair and balanced electronic media cousins, 19th Century Fox. (Laughter.) Apologies to Gore Vidal. (Applause.)
Two weeks ago, the United Way canceled Susan's appearance at a conference on women's leadership. And both of us last week were told that both we and the First Amendment were not welcome at the Baseball Hall of Fame.
A famous middle-aged rock-and-roller called me last week to thank me for speaking out against the war, only to go on to tell me that he could not speak himself because he fears repercussions from Clear Channel. "They promote our concert appearances," he said. "They own most of the stations that play our music. I can't come out against this war." Let me repeat John Button's opening quote: Ultimately, as the authors of Dark Victory point out, "the key to the government's success was the collaboration of the Opposition". The feeble collaboration and then collapse of Opposition parties is what gave Hitler his final victory. The collaboration of the Labor Party under Kim Beazley offered the incompetent and reprehensible Howard government an undeserved return to power and the consolidation of their policies of ruination. Labor under Simon Crean is even more divided and in danger of collapse. If they remain as they are or sink even deeper, the Howard government will remain in power for a very long time indeed. Long enough to make Australia unrecognisable even to Howard's supporters. Top |
