Deja Vu

About 56 years ago, four students at Kent State University were shot dead by the Ohio National guard.

I remember it well, as I was at the time a rifleman in 7 RAR and we were patrolling on operation Concrete. The news filtered through to us when we got back to Nui Dat at the end of the operation. The students were protesting the invasion of Cambodia, an event that was happening only 100 Kms to the North West of our location. 

Neil Young released "Ohio" shortly after the massacre, and despite the fact that Nixon was re-elected in 1972, the impact of this song, together with publicity about the My Lai Massacre  (which was in news at about the same time) began to have a profound effect on public opinion against the war.

Bruce Springsteen has released Streets of Minneapolis which is already having an impact given the extent of its shares on social media.

There has been, and always will be, a visceral reaction across the Pacific  to US citizens being shot by uniformed people in their own country.

This incident may represent a turning point in US public opinion.

It's certainly deja vu. 

(The words mean "already seen").

 

Advice for the Troops

 

When I was on the way to Vietnam on the HMAS Sydney in February 1970, we were given a pamphlet outlining how we were expected to behave as soldiers in our interactions with Vietnamese civilians.

We had very little contact with civvies, except on leave in Vung Tau, so it wasn't all that useful, but coming across this little piece of history online the other day, reminded me that the military did make an effort to provide some factual information for its soldiers.

In the fact sheet above, issued to American GIs in World War Two, the military explained the phenomenon of fascism, the ideology that these same GIs were fighting.

Taking some of that advice, and applying it to the current situation under the Trump administration, is a revelatory exercise. 

The Fact Sheet #64 was entitled "Can We Spot It?"

The second paragraph begins with - 

Any fascist attempt to gain power in America would not use the exact Hitler pattern. It would work under the guise of "super-patriotism" and "super-Americanism". 

Trump's slogan is "Make America Great Again". 

It goes on to list three fascist aims -

1. Pitting of religious, racial and economic groups in order to break down national unity - In the United States native fascists have often been anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Negro, anti-Labor, anti foreign-born"

That is a pretty accurate summary of what is happening in the USA now, where members of minority groups are being taken off the streets into detention. It has an application in this country as well, when you look at the hate that is daily posted on social media, usually referring to Indigenous Australians, Muslim Australians, and Asian Australians. It's the bread and butter of One Nation.

2. Fascists cannot tolerate such religious and ethical concepts as "the brotherhood of man". Fascists deny the need for international cooperation. 

This has a very familiar ring when Trump's railing against globalism is considered.

3. It is accurate to call a member of a communist a "communist" - Indiscriminate pinning of the label "Red" on people and proposals which one opposes is a common political device. It iis a favourite trick of native as well as foreign fascists.

This labelling is used with boring frequency. It has the advantage for the neo-fascists in this country and abroad in that it removes any possibility of debate. The label is enough. It is particularly popular on social media, as it operates as a type of shorthand which suits those who are too lazy or ignorant to describe what they actually object to. 

My father fought fascists in World War Two, a war in which forty thousand Australians died.

The ignoramuses who post about the communist menace have short memories, or no understanding of history.

History Rhyming

Pic courtesy holocaust encyclopedia.

If you have any interest in history at all, it's not difficult to detect a pattern emerging aligning the current Trump administration with Weimar Germany and from there the rise of Nazi Germany.

The Nazis needed scapegoats. They had the Jews. Now it's completely obvious that undocumented (or documented) immigrants are the scapegoats. They are building internment camps, (called concentration camps until that term went out of fashion).

You could have assumed the US military command would save the day because they would refuse Trump's illegal orders. They didn't. The motorboat strikes were the litmus test. US military command is getting frog-boiled.

Senator Mark Kelly and Representative Elissa Slotkin saw this coming a mile away. Kelly has been threatened with demotion and loss of his military pension.

Slotkin has received bomb threats at her home, and numerous death threats. The Nazis used intimidation to silence their critics although they were slightly less sophisticated. Remember Trump labelled her actions as "seditious behaviour punishable by death."

The ICE crackdown, is getting incrementally more violent by the week culminating in the shooting of a protestor in Minnesota. Remember Hitler's Brownshirts. Intimidation worked well for them.

That's the domestic stuff. Now for foreign policy.

Hitler first annexed Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland (1938) and Bohemia and Moravia in 1939 on the basis that the populations were German speaking.

Trump has kidnapped Maduro and threatened Greenland, Cuba and Columbia. There have been reasons given which talk about the security of the USA. Hitler talked about Lebensraum.

Without drawing too long a bow, you could say that under Trump, the USA has been Weimar Germany for awhile. The Germans, however had an excuse to feel aggrieved post Versailles, but Americans aren't dealing with hyperinflation.

Pic courtesy Wikipaedia

Perhaps the MAGA cult, spread by oligarchs like Musk, has been a major influence.

Is Greenland is the new Poland?

Wasn't it JD Vance who said Trump is America's Hitler?

We live in interesting times....

A Royal Commission?

Pic courtesy CPA

We're hearing, gentle reader, a clamour for a Royal Commission after the Bondi tragedy.

I have written that this clamour can be classified under the heading of "cashing in" on that tragedy, but beyond that, perhaps the notion has some merit. 

Let's put aside the politics and the ghoulish behaviour of most of the media, (especially social media) and consider terms of reference for a Royal Commission.

The generality of the call is all we're hearing at the moment, not the specificity* of its terms of reference.

Here are my humble suggestions of what those terms of reference should be -

1. Was there a connection between the events of October 7th 2023 on the Gaza/Israel border, the IDF's response since, and an increase in anti-semitic rhetoric and behaviour in Australia?

2. Was there a connection between the activities of Islamic State Franchises in the Philippines and Australia and the radicalisation of the shooters at Bondi?

3. Was the granting of a firearms licence to Sajid Akram an oversight on the part of the NSW firearms registry?

4. Are the various state firearm's registries competent to ensure that militants don't gain access to weapons, and are they sufficiently resourced to ensure this?

5. Are the National Intelligence Community (NIC) agencies competent to cooperate and share information that will prevent a recurrence of this atrocity?

If this is to be a good faith enquiry to prevent another attack like Bondi, these are the factors that need to be examined. The brief of the commission needs to be narrow and specific to prevent it weaponizing the politics of the situation.

A simpler brief will also allow the findings to be expedited. A Royal Commission needs to heal divisions, rather than exploit them, to unify rather than to blame, and to provide a strategy to prevent this obscenity from happening again.

Any outcome that doesn't ensure the last one is futile. 

*With apologies to Kevin Rudd.