As the great Australian poet Les Murray wrote, in his magnificent The Suspension of Knock, there is no end of cant and hypocrisy in the elite debate (if one-way fog-horning can be called “debate”) about Australian identity. “Our experience and presence, unlike theirs, are fictive ideological constructions.”
The “we” in Murray’s poem are, of course, ordinary Australians (especially white Anglo-Saxons) unencumbered by the burden of “intellectualism”; “they” are the elites and their favoured victim groups. The hand-wringing elite may not know what Australian identity is, but they know there’s no place in it for us.
“When we are made fully nothing by our own, at home and abroad, where will we hold Australia?”
Stan Grant, journalist and professional “Indigenous Australian” (the rest of us are, as Murray says, “not indigenous, merely born here”) is never backward about jumping on an identity politics bandwagon.
Even if it means pretending to rise above “identity”, while at the same time peddling arguments rooted in racist identity politics.
Who are we? What does it mean to be Australian?
It’s that time of year again when, amid the barbecues, beaches, citizenship ceremonies and protests, we turn our minds to questions of national identity. But can we define national identity at all? Should we even try?
As Louis Armstrong said, if you’ve got ask, you’ll never know. It’s conspicuous that while this whole, fatuous “national identity” debate furrows the brows of the “intelligentsia”, ordinary Aussies, of every colour and creed, from recent immigrants to those whose ancestors’ bones are mingled with the dust of this land (and thus, by Noel Pearson’s admission, indigenous), just get out there and joyfully embrace being Australian. They don’t have to ask, because they know.
But, back to Stan Grant’s hand-wringing. According to Stan, national identity is a very bad thing.
Let me flirt with heresy: We don’t need national identity. In fact, history teaches us to be wary of national identity […]
National identity is what Xi Jinping in China cultivates with his narrative of national humiliation and mandated teaching of Xi Jinping thought in schools. National identity is part of the reason Vladimir Putin has 100,000 troops on the Ukraine border, poised to invade.
National identity inspires Narendra Modi‘s Hindu nationalism and persecution of Muslims. Political strongmen like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro all exploit national identity.
National identity is too often the refuge of scoundrels and populists feeding on fear and anxiety.
Stan’s list of “bad identitarians” is notable by whom it omits: no mention of the violent identitarianism of Critical Race Theory. No mention of the Aboriginal identitarians who torched the Museum of Australian Democracy.
Politicians, Grant whines, exploit identity.
And then immediately proceeds to exploit identity to his own ends.
Indigenous recognition is one challenge to our national image, the republic is another. Australians have already rejected that at a referendum, now they are being asked to consider yet another model.
We will never get unanimous support for recognition or the republic. In any case, national identity cannot be legislated. National identity isn’t defined in a constitution.
But, apparently, racial identity and separatism can be.
Because try and talk their way around it as they will, this is the root of the “Recognition” and “Voice” proponents’ arguments: racial identity. “Indigenous”/non-“Indigenous”. Them and us — with Them forever enjoying a magical “connection” to this land that none of Us apparently ever will, no matter that we and generations of our ancestors were born, fought for, loved and died in this land. No matter how many of our ancestors’ bones turn to dust and become part of the soil of this land, we can never fully belong — solely because of our identity.
The very identity the Stan Grants sneer at, even as they cling to theirs and hoist it high on the flagpole of eternal grievance.
Where will we hold Australia, we who have no other country?
