Douglas Murray writes the finest essay of the Voice campaign

Australia has the choice of conceding it is wicked and that all failures of the Aboriginal peoples in the past and present are directly due to the “settlers”. Or it can concede that one of the least racist countries in the world should at some point give itself a break. The English did nothing wrong. Neither did any of you.

That’s the conclusion. Now read how he got there. We are all being conned in sinister increments.
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36 Responses to Douglas Murray writes the finest essay of the Voice campaign

  1. C.L. says:

    History is always being re-evaluated. Countries constantly evolve. But rarely has a country had a change as abrupt and comprehensive as Australia in one generation. America has suffered some of it. Canada a great deal of it. But among all the countries I know, Australia seems to have gone most all-in on a re-estimation of itself. And before I get to the results, let me point to the origin.

    It is very simple, really. It is that thing which John Howard caused such controversy by touching on recently when he said “the luckiest thing that happened to this country was being colonised by the British”.

    On balance, do you think that it was a good thing that the country you are in was founded or not?

    In the case of Australia, do you think it was on balance a good thing that the English arrived? In the case of America, would you, on balance, rather that Christopher Columbus had not set sail? Or should he – having discovered America – have returned home and pretended that there was nothing worth seeing out there?

    Until very recently the answer that most Australians, like Americans, would have given to such questions would have been, “Obviously, I’m glad that the country was discovered. And the Europeans were among the better people to discover the land.”

    Would the history of Australia have been better or worse if the Chinese had colonised it first? Or if the Persians had sent their prisoners to these shores? Would it have been better for America if Columbus had been a Mongol or a Hutu? We will never know because the experiment is impossible to run. But it is suggestive. And it allows us to add some context. Because when it comes to the case of Australia, as with America and Canada, it is context that is being most lost. And that context is everything.

    Of course there is plenty of emphasis on the sufferings of Aboriginal Australians. Not all of which is inflicted by others. But I often marvel at how much non-Aboriginal Australians have been expected to put up with in recent years. Not least the endless guilt-tripping and the apologies without end. The Sea of Hands displays in which hundreds of thousands of Australian citizens sponsored and signed plastic hands in Aboriginal colours to sit on the lawn outside buildings such as Parliament House in Canberra. The creation of a National Sorry Day back in 1998 and the signing of “Sorry Books”. This all happened in the last century. Nevertheless, the apologies never stop coming.

    It is now 15 years since Kevin Rudd as prime minister made his apology to the Indigenous peoples of Australia. Has any of the guilt been alleviated since then? Have the “sorrys” washed away any blame? It seems not. But then, how could they? After all, something that the Australian debate seems to have almost completely ignored is something I have tried to bring out a number of times. And it is this.

    As a number of the most serious and profound ethicists of the last century have agreed, an apology can work only when it comes from someone who has done a wrong and is accepted by someone who has been wronged. If it comes from someone who has themselves done no wrong and goes to someone who has not actually been wronged, then the deal is a fraud. If such an apology is offered and accepted it is a fraud on both sides. Someone who has done no wrong is pretending to be speaking for the dead. And people who have suffered no direct wrong are pretending to be able to accept an apology on behalf of people they did not know.

    This may seem a longwinded way to get to the core of more recent events. But it is important. Australia feels like it is stuck in an apology loop because it is. And the reason that it doesn’t seem to be getting the country anywhere is because it never could – however many cycles of this you want to go around for.

    One thing that it does do is subdue the majority of Australians. As I have found when travelling the country, the typical Australian no longer seems to me to be that striding, sensible, happy-go-lucky figure of old. They seem – in my experience – to be guilt-ridden people, forever caveating their thoughts and self-conscious to an often excruciating degree.

    Why? Because if you browbeat any group of people for long enough you will get that result. A cringing, creeping-through life person, who subdues their thoughts and distrusts their own speech and actions.

    Which brings me back to that original question. Are you happy with the country as it is, or not?

    That is the question underneath the debate on the Indigenous voice to parliament. A lot of what is being proposed sounds reasonable. But even before considering the content, just consider the tone in which these proposals are being put before the Australian people.

    Thanks to an FOI we can now all read a collection of documents that informed the proposal for the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Allow me to quote:

    “The invasion that started at Botany Bay is the origin of the fundamental grievance between the old and new Australians … this is the time of the Frontier Wars when massacres, disease and poison decimated First Nations even as they fought a guerrilla war of resistance. The Tasmanian Genocide and the Black War waged by the colonists reveals the truth about this evil time.

    “The taking of our land without consent represents our fundamental grievance against the British Crown … By making agreements at the highest level, the negotiation process with the Australian government allows First Nations to express our ­sovereignty.”

    That does not sound to me like the words of a group seeking dialogue or common ground. It is entirely based on the language of blame, victimhood and grievance. A language not of equality but of superiority. It refers to the British as “colonisers”, “invaders, murderers and rapists” who to this day are living “in a country that is not their own”.

    Any self-respecting person with some knowledge of history might make a few assertions of their own after reading that. They might ask whether life was so great for the settlers who arrived in those days. Plenty of them died of diseases that our species was ignorant about at the time. Besides, the Indigenous peoples were hardly a pacifist group, whatever the propagandistic history of those times now pretends.

    Besides, who says whose land it is? If the Aboriginals were conquered or subjugated, then they can join the club of almost every group in human history. The whole of history is the story of peoples rolling into other peoples’ neighbourhoods, and either succeeding or failing to conquer them. It happens to be the story of Aboriginal culture as well, where Aboriginal groups subjugated, subdued and slaughtered each other. I know that it is now de ­rigueur to refer to the origins of the Aboriginal communities as Dreamtime. But there was nothing Dreamlike about Aboriginal societies. They were violent, poverty-stricken and woefully unadvanced even for their time.

    Anyone who likes to romanticise that time today needs their head examined. You would have hated to have lived in those times, and nobody should kid themselves otherwise.

    Australia’s Aborigines were not even yet pre-Medieval when the English arrived. They came face to face with the relative modernity of their time and modernity won. That may be an unpleasant fact to accept, but it is a fact. If the situations had been reversed then the outcomes would have been reversed. But they weren’t.

    Yet consider how completely the facts I have just stated have been made unsayable and effectively covered over. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese may have tried to keep this whole debate as unheated as possible. But even he has been happy to say – as he did at Marrickville Town Hall in October last year – that Australian ­history since 1788 had been a “brutal” history.

    Perhaps he could soon tell us which group’s history has not been brutal in the past two-and-a- half centuries? Any contenders? Any at all? The Maori, perhaps? That wouldn’t be a good choice. In the 1800s the Maori were busy with their own intertribal “Musket wars” in which they traded with foreign markets – including the Chinese – for muskets with which they then attacked other Maori tribes. As Nigel Biggar has pointed out in his recent book weighing up the ethics of colonialism, “By the early 1830s the Maori were trading ‘the smoked heads of slain enemies’ for muskets, with some slaves being killed specifically to supply the heads for this grisly market.” Does anyone want to demand humility and apology from the Maori? If not, why not? Why must all historical apology and self-flagellation be in one ­direction alone?

    It’s not a facile question. It gets to the root of what Australia is going to keep being put through if it continues down this path.

    Bruce Pascoe – who Albanese so admires – is just one of those people who has helped feed the historical fantasy that is now rampant. What this always requires is a talking up of the horrors of the “colonisers” and at the same time a talking up of the achievements of the Indigenous population. That is how Pascoe got to his Dark Emu theory in which he claims that Aboriginal Australia was the first democracy in the world and existed for 80,000 years as a peaceful and blessed haven.

    There are many people who would like to believe this – and not only many Aboriginal Australians. But once you concede nonsense, fantasy history like this you will find it very hard indeed to get your footing back.

    The Prime Minister assures people that the upcoming vote is not about treaty. But you just watch. If the vote goes to the Yes camp, treaty will come next, with all its follow-on demands. After all, since Albanese has said no fewer than 34 times that his government is committed to the Uluru Statement “in full”, he ought to know that the mantra of the gathering that produced that statement was “Voice, Treaty, Truth”. So it looks like treaty will be on the table soon.

    And why wouldn’t it be, when the point of view that Howard made recently seems so completely on the run?

    The Yes campaign has already been incredibly successful in intimidating any and all opponents. It has been adept at claiming everything it doesn’t like (such as Nine’s July anti-voice ad) is “racist”. Of course. Because everything in its view is racist. Including the founding of Australia. And if the founding of a country is “racist” then everything in it is “racist”.

    I see decent commentators trying to make their partial or full “don’t hurt me” statements. One recently did the compulsory knee-bend about the way in which, compared with the Aboriginal people, “we’ve all just stepped off the boat”. Well, just see how far that gets you. And wonder where else such kowtowing would be encouraged. Would you like to scour England and tell all the people who’ve stepped off the boat more recently than the Anglo-Saxons that they have some apologising to do? I’d like to see someone try.

    Would you like to try this exercise in any of the kingdoms ransacked by the Mongols, or the Russians? As my late friend Clive James used to say, with great wisdom, in the end “we are here because history happened”.

    It could have gone any number of other ways. But it didn’t. A wise person – and a wise nation – accepts that and gets on with things.

    After all, Australia’s situation is not unique. It is a situation that every nation in the world knows about to some generally greater degree. It is the story of humanity, in all its darkness and light.

    Australia has the choice of conceding that it is wicked and that all failures of the Aboriginal peoples in the past and present are directly due to the “settlers”. Or it can concede that one of the least racist countries in the world should at some point give itself a break. The English did nothing wrong. Neither did any of you.

  2. NFA says:

    Thank you C.L.

  3. Peter Sawyer says:

    The entirely fake “referendum” known as ‘The Voice’ has absolutely nothing to do with giving anything to Aboriginals. It is designed to transfer the power to change the Constitution from the people to the Executive Government.

    The Executive Government is NOT the parliament, or even the party holding the majority of seats in the parliament. It is the PM and the Cabinet Ministers. And as we saw in 2021 the GG is quite happy to assign all those Cabinet positions and powers to one man. In other words, create a dictatorship.

    There is nothing new in this. In fact we are meticulously following a script first written in Germany in 1833.

  4. Peter Sawyer says:

    Sorry, typo – should be 1933

  5. Mantaray says:

    Peter Sawyer ( and many others)… Much as I enjoy ooga booga from time to time, ya really gotta draw the correct analogies. Whatever happened to Godwin’s Law that the first one to pull Nazis into the argument loses that argument?

    First step is to understand that Germany 1933 and beyond was about the huge majority of Germans (the “Aryans”) crushing a small minority claimed responsible for Germany’s ills…whereas the Voice is much more akin to Apartheid in Sth Africa where as smallish minority there oppressed everyone else, as the tiny few desire to do likewise here. the rest. Please no more BS comparisons with the wrong examples!

    Then there’s the question of 99% of the loudmouths claiming to be Aborigines…NOT being Aborigines: having no “skin”-names…and therefore not being part of ANY genuine Aboriginal group at all. Not being Aboriginal Aryans at all!

    DNA-testing will not solve this problem. Just as a DNA test linking, say, Gomer Pyle (google this) to Julius Caeser will not make Gomer a “Roman” Emperor. Not even a plain old Roman, but simply a guy who has some Roman DNA. On the other hand, if Pyle speaks fluent Latin…observes the Roman festivals and honours the Roman Gods etc whilst carrying a Roman name (Gomerus Pylus?) then maybe there’d be a teeny-tiny chance he is/was on the level.

    So let’s get down to the nitty gritty. Communist F’wits such as Albanese, Bowen, Wong etc are using a whole bunch of other Commie F’wits (most of the 250 who drafted the Aboriginal Mein Kampf at Uluru) to all enrich themselves…whilst trashing everyone else.

    Vote No to this? Hmmmm?

    BTW: Any leftists who may be lurking could explain where they reckon the $35 Billion pa dedicated funding for “Aborigines” ended up?

  6. Tel says:

    In this country we love immigrants … but we hate colonization.

    It goes without saying that all of my ancestors were immigrants and not the evil colonists … that puts me in the clear.

  7. Christine says:

    The glaring omission:
    A discussion on where all the funding went.
    No one in the Yes camp would dare say .

    Hundreds of thousands may not see all this as Albanese’s push for more power over us, but they’ll vote NO because the ‘goodwill’, that Burney airily spoke of, is trickling away. To my mind.

  8. Mantaray says:

    Christine. Plus…always bear in mind that the $35 Billion or so per year is only the dedicated outlay….

    Example: let’s say the Alice Springs based Aboriginal Health Service (“Congress”) gets $1 Billion a year to cover it’s activities in Central Australia That is part of the $35 Billion overall.

    Meanwhile Alice Springs Hospital in Gap Rd gets $3 billion per year to cover everything under the sun…of which $2 billion is also spent on Aboriginal patients. This $2 Billion is not part of teh $35 Billion…is additional!

    It’s hard to get a handle on it, but I reckon “Aborigines” ( and parts thereof) get well over $100 Billion per annum!

  9. Demarco says:

    The simplest truth about the Rudd apology is the most useful: no-one — no-one — of those people being offered apology ever accepted it. Their response, if any, was to sneer.
    That means it was a fraud, as Murray says.

  10. C.L. says:

    It was a fraud well before its rejection.
    There was nothing to say sorry for and no “generation” was ever “stolen.”

  11. Rockdoctor says:

    This $2 Billion is not part of teh $35 Billion…is additional!

    I’m not shocked. We have in NQ a mob TAIHS who is supposed to supply heath services for ATSI people. They have long been subject to rumours of money disappearing into reportedly a couple of big clans pockets. Beattie looked at investigating it but backed off when the howls of racism started, future ALP governments haven’t gone anywhere near it and it is still a basket case.

    Anyway they got $25mil from the Government in 2020 which according to their financial report is 83% of their income.

    Nice gravy train if you are on it.

  12. Franx says:

    It’s only a thought, about there being an attempt to set up a newly-formed and self-aware ‘sovereign’ group as the enablers to oversee the globalist program of control, one which at first invites and then enforces participating in pagan rituals because these are rooted in ancient wisdoms and modern science covenanting worshipful harmony with the environment no less than with those who distil victory gin.

  13. and says:

    This morning: Channel 7 direct telecast.
    The Matildos bandwagon out of control, wheels wobbling.
    Political opportunists queueing up to exploit the fanaticism.
    Wall to wall unadulterated fawning and drooling.
    Go Anna promised moolah and… a statue.

  14. and says:

    Apologies. Post was meant for another thread.

  15. and says:

    Excellent piece by Murray. The Voice fraudsters are attempting a “blakwashing” of history.

  16. Dunny Brush says:

    I happened to be in Aurukun for Rudd’s self-indulgent apology. Happy to report it was completely ignored by the locals who went about their business and viewed the whole thing as stupid whitefalla business.

  17. and says:

    From a commenter on another blog:

    If the Voice gets up, many indigenous tribes will join to form one big tribe to be called the Gimme Gimme tribe.

  18. C.L. says:

    The commenter is slightly mistaken.
    White leftists are the big Gimme Gimme tribe.

  19. and says:

    Comrades, Ratsco Da Garma has resuscitated “It’s Time” for the Voice™. Interesting photo… is that Snake Chalmers going for a big draw on the smoke?

    ‘It’s time’: Labor rallies supporters with call to arms for Voice campaign

    https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/its-time-labor-rallies-supporters-with-call-to-arms-for-voice-campaign/7m7lwkxu6

  20. Christine says:

    Don’t tell me the others are enthralled by the native stomp and the magical smoke any more than Snake Chalmers is.
    It’sTime to go backwards.

  21. Lee says:

    Bruce Pascoe – who Albanese so admires – is just one of those people who has helped feed the historical fantasy that is now rampant.

    Two peas in a pod, both left wing frauds well above their pay grades.

  22. Charles says:

    There was nothing to say sorry for and no “generation” was ever “stolen.”

    + 100 CL

  23. Mantaray says:

    Did someone already link to Andrew Bolt taking Lidia Thorpe’s mad version of history (herstory?) down. If not here it is, maybe again….https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/andrew-bolt/bolt-exposes-historical-massacre-of-aboriginals-allegedly-committed-by-lidia-thorpes-tribe/video/d863b1d733399e1f728fe28021148127.

    FFS. Facts are that had the Pommies not arrived to civilize the savages who were eking out a meagre existence in what was soon to be NSW,. they’d probably have wiped themselves out completely by now!

    This is why the 300 marines armed with tediously slow-to-reload muskets…three-quarters starved, and trying to handle and feed a thousand convicts while simultaneously building a town, were able to conquer the tens of thousands of warriors living near Sydney Cove. The warriors wanted Law and Order, and they soon got it.

    These modern-day grifters with their Maltese and Italian ancestors,…now claiming they were actually Maltese and Italian Aborigines know full-well how welcome Captain Phillip and the Marines were. Otherwise how did the Pommies get the upper hand so easily…and so quickly?

    BTW: If these fraudulent wannabe Indigenous-royalty don’t like it, why don’t they Go Back To Where They Came From? Sicily’s nice this time of year. Calabria too!

  24. Buccaneer says:

    Why does no one ask the professional grievance industry grifters their opinion on immigration?

  25. Boccherini says:

    Is there forgiveness in aboriginal culture?
    Or is there just blame and retribution?

  26. Daisy says:

    Is there forgiveness in aboriginal culture?
    Or is there just blame and retribution?

    Such a good question but I think we know the answer.

  27. Lee says:

    Is there forgiveness in aboriginal culture?
    Or is there just blame and retribution?

    I tend to think the latter.

    In any case, I ask for no forgiveness, because I have done no wrong to them.

  28. Megan says:

    Douglas Murray gives me hope as a shining light in the darkness of the shitstorm we have been tossed into. Brilliant mind and clear, coherent writer.

  29. jupes says:

    Brilliant mind and clear, coherent writer.

    Brilliant debater too.

  30. Franx says:

    DM can be insightful on many issues, yet in matters to do with war and – specifically – UK foreign policy, he tends to avoid critical analyses while preferring the jingoisms of the establishment elites and their many, many valorised splinter groups.

  31. Buccaneer says:

    I think this article neatly supports idea here that there is a deliberate washing of history to support a narrative. This time the washing is to gloss over the inconvenient Ottoman history of imperialism.

  32. Brian Buckley CLARE says:

    The new Australian Patriots party (patriotsofoz@gmail.com) says VOTE NO to this rigged socialist Labor/marxist communist Greenslimereferenda on he stupid useless Voice , where if passed will gives the Indigenous swathes of loot from we decendents of the original British which as you know will be just wasted.
    What needs to be done is re-introduce a new National Service compulsory scheme to be called the NATIONAL GUARD for daily service for all not in paid employment including the Indigenous with part exemption for those studying , Uni , Trades, etc. All that is needed is to convert /upgrade all Indiggcamps 2 towns with elected councils with Indig Police for Law/order to stop many unwanted rapes & excess drunks, +schooling mandatory, and taught respect for their /others property. vive l’e australie

  33. Tel says:

    Otherwise how did the Pommies get the upper hand so easily…and so quickly?

    I’m not the first to say this, but the answer is Guns, Germs and Steel.

    The musket might be slow to reload but it has better range and accuracy by far than a spear, therefore the people with spears won’t even get close enough to throw anything. Possibly, sme of the early troopers might have had rifles which are better still. Not sure which year the first rifles were in Australia … someone will know.

    In terms of close range fighting, and even moderately skilled group of light horseman with Sheffield steel cavalry sabres can easily dispatch 10x their number when facing off against footmen with no armour and only wooden clubs. Technology really does change the battlefield.

    Lastly, smallpox did a lot of killing … at least in Eastern NSW. The natives had no natural defense and no idea what was even happening.

  34. Buccaneer says:

    A small number of breech loading rifles were used in the American Civil War, it was mostly muskets though and it’s super unlikely they would have made it to a backwater penal colony til much later.

    Most rifles were smoothbore until the 1900s. After breech loading the next main improvement was the needle gun used by the prussians after 1840.

  35. Tel says:

    Buccaneer, the British Army started work on muzzle loading black powder rifles around 1800 with firstly the Baker Rifle (flintlock) then followed by the Brunswick Rifle (percussion). These were specialist weapons, difficult to properly use but they did see real action, so presumably better accuracy than the smoothbore gave them tangible advantages in certain situations. They kept tinkering with the design and it was never really good enough to be standard issue … eventually abandoned.

    I found a picture of the astounding belted ball used by the Brunswick.

    https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=2003-07-99-1

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