Faux bravery
Once upon a time, there was the Protestant Ascendancy. They were-to use Judith Brett’s phrase-the moral middle class of their time. The middle class folk of quality and proper opinions. The education system (particularly the elite private schools and the state system), public broadcasting, “quality” newspapers, the general tenor of public debate, reflected their concerns. (Tabloids, on the other hand, were the strongholds of trashy vulgarity.) They dominated the professions and business, so those were fine, respectable institutions (and tended to support private enterprise a la Deakin rather than free enterprise a la Reid). An Anglophile Protestantism was the basis of their outlook-exemplified by Labor PM Andrew Fisher announcing that Australian would defend Britain and the Empire to the last man and the last shilling. They often argued about things, but from within an identifiable range of opinion based on that Anglophile Protestantism.
The Catholics were a bit of a worry. The working class-raucous and vulgar-were a definite worry. As were the radical left. But the Protestant Ascendancy was definitely Ascendant. Confident in its own propriety and sense of status.
Over time, differences amongst believers stopped being a major fault line in Australian society. A Liberal government introduced state aid for (Catholic) schools, for example. And the proper folk of quality, the moral middle class, shifted from identifying with the past and present of their society-what they and their ancestors had built-to identifying with the much better future they will build (and so against past and present of their society). The ideological markers changed.
But the underlying patterns haven’t. Now we have the Progressivist Ascendancy. The middle class folk of quality and proper opinions. The education system (particularly the elite private schools and the state system), public broadcasting, “quality” newspapers, the general tenor of public debate, reflect their concerns. (Tabloids, on the other hand-whether tabloid newspapers or tabloid radio-are the strongholds of trashy vulgarity.) They dominate government bodies and NGOs, so those are fine, respectable institutions. Their ideology has evolved but it has become a mixture of welfarism, environmentalism, secularism and that amalgam of evangelical niceness and opinion bigotry often labelled political correctness. The UN and related bodies (things with, of course, wonderful futures if just given a chance) provide the same external focus of moral uplift that the Empire (whose glorious past and present were so celebrated in the texts of that time) did for their predecessors.
The conservatives and “neo-liberals” are a bit of a worry. The working class-raucous and vulgar (racist, xenophobic, homophobic, patriotic, car-loving, fillers of dreadful urban sprawl with their desires for houses with gardens: the list of their vulgarities seems endless)-are a definite worry. As are evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics. But the Progressivist Ascendancy is definitely Ascendant. Confident in its own propriety and sense of status.
Well, apparently not so confident. Because it seems that having the ALP in power in all six States and both Territories is not enough. For a Progressivist Ascendancy authority of proper thought is-ever so bravely-going to explain how the evil Howard Government has undermined public debate and intimidated dissent.
Isn’t it ever so brave of him to put that into print?
It is a very fashionable sort of “bravery”, a very fashionable form of “defiance”. Bookstores are never empty of the books of “silenced”, “suppressed”, yet bravely unintimidated, progressivists: The War on Democracy, by Niall Lucy and Steve Mickler; Silencing Dissent: how the Australian Government is Controlling Public Opinion and Stifling Debate, edited by Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison; Scorcher: the Dirty Politics of Climate Change, by Clive Hamilton; and National Insecurity: the Howard Government's Betrayal of Australia, by Linda Weiss, Elizabeth Thurbon and John Mathews.
Most, perhaps all, of the above authors, would say that they are “the Left”. But to call these comfortable scions and enjoyers of privilege, working and living in milieus where it would be a risk not to endorse the progressivist pieties, the Left, thereby invoking those who genuinely risked life, limb and freedom, those who actually genuinely interacted with the underprivileged instead of pontificating about (and often sneering at) them from a comfortable distance, those who challenged authority rather being outraged when people don’t accept their authority, is so pathetic as to be grotesque.
The progressivists inhabit an empire of the mind, the empire of the imagined future. An empire where nothing can sully or match the purity of their intentions. Nothing in the past is theirs, so they are not responsible for any of it. Only a focus on what is negative about past and present establishes one’s moral and intellectual seriousness (even if you have to make things up). But those who are attached to their society must atone for all its past and present ills-because that is how and why one builds a better future. A future the building of which is the Progressivist Ascendancy’s great task. So our society’s past and present successes have no moral force-because that would undermine the urgency of the Ascendancy’s project, the future. To be a conservative is therefore, ipso facto, to be morally and intellectually delinquent. And the most outrageous thing imaginable is to have a different project of the future, as those evil “neo-liberals” and “neo-cons” do. For the future, the realm of good intentions, of social improvement, is the Progressivist Ascendancy’s, and only the Ascendancy’s.
Just as good intentions are the Ascendancy’s and only the Ascendancy’s.
There is a slight problem with this confidence in the glorious future they will build, the wonderful gifts of social justice they will hand out. It keeps being a case of the glorious future behind us. The socialist cause has collapsed. Economic reform went in the “wrong” direction. Building an ever-larger welfare state has lapsed into minor adjustments. The West did win the Cold War. The workers have proved an embarrassment. Indigenous affairs, a disaster. As Michael Duffy has noted, their moral mascots seems to have reduced down to David Hicks, to a Jew-hater who went overseas to kill people. (When are violent racists martyrs? When they’re being detained by the Americans apparently.)
But there is always the environment, especially global warming. The proof that the evil past and present will doom us all. Only those who are gifted with building the future can save us! For that is the great thing about empires of the mind-their ease of motion from one cause to the next, with nary a backward glance.
Especially without learning anything. What makes me most suspicious about the global warming hysteria is not merely that it is clearly the Great New Cause pushed by folk who have had their previous Great Cause(s) die under them, but that it shows all the same patterns as before. The notion that all the key issues are settled. That only cranks, fools and the malignant dare disagree. That dissent is moral malfeasance. That they alone are possessors of truth and virtue.
And that past and present is a litany of error, failure and evil from which only the Builders of the Future can rescue us. Just like they built the Great Socialist Future, the Great Indigenous Future, the Great Unilateral Disarmament Future: all the Great Futures behind us.
All the Great Futures from which nothing is to be learned.
Critical self-reflection is not a noted feature of the Progressivist Ascendancy. Possibly because it is not congenial to staying Ascendant.
So it is with David Marr’s long whine about Howard’s approach to information. He does, in passing, note that Howard is continuing a trend well-established under Keating. (Given the current Leader of the Opposition is notoriously an abusive control freak, it is unlikely to improve with a change of Government: there I go, casting aspersions on the new Glorious Future.)
The Howard Government is very controlling about information and its sedition laws are mildly illiberal. So it is not as if there is nothing to complain about. But there rarely is.
It is also not as if there is no context. Howard had some very bitter experiences with the Canberra Press Gallery over the years: he has never had many friends there, but lots of enemies. It is less than surprising that he has sought to give himself as much advantage as he can. Marr’s complaint that Howard does not admit mistakes is particularly rich, given the utterly predictable sneering savaging which would result if he did.
But Marr himself is not a supporter of open debate. Far from it. He is a notorious ideological enforcer within the Sydney Morning Herald.
When the Perils of Pauline were upon us (in the dark age before online newspapers), Marr advanced the argument that supporting the same government programs, rules and laws for everyone was egalitarian racism.
And avowed atheist, he campaigned against George Pell’s appointment as Archbishop of Sydney. (Of course an institution where men make all the decisions promoting an erotophobic outlook is going to be misogynist and homophobic, that follows. But a Catholic Archbishop is supposed to uphold Catholic doctrine.)
Marr has been known to fall into the consulting my prejudices is good enough style analysis - labelling two Pakistani Christian pastors as white.
And is publicly in the favour of the notion that conservatism and competence are incompatible: We want an end to politically conservative appointments to classification boards, so the decisions are made by competent people with no axes to grind and with some understanding of Australia as a country of diverse communities.
It is not ideological enforcement he is against-being an avid practitioner thereof-it is anything that smacks of providing any benefit to alternative points of view.
Thus the claim that the ABC has been “intimidated” seems to come down to nothing more than the ABC has had to make some small gestures to reaching outside the Ascendancy for perspectives. It certainly hasn’t stopped it producing yet another miniseries on Oz history which reflects the prejudices of the Progressivist Ascendancy.
But there is a deep consistency in what he and the other brave defiers of silencing and intimidation are about.
If opinions are markers of status-if you are a person of moral and intellectual superiority because you have the correct opinions-then having the public arena “polluted” by adverse opinions is an assault on your identity and sense of self. The essence of bigotry is that for the objects of bigotry to claim equal status is itself an insult. So, for patent inferiors to claim the status of good motivations, of understanding, of genuine moral concern, is an outrageous insult and assault.
And anyone else who claims or implies that what they are doing has moral concerns, shows any degree of wisdom, knowledge or understanding is-ipso facto-denying such to the members of the Progressivist Ascendancy, for such matters are monopoly items based on opinion. If one group has them, any other clearly can’t. For opinions can only be markers of status if denial of such opinions deprives one of status.
Which leads one to all sorts of interesting places. Such as a polemical concept of agency, particularly obvious in outpourings on matters indigenous. So the progressivist orthodoxy is that indigenous problems are overwhelmingly the result of the racism of the surrounding society and have nothing to do with cultural distance. That a process of displacement of hunter-gatherers by farmers that has been going on around the globe for 10,000 years is best analysed as based on a ideology less than 200 years old. A Manichean worldview (only racists and their resisters have agency) firmly based on avoidance of responsibility (none of our ideas have had bad consequences).
When the patently not intimidated complain so relentlessly about the “intimidation” of debate, what they are actually complaining about is not winning the debates. But, of course, that is “explained” by all the intimidation and information control. That they might not have a monopoly on truth and virtue is, of course, out of the question. As is that they might not be persuasive because they are pompous, self-righteous and so insultingly and sneeringly uninterested in other people’s concerns. The entire point of the “racism” discourse used with such abandon is, after all, to control debate (in a quite Orwellian, inventing thoughtcrimes way) and to be as insulting as possible to as many of their fellow Australians as possible-“egalitarian racism” indeed. The breast-beating about intimidation and information control being another instance of the pattern of big-noting insult (we are so bravely not intimidated, we so clearly see the truth despite it all, but you …).
The point of being an Ascendancy is to enjoy being so much better than everyone else. (Plus the perks and privileges.)
The pattern of failure has a deep consistency too. For if past and present are litanies of folly, error and evil, then there is nothing positive to be learned from them. Or from those who participate in, or support, the same. Such a crippled epistemology is a natural recipe for serial failure. As it has been.
For that is the thing about a sense of standing and status based on building the future. The future is not real, it is only imagined. And the Ascendancy’s claims to a pervasive moral and intellectual superiority are quite imagined.
The Catholics were a bit of a worry. The working class-raucous and vulgar-were a definite worry. As were the radical left. But the Protestant Ascendancy was definitely Ascendant. Confident in its own propriety and sense of status.
Over time, differences amongst believers stopped being a major fault line in Australian society. A Liberal government introduced state aid for (Catholic) schools, for example. And the proper folk of quality, the moral middle class, shifted from identifying with the past and present of their society-what they and their ancestors had built-to identifying with the much better future they will build (and so against past and present of their society). The ideological markers changed.
But the underlying patterns haven’t. Now we have the Progressivist Ascendancy. The middle class folk of quality and proper opinions. The education system (particularly the elite private schools and the state system), public broadcasting, “quality” newspapers, the general tenor of public debate, reflect their concerns. (Tabloids, on the other hand-whether tabloid newspapers or tabloid radio-are the strongholds of trashy vulgarity.) They dominate government bodies and NGOs, so those are fine, respectable institutions. Their ideology has evolved but it has become a mixture of welfarism, environmentalism, secularism and that amalgam of evangelical niceness and opinion bigotry often labelled political correctness. The UN and related bodies (things with, of course, wonderful futures if just given a chance) provide the same external focus of moral uplift that the Empire (whose glorious past and present were so celebrated in the texts of that time) did for their predecessors.
The conservatives and “neo-liberals” are a bit of a worry. The working class-raucous and vulgar (racist, xenophobic, homophobic, patriotic, car-loving, fillers of dreadful urban sprawl with their desires for houses with gardens: the list of their vulgarities seems endless)-are a definite worry. As are evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics. But the Progressivist Ascendancy is definitely Ascendant. Confident in its own propriety and sense of status.
Well, apparently not so confident. Because it seems that having the ALP in power in all six States and both Territories is not enough. For a Progressivist Ascendancy authority of proper thought is-ever so bravely-going to explain how the evil Howard Government has undermined public debate and intimidated dissent.
Isn’t it ever so brave of him to put that into print?
It is a very fashionable sort of “bravery”, a very fashionable form of “defiance”. Bookstores are never empty of the books of “silenced”, “suppressed”, yet bravely unintimidated, progressivists: The War on Democracy, by Niall Lucy and Steve Mickler; Silencing Dissent: how the Australian Government is Controlling Public Opinion and Stifling Debate, edited by Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison; Scorcher: the Dirty Politics of Climate Change, by Clive Hamilton; and National Insecurity: the Howard Government's Betrayal of Australia, by Linda Weiss, Elizabeth Thurbon and John Mathews.
Most, perhaps all, of the above authors, would say that they are “the Left”. But to call these comfortable scions and enjoyers of privilege, working and living in milieus where it would be a risk not to endorse the progressivist pieties, the Left, thereby invoking those who genuinely risked life, limb and freedom, those who actually genuinely interacted with the underprivileged instead of pontificating about (and often sneering at) them from a comfortable distance, those who challenged authority rather being outraged when people don’t accept their authority, is so pathetic as to be grotesque.
The progressivists inhabit an empire of the mind, the empire of the imagined future. An empire where nothing can sully or match the purity of their intentions. Nothing in the past is theirs, so they are not responsible for any of it. Only a focus on what is negative about past and present establishes one’s moral and intellectual seriousness (even if you have to make things up). But those who are attached to their society must atone for all its past and present ills-because that is how and why one builds a better future. A future the building of which is the Progressivist Ascendancy’s great task. So our society’s past and present successes have no moral force-because that would undermine the urgency of the Ascendancy’s project, the future. To be a conservative is therefore, ipso facto, to be morally and intellectually delinquent. And the most outrageous thing imaginable is to have a different project of the future, as those evil “neo-liberals” and “neo-cons” do. For the future, the realm of good intentions, of social improvement, is the Progressivist Ascendancy’s, and only the Ascendancy’s.
Just as good intentions are the Ascendancy’s and only the Ascendancy’s.
There is a slight problem with this confidence in the glorious future they will build, the wonderful gifts of social justice they will hand out. It keeps being a case of the glorious future behind us. The socialist cause has collapsed. Economic reform went in the “wrong” direction. Building an ever-larger welfare state has lapsed into minor adjustments. The West did win the Cold War. The workers have proved an embarrassment. Indigenous affairs, a disaster. As Michael Duffy has noted, their moral mascots seems to have reduced down to David Hicks, to a Jew-hater who went overseas to kill people. (When are violent racists martyrs? When they’re being detained by the Americans apparently.)
But there is always the environment, especially global warming. The proof that the evil past and present will doom us all. Only those who are gifted with building the future can save us! For that is the great thing about empires of the mind-their ease of motion from one cause to the next, with nary a backward glance.
Especially without learning anything. What makes me most suspicious about the global warming hysteria is not merely that it is clearly the Great New Cause pushed by folk who have had their previous Great Cause(s) die under them, but that it shows all the same patterns as before. The notion that all the key issues are settled. That only cranks, fools and the malignant dare disagree. That dissent is moral malfeasance. That they alone are possessors of truth and virtue.
And that past and present is a litany of error, failure and evil from which only the Builders of the Future can rescue us. Just like they built the Great Socialist Future, the Great Indigenous Future, the Great Unilateral Disarmament Future: all the Great Futures behind us.
All the Great Futures from which nothing is to be learned.
Critical self-reflection is not a noted feature of the Progressivist Ascendancy. Possibly because it is not congenial to staying Ascendant.
So it is with David Marr’s long whine about Howard’s approach to information. He does, in passing, note that Howard is continuing a trend well-established under Keating. (Given the current Leader of the Opposition is notoriously an abusive control freak, it is unlikely to improve with a change of Government: there I go, casting aspersions on the new Glorious Future.)
The Howard Government is very controlling about information and its sedition laws are mildly illiberal. So it is not as if there is nothing to complain about. But there rarely is.
It is also not as if there is no context. Howard had some very bitter experiences with the Canberra Press Gallery over the years: he has never had many friends there, but lots of enemies. It is less than surprising that he has sought to give himself as much advantage as he can. Marr’s complaint that Howard does not admit mistakes is particularly rich, given the utterly predictable sneering savaging which would result if he did.
But Marr himself is not a supporter of open debate. Far from it. He is a notorious ideological enforcer within the Sydney Morning Herald.
When the Perils of Pauline were upon us (in the dark age before online newspapers), Marr advanced the argument that supporting the same government programs, rules and laws for everyone was egalitarian racism.
And avowed atheist, he campaigned against George Pell’s appointment as Archbishop of Sydney. (Of course an institution where men make all the decisions promoting an erotophobic outlook is going to be misogynist and homophobic, that follows. But a Catholic Archbishop is supposed to uphold Catholic doctrine.)
Marr has been known to fall into the consulting my prejudices is good enough style analysis - labelling two Pakistani Christian pastors as white.
And is publicly in the favour of the notion that conservatism and competence are incompatible: We want an end to politically conservative appointments to classification boards, so the decisions are made by competent people with no axes to grind and with some understanding of Australia as a country of diverse communities.
It is not ideological enforcement he is against-being an avid practitioner thereof-it is anything that smacks of providing any benefit to alternative points of view.
Thus the claim that the ABC has been “intimidated” seems to come down to nothing more than the ABC has had to make some small gestures to reaching outside the Ascendancy for perspectives. It certainly hasn’t stopped it producing yet another miniseries on Oz history which reflects the prejudices of the Progressivist Ascendancy.
But there is a deep consistency in what he and the other brave defiers of silencing and intimidation are about.
If opinions are markers of status-if you are a person of moral and intellectual superiority because you have the correct opinions-then having the public arena “polluted” by adverse opinions is an assault on your identity and sense of self. The essence of bigotry is that for the objects of bigotry to claim equal status is itself an insult. So, for patent inferiors to claim the status of good motivations, of understanding, of genuine moral concern, is an outrageous insult and assault.
And anyone else who claims or implies that what they are doing has moral concerns, shows any degree of wisdom, knowledge or understanding is-ipso facto-denying such to the members of the Progressivist Ascendancy, for such matters are monopoly items based on opinion. If one group has them, any other clearly can’t. For opinions can only be markers of status if denial of such opinions deprives one of status.
Which leads one to all sorts of interesting places. Such as a polemical concept of agency, particularly obvious in outpourings on matters indigenous. So the progressivist orthodoxy is that indigenous problems are overwhelmingly the result of the racism of the surrounding society and have nothing to do with cultural distance. That a process of displacement of hunter-gatherers by farmers that has been going on around the globe for 10,000 years is best analysed as based on a ideology less than 200 years old. A Manichean worldview (only racists and their resisters have agency) firmly based on avoidance of responsibility (none of our ideas have had bad consequences).
When the patently not intimidated complain so relentlessly about the “intimidation” of debate, what they are actually complaining about is not winning the debates. But, of course, that is “explained” by all the intimidation and information control. That they might not have a monopoly on truth and virtue is, of course, out of the question. As is that they might not be persuasive because they are pompous, self-righteous and so insultingly and sneeringly uninterested in other people’s concerns. The entire point of the “racism” discourse used with such abandon is, after all, to control debate (in a quite Orwellian, inventing thoughtcrimes way) and to be as insulting as possible to as many of their fellow Australians as possible-“egalitarian racism” indeed. The breast-beating about intimidation and information control being another instance of the pattern of big-noting insult (we are so bravely not intimidated, we so clearly see the truth despite it all, but you …).
The point of being an Ascendancy is to enjoy being so much better than everyone else. (Plus the perks and privileges.)
The pattern of failure has a deep consistency too. For if past and present are litanies of folly, error and evil, then there is nothing positive to be learned from them. Or from those who participate in, or support, the same. Such a crippled epistemology is a natural recipe for serial failure. As it has been.
For that is the thing about a sense of standing and status based on building the future. The future is not real, it is only imagined. And the Ascendancy’s claims to a pervasive moral and intellectual superiority are quite imagined.