Defending our culture:  How?

By David Truman

Cultural issues are the defining ones of our time.  Groupthink is being imposed on all of us, against the will of most of us, by liberal-left elites.  These “unrepresentative swill” (to use a Keatingism) are heavily into cultural relativism and “woke” political correctness.  Right across the Anglosphere, self-appointed elites now control virtually all the opinion-forming fields. 

These include TV, radio and print media; internet search engines (Google censors many sites it considers politically incorrect); and Wikipedia (did you really think it is just about facts and politically neutral?).  Then there’s social media:  Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg really doesn’t like conservatives – have you seen what his AI algorithms are spruiking now as “fact?”  Meta’s new artificial intelligence tool has ranked Gough Whitlam as Australia’s best prime minister, with Julia Gillard, Malcolm Turnbull and Anthony Albanese also making the top five — in a list that ignores the nation’s two longest and conservative leaders Robert Menzies and John Howard.  The only uncontroversial one among Meta’s top five was Bob Hawke.  (Reported in The Australian on 22 April 2024.)  

The rot has gone very far in Britain, where the BBC and the police despise the native population and its traditional values.  Mass immigration from the third world has hugely damaged Britain’s social cohesion while greatly magnifying the proportion on welfare benefits.  Britain has had more immigration in the past 25 years than in the previous two thousand years combined.  Today 16.6% of the British population is now foreign born: 10 million people – and of these 10 million, 42% arrived in the last decade. 

Britain now has a Hindu Prime Minister (Rishi Sunak – a mega-rich globalist), a Pakistani Muslim as London Mayor (Sadiq Khan), a Pakistani Muslim as Chief Minister of Scotland (Humza Yousaf), and a black half-Zambian now as First Minister of Wales (Vaughan Gething).  

Not only London, but Birmingham, Leeds, Blackburn, Sheffield, Oxford, Luton and Oldham all either now have or have had Muslim Mayors; while Britain now has several thousand mosques, and well over a hundred Sharia courts.  Whatever happened to the Rule of Law?  And to the “Land of Hope and Glory”?

Australia, unlike Britain, has welcomed immigration throughout its history since settlement by the British, and now has 30 per cent of it s population born overseas – the highest rate in the world.  The issue for us has been not so much the total number of migrants (though that is currently a problem given the severe shortfall in housing).  What has been damaging is the last half century’s great widening of the source countries to include many from the Middle East and the third world whose cultural values are hostile and incompatible with the mainstream.  Multiculturalism as an ideology has positively encouraged many of these to retain their own culture and not assimilate into the mainstream.  We now have “little Lebanon” in Lakemba and elsewhere, and a huge spike in incidents of anti-Semitism, especially since the current war between Hamas and Israel.  Never before has our Australian society – and others in the Anglosphere – been so divided, evidently permanently.

The Biblical Book of Daniel, set in the sixth century BC, describes the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of a huge statue with a golden head, a silver chest and arms, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of mixed iron and baked clay.  In Daniel’s explanation to the king, the various layers represent successive empires to follow, but the whole thing is eventually smashed because “As the toes were partly iron [strong] and partly clay [brittle],  so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay”  (Daniel 2: 31-43).   There’s a lesson in that, despite the rubbish spruiked about our “superior” multiculturalism.

Why the emphasis in this article so far about Islamic immigration?  Because ELITES imposed this on the native populations, without ever asking for or receiving the approval of the electorate. 

The problem with Islam specifically:  migration yes, assimilation no

In Islamic doctrine, assimilation is specifically forbidden, while hijra – migration to establish the religion – is a clearcut Islamic objective.  There’s doctrinal basis in Islam for the ongoing invasion of the West. 

Mohammed said: “I command you with these five, which Allah has charged me with: assemble, listen, obey, HIJRA and jihad.”  [Reference:  Tafseer al Qur’an, ibn Kathir; Dar al A’hiya a’turath al Arabi, Volume 1, 103. Masnad al Ansar, Imam Ahmed: Dar al A’hiya a’turath al Arabi, Volume 6, 471. Sunnan a’Tirmizi, Dar al Kittab, 1994, Volume 8, 135.]

In another hadith, he said: “O people, IMMIGRATE, holding onto Islam, for HIJRA or migration is to continue as long as jihad continues.”  [Reference:  Hadith kenz Umal 46260] And there’s Hadith kenz al 46274 Umal – “Migration cannot be ended as long as there is unbelief or as long as there is an enemy that resists.”

Sam Solomon, an erudite Islamic professor who converted to Christianity, wrote a book called The Mosque Exposed.  He says: “Migration is legally obligatory on a Muslim as preparatory to other forms of jihad for the victory of Islam and Muslims in other countries.  Migration precedes jihad and both are inextricably linked.  It is not possible to consolidate the Islamic religion without migration.  There is no way to raise the profile of Islam in the abode of apostasy without the help of Muslims and the increase of their numbers.”

Mohammad specifically forbade migration that involved assimilation into the mainstream community: “The believers must not take the disbelievers as friends instead of the believers.  And whoever does that has no relation with Allah whatsoever, unless you [do so] as a protective measure [in order to] save yourself from them.” (Koran 3:28)

HOW TO DEFEND OUR CULTURE? 

In 2006, in Britain, Peter Whittle founded the New Culture Forum to challenge the cultural orthodoxies dominant in the media, academia, education, and wider British culture.  On 23 April 2024, he delivered a powerful speech to the NCF’s 2024 Conference titled The Police are no longer on our side.   His speech (19 minutes) is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PPDUaGrE9w . Key points he makes are:

He continues: However, whether it be Islamic fundamentalism, or Critical Race Theory, or Trans Activism, or Environmental Activism, it is crucial that people understand that the basic motives behind all of them are the same:  an ingrained hatred of our culture and Western civilization and a desire to overturn them. 

There is also a war on Western civilization in Australia too, as evidenced by the great difficulties the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilization has had in getting a foothold into a number of Australian universities.  Leftist academics heavily into a “black armband” view of our history have campaigned against it.

Ten actions to save Britain

Peter Whittle proposes these ten actions, most of which could be replicated in Australia:

1. Permanent and complete end to mass immigration.

2. The UK must withdraw from the UN Convention on Human Rights.

3. The Equality Act must be abolished.

4. The thorough, balanced, history of Britain and its achievements must be taught to every pupil in every school to the age of 16.

6. The concepts in law of hate and harmful speech must be scrapped. 

7. There must be a complete ban on the teaching, as though it were fact, of Critical Race Theory,  gender ideology and all associated ideologies in schools across the country.

8. There must be a ban on compulsory attendance at so-called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion courses and “unconscious bias” sessions.

9. All institutions and quangos, including publicly funded broadcasters which stray from their core purpose by prioritizing ideologies must be challenged and if possible, lose their funding.

10. Those bodies which, instead of promoting Britain and caring for its history and heritage, actually undermine it, should be replaced either with another which is up to the job, or all public funding should be withdrawn. 

He concludes by saying “We must keep our faith in ourselves and in Britain because indeed they are in fact one and the same thing.”    

Actions for Australia

Freedom and Heritage suggests these actions to tackle our own war with the elites, as a minimum.  The list is not exhaustive:

1. In the short term, slash immigration numbers from the current absurdly high volume.  Migration rose by one-third last year to 765,900, and after departures, Australia’s population rose by a record 659,000 in just one year.   This is happening at a time of acute housing shortage both in new houses, and in housing for rent.

2. Apply much tighter vetting of intending migrants for their cultural assimilability.   The Albanese government’s recent decision to admit some 2200 Palestinians from Gaza, virtually unvetted, is an appalling mistake.

4. Make teaching of balanced, factual Australian history compulsory in all primary and secondary schools, along with civics – information on our system of government and the rights and duties of citizens.  Pride in nationhood should be encouraged, and exaggerated cultural pessimism over Aboriginal issues should be not permitted

5. Abolish the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975.   Section 18C of the Act, added in 1995, makes it unlawful for a person to do or say something in public if it is reasonably likely to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” a person of a certain race, colour or national or ethnic origin.  This provision was outrageously abused in the case of the “QUT Three” when Alex Wood, Calum Thwaites and Jackson Powell, three students from the Queensland University of Technology, had complaints against them taken to the AHRC in 2013 by an indigenous student over their use of an allegedly indigenous-only computer lab. The AHRC played a shameful role and the case was eventually dismissed by a court, but only after causing three years of distress to the defendants.

6. Ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory and gender ideology in all schools including, of course, the ironically named “Safe Schools program.”

7. Ban school teachers from pushing ideological or quasi-religious matters on their students, including “climate emergency”.

8. Remove all “woke” distractions from the Australian Defence Forces and government departments, including Diversity, Equity and Inclusion ideology and Cultural Marxist “Intersectionality” like that pushed by an American BLM parasite in this picture:

9. Abolish the position of E-Safety Commissioner, uphold free speech, and allow no censorship of what adults can watch or post, subject only to preventing direct incitements to violence.  Fear of “offending” certain groups, such as Muslims, should not be a consideration.

10. Privatize or very punitively cut the budget of the ABC to force it to provide genuine balance that fairly represents the views and values of the broad Australian community.  Apply the same rule to the SBS.

11. Require unions and large corporations follow the principle that “the cobbler should stick to his last” by not engaging in political activity that is opposed by dues-paying members or shareholders.

And last, but certainly not least:

12. This country needs to return to its Christian roots. 

The abandonment of Christianity and openness to belief in just about anything – moral and cultural relativism, New Age mumbo-jumbo, the occult, and Islam (a belief system that is rabidly and murderously intolerant, and is completely incompatible with critical thinking) is a MASSIVE OWN GOAL. 

How can a society survive when its roots have been torn out, and it has no agreed, absolute standard for good and evil?  Nietzsche, in his 1882 Parable on the Death of God, outlines the implications of life without a sacred beyond.   A madman runs into the marketplace screaming that we have killed God.   In a series of demented questions he spells out the implications:

“How were we able to drink up the sea?  Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?  What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun?  Where is it moving now?  Where are we moving now?  Away from all suns?  Are we not perpetually falling?  Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions?  Is there any up or down left?”

This is quicksand, a nihilistic void.  No way to live.

We should heed the advice given by God to Solomon in the temple:

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. – 2 Chronicles 7:14