I have been reflecting lately on the rising use of labels appealing to patriotism, nationalism or even our identity as Christians. Darren’s blog has included a discussion of him being labelled “anti-american”. Lately everyone seems to be described as Anti-American, Anti-War, Against Saddam, against, anti, un, not.

Today’s paper had an article of what it means to be unAustralian. Most famously, this was the expression used to describe S11 protesters (so-called anti-globalisation protests against an economic forum here in Melbourne, before the meaning of the phrase was changed by the September 11 tragedy in the US) by our PM and several state premiers from all sides of politics. The author of the article documents the things that have been called unAustralian over the past decades by politicians or those in the public sphere:

* proposals for an Australia Card (like an all purpose identity card to which all your personal info would be linked)
* supporters of the Mabo decision (which overturned the doctrine of terra nullius and paved the way for native title to Australian land)
* trade unionists who attacked parliament house
* detractors of Australian cricket captain, Mark Taylor
* street campaigns against Pauline Hanson (and her controversial one nation party)
* the Reserve Bank of Australia (by multinational credit card company Visa International)
* BHP (for closing down the Australian steel industry)
* Patrick Stevedoring (for their response to a waterfront crisis involving blockades and striking workers)
* Tony Abbott (a Liberal party head-kicker, so labelled by Labor Party head-kicker Mark Latham)
* attempts to block new housing developments when Sydney was growing so quickly
* abusive strikers on a Townsville picket line
* a gunman who shot at the home of a journalist
* Aborigines (that’s right, for seeking to prevent tourists climbing Uluru during a period of mourning)
* mandatory sentencing laws
* bugging phone calls to the Tampa (at the time holding asylum sinkers off the coast of Australia)

This is a statement about Australians by Australians (mostly) seeking to marginalise their particular voice or actions. These types of epithets are completely meaningless. They are part of the function of putting people on one side or another of a line drawn in the sand. Philip Hunt, a former CEO of World Vision Australia has written about the need to scapegoat others in order to shore up one’s own position. Once we have created a system of us and them, it is easier to distance ourselves from those that disagree with us.

Using statements like Anti-American, UnAustralian or Anti-War tells us nothing about the position or beliefs of an individual except for the fact that they disagree with me, whatever my position might be. We don’t say that these people are unjust, or unreasonable, or expressing themselves in a manner which we don’t agree with or whatever our particular beef might be - we call them unAustralian. In the same way, we in churches create artificial boundaries in order to be able to apply labels to people. We have a compulsive need to label and box people, in order that we should not have to deal intelligently and compassionately with their points of view.

In my previous post I was struggling with some of my feelings about our PM and how he had managed to fit himself so neatly into the category of “pro-War”, thereby implying that the argument is a simple one, with only two viewpoints.

One quote from the article I read the morning struck me particularly - Meridith Bergman, the President of the NSW Legislative Council (don’t worry if you don’t know what that means, not important to the story) said:

The stupidist thing I ever heard was when a police station got shot up, and some politician said it was unAustralian. It’s un-anything. I can’t imagine a country where that’s acceptable. It is not as if it is Canadian behaviour

Using labels like this undermines true dialogue and understanding - it is a statement without saying anything which is designed to finish a debate. Once Phil was challenging my theology in a particularly disturbing manner and I shouted at him “You’re just a rampant individualist!!!” Now, it is true that I revert to ten-dollar words in times of stress, but I have no idea what I meant by that statement. I just wanted him to stop talking and feel like I had won the fight.

And that is what labels like this do - they are used to stop us talking and to win the fight.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 22nd, 2003 at 10:37 am by dan and is filed under iraq. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.