Honour the present, not the horrors of the past
Don’t spit in the face of Australia Day for past wrongs while fawning over Bastille Day. The national days mark events occurring in nearly the exact same period in history a hemisphere away, but are light-years apart in the actions of presiding leaders.
During the French Revolution, frenzied, drugged and drunken mobs destroyed literary treasures and medieval paintings and executed the educated, targeting scientists and priests. State-sanctioned violence, public executions and mass killings of those suspected of being disloyal to the radical cause followed the storming of the Bastille in 1789. It was the “Reign of Terror”.
In 1788 Australia, Governor Arthur Phillip was trying to stop a miserable penal colony from starving to death, doing all in his power to be respectful to the Aboriginal people he met and tried to trade with. He was the governor of a penal settlement, not the general of an army.
Yet the same councillors and members of parliament who choke on the words “Australia Day”, renaming it “Invasion Day”, seem happy to gush all over the celebration of Bastille Day, often with the assistance of the taxpayer. The world has moved on, and what Bastille Day now represents is entirely different to the horrific violence that occurred. But that maturity is lacking in so many Australian politicians who are hung up on seeing a 1788 colony with 2024 iPad eyes.
Leading the gushing are a range of councils who canned their citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day, and our current Minister for Citizenship, Andrew Giles.
Mr Giles started writing his chapter in the book of chicanery by dissembling the Australian Citizenship Ceremonies Code to allow councils to remove citizenship ceremonies from Australia Day surreptitiously, and with it many of the associated celebrations, from barbecues and lamingtons to fireworks. However, on Bastille Day he is all baguettes and champagne, gushing on social media “Happy Bastille Day” as if the French Revolution was a benevolent expose of a new philosophy.
Warringah MP Zali Steggall, who famously asked Mosman Council to hold a moment of silence to mourn on Australia Day, also fawns “Happy Bastille Day for tomorrow!”
She must have either been on the slopes when that history lesson was on or now has the maturity to realise that what it represents today differs from what happened then.
Yet she puts a lot of caveats on her support of Australia Day, which never seem to apply to Bastille Day.
Sydney City Council, recently listed as a sponsor and partner by the Bastille Festival, sends its councillors to Bastille soirees and promotes Bastille Day events on ratepayerfunded socials and websites, while refusing to conduct citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day.
Why don’t they insist on a minute of silence for all of those murdered, raped and tortured in the bloodbath that was the French Revolution?
Let’s again dispense with the idea that Governor Philip came as an invasion force; he was the administrator of a penal settlement that nearly starved to death. After mother Britain waved goodbye, he was promptly forgotten. Far from wanting a military campaign in Australia, Britain had its books full, with the recent loss to George Washington in the American Revolutionary War and then another problem by the name of Napoleon.
In the US, the Fourth of July was a celebration of a profoundly violent civil war, including slave-owning George Washington’s genocidal campaign against Iroquois Native Americans. The National Day of Spain celebrates the discovery of the New World, which didn’t end well for the original civilisations of South and Central America.
Yet no one is tearing down the statues of Christopher Columbus in Spain, nor is any US presidential candidate speaking ill of the Fourth of July, and French families don’t mourn for a minute during their Bastille celebrations. Another cancelculture council, Darebin in Victoria, advises ratepayers to “Read an Acknowledgement of Country statement to family, friends or loved ones during a quiet moment or before a meal on January 26” and lowers the flag on Australia Day.
Our nation came from the seedbed of a penal colony and the Aboriginal people. If the French can put aside the horror of the French Revolution to celebrate Bastille Day, and if the Americans can pluck out the good parts of the Fourth of July, then we must grow up as our nation has, and celebrate it for what it is now.