Only a few kilometres from the extermination camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau was the village of Oswiecim. During the years of mass murder no one in the village complained, aside from comments among one another about the stench. To be fair, a complaint might have been met with summary execution.
John Howard supporters have no fear of execution, which makes it even worse. Free to acknowledge the crimes against humanity and Australia's fair go by the Howard Government, they have instead allowed their ignoble silence, support and complicity to be bought with filthy lucre.
Take a bloke by the name of Peter Milford, who lives and works in Ringwood, in the seat of Deakin, Victoria, held by Liberal Phillip Barresi with a swing of 5 per cent needed to turf him out.
In Ewin Hannan's article, Temptation to stay with the devil you know, in today's Australian, Milford says of the illegal invasion of Iraq: "It's been a total disaster and will remain so." Of the PM's refusal to sign up to the Kyoto Protocal: "It's a disgrace." The treatment of Mohamed Haneef: "It's been appalling."
But, will he vote Labor, then?
"They were all things that totally alienated me and because of them I would (have said) publicly that I would not be voting Liberal."
Sounds promising, doesn't it?
"But when it comes to the crunch on polling day, I'll probably be thinking, things aren't really so bad, that we have been pretty well managed over a good number of years, and I think there will be a lot of people who will be saying: 'Let's go with the devil we know'.
"When I look around at my family, they are all well employed. They can get a job. There are not too many people I know who don't have a job but want one. If you're prepared to work, you can get a job, and I just think, generally speaking, things have been handled pretty well."
You wonder how many townsfolk from Oswiecim were well employed at the camps. Foolish question: all the labour at Auschwitz was slave labour. What was I thinking!
So that's your typical John Howard supporter. A decent man, without doubt, but one whose sense of injustice, while not dead, has been largely hammered out of him by Howard's mantra of aspirational greed.
An article to savour is Michael Gawenda's eulogy for John Howard (and perhaps himself as a campaign reporter): The Last Campaign. In it he refers to the emptiness surrounding Howard's last stand. He speaks of the weird deployment of Howard's hugs in recent weeks:
[Howard's] hug is executed, body to body, the prime ministerial arms wrapped around the hugged one, the prime ministerial head bobbing around affectionately, with the only hint of discomfort being the prime ministerial laugh, "hah hah hah, ho ho ho", which under these circumstances, seems to be entirely inappropriate.
This week, the fourth of the campaign, the Howard hug was deployed perhaps a half a dozen times. The recipients were young men in baseball caps turned backwards and older blokes who afterwards looked surprised by Howard's ardour and their positive, reflexive response to this unexpected show of affection.
But it's the "emptiness of an ageing and inaccessible PM's highly stage-managed campaign" that most disturbs Gawenda:
[Perhaps] Howard's hugging is merely a symptom of the emptiness of this campaign, empty in the sense not of its importance, but of spontaneity and debate and political speeches and humour and anything approaching a real conversation — and a real confrontation — between those who want power and those who will decide who wins it.
And this:
It is a sign of the desperate emptiness of this campaign that Howard's morning walk offers the main, perhaps the only, chance of a fleeting moment of unscripted reality, even if that reality is a chance to interview someone dressed as a sheep who is protesting against the live-sheep export trade and who, on most mornings when Howard is staying at Kirribilli House, waits for him to appear and then is duly ignored.
Gawenda also discusses in detail the gobsmacking difference between the US campaign (he's just returned from several years in the States) and ours. The difference is that they make speeches and have public rallies, while we have stage-managed sprints through shopping centres, pubs, RSL's and old folks homes, where hardly anyone gets a chance to say a word to the contenders unless it's shouted from the sidelines.
One of the best commentaries on John Howard yet, from the man we're only just beginning to forgive for his endorsement of the Weasel in 2004, as then editor of The Age.
Certainly Horrible Horck, anyone supporting Howard these days would have to be shameless, stupid or have the mentality of a prostitute's pimp, ie doesn't care who gets hurt or what they may have to do to generate a profit for the boss.
There are, unfortunately, some in Australia who are very like those who were in the know at Oswiecim. They are in a comfortable position themselves at the moment, care nothing for the plight of the many tens of thousands with underpaid, part time work (remember anything of one hour or more duration is called 'a job' today, yet the bank manager doesn't think so when you go for a loan) and job security is a thing of the past. Howard's faithful stooges with ample incomes are never likely to consider others, after all they are from an ideology that makes a science of self first, self second and if anything is left over self yet again; the "born to rule" types. Much the same type as those doing nothing about the goings on at Birkenau, too well off to care or too scared to be involved even if it be involvement in a very small way. (My family members, well some, were doing their bit against fascism in those dreadful days and two paid with a slow death themselves in Mauthausen).
It is for this multitude of under paid, under protected (in terms of workplace health and safety etc.) Australian workers and other fixed and low income people that we need to be rid of these lying little bastards who have been mismanaging this country for the last decade or so.
Remember Hitlers rampage through Europe! Do not let this occur again anywhere in the world. It appears to be that under this "globalism" a world fascist order is the wanted outcome by multinational big business and their puppets in various countries; this is very much including Howard's Australia. The world today is at a crossroads, much as was Europe in the late 1920's early 1930's. Never let such history be repeated!
Posted by Ugly on November 11, 2007
For goodness sake, get a hold of yourself, Horrible Horck, the man is surely a dickhead and possibly destroyed, The Age, as we knew it.
Wasn't it he, amongst others, that thought that Weapons of Mass Destruction were rampant in Iraq and helped give Howard the nod for perpetual war?
Just askin', anyway ... and peace.
Posted by joe2 on November 11, 2007
Ugly, your outrage and erudition have been much appreciated here at Bilegrip. Many thanks.
joe2, I'm sure that many, many subscriptions to The Age were dropped after Gawenda's unforgiveable endorsement of Howard. I would have been among the first hundred to call, but never received that set of steak knives.
As for the present editor, the Scotsman Andrew Jaspan, whom everyone was sure would fuck things up (and how dare they hire someone not of Melbourne or at least Australia), I think he's doing a great job. Perhaps even better than Bruce Guthrie, who took on Kennett and lost. Guthrie is now editor-in-chief of the Herald Sun. I rarely look at that rag, but wonder if he hasn't moved it away from its long held position as the official media outlet for Genghiz Khan's fair treatment for the captured, dismembered and communally entombed.
Posted by Horrible Horck on November 12, 2007