Final edit: Sorry guys, this got out of hand as I feared and it would take too long to answer everything properly and it would just offend more people.
I got some nice tips for finding places and learned more about Australian’s views on the subject. I should have been more careful with what I said. It changed my opinion somewhat but people here would still not like it, so I’ll keep it to myself.
Thanks for the very civilized and nice answers and I’m sorry if I didn’t answer. I would like to, but in private, or this could become a witch hunt. I do not wish to offend anyone or be attacked because of that. As someone commented, I am the problem here.
Hi everyone, I’ve been lurking for a long time and decided to try to ask something I can’t find out.
First, please be tolerant about the question. I am an Australian citizen, but from a foreign background, so cultural things that seem sacred and unquestionable here are not the same to me. I wouldn’t be crazy to post this on reddit (though I deleted my account ages ago) because I know all the posts would just be attacking me (if you don’t like it, leave, are you defending terrorists?, and so on), instead of helpful comments. Hopefully it will be different here.
The question is: is there any Australian town free from military worship? I mean monuments everywhere, pools and parks named after it and so on. Somewhere I can forget and pretend that this is not how the rest of Australia is.
I’ve been traveling around trying to find a place I would like to settle. I found many small towns I liked, but it seems that the smaller the town, the higher the military worship. They may not even have a public toilet, but they will have a military worship statue that seemed to have cost more than all the town to build.
I love Australia, specially the outback, but the military worship issue is so big that makes me think of looking for another country. I know my taxes are being used to send people to kill whoever the US doesn’t like, and the country prides itself with this history. But if I can ignore that, I can pretend to myself that it’s not true and live happy. I tried to fight the issue for a long time but it makes no difference except to me, sacrificing my well being for nothing. But if I keep being reminded every time I go to do groceries trough the park “invasion of foreign country divine pride park”, it will be impossible. I already try to avoid news and ABC, so it should be possible.
I’m sending a picture of some of the places I’ve been to, without much luck. Funny enough, the town I liked the most, Roma, is the worst, with military trees every 10 meters.
Anyway, that’s it. Maybe I’ll get downvoted to oblivion, but let’s try…
By the way, I don’t know if I am posting this correctly, on the right place and everything. It’s my first lemmy post as well. It’s very confusing to know the community to post. It shows everything everwhere!
Edit- I posted this before, thought it was in the wrong place, deleted and posted again. Now I see 2 of the posts and the deleted one has 2 upvotes. This is so confusing…
Edit2 - Before I get any comment, I dislike military worship from any country, not just Australia. Military may or not be necessary in modern societies, but worship and praise should never be acceptable and is specially dangerous when applied to a group with power. Citizens should always be skeptical of their military group, its uses, powers and permissions. It should be like owning a gun. You may be allowed to have one but should be constantly proving you are not doing anything wrong with it. The definition of what is “wrong” or “right” should be constantly questioned as well.
Edit3 - just a reminder, that I do not wish to change anyone’s point of view. It’s your tradition and culture and I respect, but I don’t have to like it and I would like to figure out how to avoid it. It is all. I would like to stop Australian involvment in American wars, but besides that I don’t mind if Australians like military or not, but I would like to avoid being exposed to that, assuming that is possible, which is the reason for the post, so I can find out.
If you haven’t heard it before, please listen to the song “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” by Scottish-Australian songwriter Eric Bogle. That song, as well as “I Was Only 19” by Redgum, perfectly encapsulates the reason for the memorials.
The songs do not glorify our success as a military nation, nor do they portray the soldiers they are about as grand heros or defenders of freedom. They are about very young men, sent away by their country to experience unimaginable horror and suffering, only to return to a home with, at best, minimal support and, at worst, the shame of the community they once were a part of.
Each name on each of those memorials- thousands of them- represent an experience of the unimaginable, and a family irreparably changed. They are a reminder of what was taken, and of the sorrow that was caused. I do not see them as prideful, celebratory or reverential, and I do not know of anyone who does. They are a commiseration.
With regards to ANZAC, and it’s place in Australian culture, you are essentially looking at modern Australia’s foundational myth. In the 1950s and 1960s when Australia was having its own civil rights moment, the original foundation myth of terra nullius and the “brave”, white settlers conquering an untamed land finally began to feel too untrue to most Australians, too much like a myth. Colonial Australia needed a new explanation for its existence and it is around that time that the Gallipoli campaign started to be promoted by various historians and authors as Australia’s “coming of age” as a nation.
The intention was to give (white) Australians a point of reference for themselves, something they could point to and say “the things that we are, this is where they came to be”. Qualities like mateship, camaraderie, larrakinism, hard work, disdain for authority or aristocracy and resilience in the face of adversity. Those were the qualities promoted as being cemented in the national psyche at ANZAC Cove. It is a manufactured narrative, but those writers were very successful, as you can see.
There’s more that can be said for Australia treats it’s narrative history, especially that of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, but that’s better left for another (long) post. If you’re interested in how Australia viewed it’s two competing foundational stories in the 1990s and 2000s, and how it effects the way we talk about our history today, look up the History Wars. Let me know if you think there was a winner.
