ANZAC day should be opposed for at least two reasons. The first is the most obvious: rather than being a day to remember those who have died in various wars the New Zealand State has sent its soldiers to fight and kill in, rather than being a day to resolve “never again”, and far from acting as a stimulus that “lest we forget”, ANZAC day is instead a celebration of the New Zealand military.
You will never see the various wars New Zealand has fought in, and continues to fight in, condemned. The lists of those killed always excludes “the enemy”, for they don’t really count, they are an unpeople; indeed, to humanise “the enemy” would be to expose the murderous foundations upon which the military is premised. You will never see conscientious objectors celebrated as heroes after enduring imprisonment at the hands of the New Zealand State. ANZAC day is a celebration of a murderous and violent institution, the backbone of any State, and a symbolic gesture towards those either forced or duped into murdering at its behest. Nowhere else in society would such actions be celebrated, except, apparently, when perpetrated by the State.
ANZAC day cannot be allowed to pass once again as if there is some sort of social consensus over New Zealand’s history of State violence or over its current military operations in Afghanistan, East Timor and the Solomon Islands.
Just as dangerously, however, is the second force at play on ANZAC day: an insidious and growing nationalism. ANZAC day, more and more, functions as a key ritual of nationalism. Nationalism is essentially the ideology of the State, it is the identity of a “people” that is constructed to unite very real divisions within any State, to legitimate its exclusive use of force and its claim to territory. The maintenance of New Zealand nationalist identity requires constant work against creeping divisions, and essential to this are national rituals and performances that cement this identity. Both Waitangi day (as part of official biculturalism policy) and ANZAC day are deployed in this way as government policy by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage alongside their plethora of websites.
This is all the more dangerous for anti-nationalists and anti-Statists considering the recent growth of New Zealand nationalism. Many believed ANZAC day would eventually die as ex-soliders went the same way, but instead, since about the mid-90s, there has been a growing youth presence at ANZAC ceremonies who are there not as part of Scouts or their associated groups, but out of a growing sense of national pride. Anybody who saw images of the Big Day Out would have noticed the growing presence of New Zealand flags being voluntarily brought along, some wearing them as items of dress (paralleled too, but far worse, at the Australian Big Day Out). And ‘New Zealander’, despite not being a recognised ethnic group, was submitted by 429,000 people at the recent 2006 census.
As part of an anti-nationalist and anti-Statist politics, ANZAC day should be recognised as a ritual cultivating nationalist identity and thus opposed.
It is a bizarre situation, then, that those on the left, even those claiming its radical margins, are unwilling to oppose in any meaningful way the ceremonies of ANZAC day. They fear offending those mercenaries of the State in attendance. They fear disrupting what is in fact a near-sacred national ritual. They, apparently, lack an ability to compare an act that merely offends with systematic and legitimised murder, armed patrols, nightly curfews, military checkpoints and all the other associated tactics of the New Zealand military.
ANZAC day must be opposed as part of a generalised anti-militarist, anti-State and anti-capitalist position.
10 Comments
I’m really sad you feel this way. I feel you are seeing ANZAC day only in terms of a black and white issue, – there’s an awful lot of grey here. Perhaps you’ve been too cut off from the generation who were affected by the World Wars to fully appreciate the pressures of the day. I also believe that one reason for the upsurge of youth at the commemoration services, is simply that they are giving tribute to the sacrifices their grandparent’s generation made. I wonder how many people today would put their lives and careers on hold to do anything for the good of their country. And I’m not even talking about going to war!
And what is the problem with pride in your country?? You have pride in your cause and you take the Anarchist flag to rallies and protests and you even have the emblems on your backpacks. This smacks of reverse bigotry to me. Not everyone has hidden agendas, – most of us just do the best we can with what we have, and try to protect our families and ourselves. This was the same type of motivation for those who were embroiled in the World Wars, – when they ended up personally dealing with the fallout from a political pissing contest.
I think you should go to the ANZAC march and protest it, thats an awesome way to build a mass movement!
Jeez, it has been so long since I’ve had to seriously engage with someone wanting to celebrate their pride in their country that I’ve not bothered to remember the snappy lines I used to use to express how truly revolting it is.
I was trying to get a group to intervene into the ANZAC Day parade in Melbourne the year after the more recent invasion of Iraq. The idea was to have a big banner, run to the front of the march and unfurl it for the world/cameras to see, etcetera. My proposed slogan: “Bring our boys home (in body bags)” Some people didn’t seem to like it.
A few years back, before I went overseas, the thursdays in black women in Otautahi would hold a silent vigil at the dawn ceremony in the Square with a banner saying “In rememberance of women and children killed in war” as a silent protest to the exclusion of these unpeople in the official proceeding.
I am trying to get women interested in doing something similiar this year.
I think we have to be gentle in our protests on ANZAC day. Realise that the old men involved have been psychologically damaged and victimised by their country. Make it clear who we hold responsible, what we want changed.
(And the agitating required to overcome the nationalist sentiments being fermented in Aotearoa need to be year round!)
Agree with Anna-Claire. Anzac day is a complex sort of affair -for quite a few people it’s a reminder of the horrors of war and the suffering of vets. On the other hand there is a nationalist tub-thumping side to events, and in recent years there’s been a depressing tendency to ‘reclaim’ Nam and WW1 as just wars.
Tom O’Lincoln has some good stuff on the forgotten side of WW2 in Indonesia, East Timor and other pats of the Asia-Pacific theatre:
http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2007/01/good-war.html#links
Not sure if my response will come up in trackbacks anarchafairy, so here’s a link:
http://spanblather.blogspot.com/2007/04/anzac-spirit.html
Span,
Womyn are not inevitably victims in times of conflict. The Killing of womyn in war is systematic and intentional. Rape is used as a weapon of war. Womyn are the bearers of life, and weaking, destroying, controlling life is the aim of warmongers. But not too many cause they need a reliable source cannon fodder.
Torrance,
Go find someone over 60 and ask them about ANZAC day during the Vietnam years. Protestors got a pretty firey response doing something very similar to what you have planned. Is that what you’re aiming for? a return to the glory days of anti-war protesting?
It’d certainly be nice to see those kind of numbers involved again, need a mass for mass action.
Anna-Claire, I agree that women are not inevitable victims in war because of the nature of women, or biology or any bullshit like that. I actually mean the same thing you do, that the targeting of women during war (and at other times too) is both systematic and intentional, and part of the patriarchy. I don’t like it either, and I want to change it. Thanks for your feedback.
in my opinion i think ANZAC day although yes it was a time of pain and death. it is celebrated to honour and thank those who gave their lives so we can remain a free country. i mean how bad would it be if the germans took over and did to us what they did to the poor Jewish religion.
Fuckyou man, fuck you fuck you fuck you.
Several of my uncles died in WW2 fighting for the freedom from the Tyrant of the German Warmachine.
And you – you wortless piece of shit, sit here in the comfort of a free country and say we shouldn’t remember it.
Well FUCK YOU. Go and die, go live in an opressed country, and fucking die you worthless piece of shit.
For your own safety I hope we never meet face to face.
3 Trackbacks
[...] I’ve covered my objections to ANZAC Day already. I only want to add that the level of nationalism and patriotism present was far worse than I had expected, and the demographics of those present – young, families, clean, white and middle class – coupled with the huge growth in numbers from last year alone makes the ANZAC day trends all the more worrying. [...]
[...] the “value” of war dead, depending on whether they are ours or theirs, is made here: ANZAC Day Must Be Opposed – the blog of the protesters I saw at the ANZAC Day service in Wellington. He writes: You will [...]
[...] I’ve covered my objections to ANZAC Day already. I only want to add that the level of nationalism and patriotism present was far worse than I had expected, and the demographics of those present – young, families, clean, white and middle class – coupled with the huge growth in numbers from last year alone makes the ANZAC day trends all the more worrying. [...]