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October 14, 2003
I agree with Scott Burchill's descriptions of the two different responses to the Kuta Beach atrocity in Bali within Australian political circles.
First, we have the conservative 'clash of civilizations' response I have previously noted. Scott describes the conservative interpretation as arguing:
....'that cultural hatred is the only legitimate explanation for the current wave of Islamic militancy. Prime Minister Howard has repeatedly stressed that Australians are targeted by extremists "because of who we are, not because of what we have done. We are a western country and what these terrorists hate is western civilisation". According to this argument, no rational account of the behaviour of terrorists can be found and no dialogue with individuals willing to commit such heinous acts is possible.'
This rejects the view that there are reasons or social conditions for why terrorists act in the way that they do. Scott decribes it as follows:
.... 'Attempts to identify the sources of grievance which drive people to commit these crimes are, according to Mr Howard, "convoluted argument[s] about the alleged dispossession or prolonged disputes in other parts of the world" and constitute "obscene rationalisations that the apologists for terrorists have engaged in"'.
The central solution is the military one. Take out the terrorists and the regimes that support them in the name of pre-emptive strike. Become warlike. Such a view then gives rise to Australia's image problem in Asia. Australia is now seen to be both aligned with the US (its deputy sherrif) and being anti-Islam or anti-Asia.
The other response to the Kuta Beach atrocity in Bali is to connect the Islamic hostiility to the West to Washington's support for Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine, and to the range of venal and repressive client regimes across the Arab world. Scott says that this response seeks
.... "to understand and explain why such an attack took place does not condone it or imply in any way that it was deserved. To excuse is to defend, to justify and exculpate. To explain is to examine and to understand. They are very different responses, though since 9/11 and Bali they have frequently been conflated."
This second response is muted in Australia. It is frequently dismissed as condoning terrorism, when it is more a questioning of the confrontation of civilization thesis. It is the conservative one that is hegemonic as it taps into the unconscious emotional structure of the old yellow peril that forms so much of Australia's political unconscious. That unconscious is now being expressed by Andrew Bolt
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Andrew Bolt IS unconscious!