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July 17, 2005
'Tis a new everyday world that has formed as a result of 'the war on terrorism', and its domestic use by conservatives to legitimate the national security state:
Matt Golding
The conservatives are playing politics with terror. John Richardson over at Webdiary describes this politics as a fear meme, in which:
"...our political warriors employ the best of darkest-hours rhetoric to paint the enemy as fundamentalist Islamic jihadists: barbarian hordes at the gate; savages determined to destroy our freedom and liberty."
The fundamentalist Islamic jihadists want to wind back the gains of the enlightenment and to destroy our civil liberties and freedoms.
Ted Lapkin, director of policy analysis at the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, runs this conservative discourse about the destruction of western civilization with its 'we will never concede defeat to terrorism' etc. However, he links the war against the barbaric enemies abroad with up the enemies at home, with phrases like 'appeasement', 'anti-Americanism' and 'refusal to recognize the existence of the conflict' to highlight the 'radical left's blindness and stupidity in linking terrorism to the war in Iraq.
No doubt we will shortly hear about more proposals to lessen our liberty in the name of the state of emergency, because of the cancerous cells of traitors residing within the body politic. And more talk about the end of multiculturalism, the blind embrace of moral relativism, and dismissal of the liberal tolerance of non-Western values because it provides excuses and rationales for terror.
A state of emergency is required because we Australians are caught up in a war of necessity to defend western society from those in an alien civilization who 'despise our values and want to destroy 'our way of life'. Liberty needs to be sacrificed to ensure security in this endless war. So speaks conversatism.
Update: 20 July 2005
It didn't take long for the move against freedom of speech. The tabloids (eg., Daily Telegraph) attention is firmly focused on Islamic bookshops in Sydney and Melbourne selling extremist,inflammatory literature (such as a book carrying an endorsement by Osama bin Laden on the cover). Attorney-General Philip Ruddock is now talking about possible new measures against bookshops.
Hate books they are called. Hate books promoting terror acts. We are that far from fascists burning of books they didn't like. Liberalism is under the gun from the conservative tabloids., who seem to have fogotten that they are supposed to be defending the values of a free society.
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It seems to me that the national security state reprsents a radical social change.