Best of Anzac day 2016

I have been meaning to write here for some time, but for various reasons it just hasn't happened. Top of my list is to write about the year 1916 - the year of the first Anzac day commemoration, and also the year conscription was introduced. It's a dark and shameful year in New Zealand's history, in which the rhetoric of sacrifice is the driving force behind the move to introduce compulsory military service. Was the first Anzac day commemoration a significant part of this lead up to the introduction of conscription? How did people opposed to New Zealand's involvement in the imperialist slaughter deal with the emotionally charged atmosphere of the time? Hopefully I will have the time soon to do justice to these questions.

In lieu of anything original, here are my Anzac picks of 2016:

The best and most prominent act of counter propaganda was without doubt the fantastic Archibald Baxter - field punishment - "guerilla installations" dotted around Wellington. What makes this even better is the Stuff article and the accompanying video, unusually positive for this time of year: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/last-post-first-light/79299545/conscientious-objector-archie-baxter-remembered-in-guerilla-wellington-sculpture

Peace Action Wellington may or not be responsible for this, but they have some really good pictures of the Archie mannequins: https://peaceactionwellington.wordpress.com/

Renee Gerlich takes on the grotesque spectacle of Peter Jackson's 'Scale of our War' exhibition at Te Papa, and does a fine job of cutting it down to size. I was somewhat depressed when I visited Wellington recently and saw for myself the massive ques of people lining up to see this exhibition. If only they could all be directed to this:

Not only does Te Papa seek to re-sell the “grand adventure” story all over again, but to bond us to it, have us identify with it. Through the uniforms you can don, the questions you are invited to answer, the poppies you can leave heartfelt messages on – but also through its insistence on speaking in the first person plural. It’s the scale of “our” war. “We” were in Egypt when they told “us” that “we’d” be invading Gallipoli. “The Turks had sided with the Germans in the war, and we were itching to take them on… that’s where the action was.” That text is not even quoted from a letter or a journal. That’s just Te Papa speaking – as your quintessentially Kiwi, male war hero “mate”.

Read the full blog here: https://reneejg.net/2016/04/22/gallipoli-the-scale-of-our-war-propaganda/

Over the ditch where the Anzackery is even more hyped and pumped by gazillions of state dollars, not everyone is buying the same old story. Historian and aboriginal activist Gary Foley contrasts the attention paid to Anzac day with the denial of Australia's own colonial history: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/gallipoli-not-the-only-war-to-define-australian-warfare-20140424-zqymi.html

I posted last year about Scott McIntyre, the sports reporter who was fired from his job after a series of 'offensive' tweets about Anzac day. McIntyre referred to several historical episodes which are typically ignored by Anzac commentators: the so called 'battle of the Wazza', the Surafend massacre, the raping of Japanese women by Anzac soldiers and our complicity with the mass murder of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. It is not hard to imagine the immense pressure someone in McIntyre's position must have come under after this episode, so I am very impressed to see that he has not succumbed and continues to offend people blinded by Anzac nonsense: http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/25/former-sbs-reporter-scott-mcintyre-repeats-anzac-day-accusations-on-twitter

Finally, this youtube video of a debate between Australian academics is really worth a look. I think it might be from a year or two ago, but I only discovered it today thanks to the sharing miracles of facebook. The moot is the proposition "Anzac day is more puff than substance", and the first speaker (Jeff Sparrow) absolutely nails it. He starts about seven minutes into the clip, and doesn't talk too long: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk5MgWXDM2A&feature=youtu.be&t=7m16s

Links Update

I was really pleased to receive an email from Jared Davidson recently, he is the author of 

Fighting War: Anarchists, Wobblies and the New Zealand State 1905 - 1925 

....which I referred to in an earlier post. There's a fascinating history here which tells the stories of socialists, anarchists, anti - miltarists and labour activists who were opposed to the war. They might have been a minority group, but the more I read about them the more significant I think they are. He has written two other valuable articles which cast more light on this history:

Socialist cross of honour: Makings of a working class counter culture 

and

Remains to be seen: Tracing Joe Hill's Ashes in New Zealand 

I'm also going to highlight a specific page on the 'Honest History' website which has a list of links to articles and information about the Armenian Genocide. There is a lot more of interest contained in the Honest History site, it is a really valuable resource.

Honest History list - Armenian Genocide 

Finally (for now) a piece by Dougal McNeill - impressions and reflections on Anzac day inspired by his experience of the opening of the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park in Wellington. I think his comments on Anzac as a kind of hyper-real spectacle are spot on, and I suspect there is more to be said on this topic. 

Anzac: they'll remember it for us wholesale

“All that clack about the British Empire”

In my previous posts about the 'Dunedin's Great War' exhibit, I discussed the use of the prominent images depicting 'Empire patriotism'. I argued that the images emphasised a 'monolithic' view of New Zealander's attitudes towards the British empire in general and the first world war in particular. The political views and identities of people who didn't fit into this dominant patriotic code are pushed into the margins of history: Irish nationalists, the many Maori people who took positions similar to that of Te Puea, pacifists, socialists and anarchists.

Just how big was this motley collection of 'disloyal' New Zealanders? In a recent interview , Stevan Eldred Grigg suggests that it was a fairly significant minority:

A few thoughts on Stevan Eldred-Grigg's 'The Great Wrong War'

I read this book very recently, and have been meaning to write a 'proper' review on it for some time. Unfortunately I have too many other projects on the go, so I it might never happen. So instead of a 'proper review' just a few thoughts.

The Curator's Reply

The short history of this blog has so far been a fairly lonely one. I have received a few positive comments from like minded friends and people who share my perspective on New Zealand's role in WW1. While these are appreciated, I had hoped to receive some critical comments too. Many of the opinions expressed in this blog are clearly opposed to the more mainstream views of Anzac day seen in Newspapers, TV and various magazines. I provided a link to my blog at the official government “WW100” site, and various other internet sites which related to this topic. The results were a handful of views, but no comments on any of my posts.

In the shadow of Gallipoli - review

In the Shadow of Gallipoli: The hidden history of Australia in World War I

By Robert Bollard

Pub. NewSouth 2013

I spotted this book in the display section in Dunedin Public library a few months ago. There's a mountain of literature on Gallipoli, and a fairly large chunk of it seems to revolve around questions of military strategy and personal details about the soldiers who died. I knew nothing about Robert Bollard, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that he was a Marxist historian, and that the book wasn't really about Gallipoli at all. Instead, this book tells the fascinating story of the labour struggles in Australia between the outbreak of WWI in 1914 and the early 1920s.

Field Punishment No. 1

Here's a link to a preview of the movie in case you missed it. 


I should be grateful, I suppose, that a movie based on Archibald Baxter's memoir We Will Not Cease has been made at all. I should be even more proud of TV One for showing the movie last night in prime time. Baxter and the other conscientious objectors are portrayed as proud – and more importantly brave – men of high moral principle. The officers were nasty. The trenches were awful. The nurse at the hospital was pretty. It was a sad and terrible war and this was duly emphasised by the incessant and emotive piano soundtrack.

ANZAC Day and the Politics of Sacrifice

Bold and bloody, set upon the mountain tops of human experience, we dimly perceive through the foggy lens of history moments of supreme and selfless giving. In the biblical tradition the notion of sacrifice is both supremely powerful and supremely awful. Abraham submits to the will of God and comes very close to killing his own son. He was only testing him apparently, but such a test can be viewed as either spiritual triumph or twisted and malicious abuse of power. Jesus dies upon the cross and is resurrected on the third day. Once again God seems to be giving us a mixed message: we are redeemed, but we are also reminded of our fundamentally sinful nature.