It’s beginning to look a lot like Invasion Day!

It all began with this of course.

And now this flag culture pictured below.

I spotted one of these car flags at least a week ago, which is at least two weeks before the actual day of shame is about to be celebrated. Thanks Google Images. Some people like to display two car flags, one on each side, Third Reich style.

Nowadays, the 26th day of January is this country’s most beloved expression of racist nationalism. This day was once little more than an historical date taught to us kids in school. Along with such white supremacist howlers as “captain james cook discovered australia in 1770″, January 26 was the date that the first fleet of convict ships arrived in sydney cove in 1788. These poor bastards had been spat out of the bottom of Industrialisation and were making London’s streets look very untidy with their poverty-related offending behaviour and everything. The British government drew up what they called a Charter of Justice, in April 1787, and made plans to utilise these offenders as free labour in the new colony. The charter basically set out the principles of Britain’s unquestionable right to colonise this continent and to continue to rule over the convict population even after they were removed from British soil. It is under-pinned by the assumption that any native inhabitants of the continent would also be subject to British rule. Myths about “convicts made good” really are mostly myths, myths that mask the reality of convict labour and the specifics of the way white supremacy was imposed in this land.

What we were not taught in school back then was the declaration of “terra nullius” or the despicable lie that this land was uninhabited by humans, in order for Britain to justify claiming sovereignty. We were not taught that Britain breached international law in order to invade this country. We were not taught that the British government shipped women here for the purpose of providing men, both free settlers and convict men, with sexual access to female bodies. We were not taught about the deliberate release of the small pox virus which decimated the vast majority of indigenous people in Eora country, now known as the Sydney region.

The colonisation process gradually spread all over this continent, crushing each tribal group in various ways; outright murder and vicious massacres, appropriation of land and resources, undermining of beliefs and culture, racist laws defining indigenous people as requiring certain “protections” which effectively enabled harsh restrictions of their movements and social systems. Eventually these restrictions were expanded to enable over a hundred years of forced child removal, known as the Stolen Generations, in an attempt to “breed out” indigeneity – genocide, in other words.

Despite what some people believe, the colonisation process has never stopped. It’s just morphed into new and various forms. Indigenous peoples still have lesser access to resources, including education and health, lower outcomes for employment and life expectancy and gross over-representation in the criminal justice system. They are subject to specific laws which restrict their access to welfare payments. Indigenous children and young people are more likely than non-indigenous children and young people, to be placed in Out-Of-Home care or be ensnared in the Juvenile Justice system, quite often in both at once, creating what is actually a whole new stolen generation. Indigenous women in this state alone, represent one third of the prison population despite making up only about 2.5% of the overall population. White people continue to actively oppress indigenous people.

Further to this, the white system has actively oppressed, discriminated against and excluded non-white/non-anglo peoples from other parts of the world, through various despicable laws and policies relating to immigration and refugee and asylum seekers. In the immediate post – WWII aftermath the australian government sponsored ex-Nazi refugees on account of them being classified as “displaced persons” while simultaneously discriminating against Jewish refugees who were excluded from this classification because , listen to this, one of the eligibility criterion was to be aryan (Rutland, S 2010, “Jewish victims and Nazi perpetrators in post-war Australian migrant camps” live lecture, University of Sydney, September 16 2010)! Then we have the White Australia Policy and the famous dictation test which deliberately discriminated against Asian people, plus the current despicable treatment of refugee and asylum seekers, treatment which breaches multiple international human rights principles in covenants and treaties to which the australian government is a signitory. We have a consistent track record of heinous racist shit. White people here, of all classes, the rich, the middle and upper middle classes, and convict descendants continue to enjoy privilege due to their being born white and no other reason. We should be ashamed of this, but instead we are actively perpetuating the system that privileges us. We are even celebrating it and rubbing it in the faces of those upon whose backs we have climbed.

This is why I refuse to take part in and actively argue against the national holiday known as australia day. I don’t understand why there cannot be a national holiday that is more inclusive and less offensive. One that acknowledges these issues instead of pretending they don’t exist or openly supporting them. January 26 is just so blatantly white supremacist and the culture around it has become more and more about blind nationalism and racist ideology. This, despite the fact that currently, we are more enlightened about indigenous issues, the Stolen Generations, and our shameful history than we were back when it was just another day. Yet, as the racist history of this country is referred to more and more, the white supremacist ideology underpinning it becomes louder and stronger. Every year the flags get bigger and bigger, the Southern Cross tattoos get bigger and bigger, the bargain store displays of mass-produced “aussie” paraphenalia get bigger and bigger, even the stores in areas where there is considerable ethnic diversity.

This has become our swastika.

The Southern Cross star constellation that appears on the australian flag

Some dudes are getting these tats so big now that they take up their entire backs and then they make a point of strutting around shirtless to reminder us that they are of the pwning class. What was once just another star constellation has now become a white supremacist symbol.

This is what the Southern Cross tat really means.

Are we getting a clearer picture now? It’s time to abolish this vomitously shameful day as a national holiday and call it out for what it is.