Andrew Gardiner explains how Australians being roped into American “culture wars” which have nothing to do with them is all a distraction.

We’ve always been keen to jump into wars started by Americans. Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq spring to mind – futile wars with thousands of casualties which left many Australians asking: “Why were we there?”

When America’s culture wars became news here, Australians might have been forgiven for likewise asking: “Why on earth would we want to get involved?” Yet, after narrowly failing with her American far-right-inspired “It’s okay to be white” motion in 2018, Pauline Hanson, with LNP support, passed a Senate bill on Monday calling for a pre-emptive ban on the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT).

“What’s CRT?” you might ask. Oh, it’s just a model for analysing US events and history which pre-supposes that racism is embedded – systemic, if you will – throughout American society and institutions.

Fighting a uniquely American battle over issues dating back to slavery seems a worthy pastime for the Parliament of Australia, wouldn’t you say? You can’t make this stuff up, but Hanson just did.

The jokes write themselves, suffice to say someone should ask Hanson a ‘gotcha’ question requiring her to explain what CRT actually is. We all know what the answer would be:


Pauline Hanson’s most embarrassing media moment came in 1996, when Jana Wendt asked her if she was xenophobic. Her answer: “please explain?” Photo: Channel 9

Performative ‘virtue signalling’ is supposed to be a thing for latte-sipping Lygon Street lefties on issues like climate change or the Biloela family, but here’s Hanson, Peter Dutton and millions of Australian conservatives wasting valuable theatrical energy on an issue of vital relevance on the other side of the planet (virtue signalling without the virtue, you might say).

Australians, Brits and others accustomed to barracking for the LA Lakers or Detroit Red Wings at this time of year are now picking teams in America’s culture wars, egged on by Chris Kenny, Piers Morgan and other peddlers of discord from English-speaking, Murdoch-consuming countries that aren’t the US of A.

Our similarities render us vulnerable to American influence. We watch The Big Bang Theory, listen to Talking Heads, and are fed so much news about what’s going on in America that our Indonesian neighbours might as well be from another galaxy.

But most of all, you can blame the internet for this cultural Chernobyl. So ubiquitous is American online content that, in the lead-up to November’s US elections, Twitter restricted retweets worldwide in an effort to combat misinformation, the spread of which was nothing less than a digital COVID-19.

De-platforming Donald Trump a few months earlier than they did might have saved Twitter the trouble.


Culture warriors Donald Trump (left) and Scott Morrison have both tapped into variations of Richard Nixon’s “silent majority” slogan. Photos: Pacific Standard, Australian Independent Media Network.

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Of course, Australia has more than enough fodder for its own culture wars. Scott Morrison and his backers aren’t averse to stoking them with sneering references to “woke”, inner city progressives whose “cancel culture” and “identity politics” are at odds with those of the hard-working, mythical “quiet Australian”.

Never mind that the term “quiet Australian” – derived from Richard Nixon’s “silent majority” slogan – is itself a form of identity politics, or that right wing racists ‘cancelled’ Adam Goodes within sight of 400 games. From a strictly cynical, political point of view, the purpose of culture wars is to distract or divide, and by God it works.

Little wonder, then, that politicians across the right share an insatiable appetite for culture wars. Forget about the fact our new Deputy PM is accused of the very sexual misconduct that has plagued the government in recent times, or that Morrison’s bestie believes in a global paedophile ring trying to harvest children’s blood; instead, here’s Peter Dutton cancelling a defence force ‘rainbow morning tea’ for dastardly LGBTQ+ service people to ensure we’re at peak readiness to repel the looming Chinese invasion.

So voracious is that culture wars appetite, in fact, that some seem bored with our own domestic battles and want to import a few from America. There are real consequences to this: Hanson’s performative nod to her racist base in the Senate on Monday took the form of actual legislation against the teaching of CRT on the national curriculum, which drew enough government support to pass.

We’re not exactly free from broad systemic racism ourselves but, from a CRT perspective at least, Australian students on the national curriculum are one house of Parliament away from being banned from discussing it in class. CRT was never likely to be taught here to any great extent, but its potential ban is a slippery slope that could end in the censorship of broader, more locally-relevant discussions.

The Morrison Government supported Hanson’s bill, which is now one lower house vote away from becoming law. That’s right, our government, operating in a free democracy, wants to censor certain discussions on race; I’ll let that sink in.

Make no mistake: the Culture Wars are here to stay. They are catnip to skilled marketers like Morrison, who would prefer that his “quiet Australians” refrain from Googling “systemic” or “xenophobic” while, instead, sneering at the imagined smell of Arabica beans (with a hint of ganja smoke?) wafting around the hipster coffee houses where inner city “elites” toss those lofty terms back and forth.

Kill the messenger; ignore the message. Better still, bring in a few American culture war distractions so folks can switch their allegiance from the New York Knicks to the Trump Turkeys.

Australians love their sport, in all its forms.