First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
On the 15th of February, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison stood before the parliament and delivered a speech acknowledging the crimes and suffering perpetrated by State and Federal Governments in Australia against the First Nations people of this country. His speech was timed to mark the anniversary of Kevin Rudd’s official apology to the Stolen Generations delivered some 13 years ago.
Aboriginal reconciliation is often cited as one of the conscience issues that unites parties and politicians in Australia. It’s not really. There is very little of substance that the major parties disagree on these days but notwithstanding, it is very difficult for even the most stone-hearted or partisan of politicians to deny the long history of racism and mistreatment that our indigenous brethren have endured.
No doubt Scott Morrison believed that his reiteration of Rudd’s original apology was sincere. His parliamentary colleagues, the opposition Labor Party and the public at large certainly all believed he was genuine. Why wouldn’t they?
But I’m not so sure. Let’s have a look at what he said:
In rising to address the Parliament, Scott Morrison referred to a 1997 Australian Human Rights Commission report entitled "Bringing Them Home". This report was the result of a national inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families between 1900 and 1970. These children have come to be known as the 'Stolen Generations'.
In reflecting on that report Morrison spoke of how “The state seized absolute control over Aboriginal people’s lives: [controlling] where they could live, where they could travel, who they could marry, and what children, if any, they could raise.”
He spoke about how the governments engaged in “Actions of brute force carried out [against aboriginal people] under claims of ‘good intentions’, which in truth betrayed the ignorance of arrogance, ‘knowing better than our Indigenous peoples’.”
He described a history of “[Aboriginal] children forcibly removed from their parents; mothers chasing after police cars that had taken their children; siblings separated; adoptions without consent; forced servitude; welfare institutions [which were] cruel, devoid of warmth, love or care.” He spoke of “Grief, trauma and endless pain that cascaded through generations - all actioned by the state.”
In acknowledging these facts, Morrison repeated the words of his predecessor, Kevin Rudd, and said: “I am sorry, truly sorry.”
He went on to acknowledge that despite herculean efforts by contemporary governments to improve life expectancy, health, education, and economic outcomes for Indigenous Australians, very little has been achieved: “As with so much that had been tried before, our efforts were based more on telling than listening. More on grand aspirations than the experience of Indigenous peoples. So while there was no lack of money, will or work, … our ambitions went unfulfilled – mostly because we were perpetuating, the very idea that has plagued our country for so long - that we knew better.”
These are fine words indeed and ones that I can certainly agree with but is our Prime Minister really as sorry for all these crimes as he seems? Try reading these quotes again and replace the reference group ‘Aboriginal’ or ‘Indigenous’ with the reference group ‘unvaccinated’ and ask yourself how committed Mr Morrison is to respecting the rights of pro-choice Australians and how sorry he would be for transgressing them?
Of course we live in a different age and the biological criteria being put forward for discrimination is different this time around, but the narrative structure and the inevitable consequences of the current form of bio-politics remain the same. Ask yourself, how different are 'natural humans' (people whose bodies are unsullied by synthetic RNA) from First Nations people in the eyes of a government intent upon imposing new biological norms?
Based on everything Scott Morrison and his ministers have already said about how they plan to make Covid vaccines “as mandatory as possible” and how they plan to exclude unvaccinated people from many public spaces, the Federal government look set to support the States in repeating every injustice, cruelty and human rights violation on ‘vaccine refuseniks’ that Australian governments have previously perpetrated against our First Nations people.
Bio-politics is a term popularized by French philosopher Michael Foucault and it describes the way that states order and regulate human life through control over reproduction, health and longevity. It also describes the process by which industrialized societies administer and discipline human bodies in order to make them useful and docile. Foucault developed a theory about how colonial powers control colonized subjects through a regime of biological conflict. The race that holds power defines the biological norm and exercises biological control over the lives of those who deviate from that norm. Foucault maintained that the exercise of biological power by one group in society over another was not the result of an organized conspiracy of the state, but rather it arose from a confluence of commercial and political interests within the society itself.
It is a tragic irony that at the very moment our Prime Minister expresses a heartfelt apology for the bio-political crimes of past governments he is laying the foundations for the next phase of the same regime. So how does Morrison reconcile these seemingly contradictory perspectives? Is he guilty of simple hypocrisy or is there something more? Well, I’m not a psychologist but it seems to me that Scott Morrison is afflicted with a paradigmatic case of ‘doublethink’ – the ability to simultaneously accept two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in direct contravention of one's own sense of reality.
In his novel, 1984, George Orwell described doublethink as a product of indoctrination. People learned it as a result of peer pressure and a desire to fit-in and gain status within the Party. In Orwell’s novel, recognizing a contradiction in the Party’s policies was a ‘thought crime’ akin to blasphemy, which could subject a person to disciplinary action. This presented intelligent people with a problem. Doublethink was the solution. It was a form of self-discipline for party apparatchiks, complementing the state-imposed disciplines of propaganda and national security. Collectively, these tools hid the Party's evil not just from the public but from the Party itself.
And so it is with Morrison and all his ministers and every member of the Labor Party opposition as well. When it comes to forced vaccination they are, to a person, reprising the fear and loathing of those white colonists who sought to control, corral, civilize, and ultimately assimilate Australia’s First Nations people who’s only crime was that they did not conform to the bio-political paradigm that the new colonial governments had imposed as ‘legitimate’.
Today a new paradigm of ‘legitimate’ has been established by governments all around the world as a result of overwhelming pressure from global institutions such as the WEF, WHO and the UN. ‘Legitimate’, in the new paradigm, means vaccinated. Anyone who is not vaccinated is by definition, ‘illegitimate’ and will inevitably suffer the consequences of being excluded from society. The reason for this is that the unvaccinated represent a threat to the duplicitous agenda of Big Pharma the billionaire elites simply by virtue of their continued, healthy existence.
If the vaccine fraud is to continue, the unvaccinated will need to be locked down, locked out, curfewed and quarantined until they either submit to vaccination or die out. This was exactly the fate of indigenous Australians under the control of colonial governments 100 yrs ago. With this modern age of medical tyranny, we are seeing the apotheosis of the colonial project. The complex systems of financial, legal and political exploitation and domination that allowed white colonists to conquer the “New World’ have come a full circle and now they seek to eat their own children.
Sadly, our politicians are not alone in their doublethink. By my estimate over 80% of the Australian public are with them. Incredibly, the same mentality of ‘bio-security’ that provided public support for the infamous Queensland Aboriginal Protection Act of 1897 is alive and well in Australia today and about to be revisited in a raft of containment and protection measures aimed at controlling the lives and livelihoods of unvaccinated Australians everywhere. We are being plunged into a neo-colonial conflict where one group in society believe they face an existential threat from another group. Will it take another 200 years for us to realize the error of our ways?
The original Queensland Protection Act provided for the creation of Aboriginal reserves, the dismantling of family and tribal structures and the forced removal of whole populations from one area to another - where they were subjected to permanent quarantine. It became the model for South African apartheid and remained a wellspring of discrimination right up until the 1970’s. To recreate such conditions of bio-political discrimination would be unconscionable for any politician in Australia. But that's what Scott Morrison's government looks set to do.
Covid 19 has not killed anyone in Australia in 5 months. Of those 900-odd folks who have died of this disease in Australia, 90% of them lived in Victoria - the State with the strictest mask mandates and the longest and harshest lock-down. As we drift into this new phase of bio-political civil-warfare it is obvious that our politicians are “still perpetuating the idea that has plagued our country for so long – ‘that governments know what’s best for us’.”
They don’t.
Alan Hamilton is a candidate and Party Official for the Informed Medical Options Party in Queensland.