I wrote this article 12 years ago. Has anything changed?

Australia is fast heading down a dangerous path. While our stories of history may permit us to see an era of fascism only in some distant place and some distant time, there is no guarantee in this story that the ugly head of right wing extremism will not rise again. Just because we participated in the fight against it, and shared in the spoils of the victory over it, does not remove us from being the constructors of an equally horrific threat. The current rhetoric of patriotism that is circulating within this nation suggests quite clearly that fascist ideologies are gaining prominence once again. And in this land where we claim there is opportunity for all, amidst all the rhetoric of a tolerant multiculturalism, such destructive ideas are starting to appear quite normal.

I’m not saying that John Howard is akin to Hitler. Let’s be honest, he really doesn’t have that much flair. Given a bit more intelligence, and the ability to speak with passionate vigour, and he might be taken more seriously by the masses. As it stands, however, he’s far too feeble and too docile to be such a crowd-controlling force. All too often his slippages and wayward comments have to be reshaped by his publicity machine in order to make them fit the full picture. It’s as if he doesn’t quite have all the pieces there to be able to do it alone.

Today, we fail to see that the Aussie dream, where the voice of the average person on the street is said to matter, is all but dead; that our governments are becoming increasingly distant, wrapped up in their own corporate-style worlds from which they see nothing of the reality of our lives. We just sit back and we trust them. We let them tell us of the fear on our streets and to our borders. There’s something out there, threatening, waiting to get in. Don’t go outside. Don’t question. The foreign—the outside world—is, so we are told, now a danger to our “normal” and precious way of life. But this way of life, this normality of us, is just an idealised way of life. It doesn’t even exist. The people we offend by adopting such a nationalistic and high-and-mighty stance may soon grow impatient with having to appease us. We would do better, therefore, to start recognising our commonalities with them instead of dozily lapping up the rhetoric of right wing ideologies without thought, without concern for the kind of future we invite. But we can only begin this process of communication and understanding when we stop thinking of ourselves as some superior and master, unquestionably lucky race.

Dean Laplonge is a cultural theorist whose research and consulting work explores the relationship between culture and everyday practices. He is the Director of the cultural research company Factive (www.factive.com.au) and an Adjunct senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales.