ISSN: 2202-5561 ©
Heritage Guardians campaign against the unnecessary and ill-considered $498m extensions to the Australian War Memorial: contact your federal MP or candidate and ask them to oppose this project
New on the Honest History site
David Stephens reviews Mark Dapin’s Australia’s Vietnam: Myth vs History: ‘Why everything you think you know about the Vietnam War is wrong’.
Margaret Pender reviews World War Noir: Sydney’s Unpatriotic War by Michael Duffy and Nick Hordern: ‘Told from the ground – or the gutter – up, World War Noir is a raw and broad-ranging tale that confounds expectations and reveals a grittier truth’.
Lest We Forget Yassmin Abdel-Magied: a two-year retrospective
‘These issues [that Yassmin Abdel-Magied highlighted] could reasonably be seen as issues which the men of Anzac might have thought worthy of highlighting, were those men around today, given that, according to legend, they were fighting to defend certain values, or to make the world safe from certain evils. These values still enrich us and these evils still beset us; for good and ill, they are universal and persistent.’
Köken Ergun’s Şehitler (Heroes) is a well observed Dardanelles doco that deserves wide distribution: reviewed by David Stephens
‘As the Anzac Contiki contingent visits Lone Pine, we hear someone watching say in Turkish, “We should not let them come here”’. It’s a shame that the Australian War Memorial, which subsidised the film, seems reluctant to show it.
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From the Honest History vault
Australia’s Vietnam War – and keeping it in context: an Honest History series
‘Honest History has seen the Vietnam War as an important part of Australia’s war history, not only because of its military aspects but because of its impacts on Australian society. Far more important, however, were the impacts on other countries besides Australia, particularly on what became the unified country of Vietnam.’
Quote for the ages
‘The constant need to be aggressive about one’s national identity, to vociferously reaffirm it, usually indicates a sense of inferiority towards other nations. Being able to regard oneself as an Australian, being able to contribute to Australia, does not depend on outward symbols.’ (Malcolm Fraser, Australian of the Year speech, 23 January 1976)
