Our Musical Dispatch from Saturday featured some Irish (Gaelic) language, with the usggestion that ‘Google Translate’ be used to make sense of it.  Would this be ok for Ira Maine?  Not on your life, this fellow, who has lived outside of Ireland for three-quarters of his long life choose to translate himself.  This is what he wrote:

A cairde, (phonetically ‘Ah-kor-jeh (friends)

Conais  ta tu? (Kannis taw two?) How are you?

Nil ac beagan Gaeilge agam (Kneel ock bee-yug-awn Gale-geh a gum,

I speak very little Gaelic,

B’mait liom caint Im Bearla.(bah wah lum coint immer-lah).

I would prefer to speak in English.

‘Tis a long time since I studied Gaelic at school so my attempts at the original spellings are probably pathetic.  Nevertheless it was wonderful to see the old tongue set out correctly on paper.  It was equally exciting to set myself the task of translation without reference to the translator.  Luckily the bold Francis used only variants on Hail and Farewell.  Had he addressed my brain with a question in mid-text I would indeed have been flummoxed and would have been forced to use the translator.

Your piece of advice in Gaelic seems to suggest;

“It would be preferable altogether if they all simply kiss my arse’

This is the rough gist, I think…no guarantees…

Which only serves to show that your penchant for scurrilous vulgarity has abated not a whit and may be catered to in any language!

Phonetically;

Guh merry mead bee-oh air un owm shuh areesh.

(May we be as healthy the next time we meet)

Slawn lat, (goodbye,which is all that’s left of; ‘May you always have ‘God By You’, in English)’

(Signed) Niall ORiada, (Me) oh Baile Ata Cliath (from Dublin) agus (and) Tolmie.

To which our original dispatchee replied

Ira Maine,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKj2ZPEY7pY

Was told the ‘Pogues’ took their name from that very common Irish expression.

For your information in Yuendumu there is a young lady that is a fluent Irish speaker (and rightly proud of it)

As far as I can work out:

They no longer call it Gaelic. They refer to it as Irish.

Middle aged people are either resentful about it being compulsory in school (and other matters such as a test in Irish for Gardia candidates), or wistful they didn’t learn it.

Younger people tend to embrace it, albeit most don’t master it.

I read a paper by an Irish linguist (now working in the U.S.A.) in which he claims that there are as many as 250,000 Irish speakers that have revived the language by talking it to their kids.

This is not the remnants (Galway etc.) on the west coast. This is a “new” Irish that evolved in the urban regions through sheer determination, and I guess could now be considered to be a dialect of Irish.

Anyway I’m glad you enjoyed the Irish theme Dispatch. I certainly enjoyed your response- and ‘godonya’ for forcing yourself not to use Google Translate.

During my brief visit to Ireland a few years ago what most impressed me was the Long Room at Trinity College – (a quasi-religious experience for a heathen like me)

What most delighted me was the story of how the poem of Pangúr Ban the cat came to be.

What most entertained me were the Dublin taxi-drivers that managed to combine comedy and philosophy.

What most amused me was the story of how the Irish language infiltrated Hollywood (the pigmies and other assorted fuzzy-wuzzies in the Tarzan films spoke Irish, and not always polite Irish at that)

………..  Franklin (Francis is the Irish equivalent I guess)

Back after a few unwrapped weeks.

First, our quote of the week – from the local church bulletin “For those of you who have children and don’t know it, there is a nursery downstairs.”  I’m sure that helps.

How do we tell if Fascism is on the rise?  (Is it really that difficult? Ed)  Is there a resurgence or should we talk of continuity?  A new variety or just ‘old wine in a new bottle’?  A simple tick the box survey helps answer the question.  View it here

No doubt about it, Australia is going to commemorate the centenary of the First World War with jingoistic pomp and ceremony, much to the growing concern of former soldier James Brown.  Read his comments here, and buy his book ‘Anzac’s Long Shadow’.  Did you know Australia is planning to outspend Great Britain in WW1 commemorations?

Historian Jan Critchett put the lie to the idea that White Australian treatment of Aborigines was widely accepted both in Australia and in Britain in “A Distant Field of Murder”.  Cecil Poole reviews this book and concludes that although the book has many excellent passages, and analysis it still does little to counter the ongoing extreme ethnocentric views of many Australians.

Tarquin O’Flaherty takes up the cudgels “……….uncomprehending 14 year old expression on our politicians’ faces when they get up in Parliament to twist the truth, to defend the indefensible, to lie about what went on in an offshore detention centre, or to accuse refugees of dumping their kids in the sea.  This is contemptible behaviour…………..It is my profound belief that men, without the more mature influence of women in Parliament, are unfit to govern.”

Friday saw a somewhat lighter post, although not in the opinion of Cecil nor Ira.  Cecil abruptly terminated a phone conversation with our poetry editor, to take another on the second line.

Our Musical Dispatch this week featured (A)nother brilliant dispatch this week, great music and some great Irish phrases.  If perchance you are unfamiliar with Irish you can use Google Translate, – and it is worth it!

Then to Sunday, Poetry Sunday for which Ira Maine, Poetry Editor, prepared something special, featuring Dorothy Parker.  One little anecdote to tempt you: “Ms Parker  ……… as theatre critic, reviewing a performance by Katherine Hepburn;   ‘…Miss Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions, from A to B…’”

thanks for reading, join the conversation.

Cheers
Cecil Poole

Some things give immense joy.  Just the other day my American family welcomed a new arrival, their third born and second son.  Like any grandparent I felt pleasure, warmth and even a little pride.  (Pride for what? I now ask.)  

Congratulations came from many quarters, though why to me I’m not sure.  All were welcome and much appreciated.  I’d like to share one that came from PORCH, the food charity I blogged about last September – here  The mother of this new grandchild is a local coordinator.  T  “Excused Absence”  

Thank You, PORCH!
Thanks to your generous porches, a grand total of 1,003 bags of food were delivered to neighbors in need during the month of February.  Please visithttp://www.porchnc.org/porch/food_for_pantries to get more details about the local hunger relief organizations and families served through your porch donations.

Excused Absence.  On Monday at 8:46 am, PORCH central received an email from neighborhood coordinator Amy Drew saying, “Sorry for missing the sort today.  Having a baby.”   At 5:09 pm, Amy provided this update:  “Baby Boy!  Thaddeus Digby.”  Weighing in at 7 lbs and 8 oz, Teddy is “looking forward to learning his shapes and colors so he can soon help out at a food sort.”  Wake up, Teddy!  ● □ ◊ ∆

Mark Your Calendars … The next PORCH Pick-Up is Monday, March 24^th.

“Like Us” on Facebook to keep up with all of PORCH’s activities … https://www.facebook.com/pages/PORCH/1381678582054510

And then Ira Maine provided this

TDD
All was peaceful, all was still,
For almost all at Chapel Hill,
Except for Master TD Drew,
His mother and attendant crew
Who sat up half the bleary night
To make sure all was going right.
Then dawn (our time) was waking up
That little man, that cheeky pup!
What was it,Thad, what did incline ya
To waken half North Carolina?
To tell the world you’d been delivered,
As down your face your Mum’s tears shivered.
Bawl all you like… the matter’s settled.
Your Mum deserves a huge gold medal!
So, welcome, Mr. TD Drew.
May the world go very well with you.

Life is pretty good for this grandfather.

Poetry Editor, Ira Maine, presented this with the title “Boa Tree Sandy”.  I think he has too much time on his hands.  

Rothschild was Dorothy’s name before she was Parker and a long time before Parker she was born in 1893 in West End, New Jersey to Henry and Eliza Rothschild in some comfort.  Mum died early, Dad married again and Dorothy was very unhappy with the new arrangement.  She and the stepmother did not hit it off and she had a very unhappy childhood.  She married at 24 and acquired Parker as a husband for ten years and Parker as a surname forever.  At the age of 22 she was recommended for an editorial position on Vogue magazine.  Two years later she was on the staff of Vanity Fair where she would one day become it’s theatre critic.  In 1925 she would begin writing for the New Yorker, but it was the Vanity Fair period that the Algonquin Round Table meetings began and would continue for ten years.

The Algonquin Hotel, on West Forty-fourth Street, New York used to have a Rose Room Restaurant.  The room is not there now but when it was, a group of writers, actors and humourists used to meet there regularly enough and funnily enough to be remembered to this day.  Their numbers included George Kaufman, Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Harold Ross and Irving Berlin.  There were many others.  This was a smartarse, wise cracking clever and witty group of people.  It was not the cream of American literary life, this honour belonged to Hemingway and Faulkner and others, but it was nevertheless, a group you’d give your left tit to be allowed call them your friends.

And just like any tale you might read on the Café Royal, one that includes some of Oscar’s bon mots, the people round the Algonquin table were no slouchs in this department either:

Famously Robert Benchley spoke of ‘getting out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini’.

When Calvin Coolidge died, Parker was heard to ask; ‘How could they tell?’ Which, I suppose quite summed up Coolidge’s famed inaction.

On Scott Fitzgerald’s remarking that drinking was a slow way to kill yourself, Benchley is reported to have replied; ‘So, whose in a hurry?’.

And a couple from Ms Parker to round it all off. The first is Parker as theatre critic, reviewing a performance by Katherine Hepburn;

‘…Miss Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions, from A to B…’

A perfect, perfect example of how to ‘damn with faint praise’ don’t you think?

And a hilarious slap in the face for the unfortunate author of a book on science;

“…written without fear and without research…’.

It would be remiss of me, considering this piece to be of a poetic inclination, to shuffle off this immoral pile without an adverse verse or so from this extraordinarily down to earth and unpretentious Ms Dorothy Parker.  To say she was cynical would be to too easily sum the woman up.  She lost her mother at the age of four, her stepmother a few years later.  To decide from this that cynicism is the best defence, that nothing lasts, that nothing is to be trusted and that all you have to rely on is yourself, is an entirely forgiveable decision in the circumstances.  Here are a couple of unclouded observations;

UNFORTUNATE COINCIDENCE.

By the time you swear you’re his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying —-

Lady, make a note of this;
One of you is lying.

ooooooooooooooooooo

And then gloriously, to finish;

COMMENT.

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

Another brilliant dispatch this week, great music and some great Irish phrases.  If perchance you are unfamiliar with Irish you can use Google Translate, – and it is worth it!  First published 13 October 2010

Maidin mhaith mo chairde,

The GBM (bless him) has forwarded a “Last Call for Nominations” poster for CatholicCare NT’s “Strong Families Award”.

The rhetorical question is posed: “Is there a person in your community who keeps their family safe or helps other families to be safe?” So what is being implied? Can you hear the (undoubtedly unintentional) dog-whistle?

Thus are stereotypes reinforced and perpetuated.

Face the mirror for an instant… have the rhetorical question apply to your own community…. well? Is there a person in your street or suburb that keeps their family safe?…

Have you ever been asked this question? Is the question ever likely to be posed about your community?

“The winner of the Strong Families Award will receive a community grant to continue to keep their families safe.”

Safe from what? Safe from the assimilationist Intervention? Safe from Income Management? Safe from the bureaucratic assault? Safe from being patronised? Safe from a Storm?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsyqQmnI0gc

During a “bush cabinet” meeting held in Yuendumu, the CM and the NT Minister for Sport promised that the Government would fund the grassing of the Yuendumu football oval.

At a LIP meeting it was suggested that availability of the oval should be made conditional on improved school attendance (such as the “Yes School. Yes Pool” policy). The idea was dropped when it was pointed out that none of our footballers go to school, but it is yet another example of subtle yet relentless moves at control. Social engineering without consent or conscience.

The NT Government has engaged a consultant to look into the logistics of grassing the oval. A few days ago I was invited to a meeting to discuss the grassing of the oval. I took along a Warlpiri friend who has been involved in Yuendumu football all his life. At the end of the two hour meeting when seating was discussed, my friend mentioned that the existing seats had been made by “ourselves”. The GBM seized on this, and thought that ITEC or some such organisation could run a welding course leading to certificates and full time employment (Mal Brough’s “real jobs”). Again parallel universes, or should I say a different planet?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueUOTImKp0k

The recently released 149 page second biannual report from the Coordinator General for Remote Indigenous Services has two pages of acronyms defined (Appendix 4). For your enlightenment I have included some of them here:

BOM=      Board of Management
CGBAR = Co-ordinator General’s biannual Report
CM=         Chief Minister
GBM=      Ginger Bread Man

ITEC=       let them speak for themselves: “we have made a full and open commitment in assisting to ‘halve the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within   a decade’ (from their web-site)… so far as I’m aware ITEC have not “created” a single job in Yuendumu since their appointment at the beginning of the Intervention.

IUD=     Intra-uterine device
LIP=      Local Implementation Plan
LSP=     Location Supported Playgroup (What?)
NT=      Northern Territory

The other 147 pages of the report are written in English Newspeak:

Excerpt from
“The Principles of Newspeak”
An appendix to 1984
Written by : George Orwell in 1948

“Newspeak was the official language of Oceania, and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his/her sole means of communication, either in speech or writing. The leading articles of the Australian were written in it, but this was a tour de force which could only be carried out by a specialist, It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050…..”

George Orwell obviously had not foreseen the emergence of the likes of the Co-ordinator General (…not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his/her sole means of communication…):

“At a strategic level, our views are further informed by participation in jurisdictional and national high level forums. I also regularly meet with stakeholders and other interested parties. Combined, this provides the platform for an informed overarching assessment of progress across all communities and all States and Territories…” Wow!

In 1963 I went to a concert in the Melbourne Town Hall:  Louis Armstrong and his AllStars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1pdd8FPAls

I don’t like to repeat myself, but every time I see the title “Co-ordinator General” it makes me think of these old masters of co-ordination.

Some accuse me of living in the past whenever I defend self-determination or talk about things that worked or what might have been or speak up in favour of outstations or teaching in the vernacular.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoE5kGMUpcg

I’m told to make the best of the current reality. The Intervention is here to stay I’m told. I shouldn’t be so negative and cynical.

Be a good little vegemite. Cave in.

Bhuel is féidir leat póg mo thóin go léir

Roinnt ceol deas a chríochnú le
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt8p5AxJn18

Go dtí go gcasfar le chéile sinn arís

Francis

PS: for all of you that find all this “foreign” stuff frustrating, spare a thought for those older Warlpiri people when they attend an “engagement” meeting and are addressed in Newspeak English.

(“Google Translate” Irish to English will de-code this lot)

If you’re still with me you deserve another nice song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6p5P2X8cbA

As you can see from the correspondence below, these are trying times.

Your publisher abruptly terminated a phone conversation with our poetry editor, to take another on the second line.  Feeling remorse he wrote:

Rudeness, I know,
When I tell you to go
Another call doesn’t soften the blow
As the person who called offered no dough.

To which our Poetry editor replied with ‘A Puzzled Person’s Piece of Poetry”.

When you cut off the phone,
I gave a low moan,
I was once more alone
So went back to the throne,
Though I’ve now got a bone
To pick with you goin’,
I need a copper to trace
The facts of this case,
Why the hell did you ring in the first place?
Culled from the Annals of Fermi-Dore, in the presence of His Grace the Archbishop of Trugg. and the Low-Cut Lady of the Night-Time. 

In answer the Publisher offered the following
Why the Hell did I ring?
How could you ask such a thing,
I only rang out of compassion
or feelings of some other fashion
perhaps twas anger, maybe rage
could it have been I need your sage
advice, I only asked it once before, it left me helpless on the floor,
yet to your original request
I scratch my head and I am blessed
If I know why I telephoned you –
another wrong number? will that do?

The final word, as always, belongs to Ira
Your more than adequate explanation,
Must earn for you a commendation,
Although the question still remains,
Have we both just lost our brains?
It has been a big experiment,
To discover just what Jeriment,
He wrote his new and super ode,
All buried in his Merton code,
I think it is, well, quite improper,
While he’s completely off his rocker,
To ask for pieces new from Sog
Gy Bottom for the blog
While he is now, (I’m being kind)
Just slightly out of his bloody mind!
I’ll humour him, but that is all,
I must get back to Endette Hall!
signed Hyacinth Truncheon OBE

I trust that clears things up

That Tarquin!  Always measured, reserved, ready to compromise.  Well, not here, not in the case of white treatment of indigenes.  Here is Tarquin’s response to yesterday’s post.

1990 saw the publication of an important book with a provocative title: A Distant Field of Murder, by historian Jan Crichett, (Melbourne University Press, Melbourne).  The book is about contact between europeans and aboriginal people in the Western District of Victoria between 1834 and 1848.  The title is important as it is a direct quote from a Westminster Parliamentarian in the early 1840’s and effectively puts the lie to the apologists who argue that we should only judge the actions in the context and values of the times.  That murder was being committed was widely recognised and publicly stated in Britain whilst being swept under the carpet in Australia.  No wonder Australian of the Year Adam Goodes is aghast at this ongoing white-wash.

The book generally paints an interesting and positive picture of aboriginal life at contact, lauding their diplomacy, their governance, their connection to specific lands and their permanent (if only seasonally used) dwellings.

Although initially impressed with the book I’ve come to have some misgivings.  (This is most certainly not to deny it as an important book.)

There are a few lines in the book that make it seem to almost belittle aboriginal experience, to excuse and indeed venerate the squatters, and to indicate and extremely prejudicial view of class.

“Life with their own people brought some comfort to the Aborigines……..” (p 112.) This is said of Aborigines brought to missions at Framlingham and Lake Condah from throughout the Western District.  Yet earlier in the book Critchett had been at great pains to detail the importance of clan, tribe, unit; that mixing was not undertaken lightly, formalities were needed to be observed and most particularly people had “their own country”.  In the quote above there is surely a suggestion that all Aborigines belong together.  The recognition of difference so clearly spelt early in the book is all but forgotten.

In talking of the squatters,  of landholders (not owners), she invariably calls them “gentlemen’.  “Those who went out armed to deal with the Aboriginals were not only brutalised convicts and ex-convicts but our most respected pioneers  – men who would not have done so without a good cause (my emphasis). (p 187)  And the ‘good cause’?  Economic.  Without the Aborigines the costs of running a grazing enterprise could be slashed and the threat to their ‘ownership’ of the land extinguished.

Convicts and ex convicts are invariably portrayed as low life, as scum, squatters, managers and authority figures as ‘gentlemen’.

The bibliography in this book is most useful and comprehensive.  Critchetts work early in the book is especially insightful in developing the theme of separate clans.  It shows that each clan is distinct, that it has its own ‘country’.  It show that there were recognised protocols for travel to or through others country, and that these protocols were rigorously observed.  She also detailed how these protocols were disregarded by white people, and were almost impossible to observe when fleeing bullets, and searching for food once traditional food and water sources had been destroyed or made inaccessible to the traditional owners.  Yet having done such a great job of showing that there were numerous distinct nations the seems to revert to the generic “Aboriginal” as a coverall for the indigenous population.

The book also fails to discuss the impact of the legal situation for and of the squatters.

My real concern is that the book, in the end somehow, after so much good work regresses and excuses the deplorable facts of colonisation, and diminishes the indigenous whom she had earlier exalted.  By doing this the book continues to allow expression in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries of what Critchett, in another place calls ‘the extreme ethnocentrism’ of the nineteenth century.  This is what I see as the great pity.

Still, the book is highly recommended to anyone wishing to understand more of our history and why, perhaps, it seems we owe our standard of living so much to the proceeds of the theft of Aboriginal land, the destruction of their culture and the wretchedness in which we paint them.

by Cecil Poole

by James Brown   First published in The Age 26 February 2014

Australia is about to spend $325 million commemorating Anzac. It’s an extraordinary amount of money for a country that already has a war memorial in nearly every suburb. It stands starkly in contrast to the cost-cutting across every other area of policy in cash-strapped state and federal governments.

Though we are absolutely right to mark the significance of the centenary of the First World War, Australia will outspend the United Kingdom’s centenary program by 200 per cent. Anzac remembrance on this side of the Tasman will cost nearly 20 times what our New Zealand colleagues have allocated. Rather than letting silent contemplation be our offering to those who served and died for us, we are embarking on a discordant and exorbitant four-year festival, that looks like an Anzacs arms race of sorts.

Across the country, and in the Dardanelles, Australians are looking for bigger and better ways to salute our military forebears. And many companies are looking to cash in.

In 2015 cruise ships will ply Anzac Cove as Bert Newton narrates the war. One company has applied for permission to market an Anzac ice-cream, another here in Melbourne has been awarded $27million in contracts for Anzac events management. Government is crafting an Anzac merchandising plan to match. A century after Gallipoli, the Anzac spirit is being bottled, stamped, and sold.

But beyond the excesses, and crass commercialisation, the real danger of our approach to this centenary is that all our efforts might be occluding the stories of our modern veterans and undercutting the work of the current Australian Defence Force. Every story we tell about Simpson and his donkey in the next four years is a story we are not telling about the work of our modern military in places like Afghanistan.

Over the past years I’ve been staggered by the fact that despite attending dawn services in increasing numbers, Australians I speak to seem to understand less and less about the nature of modern war and the work of our serving soldiers. We have a limited bandwidth to look at military issues, after all we live in a country thankfully far away from most of the world’s traditional conflict zones and relatively unscathed by direct experience of war.

It’s stretching a little – but only a little – to conclude that most Australians would only have ever seen their soldiers performing ceremonial duties. That is true for surprising numbers of our elected representatives as well. Engaging with the military on only one day of the year may be engendering a superficial public understanding of the Defence Force and modern war.

Compared to our closest allies, public conversations on the military in Australia seem excessively simplistic and bifurcated.

On one hand shrill voices deny the legitimacy of a professional military and the possibility of armed conflict. On the other the jingoistic mindlessly trumpet the majesty of the Defence Force without pausing to critically assess its performance. The middle ground, in which we accept military force is sometimes necessary but should not be used capriciously, has fallen away. A nuanced public discussion that should help lift the performance of our military isn’t happening. Putting the soldiers of 100 years ago on too high a pedestal can be problematic too.

Because of our constant stories of Anzac, many Australians believe in the exceptionalism of the Australian soldier. A belief that all Australia needs do in time of war is hand a rifle to every athletic man, and a grenade to every cricket player, engenders complacency about current defence policy.

Inexplicably, while we are planning to construct more war memorials, our Defence Force remains under-funded. Both sides of politics acknowledge that we are spending 0.4 per cent of GDP less on the military than is necessary to keep its equipment modernised and ready, and its people well trained and protected.

In Port Phillip finishing touches are being applied to Australia’s two new helicopter carriers. One hundred years after the landings at Anzac Cove our Defence Force is once again looking to learn the science of amphibious operations and landing troops on distant shores. Though Australians have focused much on the sacrifice at Anzac, we have forgotten many of the lessons of the military operation at Gallipoli.

Today, the military experts on the amphibious battles of the Dardanelles are to be found in Quantico not Canberra. In the 1930s George Patton jnr, then a lieutenant-colonel, was dispatched to Anzac Cove to study the Australian defeat. His conclusions and a multi-year study helped the US Marine Corps develop the amphibious doctrine that underpinned their success in the Pacific during the Second World War. Even today, new Marine Corps officers study the battles of Gallipoli in detail. Yet in the Australian Defence Force, our junior officers engage with Gallipoli mostly through the emotion of Anzac Day.

If we are serious in our concern about the needless loss of lives in battle, then we have a responsibility to understand more about where our soldiers might be deployed tomorrow and how they might be led. Rather than building new multimillion dollar Anzac interpretative centres in far-flung Albany, we need a centre to interpret the lessons of our more modern wars and help shape our thinking about defending against future strife.

Respect for our military dead is important. There is much that is good about Anzac. But we must make sure that we balance looking back to the past with looking ahead to the future.

We cannot bring back our slain soldiers, no matter how grand our commemorations. But we can work to save the lives of soldiers now, and in the future.

James Brown served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Solomon Islands. He is the author of Anzac’s Long Shadow: the cost of our national obsession.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/excess-in-the-anzac-centenary-overlooks-other-military-endeavours-20140225-33foj.html#ixzz2uWghGN8b

How do we tell if Fascism is on the rise?  Is there a resurgence or should we talk of continuity?  A new variety or just ‘old wine in a new bottle’?

Some suggested preconditions include

• Industrially advanced economies hard hit by a recessionary slump.
• A discredited left alternative.
• Dissatisfaction with an inefficient or corrupt parliamentary system.
• An end to consensus politics
• Racism provoked by ‘job stealing’ immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers.
• A respectable right.
• Nostalgia for a strong state.

This page (reproduced below) on Nostalgia and Maladjustment comes from “Introducing Fascism” by Stuart Hood and Litza Jansz, 2013, and they follow this with a check list to determine level of fascism in any group, party or government.