In Australia, the place overt flag-waving rings hole and is normally thought-about tasteless, the phrase “patriot” feels imported and international, mockingly. But that may be altering.
Three years in the past, in an essay in Meanjin titled “In direction of a brand new progressive patriotism”, I sensed a reclamation mission of types, by which conservative touchstones just like the flag and an brazenly expressed love of nation may be reverse-colonised and uniquely recharged with 65,000 years of continental continuity.
That essay, which pre-dated the damaging 2023 failure of the Voice to Parliament referendum, was pitched right into a propitious historic second — one which appeared to supply a viable path to nationwide therapeutic and a collective reimagining.
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Alas, it wasn’t to be.
So why then is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese lighting upon “progressive patriotism” as each a descriptor for present applications and a driver of second-term priorities? His conjunction shouldn’t be totally authentic, nor broadly embraced. Certainly, to the left, it’s an oxymoron: “patriotism” being the disreputable turf of response and nostalgia.
This linguistic demarcation is most blatant in American politics, the place declaring oneself a “patriot” is a standard act of contradistinction. Others turn out to be traitors by implication, i.e. “woke” cultural elites, internationalists, journalists, teachers, individuals who one way or the other despise their nation.
Donald Trump has referred to as the January 6 insurrectionists “patriots”, his occasion even refusing to commemorate the legislation enforcement officers killed and injured defending the Capitol. Two-and-a-half centuries earlier, when British mental Samuel Johnson described patriotism as “the final refuge of the scoundrel”, it was this political valorisation that he opposed.
Populists and their boosters — such because the right-wing marketing campaign automobile Advance — are more and more deploying the jingoistic aesthetics of nationalism of their combat in opposition to a “lefty” consensus in media, colleges and universities, the general public service and throughout professions. With no trace of self-awareness, their wails of grievance resemble these abroad, normally in Trump’s MAGA motion. Clive Palmer’s risible “Trumpet of Patriots” brazenly drew on this.
So what then is the prime minister on about? Is his new embrace of “progressive patriotism” merely a artful label to be cheekily retrofitted to present Labor coverage? Or is it a daring new organising precept for a social-democratic authorities alive to new potentialities now that it has been resoundingly reelected? Is Albanese’s “progressive” patriotism next-level political spin, or next-level nationwide objective aimed toward real social, cultural and civic self-awareness?
Proud progressives?
It’s too early to inform, however one motive for warning is that Albanese’s slogan definition appears ethereally broad sufficient to incorporate common childcare, reasonably priced housing and strengthened Medicare. In different phrases, progressive patriotism is already manifest in established programmatic initiatives, some courting again so far as the Hawke Labor authorities’s common medical health insurance scheme.
9’s David Crowe positively framed Albanese’s conception as “a riposte to the populist takeover of the White Home and the false notion that solely conservatives might be happy with their nation”. This can be a useful addition, nevertheless it stays unclear what the prime minister’s “riposte” quantities to materially by way of new coverage and governmental observe.
Albanese is true to reclaim the notion of nation for the political left, if solely as a result of the conservative monopoly on nationwide pleasure has all the time been a political fraud — much less love of nation than nostalgic resistance to social change.
Sky “After Darkish” encompasses a nightly procession of right-wing commentators and peripheral MPs bemoaning the unhappy state of issues. Expectorating tirades lament woke lecturers indoctrinating our youngsters, a green-left conspiracy, pious teals, the preferential voting system, falling residing requirements, rising crime, the ABC, the science of world warming, renewables, unions, and so on.
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Conspicuously absent from this fire-hydrant of woe is any discernible affection for modern Australia.
After all, the lexical semantics of political competitors dictate that on the opposite aspect, nearly every part is proof of nationwide success and development. On election evening, a victorious Albanese once more brandished his Medicare card, calling it “a declaration of our nationwide values, in our nationwide colors”, which is “not Labor crimson or Liberal blue, it’s inexperienced and gold”. Medicare “belongs to all Australians”.
By that reasoning, the progressive variant of patriotism could also be as outdated as Federation and be stated to incorporate every part from the eight-hour work day to the key poll and common suffrage.
Questions of sovereignty
Even when we assume Albanese’s “progressive patriotism” is substantive and probably transformative, threshold questions persist.
For instance, how is AUKUS included? Critics of the Anglophone defence pact say its reliance on American nuclear submarines and its inbuilt technological dependence portend probably the most vital dilution of nationwide sovereignty since World Conflict II.
In Australia’s strategic coverage, this interoperability is already exerting a measurable affect. When US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth warned {that a} quickly militarising China was rehearsing an invasion of Taiwan, calling on Australia to dramatically step up navy spending to three.5% of GDP, Richard Marles nearly fell over himself in responding.
“What I made clear is that it is a dialog that we’re very prepared to have, and it’s one which we’re having,” our defence minister reported of his discussions with Hegseth.
It took Albanese to dampen the sense of undue US compliance, saying, “We’ll decide our defence coverage.”
AUKUS critic and director of the Lowy Institute’s Worldwide Safety Program Sam Roggeveen advised SBS the trade was revealing: “The general public making the case for increased defence spending are doing so as a result of they suppose Australia’s correct function is to complement America’s capabilities, and that’s why we’re shopping for nuclear powered submarines, in any case.”
Comparable issues over sovereignty seem in Australia’s ultra-tentative method to recognising Palestinian statehood (which is official ALP coverage). Ditto Canberra’s rigorously cloaked criticisms of the far-right Netanyahu authorities for committing what different democracies, and the Worldwide Felony Court docket, imagine to be struggle crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity.
The frequent issue right here is Australia’s observable reluctance to articulate a opposite international coverage or certainly to depart substantively from America’s stance. Palestinian statehood, now being supported by extra nations and by former Labor international ministers Gareth Evans and Bob Carr, stays off the desk. This, although the denial of statehood has had no inhibitive impact on Center East violence and serves Israel’s pursuits alone.
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Albanese addresses this battle solely not directly inside progressive patriotism, by arguing Australia’s profitable multiculturalism works as a result of international grievances aren’t imported right here. But Australia’s multiculturalism, or extra significantly its social cohesion, is definitely additional strained by a one-sided international coverage that’s seen to be unduly influenced.
If progressive patriotism is to quantity to greater than hole rhetoric, it should start with self-assuredness in international and defence coverage and with materials recognition of the crimes of genocide and dispossession dedicated in Australia’s trendy settlement.
Former Labor senator Pat Dodson has referred to as on the prime minister to re-engage with Indigenous communities and to ship the remaining two components of the Uluru agenda, Makarrata (a nationwide truth-telling fee) and treaty-making.
“They will try this as a result of it doesn’t require constitutional referendum. It may be achieved by the use of laws,” he advised the ABC.
Albanese had promised on election evening 2022 that his authorities would ship the Uluru Assertion from the Coronary heart “in full”. Publish-referendum, these different components have misplaced momentum. If a brand new progressive patriotism is to take root, it should planted within the soil of mannequin social democracy and nourished by the observance of values comparable to fact, equity and social justice.
Ultimately, patriotism refers to how residents really feel about their nation. A reimagined “progressive” Australia faces an infinite psychological barrier if it avoids enthusiastic about the way it happened, and the way it presents to the world.
What does “progressive patriotism” imply to you?
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