ANZAC Day Atheist

Posted on Thursday 24 April 2008 | 41 Comments

This post is now at: http://beefaerie.wordpress.com/2008/04/24/anzac-day-atheist/.

About these ads
This entry was posted in Atheism, Living in Australia, Religion. Bookmark the permalink.

41 Responses to ANZAC Day Atheist

  1. mtbrooks | Thursday 24 April 2008 at 11:58 pm |

    You godless heathen! But seriously, try being “non-religious” in the Southern US. Fun.

  2. Lucy Lowe | Friday 25 April 2008 at 4:19 am |

    I think you could make an argument that all these ceremonies honouring the dead lead to the image of war as something glorious and heroic. I think it’s right for people to know their history, to respect those who gave their lives, but often those who never did play any part end up lending support to the falsehood that war is brave and noble thing.

    It’s particularly sad how young men are encouraged to war, feted as heroes while they fight and then often abandoned by society on their return home. A ceremony is a lovely day, but perhaps jobs and a little social care would be a more fitting way to honour them.

    Oh, and by the way, this is a really well-written and interesting post, thankyou :)

  3. Malcolm | Friday 25 April 2008 at 8:41 am |

    Last night, as I came home, I saw that the largest office building in town had turned its lights on in the shape of a cross – you know, the way it is often done at Christmas.

    So I have to agree – ANZAC day is certainly a religious ceremony.

  4. Kevin Rennie | Friday 25 April 2008 at 9:58 am |

    In the early 1980s I took an excursion of 15-16 year olds to Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance. Before ascending the steps I reminded them that they were expected to be quiet when inside because many people regarded it with religious zeal. Before we entered the attendant echoed my comments, saying that it was regarded as a church by many of the visitors.

    One of my students pointed out the plaque celebrating the fight for god, king and empire.

    Let’s honour the war dead on Remembrance Day – the dead of all nations.

  5. merc | Friday 25 April 2008 at 10:32 am |

    Great post. My Grandmother (step) told me that upon enlisting all those fighting for the British, (colonials included) were asked their “denom” (Christian denomination), if none was supplied they were “given” C of E as designated “denom” on their papers.
    Thus they died in the name of Christ, both WW1 and WW2 were Christian wars for this reason.

  6. poneke | Friday 25 April 2008 at 10:47 am |

    I’d honestly not thought of Anzac Day as a religious ceremony.

    I suppose to the religious it is.

    I see it as a day to remember all the wonderful kids sent by politicians to kill and be killed by other wonderful young kids.

    I find it immensely sad.

  7. Marian | Friday 25 April 2008 at 10:52 am |

    ‘If we truly want to honour the dead, then our resolve must be to make it stop. No more deaths of young men and young women in battle. That is the memorial that the ANZACs deserve.’

    It’s really a Catch-22. The more you honour the dead in commemorations of this sort, the more likely that the horrors of war will NOT stop. Indeed, they tend to ensure the continuance of the horrors of war by concentrating almost entirely on its glories.

    Although the proponents of commemorations like Anzac Day protesteth that their purpose is not to glorify war, this inevitably is the outcome.

  8. littlegemsession | Friday 25 April 2008 at 11:07 am |

    Thank you, great post.

  9. Daleaway | Friday 25 April 2008 at 11:24 am |

    I can’t help but agree with you, Deborah. Well put.

    Our household feels queasy at seeing the Aussies introduce pop singers to the Gallipoli “celebrations”, and about the way that traipsing to Turkey has now become a sort of nationalistic OE something akin to supporting the America’s Cup – with great-grandfather’s medals replacing the red socks.

    I’ve also noticed a trend to republishing the Anzac biscuit recipe last week – could it be that Anzac day is being repositioned to become the bikkie holiday as Easter has become the choccie merchandising opportunity?

    I wish Chris Trotter’s excellent piece in today’s DomPost was online for you to read. He has similar thoughts to yours, and you are both brave to express them.

    [Deborah says: I found the Trotter column - Our annual ritual of denial. Thanks for letting me know about it.]

  10. ray | Friday 25 April 2008 at 12:04 pm |

    Deborah you echo some of my thoughts on Anzac day
    I could never understand the conection with religion and the day and the way it had taken over the whole dam thing
    I must say that religious seems to be less of a part of the day now
    For my part I hope my dad marched today (I am away from home so am not sure) as there can’t be many more of these for him
    And I sleeped in as I am sure that is what the old digs would have done if allowed a choice

  11. Idiot/Savant | Friday 25 April 2008 at 2:50 pm |

    Trotter expands on the blood for butter theme in No Left Turn. It’s an excellent read.

  12. pennypacker | Friday 25 April 2008 at 2:58 pm |

    I’m not opposed to some form of memorial to those killed in wars, I’m opposed to a memorial that privileges New Zealand dead over non-New Zealand dead, and ANZAC day is just that. The day is not remarkable as a particularly uniquely large slaughter, it’s unique only in that it’s the first time inhabitants of these islands experienced that slaughter. By viewing war through a patriotic lens, we are participating in the ideology that sent them off to be killed in the first place – in other words, we’re saying it’s a shame that people have to die to further the so-called ‘national interest’, but we’re not interested in abandoning the same interest in order to prevent future deaths.

    Even if war were to end, until people stop looking at the human race through this ridiculous jigsaw of nation-states, and realise that the deaths caused in wars in distant places like Algeria, Somalia, Chechenya and Burma are as important to us as the deaths of the ANZACs – moreso, since those wars are happening right now, and we could do something about them – I don’t think we would be able to commemorate the dead appropriately. We’re still perversely mired in the nationalist ideology that killed them in the first place.

  13. Marian | Friday 25 April 2008 at 3:10 pm |

    Deborah

    ‘Who cares that so many women have suffered in giving birth, so many have died, along with their babies, leaving young children behind them? No one, it seems, honours those who die in giving life. We only honour those who die in the battle to give death.’

    After reading and commenting on your post this morning, I came back again and had another read. This time around, the words above actually had me crying. All my life this insidious double standard has imbued my thinking and I was not even aware of it. I’m so grateful to you for allowing me to see it.

  14. Deborah | Friday 25 April 2008 at 4:41 pm |

    Thank you for saying that, Marian. It’s a thought I have had floating around in the back of my mind for years, and this is the first time I’ve tried it out in public (‘tho I have discussed it with my mother). I’m glad to know that at least one other person finds it resonates with her.

  15. shawnbarr | Friday 25 April 2008 at 5:13 pm |

    thanks for the thoughtful article. you’ve made me do some thinking myself.

    I would say that war is an incredibly complicated and sometimes unavoidable act to defend a nations sovereignty and existance. I wish we would never have another where so many soldiers give their lives.

    Although death is involved, I don’t see that the soldiers “died in battle to give death”, but instead die to maintain freedom.

    Just a thought.

  16. Simon | Friday 25 April 2008 at 5:45 pm |

    We have our Hypocrisy Day in November.

  17. Viola Wilkins | Friday 25 April 2008 at 6:33 pm |

    Good on ya did you ever see
    the Anzac Myth by Dr J Toscano ?
    This was published to acknowledge the sacrifices made by those Australians who OPPOSED CONSCRIPTION and Australia’s involvement in World War One.
    Lest we have amnesia !

    http://www.anarchistmedia.org/

    also maybe of interest ….
    http://melbourneanarchafeminists.wordpress.com/

    http://www.ragdublin.blogspot.com

    http://www.zabalaza.net/pdfs/varpams/feminism_class_anarchism_dh.pdf

    http://www.imemc.org/article/53454

    http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue69/margaret_michaelis_photographer.html

    THE 10 STUPIDEST RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

    10. Intercession / Predestination (select events being caused by prayer, or all events being “God’s will”)
    9. Manifestations (face of Jesus in grilled cheese, potato chip, etc.)
    8. Creationism / Intelligent Design
    7. “Young Earth” Hypothesis / Non-Existence of Dinosaurs / Coexistence of Dinosaurs with Man
    6. Existence of the Devil at all
    5. Demonic Possession / Exorcism
    4. Rapture / Second-Coming / Apocalypse Scenarios / “The Antichrist”
    3. Geocentrism
    2. The Tower of Babel
    1. Noah’s Ark / The Flood

  18. Paul | Friday 25 April 2008 at 6:56 pm |

    I’ve been thinking about Anzac day a lot the past couple of days and my meh! reaction to it – partly because my daughter asked why I wasn’t wearing a poppy (her high school had told her it was compulsory).

    To me it’s a somewhat different issue, I’m of an age that I was a teenager during the Vietnam war – I lived with the draft looking over me for all my teenage years – and the people who were rooting most for drafting my ass and shipping it off to Vietnam were the RSA – the same guys who sell the poppies

    I went and lived in the ‘states for 20 years and moved back to NZ recently – gen x/y’s new found love of Anzac day mystifies me as does the iconification of this strange non-poppy like red thing they sell these days (I saw one badly painted on a rugby field tonight) – old one they had when I left at least looked like a poppy

  19. seren | Friday 25 April 2008 at 6:57 pm |

    Oh my, I do agree. I’m not religious, I’m spiritual (I think of myself as Pagan). I think that the best way to commemorate the lost would be to have no wars ever again. In a way, I can understand WW1 and II, but the current one? No way.

  20. Nick | Friday 25 April 2008 at 8:49 pm |

    When I was a kid growing up in Dunedin (in the 60s and 70s) ANZAC day was just not such a big thing. I remember that some people wore poppies, but they certainly weren’t handed around at school. Having watched one ANZAC day in Australia, I suspect that traditionally more has been made of it there. But, whatever the case, I never attended a dawn parade as a child or a teenager, though I think my nephews and nieces now probably now have.

    Something happened in the mid-80s, and I’m not sure what it was, but it came with a kind of revival of interest in national identity that has been growing since then across the “west”. For example, London was awash with St. George’s flags and St. George’s day events earlier in the week. I can vouch for the fact that that wasn’t the case even ten years ago.

    Whatever the case, I did attend my first dawn parade in Wellington in 1990, and I must admit that I was moved by it. It certainly wasn’t the service or any other aspect of the pomp and circumstance that moved me. It was the sight of the veterans. They weren’t as you’ve described them, marching along with puffed out chests (though I do remember seeing that kind of thing in Melbourne) In fact there was a fairly shabby line-up of old men and women, all a bit bent with age. They looked so terribly ordinary in the half-light. It struck me that, like most of us, most of them weren’t particularly heroic, but were caught up in events I hope I will never have to experience, and that they coped with all the moral ambiguities as best they could.

    We can look back on the idiocies of WWI now, and see them as just that. But, having read my grandfather’s diary kept in North Africa and Italy during World War II, I am not so sure how I would have responded if caught up either in the first or the second world war. They diary’s written in a clear-eyed way — not by someone who’s been taken in by atrocity stories or Imperial hoopla. In fact his major preoccupation most days seemed to be finding a fresh bottle of wine. I know from having spoken to my grandparents and people of their generation that they respected people like Archibald Baxter and others who had refused to fight, but felt that they couldn’t take that option. They told me that even at the time, they were appalled by Hiroshima and the bombing of Dresden. They were also pretty aware of when they were being propagandised by the government. They had also all read Wilfred Owen and the other war poets at school and university (my grandmother taught WEA evening classes on them in the 1930s). I suspect that there are still a lot of people like that in the veterans’ processions.

    Anyway, since 1990, I’ve gone to the service most years, if I get a chance. I agree with you that there’s something faintly ridiculous about the ceremonial aspect of it (believe me, it’s ten times as ridiculous in the UK) but I still find the humanity of it a kind of inoculation against the idea that most of the moral choices we make are anything less than ambiguous and difficult. And I think as well that for various reasons, I’d rather be reminded that there were wars like that, than forget it.

  21. Ken | Friday 25 April 2008 at 9:03 pm |

    Thank you for your article.

    Why do we not commemorate the the ‘Collateral Damage’ of war? The people that live and are killed on the battle fields. We hear very little about the civilians who happen to live on land that is strategic to some non locals plan for world domination by their side.

    South of Darwin there is a war cemetery for all the service personal killed during bombing and defence of Northern Australia. It is on the must see of any trip up here. It is a beautiful garden and moving place to visit. But, there is no publicised memorial or cemetery for the civilians who were killed in this town.

    The only day I can think of that memorialises civilians killed in war is Hiroshima Day. Even though I nominate this day as an example, I couldn’t tell you what date it is. It passes like so many ‘ribbon days’, it may get a 10 to 20 words before the weather on one of the morning news bulletins. But, even people who are totally uninterested in history or current affairs will be able to give the 2 soldier memorial days in April and November.

  22. soymilk | Friday 25 April 2008 at 9:15 pm |

    Amen.
    I worry about all the young kids now, growing up with this myth of the noble war and the idea that to not attend a dawn ceremony or wear a poppy is almost sacrilegious. There’s not much discussion about it, just reverence.
    Changing the flag too – dishonours the old soldiers because they fought for that flag.

  23. Deborah | Friday 25 April 2008 at 9:53 pm |

    I have no problems with the veterans marching, and if they march with puffed out chests, then all power to them – they deserve every bit of respect they get, and then some. It’s the accretia I mind, the kids who wear their granddad’s medals, and somehow think that confers some sort of holiness on them.

    The New South Wales Returned Services League has asked relatives not to march with veterans:

    because of dwindling numbers of veterans, relatives are in some cases overwhelming the units, to the point where the veterans are not visible to the crowd or television viewers.

    Children and young people wearing medals won by their ancestors have become a prominent feature of Anzac Day parades in recent years.

    RSL state president Don Rowe says he understands some descendants will be disappointed by the change this Friday.

    “I would hope that they would see that it’s the veterans we’re trying to ensure have pride of place in the march,” he said.

    “It is a veterans’ march, not a descendants’ march.

  24. Nick | Friday 25 April 2008 at 10:15 pm |

    Yep, the vicarious heroism does sound a bit hard to take.

    It reminds me a bit of the Diana-hysteria here in 1997. It was surreal. You felt like a major social transgressor if you didn’t throw your own cellophane-wrapped offering on the communal heap of rotting flowers. But while it’s sad if anyone dies, Diana didn’t mean anything more to me than the umpteen thousand other people who died that day.

    It does point, though, to some kind of widely felt need to be part of something big and symbolic, whether it’s a nation, a footie team or “tradition” (e.g. the dreadful Braveheartery in Scotland).

    I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing or just one of those things that’s there and we just have to live with it.

  26. Guido | Friday 25 April 2008 at 11:58 pm |

    In your post Deborah you have written many of my feelings as well. One is the fact that some relatives seems to get some sort of reflected glory because one of their family connections.

    The other, and you are right, is the religiosity of it all. But I find this quasi-religious attitude towards ANZAC day even worse than a real religious day. Someone can say they they don’t believe in Jesus Christ and that he did not raise from the dead and no one would bat and eyelid. But say something against ANZAC day, then you deserve to be publicly put is stocks.

    I remember some years ago Moreland Council here in Melbourne (which is pretty left wing) decided not to participate in ANZAC celebrations and Neil Mitchell, the most listened person on 3AW was pratically staging a campaign about these ‘un-Australians’.

    As others have said here I have no issue with the veterans themselves meeting and reminisce about an event which would have been pretty life-changing for most of them and remember those who died.

    What I object is the saccharine schmalz that we get from the media. Please not another story about ‘young people’ being enthusiastic about ANZAC day. Not another child being interviewed and repeating ‘they died for our freedom’ or some other glib line that they were fed by their private schools. It is this exploitation of this event by media outlets trying to outprove about how caring they are about the diggers and how patriotic they are about the ANZACs that make me puke.

    Of course this is also a subject I stay quiet about. Being a migrant (especially from a country which was Australia’s enemy in World War II) I feel somewhat restrained from expressing my feelings in public.

  27. Marian | Saturday 26 April 2008 at 9:21 am |

    Ken

    ‘Why do we not commemorate the the ‘Collateral Damage’ of war? The people that live and are killed on the battle fields.’

    Agreed. I often wonder about that, too – as well as the scarcity of memorials to civilians who have died in wars.

    Unlike soldiers, civilians don’t seem to ‘fall’; they just evaporate. There are few-to-no monuments, parades or commemorations (that I know of) to those who have died as a result of military cross-fire, aerial bombings, landmines and other explosives, war-related diseases and famines, war rapes and refugee dislocations. The only well-known exceptions being the Holocaust and Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    I suspect commemorating Collateral Damage detracts from the memory of the military ‘fallen’, and asks disturbing questions about what they were actually fighting to protect.

    Nick

    I fully relate to your point about Princess Diana. Many try to analyse the identity and cultural reasons why people, especially the young, have been increasingly attracted to Anzac Day in recent times.

    No one ever really puts it down to good old-fashioned media marketing in an overwhelmingly media-driven age. Like Princess Diana’s death, the resurgence in Anzac Day has been largely due to a well-orchestrated grief-by-media campaign that successfully taps into mass archetypal psychology.

    (PS I’m not as cynical as I sound.)

  28. Marian | Saturday 26 April 2008 at 9:34 am |

    Deborah

    Have you checked out this site , hailing from the NZ part of ANZAC?

    An Alternative ANZAC Commemoration
    http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/AlternativeANZACs.pdf

  29. Ken | Saturday 26 April 2008 at 11:06 am |

    The sad thing is that religion is forced on people who wish to publicly remember their relatives and fellow country people who died in a war.

    As always ins such situations it denigrates people of different beliefs.

    Why can’t these sort of commemorations be for everyone – not just the less than 50% who have theist beliefs.

  30. genfie | Saturday 26 April 2008 at 1:58 pm |

    Very interesting post.

    I don’t know, there does seem to be something in people that requires ritual, doesn’t there? Something in our soul that makes us create and cling to ceremony? Could this very simple human need explain ANZAC Day’s resurgence over the past 10 years? Truth is, it never used to be this way. It just used to be a couple of old guys marching, gunfire breakfast and two up. Now it’s this…thing. Greater than the sum of its parts. And certainly some of those parts are slightly disturbing.

    I have my own musings on ANZAC Day on my blog. Feel free to check it out or not as you see fit.

    http://www.gennevene.blogspot.com

  31. g bruno | Saturday 26 April 2008 at 4:56 pm |

    “They died for our freeedom” surely does NOT apply to WWI, Vietnam, WWII didnt sem to leave us particularly free, maybe Tojo&Hitler would have ben worse, but NZ moving its army from the Pacific to Europe, and the A-Bombing of Japanese cities are problematic freedom fighting moves.

    http://gbruno2.blogspot.com/2008/04/anzac-day-armenian-genocide-day-song-of.html

  32. Julie | Sunday 27 April 2008 at 11:49 am |

    My experience of ANZAC day is fervently pacifist – for me “lest we forget” is a potent reminder of the horrors of war which I would rather we avoid if at all possible.

    Sadly my view of ANZAC day is probably not that widespread. Certainly the undercurrents you have written eloquently about are quite mainstream these days.

    It’s worth noting that there were also Indian and French soldiers at Gallipoli. The French were in powder blue uniforms, which I imagine would have made them pretty easy pickings in that wasted beige hell.

  33. Craig Ranapia | Sunday 27 April 2008 at 9:01 pm |

    It’s the accretia I mind, the kids who wear their granddad’s medals, and somehow think that confers some sort of holiness on them.

    I wouldn’t be quite so patronising, Deborah, but I’ve got to admit there’s something in my gut that goes thud at the sight. I’d never wear my father’s medals for one simple reason — they are a recognition of his service, not mine. It strikes me as being as vulgar and impertinent as wearing his uniform or regimental tie.

  34. drewzel | Wednesday 30 April 2008 at 10:13 am |

    I’ve never thought of Anzac Day as religious either, as some others have said, for me it’s a day of remembering the people who were sent by governments to do their dirty work, so to speak.

    But it is meaningful for me. I always shed a tear on Anzac day. Why? Because it reminds me of the horrors of War, the needlessness of fighting, the fact that both men and women were willing to “do their part” and “help protect our way of life”. I’ve had rellies die in the war, I know people whose family have died in the Nazi death camps. It’s all so horribly wrong. That’s what Anzac Day should remind us. That’s why it’s so sombre, because it was tragic, and still is tragic that we are STILL fighting wars around the world. I’m not for glorifying war, but if it (Anzac Day) gives meaning to people by marching and feel that their loved ones didn’t die for nothing, then that’s a valuable thing too.
    For me, Anzac Day isn’t just about men and soldiers, but for everyone effected by war. And as the old soldiers die out, maybe there will be less glory and more sorrow. I don’t know.

    You’re right – people do act as if they want to stone you if you dare question Anzac Day…but then again, I also get that response when I tell people I’m not interested in the AFL.

  35. Deborah | Thursday 1 May 2008 at 10:23 am |

    This comment was made by Bill on my ‘About’ page, but I think he must have meant it to go here, so I have copied it.

    Whilst commemorating ANZAC day and the sacrifice made by sucessive generations (and yes war will continue as long as Man [whoops] peoplekind inhabit the earth) is prevented by your atheist views, you clearly miss the point. No one knows better the horrors and futility of war better than a soldier. No one denies that we enjoy the freedom today provided through their sacrifice. Not taking time with those men and women to remember the horror of war, what our forebears went through and a good dash of “let it not happen again” becuase their may be a religious component to the various ceremonies is at best chrulish and shows that you are a very small person. If you feel as strongly as you appear, then instead of taking the holiday why not give something else back to the community instead of leaving your lard arse in bed, gardening and writing about yourself on the computer.

    You doubting the existence of god has made a believer out of me.

  36. Julie | Thursday 1 May 2008 at 11:28 am |

    Wow Deborah, you have singlehandedly converted someone to the cult of Deism! ;-)

  37. Julie | Thursday 1 May 2008 at 11:28 am |

    Or should that be Theism? Hmmm, maybe I should start drinking coffee and smarten up.

  38. Deborah | Thursday 1 May 2008 at 2:46 pm |

    I was pretty impressed with my hither-to unknown (to me, that is!) ability to make people believers. I wonder if it’s only a ‘convert people to theism’ power, or maybe it’s a power I can deploy elsewhere too. Maybe I could use it for the good, and turn the whole National party caucus into feminists.

  39. Malcolm | Thursday 1 May 2008 at 6:16 pm |

    Yes, but only by being an a-feminist yourself. Maybe Bob Clarkson could be your role model?

  40. unknown | Thursday 19 June 2008 at 2:32 pm |

    i find it disgusting those of you who do not support anzacs. i am a 15 year old girl, and i think it is very brave and nobel of the young and old soldiers who faught. they were fighting for their country. think about that. the young kids were not forced to fight, it was their own will.

  41. Mat | Thursday 15 April 2010 at 12:09 pm |

    A few years ago I attended a morning ‘service’ – completely by accident. i happened to take an early morning stroll with my then 2-year old son, and stumbled upon a bunch of people gathering at the local war memorial phallus in Papakura.
    While there were a few invocations of God, to which i paid my usual level of apathy, i found the experience to be incredibly moving. i found myself thinking of the boys who wen to a strange land to die a horrible, pointless death, and could not help but shed a tear. I found the ceremony a touching, and above all IMPORTANT thing to have, because we must NEVER forget. those who forget or deny the mistakes of the past are bound to repeat them, and it certainly looks like there are people in the Middle East and the US (thankfully not so many here) who would gladly plunge us back into the idiocy of global war.
    I won’t ever see the ANZAC remembrance as a religious ceremony, because i can see past the mindless pandering to the established delusions, and instead see it as a neccesary reminder of what can happen when we go along with what those few megalomaniacal, egotistical authorities demand of us – rather reminiscent of religious institutions… ironic, isn’t it?