Today I recorded a lecture on genocide in Australia.

So I’ve got a list of people if you want to play “Whitewash an Imperialist” with your guest list

A thread. https://twitter.com/theage/status/1254515660769673230

Let’s start with Governor Arthur Phillip, nice guy by all accounts, meant well. Then he was all about the kidnapping and beheading. A bit too eager to please, but would have some stories about keeping those convicts in line!

We could head to Queensland and invite Fred Walker, first commander of the Native Police. Bit short on words, when he wasn’t directing the most violent front of the Black War, but the man could knock back a few. Depends on the kind of party you want tho amiright?

We could head over to WA and invite AO Neville, architect of assimilation and enthusiastic eugenicist. A keen golfer and singer, but probs too much of a social climber. Would want to know who else is going first.

What about William George Murray? Anzac and police officer who fought at Gallipoli twice. Responsible for the last, and one of the worst, massacres on the continent. At least 60 people died by his hand over 3 months. Tell you a few stories about the Western Front though.

What a repellent thing to do to the memories of family lost. Completely ahistorical, without compassion and actively rewrites the impact of colonisation as a side-effect of ‘plucky scientists and fearless soliders exploring the world’.

That’s not what happened

Rewriting Cook’s story as a “boys own adventure” does damage. It blinds us to the role that men, and men like him, played in a global campaign of terror and slavery.

Celebrating “the man” is a dangerous trope, designed to minimize Cook’s role as a harbinger of destruction. As vapid as this ahistorical bromance is, even the author can’t quite erase all that death. Cook was an “instrument of Empire”. He had “so many worlds to conquer”

This kind of writing hurts. Taken to its logical conclusion it’s horrific.

This project of rehabilitating Cook ultimately serves only one purpose.

To feed the machine of white supremacy.

But you know what? After delivering a very well-researched lecture on the Frontier Wars, the History Wars and their ongoing effects on Indigenous people, there’s probably only one thing to say about this steaming pile of White narcissism