Propaganda radicalised us, then and now

dungfungus said :

The fatal flaw in your theory is that the current crop of “radicalised by propaganda” (your words, not mine) young men who go to fight for ISIS in Syria are opposed to Western values and the skills they acquire there in how to kill infidels may be used against us when they return.
This was not the case with all the other cases of impressionable young Australians going to other campaigns that you mention.

Dunno about that. One troop ship returning from the Great War to the port of Fremantle happened to dock in the middle of a police action against strikers. They promptly joined the workers and, using the skills they had acquired in the war, gave the cops a good flogging. The Mayor did a Bligh and hid in his office, IIRC.

gazket said :

JessP said :

John Hargreaves said:

“I was radicalised as a young man. I was told that the communists were at our doorstep and that a forward defence policy to stem the tide of the yellow peril advance down the Indo-Chinese Peninsula, domino fashion was essential.

I was convinced that if I were to be a true Australian, I would go into the Army and face the enemy. And so I did. I volunteered for nasho”

Really John? And did the other young men in your outfit also sign up to kill or be killed for their belief in the domino theory?

I find this difficult to believe. In order to be ‘radicalised’ you must have missed all the anti -war demonstrations and general cynicism about the war across the nation, particularly from your generation. But you never questioned it? Didn’t you wonder what all the fuss was about?

And your quote at the end equating joining the Australian army with joining Islamic State plumbs new depths, which may be why you used someone else’s voice to say it.

Frunkensteen said :

….this society that we live in rejects (or should reject) the values that fundamentalist islam adheres to.
All value-sets are not equal. We have ours, they have theirs. Theirs are wrong.

I realise this is a shocking thing to say in the eyes of those who’ve been conned by 40-odd years of post-modern cultural relativism, but there it is.

Greetings, fellow dinosaur.

Justin, I did not miss some of the demos re the Vietnam War but need to say that the vehemence expressed in those demos was acutely felt interstate and not much here in 1968 or 1969. I was overseas with my RAAF father in the first half of 1968 and in boarding school in country Victoria in 1967, and prior to that I was 12 months at RAAF Butterworth in Malaysia.

This was the time of the Confrontation between Malaysia and Indonesia and the domino theory was alive and well. Indeed, the threat of communism to Malaysia was a key media event.

So, no, I didn’t feel the protests as much as others, I believed the rubbish put out by the government and by my father’s associates in the services. As a young bloke, I didn’t delve deeply into the validity of the propaganda, I trusted my elders. And I didn’t wonder what the fuss was all about. I took a different stand to my friends, convinced, then, that they were wrong. But I was and I was brain washed into believing that stuff.

There were no other ‘volunteers’ in my platoon in the Army, but I did meet a bunch of ‘regulars’ when I went to my units. They were professional soldiers and did what the government of the day asked of them.

I think Manderson got it right and I don’t accept that my reference to his article was new depths and I did quote the author, so your problem is? I didn’t hide behind anonymity. You can check it if you want.

That aside John, did you still want to kill the enemy when you returned to “civvie street or did you become a closet communist?”

JessP said :

John Hargreaves said:

“I was radicalised as a young man. I was told that the communists were at our doorstep and that a forward defence policy to stem the tide of the yellow peril advance down the Indo-Chinese Peninsula, domino fashion was essential.

I was convinced that if I were to be a true Australian, I would go into the Army and face the enemy. And so I did. I volunteered for nasho”

Really John? And did the other young men in your outfit also sign up to kill or be killed for their belief in the domino theory?

I find this difficult to believe. In order to be ‘radicalised’ you must have missed all the anti -war demonstrations and general cynicism about the war across the nation, particularly from your generation. But you never questioned it? Didn’t you wonder what all the fuss was about?

And your quote at the end equating joining the Australian army with joining Islamic State plumbs new depths, which may be why you used someone else’s voice to say it.

Frunkensteen said :

….this society that we live in rejects (or should reject) the values that fundamentalist islam adheres to.
All value-sets are not equal. We have ours, they have theirs. Theirs are wrong.

I realise this is a shocking thing to say in the eyes of those who’ve been conned by 40-odd years of post-modern cultural relativism, but there it is.

Greetings, fellow dinosaur.

Justin, I did not miss some of the demos re the Vietnam War but need to say that the vehemence expressed in those demos was acutely felt interstate and not much here in 1968 or 1969. I was overseas with my RAAF father in the first half of 1968 and in boarding school in country Victoria in 1967, and prior to that I was 12 months at RAAF Butterworth in Malaysia.

This was the time of the Confrontation between Malaysia and Indonesia and the domino theory was alive and well. Indeed, the threat of communism to Malaysia was a key media event.

So, no, I didn’t feel the protests as much as others, I believed the rubbish put out by the government and by my father’s associates in the services. As a young bloke, I didn’t delve deeply into the validity of the propaganda, I trusted my elders. And I didn’t wonder what the fuss was all about. I took a different stand to my friends, convinced, then, that they were wrong. But I was and I was brain washed into believing that stuff.

There were no other ‘volunteers’ in my platoon in the Army, but I did meet a bunch of ‘regulars’ when I went to my units. They were professional soldiers and did what the government of the day asked of them.

I think Manderson got it right and I don’t accept that my reference to his article was new depths and I did quote the author, so your problem is? I didn’t hide behind anonymity. You can check it if you want.

John Hargreaves said:

“I was radicalised as a young man. I was told that the communists were at our doorstep and that a forward defence policy to stem the tide of the yellow peril advance down the Indo-Chinese Peninsula, domino fashion was essential.

I was convinced that if I were to be a true Australian, I would go into the Army and face the enemy. And so I did. I volunteered for nasho”

Really John? And did the other young men in your outfit also sign up to kill or be killed for their belief in the domino theory?

I find this difficult to believe. In order to be ‘radicalised’ you must have missed all the anti -war demonstrations and general cynicism about the war across the nation, particularly from your generation. But you never questioned it? Didn’t you wonder what all the fuss was about?

And your quote at the end equating joining the Australian army with joining Islamic State plumbs new depths, which may be why you used someone else’s voice to say it.

Frunkensteen said :

….this society that we live in rejects (or should reject) the values that fundamentalist islam adheres to.
All value-sets are not equal. We have ours, they have theirs. Theirs are wrong.

I realise this is a shocking thing to say in the eyes of those who’ve been conned by 40-odd years of post-modern cultural relativism, but there it is.

Greetings, fellow dinosaur.

dungfungus said :

Maya123 said :

Mysteryman said :

“This was not the case with all the other cases of impressionable young Australians going to other campaigns that you mention.”

And where do you think the bike gangs came from?
Look at post WWII history. Young men, trained in warfare, used to relying on their ‘brothers’ for survival and surviving in lawless conditions.
No, obviously not the case before.

What “bike gangs” are you talking about?

He’s talking about 1950s Californian motorcycle club cultural history.

Some people confuse US culture for everywhere’s culture.

dungfungus said :

The fatal flaw in your theory is that the current crop of “radicalised by propaganda” (your words, not mine) young men who go to fight for ISIS in Syria are opposed to Western values and the skills they acquire there in how to kill infidels may be used against us when they return.
This was not the case with all the other cases of impressionable young Australians going to other campaigns that you mention.

Oh, of course, the Unicorns.
Yes, I understand now.

dungfungus said :

Maya123 said :

Mysteryman said :

“This was not the case with all the other cases of impressionable young Australians going to other campaigns that you mention.”

And where do you think the bike gangs came from?
Look at post WWII history. Young men, trained in warfare, used to relying on their ‘brothers’ for survival and surviving in lawless conditions.
No, obviously not the case before.

What “bike gangs” are you talking about?

He’s talking about 1950s Californian motorcycle club cultural history.

Some people confuse US culture for everywhere’s culture.

Anybody interested in this would really enjoy this:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10882.Hell_s_Angels

I’m not even faintly interested in motorcycle clubs, and I loved it.
It is one of US literature’s pearls, head and shoulders above most of the other rubbish published over there post-war. I found it far more engaging than boring Kerouac, and far less dated than Norman Mailer or Wolfe, who got so lost in the minutiae of the day they wrote stuff that no longer has meaning for us. As for the gibberish from Pynchon, Heller and Vonnegut…

Maya123 said :

Mysteryman said :

“This was not the case with all the other cases of impressionable young Australians going to other campaigns that you mention.”

And where do you think the bike gangs came from?
Look at post WWII history. Young men, trained in warfare, used to relying on their ‘brothers’ for survival and surviving in lawless conditions.
No, obviously not the case before.

What “bike gangs” are you talking about?

He’s talking about 1950s Californian motorcycle club cultural history.

Some people confuse US culture for everywhere’s culture.

Mysteryman said :

“This was not the case with all the other cases of impressionable young Australians going to other campaigns that you mention.”

And where do you think the bike gangs came from?

Immigration mostly. Not the ADF.

Mysteryman said :

“This was not the case with all the other cases of impressionable young Australians going to other campaigns that you mention.”

And where do you think the bike gangs came from?
Look at post WWII history. Young men, trained in warfare, used to relying on their ‘brothers’ for survival and surviving in lawless conditions.
No, obviously not the case before.

What “bike gangs” are you talking about?

“This was not the case with all the other cases of impressionable young Australians going to other campaigns that you mention.”

And where do you think the bike gangs came from?
Look at post WWII history. Young men, trained in warfare, used to relying on their ‘brothers’ for survival and surviving in lawless conditions.
No, obviously not the case before.