Tom CravenThe Barracking Mentality
April 30th 2008 09:27
Australian Yobbo’s draping themselves in Australian flags, bogans with stickers of the flag on the back of their Holden ute and hoons wearing shirts with slogans like ‘if you don’t like it get out’ or ‘we grew here, you flew here’. Please someone tell me, what is happening to our country?
It’s bad enough with sport; we as ordinary Australians are constantly subjected to the ‘barracking mentality’ of Australian culture. Sporting commentators and normal Australian’s alike constantly yap on about how sport is such an integral part of our culture and why sport shows the real Aussie spirit. Since when did kicking some leather with air in it become an important celebration of culture? This is what is happening, to our country. We had a culture once, glance back to Federation or even just after WW2, an emerging culture of youth and new Australianism came into existence. We still had pride in our country, more so than today, but we did not behave like we do today. Today we support our country in the same way we support a sporting club, this a dangerous mentality to have. Our country is not a sporting team, it is a country and it should be treated with some kind of reverence.
Draping oneself in the Australian flag is not showing our country reverence or respect telling Asians or Lebanese immigrants to ‘piss off’ is not showing patriotism and marching against immigrants is not showing green and gold blood, if anything it’s staining it. This mentality of barracking has even stretched to the ANZAC’s, for 14 years we have had the ANZAC Day match in the AFL, it’s portrayed to us as Aussie as Banjo Patterson, in reality its a giant marketing exercise that plays lip service to our country. More importantly it mixes sport with militarism which as demonstrated by Germany in the 1930’s is a dangerous mix.
Even with politics people support their party as if it is a footy team, it’s not, nor will it ever be. Politics should never be taken lightly, and supporting your party with a one-eyed mentality like we do with football teams is extremely dangerous.The party can do no wrong, and we end up forgetting the idea of policy and only care about how the party appears externally.
I respect one’s right to support an idea, event, person, belief, country or anything of that nature. But supporting important ideals and even values like they are football teams is not only dangerous it leaves our country susceptible to a cultural backlash that even Gretel Killeen could not cope with. We should treat our country with reverence and respect, we should not pretend that is a sporting team that can never play a bad game.
It’s bad enough with sport; we as ordinary Australians are constantly subjected to the ‘barracking mentality’ of Australian culture. Sporting commentators and normal Australian’s alike constantly yap on about how sport is such an integral part of our culture and why sport shows the real Aussie spirit. Since when did kicking some leather with air in it become an important celebration of culture? This is what is happening, to our country. We had a culture once, glance back to Federation or even just after WW2, an emerging culture of youth and new Australianism came into existence. We still had pride in our country, more so than today, but we did not behave like we do today. Today we support our country in the same way we support a sporting club, this a dangerous mentality to have. Our country is not a sporting team, it is a country and it should be treated with some kind of reverence.
Draping oneself in the Australian flag is not showing our country reverence or respect telling Asians or Lebanese immigrants to ‘piss off’ is not showing patriotism and marching against immigrants is not showing green and gold blood, if anything it’s staining it. This mentality of barracking has even stretched to the ANZAC’s, for 14 years we have had the ANZAC Day match in the AFL, it’s portrayed to us as Aussie as Banjo Patterson, in reality its a giant marketing exercise that plays lip service to our country. More importantly it mixes sport with militarism which as demonstrated by Germany in the 1930’s is a dangerous mix.
Even with politics people support their party as if it is a footy team, it’s not, nor will it ever be. Politics should never be taken lightly, and supporting your party with a one-eyed mentality like we do with football teams is extremely dangerous.The party can do no wrong, and we end up forgetting the idea of policy and only care about how the party appears externally.
I respect one’s right to support an idea, event, person, belief, country or anything of that nature. But supporting important ideals and even values like they are football teams is not only dangerous it leaves our country susceptible to a cultural backlash that even Gretel Killeen could not cope with. We should treat our country with reverence and respect, we should not pretend that is a sporting team that can never play a bad game.
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