The attack on the Anzac legend began at the end of the Great War when the newly formed Communist Party of Australia tried to appropriate it for propaganda purposes. When that failed, it turned violently against it. The ideal of the Anzac easily swept aside the competing model of ‘Soviet Man’ that the Left wanted to impose on the Australian people. This was a major ideological defeat and the failure festered on the Left over the decades, provoking streams of invective against the tradition. This reached a torrent at times, especially during the Cultural Revolution of the Sixties (c.1965-74), when the iconoclastic rage of the Vietnam War era very nearly destroyed the Anzac tradition. Stigmatized, it was effectively driven underground. Meanwhile, the triumphant Left began its long march through academia and other vital institutions, entrenching its bleak ideological hegemony over our political, cultural and social life.
.....This period is dominated by the Left intelligentsia and the adversary culture that it nurtures and sustains. It sees itself as the champion of various victim groups, social causes, and the Third World. And it is fiercely iconoclastic, despising both Anzac and Australia,
Whereas the first period [1918-1960's] nurtured a nation-building narrative and sustained a unifying positive national identity, the present period is dominated by the divisive ‘black armband’ historical narrative of a genocidal and ecologically rapacious settler society, promoting a negative national identity based on guilt, shame, and despair.We in Australia are engaged in a culture war and its aims and objectives bode badly for the soul of the nation and the souls of its people. We cannot afford to lose for the latter reason.
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2015/04/anzacs-determined-foes/
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