Final edit: Sorry guys, this got out of hand as I feared and it would take too long to answer everything properly and it would just offend more people.
I got some nice tips for finding places and learned more about Australian’s views on the subject. I should have been more careful with what I said. It changed my opinion somewhat but people here would still not like it, so I’ll keep it to myself.
Thanks for the very civilized and nice answers and I’m sorry if I didn’t answer. I would like to, but in private, or this could become a witch hunt. I do not wish to offend anyone or be attacked because of that. As someone commented, I am the problem here.
Hi everyone, I’ve been lurking for a long time and decided to try to ask something I can’t find out.
First, please be tolerant about the question. I am an Australian citizen, but from a foreign background, so cultural things that seem sacred and unquestionable here are not the same to me. I wouldn’t be crazy to post this on reddit (though I deleted my account ages ago) because I know all the posts would just be attacking me (if you don’t like it, leave, are you defending terrorists?, and so on), instead of helpful comments. Hopefully it will be different here.
The question is: is there any Australian town free from military worship? I mean monuments everywhere, pools and parks named after it and so on. Somewhere I can forget and pretend that this is not how the rest of Australia is.
I’ve been traveling around trying to find a place I would like to settle. I found many small towns I liked, but it seems that the smaller the town, the higher the military worship. They may not even have a public toilet, but they will have a military worship statue that seemed to have cost more than all the town to build.
I love Australia, specially the outback, but the military worship issue is so big that makes me think of looking for another country. I know my taxes are being used to send people to kill whoever the US doesn’t like, and the country prides itself with this history. But if I can ignore that, I can pretend to myself that it’s not true and live happy. I tried to fight the issue for a long time but it makes no difference except to me, sacrificing my well being for nothing. But if I keep being reminded every time I go to do groceries trough the park “invasion of foreign country divine pride park”, it will be impossible. I already try to avoid news and ABC, so it should be possible.
I’m sending a picture of some of the places I’ve been to, without much luck. Funny enough, the town I liked the most, Roma, is the worst, with military trees every 10 meters.
Anyway, that’s it. Maybe I’ll get downvoted to oblivion, but let’s try…
By the way, I don’t know if I am posting this correctly, on the right place and everything. It’s my first lemmy post as well. It’s very confusing to know the community to post. It shows everything everwhere!
Edit- I posted this before, thought it was in the wrong place, deleted and posted again. Now I see 2 of the posts and the deleted one has 2 upvotes. This is so confusing…
Edit2 - Before I get any comment, I dislike military worship from any country, not just Australia. Military may or not be necessary in modern societies, but worship and praise should never be acceptable and is specially dangerous when applied to a group with power. Citizens should always be skeptical of their military group, its uses, powers and permissions. It should be like owning a gun. You may be allowed to have one but should be constantly proving you are not doing anything wrong with it. The definition of what is “wrong” or “right” should be constantly questioned as well.
Edit3 - just a reminder, that I do not wish to change anyone’s point of view. It’s your tradition and culture and I respect, but I don’t have to like it and I would like to figure out how to avoid it. It is all. I would like to stop Australian involvment in American wars, but besides that I don’t mind if Australians like military or not, but I would like to avoid being exposed to that, assuming that is possible, which is the reason for the post, so I can find out.
I thought it was the Turkish they mostly celebrate for killing? I met many people who don’t really know anything about the history, but say something against the military, monuments and so on and they will get very angry with you. Then again, a few I met don’t really care either way, maybe like you.
I just never met anyone who was against the war stuff. I saw some article on people wanting to change ANZAC day, but never met someone.
Nobody celebrates killing Turkish people. Quite the opposite, in fact. Australians have immense respect for the Turks. We recognise that neither the Anzacs nor the Turks had any direct quarrel with one another. We had no desire to conquer what is now Turkey, and the Turks weren’t really defending their homes. It was a stupid conflict that neither of us wanted to be at. Anzacs were there because they were sent there by the British. The Turks were there because they were sent by the Ottomans. The British were just trying to get through the Dardanelles and Bosporus so they could reach the Black Sea. The Ottomans were on the German side of WWI and wanted to stop that from happening. At the end of the day, that sums up the whole reason everyone was on that peninsular.
If you want to look into it, you’ll find that Mustafa Atatürk holds a very special place in Australia’s history. He has a personal memorial right next to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, looking down Anzac avenue of war memorials that point to Parliament House. Depending on the direction you take of the memorials, he is either the first or last memorial. Either way, you are sure to remember him. Short of putting him on our money, we couldn’t really honour him closer. I know that over the last decade, President Erdoğan has been shifting Turkish perspective on Atatürk and the Gallipoli campaign, but no shifts are happening in Australia.
All the celebration of Anzac spirit you see is because this war in particular changed our nation. Until this point, our ancestors thought of themselves as British. Afterwards, they were Australians and New Zealanders. The cultural shift took a few decades, and didn’t really finish until WWII (some would argue it is still shifting). The Anzac story has never been about killing Turks.
You’re misunderstanding the intent. They are memorials for sons lost at war.
There is definitely no worship. I recommend contemplating your idea of worship, and considering what every person who’s respectfully replied to help.
It’s memorial. Lost sons. That’s it.
Nobody loves war. The memorials are out of respect to the communities that lost huge numbers of their men to needless war. That’s the all of it.
No worship. Consider that for a moment.
It may be a bad term I’m using. Maybe I can say respect, simply? In my view, it’s bad to respect wars. Lives were lost and I understand people want to remember, but they should fear and hate the idea that it happened and why.
Unlike what the other guy commented on me, it’s not pacifism. If someone hits you, you should defend yourself. But never celebrate, make memorials or things like that because you did it.
And while the guy hated me for thinking, I do believe that people sent to war, soldiers, and their deaths should be seen differently than other deaths. They went to another country to kill people and died. I know it sounds horrible that I have that opinion, but I just don’t see war the same way.
People who died in Australia killed by invaders I see in a very different way. People killed in any invasion for that matter. Australians killed invading another country is a different thing.
If you come to my house to kill me and I end up killing you, I see it as a very different thing from if I go to your house to kill you and end up dead. Even if everyone thought their reasons to go there kill the other was right and necessary.
But it’s just my opinion. I don’t want to offend anyone with that nor stop them from paying their respect to the dead. I just would like to avoid it.
That’s exactly the point.
These young men were told that invaders were coming. To hurt the kingdom.
That they must defend. They must protect their mothers, brothers, sisters and country.
They must be brave and face the incoming enemy.
They thought they were doing the right thing.
They were slaughtered. They’re dead. Their family grieved. They built memorials.
They didn’t go to murder. In their hearts, they were protecting their families. It’s worth studying some history on this. From a soldiers perspective. From a mother’s perspective.
I thought it was the Turkish they mostly celebrate for killing?
This phrase illustrates how profoundly you misinterpret these war memorials. These are not celebrations of killing, they are memorials to those who died, markers of grief not celebrations of conquest.
I live in a small village in Tasmania and I’m not aware of any war memorial however there is a grove of trees commemorating WW1 at the nearby Port Arthur Historic Site. I think this is interesting because Port Arthur is itself a memorial to a brutal, horrific past, a past that isn’t celebrated but remembered. The same site also contains a memorial garden that marks the deadliest mass shooting in modern Australian history, remembrance of a tragedy not a celebration of it.
What do you think? How should a community treat the memories of those who die in tragic events? Should they be forgotten or remembered? For that matter, do you think that wars should be forgotten or remembered?
“Those who ignore the lesson of the past, will be doomed to repeat it.”
George Santayana
