What to do with Akker Dakker?

Yes, but do the Daily and Sunday Terror have any regrets over Akker Dakker? 

Isn't the pompous pose wondrous? Here it is again:

Actually for a brief moment of joy, the pond copped this from the Terror website:

Duplicate? Surely that should have been duplicitous?

Which brings us back to Akker Dakker. What to do with him?

That's the question for the day.

As the pond has been doing movies lately, do we feed him into the woodchipper, Fargo style, or do we herd him up to the top of an oil storage tank, so he can say "top of the world ma" before blowing himself up, James Cagney style in White Heat?

You see, today Akker Dakker was in full denialist mode.

But wait, you say, Akker Dakker is always in denialist mode. Climate science, rational thought, measured tones, calm methodical arguments, he routinely denies them all ...

But, it has to be said, this effort was a particularly offensive example of Akker Dakker in racist denialist mode.

In it, Akker Dakker denies that Aboriginal children were removed from their parents. That's to deny the whole apparatus that was erected on top of Aboriginal people by bureaucrats, politicians, with the consent and sometimes the enthusiastic support of the white Australian population, anxious to deal with the vexing problem of the Aboriginal people.

Akker Dakker starts out with a bit of Rudd bashing.

No harm there, the pond has no time for the narcissist Rudd, and he can defend himself.

But then Akker Dakker tells porkies. He lies, and as usual, the Terror, the Sunday edition of the least trusted newspaper in Australia, has no shame running his lies:

...apart from delivering a warm inner glow to those who think they are the most deserving, Rudd’s apology also served to give some credibility to the whole notion of “stolen children” though no court has yet found any plausible evidence that any child was ever actually “stolen”. 
The repercussions from this well-intentioned but so far baseless campaign are far-reaching. 
Academia, not unnaturally, seized upon the flawed history and used it to push its usual anti-European theme. 
Schoolchildren are now taught that the fiction is fact. 
The ABC and Fairfax unquestioningly publish any material which they think will further cement the fable into the national consciousness. Worse, vulnerable Aboriginals have embraced the myth to embellish their status as victims of an unjust system.

It's the usual rhetorical trickery, which a more direct soul would call bullshit of the most demeaning kind.

No plausible evidence? No child - not one - was actually "stolen"? No court has yet found? As if courts are going to go around taking a fresh look at events in the first half of the twentieth century ...

Say what you will about Rabbit-Proof Fence as a film, what Akker Dakker is doing is calling Doris Pilkington Garimara a liar.

Between Akker Dakker and Pilkington, the pond knows who's lying, who's shamelessly distorting the past.

Follow the Garimara path and you end up at the Moore River Native Settlement, and the work and deeds of the likes of A. O. Neville.

Forced removals?

"they have to be protected against themselves whether they like it or not. They cannot remain as they are. The sore spot requires the application of the surgeon's knife for the good of the patient, and probably against the patient's will."

The unilateral imposition of one man's will?

"the children who have been removed as wards of the Chief Protector have been removed because I desired to be satisfied that the conditions surrounding their upbringing were satisfactory, which they certainly were not." (here for the footnotes)

This is the most vicious aspect of the history wars, and what Akker Dakker is doing, in the most vicious and reprehensible way, is conflating what went on in the past so he can pay off enemies in his current political wars.

You see, Akker Dakker wants to maintain the rage at greenies and the ABC and uppity difficult blacks from Gunnedah, who apparently are deeply in the grip of a form of greenie ABC hysteria, and don't actually know what happened to their families in the past.

That's all in aid of saying that things are going along swimmingly now:

... the conservative NSW state government is actually performing better in the area of social policy than Green/Labor can manage. 
 While more can be done, there’s no need to apologise for that performance.

You see, there's no need to apologise now, and there wasn't any need to apologise for anything that ever might have happened in the past, because no court has found any evidence of a single forced removal.

Which is a lie. Unless you happen to believe many who experienced it, who endured it, were lying.

It's exactly the same sort of institutional excuse peddled by the Christian churches and their spokespeople in relation to the mistreatment of the children in their care.

Who'd listen to children, who'd care what they had to say, with their mischievous ways, up against honourable priests and responsible adults?

Well that mob has been found out, and what a painful, tortured process it has been, but no one ever calls Akker Dakker to account, while being published in the least trusted newspaper in Australia.

The few that pay attention just dismiss him - "oh that's just Akker Dakker, everyone knows he's barking mad."

But history shouldn't be merely a matter of ideological whim or convenience. Things happened, and some people even spoke up against it:

During the passage of the New South Wales Aborigines Protection Amending Bill in 1915, for example, one Parliamentarian said of the forced removal of Aboriginal children that ...
These people are unfortunate because, in the interests of so-called civilisation, we have over-run their country and taken away their domain. We now propose to perpetrate further acts of cruelty upon them by separating the children from the parents. The mothers and fathers of these children love them just as much as the birds and the animals of the bush care for their offspring, and hon. members would not perpetrate a cruelty of this kind even upon an animal.....To my mind some better method should be adopted. There should be some method of direct control over these children, but the child should not be separated from the mother. (NSW Parliamentary Debates 57 1914-15: 1953) (here, with lots more)

The birds and the animals .... flora and fauna ...

And so still shit happened, and to talk of a baseless campaign, or courts not finding credible evidence, or dismissing it as flawed history, or a fiction and not fact, and a fable and a myth, is as shameless and as vicious a form of history as ideology you can find doing the rounds.

And, if the pond can breach Godwin's Law one more time, not that far removed from David Irvine's attempts to present the good side of the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler, or bizarre Stalinists and Maoists who still try on occasion to redeem their heroes.

Well let's just go back to the bleeding obvious, which you can find here, along with a lot more. It isn't that hard to understand, and there's no dissembling about courts and myths and fables:

Aboriginal children have been forcibly separated from their families and communities since the very first days of the European occupation of Australia.

Live with it, adjust to it how you will, take whatever stance you like to current government policies, but don't re-write history.

Sheesh, even Tony Abbott could do that bit of peace pipe-smoking and humble pie swallowing:

Opposition spokesman for Indigenous affairs, Tony Abbott, has admitted publicly for the first time that the Coalition made a mistake by refusing to apologise to Australia's Indigenous population. 
The former prime minister, John Howard, repeatedly defended his decision not to say sorry to Aboriginal people during his 11 years in power and criticised the Federal Government's historic apology to the Stolen Generations last year. 
Addressing a social services forum in Sydney, Mr Abbott was applauded when he publicly admitted the Coalition should have said sorry while in government. 
"It was a mistake for us not to apologise to Aboriginal people," he said as the crowd applauded. 
"And I'm pleased when Kevin Rudd did decide to apologise that he was strongly supported by the Coalition." (here)

Oh wait. Was he just dog whistling?

On another emotional issue, the stolen generations, Abbott remains uncomfortable about the whole Sorry thing. Abbott joined the reconciliation march across Sydney Harbour Bridge in 2000 but was never really happy about the apology. I am carrying a copy of Quadrant, the magazine for the lonely conservative male. It has an article by the editor, Keith Windschuttle, titled "Why there were no stolen generations". I am also carrying a copy of the Leftier-leaning The Monthly, where Abbott stars on the cover. The Monthly has yet another article by that magazine's editorial chairman, Robert Manne, refuting Windschuttle's claims. Abbott has high praise for Windschuttle, saying he's "a breath of fresh air". No. This air is stale. People were stolen, weren't they? His response is hardcore Abbott. "I've met people," he says. "I've met lots of people who left their families for all sorts of reasons. And that phrase, the stolen generations is a morally loaded phrase." You don't accept people were taken? "Well, I suspect in some cases, yes, but the story is not quite as one-sided as some people would make out." (here)

I suspect?

Indeed. The pond suspects some Jews, some gays, some socialists and some gypsies might have suffered under Hitler, but to this very day these notions are disputed by some people, and some of these deeply perverse people even manage to reverse the idea, such that the Nazis were socialists, and they were all gays out to rule the world ...

So much wilful stupidity and bigotry in the world, and so little time.

Meanwhile, if you want to get a sense of the times and the attitudes, why not just take a look at some of the newspapers now available via Trove.

Here, for example, is The Australian Women's Weekly reporting:

"That the women's organisations of Australia be urged that for the race heritage that we hold in trust for the generations to come, for the sanctity of our age-old traditions, and for the protection of our growing boys, to combat with all their power, this insidious attempt to mingle with the community, women of illegitimate birth, tainted with aboriginal blood, the offspring of men of the lowest human type, many of whom are Asiatics and other foreign nationalities.

Sanctity, insidious, foreign, tainted.

Yep, Akker Dakker would be right at home in the 1930s ...

And if you feel like poring over the archives, why not just ask Trove about A. O. Neville, here. You could be lost for weeks, but chances are you might arrive at a report on an "interesting" Neville lecture in September 1920:

In conclusion, Mr. Neville, after pointing out6 that, in proportion to its population, no State in the Empire had spent more money upon the amelioration of its aboriginal inhabitants than had Western Australia, urged that, even though the people were dwindling away in response to some mysterious law of nature which decreed that white man should supplant them, the good work must still go on in the hope that at least we could make the last days of a dying race the easier and happier for it. here.

Some mysterious law of nature?

Yep Akker Dakker would be right at home in WA in the 1920s ...

And so let it be entered into the record again: