Jun 1: Australian Nationalism Booklist – Part One

Australian Nationalism:
Booklist: Part One – The Underlying Logic For A Movement Of National Renewal

Dr. Jim Saleam and Brendan Gidley

This is the first part of a book list to assist Australian nationalists to mould themselves ideologically so to improve their ability to interpret Australian historical-political reality and facts. Political change in Australia that secures our identity, independence and freedom, can only be made by Australians acting as Australians.

Percy Stephensen, The Foundations Of Culture In Australia: An Essay Towards National Self Respect, 1935.

This work is a key text in Australian identity-cultural politics. Authored by a nationalist intellectual prominent in the 1930’s and 1940’s, Stephensen showed himself the heir of the nationalist thrust of the Bulletin magazine. He argues for Race and Place as determinative factors in the development of the Australian identity and its culture. The nativist European identity of Australia is again the question as Australia struggles for internal cohesion.

Availability: there are several Internet editions. A new edition can be located through Amazon.

See: http://www.australianculture.org/the-foundations-of-culture-in-australia-stephensen-1936/

F.H. Kirmess, The Australian Crisis, 1907.

This book spurred the foundation of an Australian Navy and the creation of the Citizens’ Military Forces, a national militia of all Australians. Its fictional account of an invasion of the north of Australia by Japan, both a military attack and a colonization effort, in effective collusion with the imperial master, shocked Australians and encouraged nationalist sentiment. The book suggested warfare on Australian soil by a new army, ‘The White Guard’, which would be compelled to fight both a national war and a civil war, against those loyal regardless to the Empire, for independence and White Australia. Ultimately, Australians can depend only upon themselves, men whom Kirmess calls the Moderates castigated to oblivion and the Extremists brought to power. Australia wins freedom from the Empire, but a Japanese colony remains in the North under the control of Britain. Shades of today.

Availability: there are Internet editions and library copies.

See: http://www.australianculture.org/the-australian-crisis/

Lothrop Stoddard: The Rising Tide Of Color Against White World Supremacy, 1920.

This work, written by an American, was once the bible of RSL clubs throughout our country and a work that underlay the Australian perception that the Great War had been a civil war amongst Europeans. The position Australia finds itself in today began there with the crucial decline of old empires and the rise of new non-European states before a strong and growing Australia could achieve full Nationhood. Stoddard viewed the massive population increases in the non-European world as a challenge, not simply to the European Nations geopolitically, but to their colony nations – demographically. The popularity of his book generally has caused even opponents of his views to consider it as classic text.

Availability: there are Internet editions, library copies and a new edition in the United States.

See: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37408

William Lane, White or Yellow? The Race War of 1908 AD, 1890.

This work outlined a corrupt Queensland premier enmeshed with wealthy Chinese capitalists opening the then-colony to a massive Chinese immigration program and economic penetration. A new workers’ movement and leader were needed to fight to reverse the takeover.

Lane once said of the clash of races in Australia:

“It is a race struggle, this white-yellow controversy, the clashing of distinct civilisations and of antagonistic peoples. The strong hand must win in this as in every other struggle for existence. The Chinaman has got to go if there is virtue in our vigorous Australian blood or energy in our mingled descent from the migrating stocks.”

The importance of his role in the Australian labour and nationalist movements was undeniable.

William Lane, The Workingman’s Paradise: A Labour Novel, 1892.

This was William Lane’s great novel of a workingman’s life and political struggle to realize the great Promise of Australia, a paradise for workingmen where through essential labour, the wealth of the nation was available to uplift all. He wrote of a nation of free men and women exercising power by cultivating responsibility. The reader will find The Workingman’s Paradise rich in philosophy, racial history, religious debate and Australian social history. It is a window onto the Australia we wish to ‘recapture’, not the yesteryear as it was, but as it should have become. It is not necessary, and indeed is impossible, for us in this century and given our collective experience of the last century, to agree with the pure-sentiments of a man the century before that. That is impossible. Rather, we must reduce Lane to spirit, the hand that wrote the paper, and thence move forward, secure in our Australianity!

See: http://home.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/williamlane/index.html
David Mosler, The Recreational Society, 2002.

This work is not written by any sort of nationalist; however it conveys considerable insight into the inability of Australians to acquire a thorough-going resistance to the colonization of protector powers and to the contrary the disposition of Australians to detach from history on the basis that the country can live in a bubble free of demands and crisis. Many nationalist minded people naively assume that the right programme will attract the suburban mass, or when it is rejected, they despondently assume the people are deficient or the cause in some manner wrong. Rather, it is the way that consumer-suburban Australia has developed that limits us.

Availability: it can be purchased as an e-book or is generally available for purchase or in libraries.

Jean Raspail, The Camp Of The Saints, 1972.

The classic novel of the unarmed refugee invasion of a European society and how the society reacts and fragments as liberal and patriotic elements jostle. This work was one which predicted a crisis before it emerged. Its power lies in the author’s understanding of the liberal mind and its degenerative function, its failure to understand that the population problem cannot be addressed by the immigration of the poor to the European lands, but by their taking charge of their own resources and curbing population growth. Apocalyptic and revolutionary and necessary for the survival of the Nation.

Availability: it can be downloaded as an e-book or is generally available for purchase or in libraries.

See: https://archive.org/details/CampOfTheSaints

Donald Horne, The Lucky Country: Australia In The Sixties, 1965.

This work is the cry of an anti Australian liberal to change the demographics and the place of Australia in the world – not towards genuine national independence, but towards enmeshment in Asia. Horne did dislike the narrow suburbanism and consumerism of our society and dependent political caste which looked to strong foreigners to guarantee the luck it enjoyed – but it was a self-loathing anti Australianism that leads him to abhor the White Australia Policy which he wrongly equated with pro-British conservatism. He represents the new liberal caste in motion. This work helps us understand the venal nature of the liberal mentality.

Availability: it is generally available for purchase or in libraries.