Peter Dutton’s ongoing quest to bring the worst elements of American politics to Australia reached a new low this week with his social media post urging Woolworths to stop ‘peddling woke agendas’. This was in response to the supermarket giant saying it would no longer be selling Australia Day merchandise, along with Kmart and Aldi, due to declining sales.
The overseas manufacturers of useless plastic products emblazoned with Australian flags were devastated of course, but the decision of the retailers was manna from heaven for Dutton’s backers, the astroturf organisation Advance, along with its international backer Atlas Network, which is on a mission to distract ordinary people everywhere from their real enemies, the freedom-loving ultra-rich ‘libertarians’ who are literally destroying our planet.
The concept of ‘woke’ goes right back to Marcus Garvey and Lead Belly, but the word went mainstream when the Black Lives Matter movement took off in 2014. Being woke meant you were politically conscious and aware of injustice, especially racial injustice. Seriously triggered right wing nutjobs in America soon went to work, turning woke into a pejorative. As Steve Rose put it in 2020, wokeness transformed from being a virtue signal to a dog whistle.
So woke!
As a result, it’s now much easier to attack wokeness than being compassionate, or sensitive to your own privilege, or even being nice, although they all amount to pretty much the same thing. Woke has less syllables than ‘politically correct’ and includes the handy racist undertones associated with repurposing a positive word from African-American culture and turning it into something negative.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has built most of his political career on attacking ‘woke culture’, making it the basis for his now flailing campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr DeSantis invented his own definition in his book, saying ‘a fundamental attribute of wokeness is the subordination of facts and evidence to anecdote and ideology.’ Bear in mind that this man leads a state so crazy – even in the context of the USA – that schools there sought last week to ban dictionaries because they contained the word ‘sex’.
Other Republicans have tied wokeness to progressive stances on numerous issues that annoy them, including transgender athletes, school curriculum and church-state separation. This has been given added rocket fuel by ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch’s many-tentacled global media empire.
The underlying idea of being aware of your own privilege and history is anathema to many white people, who seem determined to hold on to their victim status at all costs. This is an issue where Australia is completely in lockstep with our friends across the Pacific, although a growing number of Australians are uneasy with our national day being commemorated on the day convicts arrived in Sydney Cove, beginning the process which devastated the people, animals and plants of this ancient island continent.
Oi oi oi
Since 1788, Australia Day has been celebrated on various different days in different parts of Australia, only becoming officially linked nationally to 26 January in 1994.
John Howard found it useful to focus on the jingoistic aspects of the occasion, and it remains a convenient political football for many other cultural warriors who have nothing substantial to offer in terms of policies or new ideas, so seek to divide and conquer the population instead, no matter how much pain it causes to those Australians who have already suffered the most.
Like wokeness, Australia Day is now the subject of debate at every level of government, and in the media, while major actual problems remain unaddressed. This week for example, while Peter Dutton called for a boycott on Woolworths for withdrawing from plastic patriotism, NSW Farmers were calling for an ACCC inquiry into the anti-competitive price gouging from the supermarket duopoly which is seriously hurting farmers and fresh food consumers alike.
Those who want to wave a plastic flag on 26 January will be okay though, with Big W continuing to stock them all year round, and Coles proudly offering a full range of Australia Day merch in 2024.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning film-maker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
Long ago, he did work experience in Parliament House with Mungo MacCallum.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
