Critics of Dark Emu fail to see Professor Pascoe's Brilliant Wordsmith Ability
The ideas put forward, and the conclusions drawn, in Professor Pascoe’s book, Dark Emu, are so preposterous to any sensible person with a rudimentary working knowledge of Australian history in general, and farming and agriculture in particular, that critics are dismayed that anyone could take his book seriously. But they have, and in large numbers, propelling Dark Emu up the best seller’s lists.
And it is not just the general public who are hooked on Dark Emu, but also people who should know better; for example, a lecture hall full of Australia’s supposedly top, rational scientific and enquiring minds from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, and apparently ‘educated’ audiences at the Stephen Murray-Smith Memorial Lecture, held at the State Library of Victoria, the 2019 Narelle Oliver Lecture the State Library of Queensland and the glitterati at the Art Gallery of NSW . Gauging by the excited and appreciative introductions and summaries of the hosts, and the level of audience clapping, it does not appear that anyone at these lectures openly challenged or questioned Professor Pascoe on his thesis.
Nevertheless, some critics are so appalled by Professor Pascoe and his thesis, to be moved to write, “… as purported history, Dark Emu is worthless. Even worse, it promotes a divisive, victim-based agenda that pits one Australian against another.”
So how has Professor Pascoe done it? His supporters would say that it’s because he has revealed the ‘truth and evidence’ that was always before our very eyes, the ‘truth’ that Australians either refused to see or, when we did, we destroyed the evidence to erase its memory. We at Dark Emu Exposed however, know that the book is mostly “trash history”, and there is no ‘truth’ or ‘evidence’ that Aborigines were ‘agriculturalists’, so we offer some other reasons for Dark Emu’s popular success.
And the first clue comes from the writings of a very unfortunate Italian, whose life was short and painful, but whose influence lives large today. While he was imprisoned by Mussolini from 1926 until the year he died in 1937, the Italian Marxist, Anotonio Gramsci was busy writing little gems like the following, which have come down to haunt us in Australia in the 21st century.
“The group in power in society always insists that intellectual discussion shall take place in the kind of language which it uses, which it understands, and which represents its way of seeing, interpreting and dominating the world.”
- (Ref 1)
This use of ‘language’ to obtain and maintain power for a particular intellectual class was further described by George Orwell in his book 1984 and then put more effectively into practical action from the late 1960’s onwards by the strategy of the ‘long march through the institutions: working against the established institutions while working within them’
To give a practical example of how this control of the use of language can allow a group in Australia with an ideological goal, obtain and then maintain power in some way, consider the word “swamp”, which was in common usage up until say, the 1970’s and 80’s, when the word “wetland” rapidly began to be used instead. Why did the Carrum Carrum Swamp in Edithvale in Melbourne’s south-east, so named for 150 years, become ultimately known as the Edithvale-Seaford Wetlands in 2001? Why did the use of the word, “swamp” steadily diminish, and the word, “wetland” rapidly increase in the last decades of the 20th century, as the two Google Ngram word-frequency* charts below would seem to indicate?
We would argue that it was a well thought-out plan by an increasing number of ‘environmentally-minded’ graduates moving into positions of influence in local, state and the Federal governments and local councils, who were in a position to influence what language would be used to communicate decisions and set policy. The word, ‘wetland’ has a much better environmental profile than the word, “swamp” – the public could be made to agree to drain a dangerous, infested ‘swamp’, but who wants to be a vandal and see a ‘wetland’ destroyed?
So the cheapest, easiest way for environmentalists to wield power and stop farmers or developers draining and reclaiming a swamp, and secure its ownership for their environmental group’s enjoyment, is to use language – ‘swamp’ equals bad and under threat of draining, becomes ‘wetland’, equals good and protected - problem solved. A sensible person can see that physically, the swamp is still there unchanged. To the ideologue there is no ‘swamp’, only a beautiful ‘wetland’ which, within a short period of time, is believed to have been there forever. Don’t believe us? – Dig out grand-dad’s old atlases and maps and look at all the labelled ‘swamps’ in Australia – there maybe the odd ‘marsh’ or two, but no ‘wetlands’. Look at a modern map – just about all are named ‘wetlands’, a few ‘marshes’ and the rare swamp, such as the Koo Wee Rup Swamp, that resist being, what a Post-Modernist like Professor Pascoe would call, “re-considered”.
And so it is with Prof Pascoe’s ‘Aboriginal Agricultural Society’. A sensible person can see that the descriptions of the lives of the Aborigines for the 50,000 years, before the publication of Dark Emu in 2014, fit a hunter gatherer society. And although there is no physical or material change to the Aboriginal hunter gatherer society (in its archives, material relics, archaeology, pictures, film records, etc.,) after 2014, in the new, post 2014 world of Prof Pascoe and his followers, there is change. The language of, ‘agriculture’, now provides what is called, “ a compelling argument for a reconsideration of the hunter gatherer label” (from Dark Emu dust jacket blurb). Once this “reconsideration” has been processed through the next generation of Australians, it will automatically be accepted that the Aborigines are, and always have been, ‘agriculturalists’. Game, set and match to the Post-modern marchers going through our institutions.
We have put together a small Post-modern dictionary companion to Dark Emu to enlighten the reader as to Professor Pascoe’s brilliant wordsmith ability.
Old accepted definition = Pascoe’s Newspeak : blocked creek channel = irrigation channel or scheme; single gunyah, wurley, gurlie, humpy, hut = a house, plural = Villages or towns or estate; eel trap = aquaculture scheme; stone wind break = stone house; trading meetings and routes = pan-continental government ; round stone with flat grinding stone = flour grinding mill ; discussion and decision making by elders = democracy , et al.
Think this is a far-fetched, conspiracy theory? Then consider the following sequence of events.
Up until the 1960s, every anthropologist and historian described the Australian Aborigines as hunter gatherers. The great friend and admirer of the Aboriginal people, and one of Australia’s most celebrated anthropologists, W.E.H. Stanner wrote in 1956,
“They [the Australian Aborigines] are, of course, nomads — hunters and foragers who grow nothing, build nothing, and stay nowhere long. They make almost no physical mark on the environment…They move about, carrying their scant possessions, in small bands of anything from ten to sixty persons…Their tools and crafts, meagre — pitiably meagre — though they are, have nonetheless been good enough to let them win the battle for survival, and to win it comfortably at that. With no pottery, no knowledge of metals, no wheel, no domestication of animals, no agriculture, they have still been able to people the entire continent…”
- W.E.H.Stanner, The Dreaming & Other Essays, Black Inc Agenda, 2010, p 64,65 & 70 - (our emphasis)
Stanner lived with Aboriginal tribes who still largely lived traditional lives so he knew what he was talking about. He wasn’t a desk bound scribbler like Prof Pascoe, far removed in space and time from being able to observe real, Aboriginal traditional life.
But then in 1969, an important new term called, “ fire-stick farming”, was coined by the great Australian archaeologist, Rhys Jones, when he proposed that the Aborigines used “burning as resource management.” (Ref 2) . Another anthropologist, Gould (Ref 3), developed the use of term further in 1971.
The intellectuals could see value, both political and career-wise, in taking up the term, “fire-stick farming”, and it was quickly used more frequently and readily gained wide, popular currency with the publication in 2011 of the book, The Biggest Estate on Earth, by the writer, Bill Gammage, an academic who specialised in covering research in history, anthropology and botany.
Today there is very widespread acceptance by the general public that the Aborigines were “fire-stick farmers”. But why this term? Why didn’t Rhy Jones, and those that followed him, call it by a more accurate term such as, for example, “fire-stick gathering”? The Aborigines were obviously not doing what we call “farming”, by tilling the soil, planting seeds, maintaining the crop, harvesting it and then saving seed for replanting next season. Weren’t they just burning a patch of scrub and gathering the game (reptiles, wallabies, kangaroos,) as they fled the flames, or burning grass plains to return to 6 months later to gather the game (kangaroos, wallaby’s) that has been attracted by the new, fresh, greens shoots, and then return again in another 6 months to gather the grass seeds that had ripened in the pre-burnt patches?
We know why. The ‘march through the institutions’ required that the ultimate destination was where Prof Pascoe has now brought us to – the “Aboriginal Agriculturalist”. The word ‘farmer’ was just a half way point - ‘fire stick gatherer‘ just would not have done, as it showed no progress towards the ‘agricultural‘ destination. If Dark Emu gets into the school curriculum, and into the minds of the intelligentsia in the ABC, government and academia, there is no doubt that in 10 years or so, everyone will come to believe that the Aborigines were ‘agriculturalists’ for the past 50,000 years and not hunter gatherers. The Aborigines, their society, and the physical relics, oral history and archaeology won’t have changed at all , but the label and our imagining will have.
But who really cares we hear you say? Aren’t you just nit-picking? What could possibly be wrong in just being a bit generous and flexible with the truth and letting the Aboriginal intellectuals have their way and “re-consider” Aboriginal society as being ‘agricultural’? Who cares if the definition of words changes over time?
We will tell you why, by giving a more concrete and sinister example of the use of language that is underway now in our society and will have major adverse ramifications for Australia’s social cohesion unless it is checked.
In George Orwell’s novel, 1984, the character Emmanuel Goldstein explains the concept of Doublethink in the paragraph below using the composite word of two opposites, “blackwhite” as an example of Doublethink. In our case we have just replaced ‘blackwhite’ with another composite of opposites, “racism-inclusivity”. This illuminating example shows the increasing acceptance in Australian society that we are allowed, or even need to be racist, to achieve inclusivity.
From Orwell’s 1984 :
“The keyword here is racism-inclusivity (blackwhite). Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that racism is inclusivity (black is white), in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that racism is inclusivity (black is white) when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that racism is inclusivity (black is white), and more, to know that racism is inclusivity (black is white), and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink. Doublethink is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them”.
— Part II, Chapter IX – The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by the Emmanuel Goldstein character in George Orwell’s 1984.
We then Googled, this Doublethink word plus Australia, racism inclusivity Australia, and not unpredictably, a confirmation of racist Doublethink returned from not unsurprisingly, the Australian Human Rights Commission, from whose webpages we could quite easily find the following Doublethink related quotes:
“…racism…works against our goal of building a fair, inclusive community.”,
and a description of their legal tolerance of what are called, “identified positions”, or jobs where applicants are selected on the basis of race as a way of increasing inclusivity of those races within the work force.
“Identified positions are positions where an employer may identify that a position is to be filled only by a person with a particular attribute. This might mean an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander applicant, a person with a disability, a person of a particular sex or a person of a particular age.
A position identified for people of a particular racial background, such as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people, can be lawful if it is taken for the sole purpose of advancement of a certain racial or ethnic group to ensure those individuals’ equal enjoyment of human rights.”
(ie: we are all complicit in voting for governments who willingly enact a racist policy, which requires us to have to say and believe that we are not racists, when clearly we are acting as racists - we need to believe in two opposing views at once - ‘black is white’ - Classic Doublethink !).
We now rest our case on the need and importance in stopping ideological language manipulation of the type practiced by Professor Pascoe in Dark Emu, which ultimately will have serious, adverse implications for Australia’s social cohesion.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."
Ref 1 - Introducing Barthes – A Graphic Guide Publ Philip Thody & Piero , Icon Books Ltd , Appignanesi, R., Ed., 2013, p 102 )
Ref 2 - Jones R, (1969) Firestick farming. Aust Nat Hist 16:224–231.
Ref 3 - Gould RA, (1971) Uses and effects of fire among the western desert Aborigines of Australia. Mankind 8:85.
*Google Ngram - Like all things ‘computer’ in the modern world, one needs to take data spat out of a computer program or model with a grain (bag?) of salt. Google Ngram has been criticised as potentially a program of , ‘garbage in garbage out’. However, in our example here the comparative trends are accurate, approximate and reliable enough we feel for the illustrative purposes of our argument.
