Comment on Question about Australian towns
guismo@aussie.zone 3 months agoI 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.
You’re misunderstanding the intent. They are memorials for sons lost at war.
There is definitely no worship. I recommend contemplating your idea or 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.
Have you considered that you are the problem here?
Yes. And I’m considering that.
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
Nath@aussie.zone 3 months ago
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.