Richard Rampton, the libel lawyer who took on Holocaust denial in his capacity as a barrister, passed away late last year. He was 82. His antagonist was the long term Holocaust denier and Nazi sympathiser David Irving. Irving, in 1996, sued Professor Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin publishers for defamation. Why? Irving contended that Lipstadt, by referring to him as a Holocaust denier, antisemite and racist, had defamed him.

The object of Irving’s irritation was the 1993 book by Lipstadt entitled Denying the Holocaust: the growing assault on truth and memory. A sweeping analysis of the burgeoning phenomenon of Holocaust denial and its basis in antisemitism and Nazi philosophy, the book made mention of numerous Holocaust deniers, and the role they played in rehabilitating Nazism. If the enormous guilt of the Holocaust could be removed from the shoulders of the Nazi regime, then the ideology which underpinned that regime would be easier to rehabilitate.

Irving was mentioned, among others, as a prolific author of books which denied or minimised the Holocaust, and praised the leading figures of the Nazi regime. Incensed, Irving launched defamation proceedings – and Richard Rampton stepped up to defend Lipstadt and Penguin Publishers. English libel law is weighted in favour of the plaintiff – the onus is on the defendant to prove that they did not libel the plaintiff.

This trial, which began in 2000, raised questions about modern history. Is there such a thing as objective historical truth? Are not Holocaust deniers exercising their freedom of speech, no matter how repulsive their views? Such issues occupy the minds of Armenians in the diaspora, facing the organised campaign to deny and downplay the genocide of the Armenians by the Turkish Republic in 1915.

Rampton, who taught himself German for the trial, attacked the falsifications and distortions in Irving’s books. Demonstrating a clear pattern of behaviour in Irving’s work that tended towards exculpating the Nazi regime, Rampton conclusively proved that Irving was a Nazi sympathiser and Holocaust denier. Rampton did not allow Holocaust survivors to testify, lest they be subjected to taunts and ridicule from Irving (the latter had done that on numerous occasions).

The court ruled in favour of Lipstadt and Penguin Publishers. Rampton, the judge stated, proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Irving was indeed a Holocaust denier, racist and antisemite. The objective facts of the Holocaust could not be disputed. Rampton, throughout his legal career, won many libel cases, but his triumph over Irving was the victory for which he wished to be remembered.

The trial, and the issues involved, were dramatised in the 2016 movie Denial, with the English actor Tom Wilkinson (RIP) playing Rampton. One of the expert witnesses who testified in Lipstadt’s defence, Richard J Evans, wrote the definitive account of the entire topic.

When a prominent person like Rampton passes away, it makes me consider what subjects I would have liked to discuss with them if they were still alive. So many topics and questions arise in that scenario, but there is one topic I would have loved to talk about with Rampton. While Irving was the most prolific Holocaust denier and history revisionist, he was not the only one attempting to whitewash the criminal record of a genocidal regime from the World War 2 years.

Established institutions, sporting clubs and migrant centres among the Croat Australian community have for decades celebrated and whitewashed the genocidal record of the 1941-45 Croat Ustasha regime. Led by Nazi collaborator Ante Pavelic, the ideology of hyper nationalist racism underpinned that regime. The Ustasha massacred Jews, Serbs, anti-Ustasha Croats, Croats who had converted to Orthodox Christianity – all with the active connivance of the Catholic Church.

The Ustasha regime earned a reputation for gruesome violence, implementing its ultranationalist vision of an ethnically pure Croatia. Defeated by the multiethnic Yugoslav partisans, functionaries of the Ustasha escaped justice in Europe, many settling in the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia.

The Croats who came to Australia were virulently anti-Yugoslav, and had experience in committing acts of terrorist violence. The soccer clubs and migrant centres founded by Croat Australians promoted a narrow, ultranationalist version of their nation’s recent history. This is not my invention, but the findings of an investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Entitled “Fascists in our midst: the community whose leaders embrace Nazi links”, the SMH journalists found that Ustasha memorabilia is incorporated into the clubs and institutions of Croat Australian communities in Sydney and Melbourne. April 10, the anniversary of the establishment of the Ustasha regime, is openly celebrated. The sadistic pogroms committed by the foot soldiers of the ultranationalist Croat regime is either denied, or downplayed as ‘Yugoslav communist propaganda.’

Srecko Rover, a Croat ultranationalist who played a crucial role in founding migrant clubs and institutions for the Croat community, had a history he would have wanted others to forget. A member of the Ustasha, he was a participant in mobile killing units, targeting Serbs, Jews, non-Catholic Croats and other minorities in the areas controlled by the Pavelic regime. Rover found sanctuary in Australia.

Since the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the Croat ultranationalist community has only increased its efforts to revise the history of World War 2 era Nazi collaborator groups, such as the Ustasha. Reinventing war criminals as anticommunist ‘nationalist heroes’ was made easier by the warm reception granted to escaping Croat Ustasha killers in the immediate aftermath of the war.

In a similar manner to Canada, Australian multiculturalism has a dark underbelly – providing refuge to those Eastern European white supremacists fleeing international justice at Nuremberg. Holocaust obfuscation is a central tenet of destructive Eastern European ultranationalist revisions of modern history.

Indeed, in the former Yugoslavia, this kind of destructive revisionism is under way, with statues and memorials to the partisans vandalised, and their antifascist struggle downplayed.

I wonder what Rampton would have made of the sanctuary provided for fascist war criminals in Australia. I wonder what he would have observed about the falsification of history happening among sections of the multicultural Australia community.

My understanding of psychology comes from popular books, magazines, my time as an undergraduate decades ago, and internet columns. While I was good at psychology, I was not so outstanding that anybody made a fuss, if that makes sense. My late father encouraged me to study psychology. One aspect of the neuroscience module in the psychology course was the name Santiago Ramon y Cajal, a scientist who should rightfully be up there with Newton, Pasteur, Darwin, Pavlov, Einstein and Hawking.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852 – 1934), co-winner of the 1906 Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine, is responsible for our current understanding of neurons, single discrete cells which, via axons and dendrites, communicate and make up the human nervous system. The discovery of the neuron as the fundamental unit of the nervous system was a crucial scientific breakthrough, because it laid the basis for the emerging field of neuroscience.

The birth of the neuron doctrine was not all smooth sailing. It had to confront, and eventually overthrow, the reticular theory of the nervous system. Today, we all understand the nervous system to be composed of neurons. The axons carry signals via neurotransmitters to the dendrites of the next neuron.

However, Cajal’s findings flew directly in the face of the prevailing orthodoxy of the time; reticular theory. The latter held that the nervous system was one, singular connected network. He fought tooth and nail to have his findings discussed and accepted. Using the metaphor of a tangled thicket, his illustrations of the intricate network of neurons are considered not just scientific breakthroughs, but also works of art in their own way.

He was not only interested in the physical structure of the brain and nervous system, but also in the workings of the mind. He was responding to the predominant theory of vitalism. The latter held that mental life was dominated by an immaterial force, a soul, which guided the psyche. Cajal, by demonstrating his discovery of the pyramidal cell – his initial name for the neuron – provided an anatomical basis for the activity of the brain. He was striving for a material explanation of the mind – consciousness.

Santiago Ramon y Cajal challenged Freudian analysis, by demonstrating that humans have a very physical – what we now call electrochemical – network of neurons and nerve connections. He opposed the inherent mysticism of orthodox Freudian doctrine – how can we comprehend the unconscious? Denouncing Freud’s analysis as pseudoscience, he maintained a strong rivalry with the Viennese author, which was Cajal’s reference to Freud.

Cajal was definitely not the first to wrestle with the thorny issue of consciousness – how can the human mind study itself? Indeed, the examination of consciousness goes back thousands of years. The Upanishads, the ancient Hindu texts, deal directly with the topic of consciousness. Does that make the Upanishads correct? No, but it does demonstrate how deeply ingrained the study of consciousness is.

Let’s not go down the path of surreptitiously introducing immaterial, metaphysical concepts into the study of mind – Deepak Chopra’s labyrinthine twists and turns of modern scientific findings into Hindu-adjacent concepts is a prime example of this institutional absurdity.

While I do not propose to solve the entire mystery of consciousness in one article, I would venture a suggestion. Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934), and his colleague Alexander Luria (1902 – 1977) recognised the importance of a physiological basis of brain activity, but also closely studied cultural socialisation and labour activity as crucial determinants in the emergence of consciousness. They avoided the twin pitfalls of biological reductionism, and the drift into metaphysical immaterialism. Labouring activity is indeed vital to the production and maintenance of human consciousness.

What makes us tick? How can we better understand human behaviour? It is not only psychologists who are asking this question, but giant tech companies as well. What am I talking about? Surveillance capitalism.

What is surveillance capitalism? Professor Shoshanna Zuboff wrote that our personal data, our shopping preferences, purchases, individual searches and choices, are now commodities for big data corporations. Why? To analyse our consumer behaviour, and predict our future habits. Driven by the profit motive, our private lives and personal information is a valuable commodity, to be bought and sold, and exploited. The large corporations want to modify our behaviour by understanding what is going on inside our heads.

The digital economy is a scenario of mass surveillance and data collection that Orwell could not possibly have imagined. The dystopian future of 1984 outlined a world where political surveillance was paramount. For instance, in communist Albania, prior to 1991, the state apparatus kept files on people’s political opinions. The ubiquitous secret police surveilled the population for political dissent.

In the post-1990 world with the rise of the neoliberal economy, the private sector amasses and exploits our personal data in a way unthinkable in Orwell’s time. Indeed, the post-Communist transformation in Albania turned out from a seemingly sweet transition into a sour and lethal social experiment.

The monetisation of our behavioural data and its conversion into profit has been done in the name of freedom. The tech giants have replaced the metaphorical Big Brother. Nearly every area of our lives – retail, finance, health care, travel – is in some way part of the surveillance capitalist paradigm. Back in 1986, former Soviet historian Dmitri Volkogonov wrote about Psychological War in the west, and how our social consciousness is impacted by the propaganda efforts of the ruling class in the sociocultural sphere. It is an early book on the battle for our minds – perhaps he was not exaggerating.

The book Spycatcher, by former British intelligence officer the late Peter Wright, is a fascinating examination of the world of espionage by a long term insider. Published in 1987, I still have a dusty old copy of the book, plus a cassette tape audio version, gathering dust since I last accessed them. Its publication was subject to numerous legal actions and attempted blockages by the British government of then prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

Recently declassified documents from the UK National Archives make clear that Thatcher was left emotionally devastated by the tell-all memoir of Wright. The latter details, for instance, that the chief of MI5 from 1959 to 1965, Sir Roger Hollis, was a Soviet spy. Wright also elaborated on how MI5 targeted the Labour government of Harold Wilson, and how various foreign embassies were bugged.

Wright, who passed away in 1995, was an insider who revealed the intricate workings and labyrinthine power struggles within British intelligence. While there was considerable controversy regarding the eventual publication of the book, involving high profile lawyers and Australian merchant banker Malcolm Turnbull, it is not the publication itself which should attract our attention. Rather, it is the predatory and criminal covert activities of British intelligence which should arose our outrage and protests.

Armchair warriors do not understand, or perhaps wilfully misrepresent, spying and intelligence gathering activities. British intelligence has always engaged in a particular confluence – that of covert activities enmeshed with criminality. We are all enthralled by the stereotype James Bond version of spying – the suave, debonair Lothario whose consumption of alcohol and bedding of women is only matched by his proficiency with high tech gadgets.

In fact, James Bond is a terrible spy – he constantly uses his real name for a start. Wasting thousands of dollars worth of sophisticated equipment, he is open to blackmail given his dedication to sleeping around with women – a sure fire way to capture him. And his penchant for alcohol; you know, I am not a spy, but I would venture to suggest surreptitiously poisoning his vodka martini as an effective way to silence the legendary agent forever.

Peter Wright, unlike James Bond, actually noticed and uncovered the mole-agents within his own organisation. Counterintelligence is a skill that spies are supposed to possess. Be that as it may, let’s leave aside the Hollywood make-believe world of spying, and concentrate on the actual activities of British intelligence.

In the days before the expression ‘fake news’ became popular, British intelligence was engaging in a sophisticated and widespread network of creating and promoting fake news. Deception became a politically useful device – for the innocuously Information Research Department (IRD). Created in 1948 by British intelligence and the Foreign Office, it quickly became the soft power source of anti Communist and pro-Imperial British propaganda. Tasked with countering socialist and labour-friendly ideas, it built up a network of writers, artists and cultural figures dedicated to the maintenance of British imperial ideology.

George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, and historian Robert Conquest were just some of the writers who either worked for the IRD, or had their publications promoted by magazines and cultural outlets financed by the secretive organisation. Expanding beyond anti Communism, the IRD’s surreptitious activities included smearing anti colonial figures from Britain’s former colonies. Deliberately maligning anti-imperialist movements as ‘communist inspired’, British intelligence did its level best to counter the popular movements for decolonisation.

The case of Yugoslavia is an interesting one, because it reveals the levels of deception – and the unrelenting deluge of lies distributed – by Britain’s ruling circles. Yugoslavia, while nominally a Communist nation, defied the authority of Moscow.

Expelled from the Eastern Bloc in 1948 for defying Stalin, Belgrade gravitated towards the West. Taking loans and financial help from the Western European nations, including Britain, Yugoslavia adopted a more effective model of health care, education and multicultural mixing than other Eastern bloc nations. Whitehall was loudly anti communist, so providing material assistance to a communist nation would only expose London to charges of hypocrisy.

Yugoslavia’s agricultural sector, for instance, was reasonably efficient compared to the experiences of other Eastern bloc countries. The IRD was careful, discreetly encouraging Belgrade’s defiance of the Soviet bloc, but all the while downplaying the achievements of Yugoslavia’s mixed market-socialist economy. While portraying Tito as a fiercely independent and courageous leader for snubbing Moscow, Britain’s ruling circles were careful to omit any reference to Yugoslavia’s official support for multinational mixing and cultural pluralism.

Indeed, highlighting the economic workings of the Yugoslav system, and its dependence on Western loans, would only add credence to the Soviet charge that Belgrade was a ‘lackey of the capitalist West’ – a charge London was anxious to deny. By the early 1990s, long after Tito’s death, nationalist and pro-market forces inside Yugoslavia became the very lackeys of US and British imperialism Moscow warned against, driving the secessionist breakup of that multinational federation.

Portraying Yugoslavia’s alternative economic model as entirely independent and free of Western backing helped to conceal the role that British intelligence, among others, had in fomenting the dissolution of that federation. Covert activities thrive in the dark, and shining a spotlight on them is a necessary component of exerting democratic accountability over those actions. No, I am not going down the pathway of conspiracy theories. I am simply asking that if we are supposed to be a democratic nation, why are the activities of intelligence agencies, and the malign ideological influence they peddle, not subject to public scrutiny?

The initial impetus for this article comes from a quote by science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin. While I am not a sci-fi aficionado, one quotation from her has always remained with me. It is the following;

“If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell you it again when you’re fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you’re reading a whole new book.”

That quote came back to me, as I was contemplating the relevance (if any) of Joseph Conrad’s now classic novella Heart of Darkness, first published in serial form in 1899. A deeply pessimistic look at the activities and impact of colonial rule in sub-Saharan Africa, Conrad’s novella has been adapted numerous times, mostly famously into the relocated and phantasmagoric 1979 Hollywood movie Apocalypse Now.

The darkness that Conrad relates refers to the jungles, the irretrievably primitive and ‘savage’ black Africans, and the hopelessly quixotic project by some imperial powers to ‘uplift’ the indigenous peoples they have conquered. Conrad does make some mild references to the injustice of imperialism – his novella is located in the Congo, a former Belgian colony. However, when it came to his adopted nation’s practice of imperialism – Britain – Conrad was noticeably silent.

I first encountered this novella in my teenage years, and yes, it spoke to me. However, I always felt a certain unease regarding its portrayal of Africans. Now, in my fifties, I think I am better able to articulate what exactly is objectionable in his book. Conrad, no doubt reflecting the thinking of his times, cannot see Africa as anything other than backwards, culturally regressive and ‘savage’. I would like to venture an alternative perspective.

The darkness is not in the hearts and minds of sub-Saharan Africans; it is not in their skin colour, nor in the dense jungles that you may find in equatorial Africa. The darkness is the looming shadow of the imperialist project itself, and how colonialism drives its subject peoples mad. While the protagonist of the novella, Kurtz, is insane living deep in the jungle, it is not the weather, or the ecology that has produced his condition.

Conrad, working in British shipping, was able to view the practices of English colonial expansion at first hand. Grappling with the horrendous consequences of such violent conquest would have taken considerable foresight and courage. However, Conrad was also bound by the limitations of his time. His outlook narrow, he could do nothing else except wring his hands at the ‘madness’ of it all. One cannot help agree with Chinua Achebe’s assessment that for Conrad, Africa was all the antithesis of civilised Europe, a repository of bestiality and primitivism.

A modern day equivalent of Conrad would be the Trinidadian-born British Indian novelist V S Naipaul (1932 – 2018). Winning the Nobel prize for literature in 2001, his book A Bend in the River is considered a modern classic. Published in 1979, his book is highly reminiscent of Heart of Darkness, in that the African characters are all primitive, subject to superstitious beliefs, irrevocably backward and prisoners of their inherent savagery. Trekking into the ‘dark heart’ of Africa results in internal turmoil, corruption and psychological descent.

Why reread this novel now – why not just ignore it? Because like it or not, Conrad’s views on African ‘darkness’ inform our wider perspective of sub-Saharan Africa as untamed, savage and unchangingly primitive. What is an alternative?

This month marks the 60th anniversary of Kenya’s independence. No, it is not the Congo, but it is part of sub-Saharan Africa. A nation colonised by Britain, the Kenyans – mainly the Kikuyu people – fought a stubborn war of independence in the 1950s. The British colonial authorities responded to the uprising with mass violence, setting up concentration camps, rounding up entire populations, torturing suspected militants (castration was a favourite technique employed by British soldiers) – anticipating the ‘strategic hamlets’ tactic used the US in Vietnam.

The Kikuyu fighters, portrayed as backward, vicious sadistic psychopaths, did kill white settlers – 32 in total. Hardly the conduct of a nation of violent savages. The King’s African Rifles, a British military unit deployed to fight against the Mau Mau uprising, was composed of Africans loyal to the English. One notable officer from this unit, who would go on to become a household name – was Idi Amin. The latter became a demonised monster after he turned against his former paymasters.

Kenya today has a growing economy, a nascent fintech silicon savanna, an airport, busy streets, green energy, and hosts safaris for rich tourists. That is all well and good, and Kenyans have a great deal to be proud of. However, let’s not lose sight of one incontrovertible fact – the Kenyan government is a loyal proxy of Western imperialism. Aligning its foreign policy goals with that of the US and Britain, Kenyan troops have served as proxies for colonial wars and interests in Africa.

Intervening in neighbouring African nations under the dubious pretext of ‘humanitarian intervention’, the government of President William Ruto has become the embodiment of everything the Mau Mau fought against. Joining the United States, Nairobi has offered its support for the state of Israel, encouraging the genocidal violence waged by the latter against the Palestinians in Gaza.

Every classic novel and work of art is inevitably a product of its time and circumstances. Conrad’s books are no exception. However the purpose of a novelist is not simply to recycle the prevailing attitudes of the time, but to expose the hypocrisies on which they are based. How about we incorporate the works of African writers when exploring the cultural practices of sub-Saharan Africa? It is not such an outlandish or difficult request to fulfil.

Let’s be clear from the outset – this article is not a review of the movie Oppenheimer. There has been a deluge of commentary about Christopher Nolan’s film, and I do not want to regurgitate all those observations here.

Now that all the hoopla and fanfare regarding Oppenheimer the movie has died down, we can focus on the serious ethical and science issues raised by the Manhattan project, the US effort to build a nuclear bomb. Examining the social impact of the Manhattan project is required, but not enough. The release of the movie, and its popularity, does provide an opportunity to discuss topics which receive scant attention – the ethical responsibility of scientists.

As a group, scientists must take into account the social and ethical consequences of their research, as the current debate around AI demonstrates. The ferocious debates surrounding vaccines, the ugly tactics of the anti-vaxxer groups, the fear-mongering surrounding the use of AI and ChatGPT, all highlight a serious deficiency of our times. What deficiency? Read on….

The capitalist business model has prioritised technology as a commodity, ready to be sold in mass quantities. We have ignored the ethical consequences of technology, and failed to ask for whose benefit scientific innovations are developed and deployed.

The Manhattan project specifically revealed two interconnected features of scientific work – the major impact the sciences had on the wider society, particularly military technology. It also revealed that scientific work can be moulded by big project funding. Major dollar amounts – in this case from the US government – undergirded a massive intertwined effort by physicists, engineers, technicians and workers from various industries. Indeed, the Manhattan project, far from being the product of a few heavy duty formulas derived by physicists – important as they were – marked the beginning of the military-industrial complex.

It took a project on the scale of Manhattan to make us realise that science is not something purely of concern to scientists only. Indeed, scientists such as Oppenheimer realised that their work has consequences for the wider society. He was definitely not the only physicist to recognisable the social and ethical implications of their work.

Years before Oppenheimer became a household name, Hungarian-born and Jewish refugee physicist Leo Szilard (1898 – 1964) emphatically opposed the deployment of nuclear weapons, even though his scientific work led directly to the Manhattan project. Szilard spoke out against using the atomic bomb, and advised US government military authorities to organise a technical demonstration of the bomb on an uninhabited target, as a way of providing a preview to the rulers of Imperial Japan. His suggestion was ignored.

Joseph Rotblat (1908 – 2005), a Polish born British physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project briefly, resigned in protest after discovering its military objectives, and campaigned against nuclear weapons for the rest of his life. He was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1995.

Oppenheimer has became the archetype of the morally tragic figure. A committed scientist, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the Manhattan Project, only to recoil at the horrific destruction wrought by his nuclear creation. He was hounded out of the military-scientific community in the McCarthyite atmosphere in the immediate post-war period. But setting aside his personal emotional and moral turmoil, he still accepted the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thus making him a war criminal, albeit a morally conflicted one.

Numerous scientists involved in the Manhattan Project understood their obligations to inform the civilian authorities of the moral implications of their work. Many were refugees from Europe, and had dealt with the ethical responsibilities of weapons research. Sensitivities to the moral considerations of their work, they were rebuffed by an increasingly aggressive domestic military industrial complex.

As has been demonstrated by historians and scholar of the period, the atomic bombings of Japan were completely unnecessary and unjustified from a military point of view. It was the entry of the Soviet Union in the Eastern theatre of war that convinced the Imperial Japanese government to surrender. The US had been intercepting Japanese government communications, where Tokyo officials were discussing various options of surrender. American government documents from the time reveal that they knew the atomic bombings were not the decisive factor in persuading Tokyo’s ruling circles to surrender.

Lets not recycle this tiresome debate for the umpteenth time, and stick to our story.

Did Oppenheimer ever consider the fact that Nagasaki, the second Japanese city to suffer nuclear annihilation, was a sanctuary city for Japanese Christians? Japanese Catholics who felt marginalised or discriminated against found refuge in Nagasaki prior to 1945. Did Oppenheimer and the US authorities realise that they condemned to death thousands of Christians, a religion America’s rulers profess to observe?

Did Oppenheimer ever consider the fate of the first victims of radioactivity, the residents of the New Mexico community directly impacted by the very first nuclear weapons test in July 1945? The people of Tularosa Basin, New Mexico, suffered the immediate as well as long term effects of the atomic bomb testing. In the decades after 1945, Tularosa residents have been experiencing higher than average levels of cancer. To paraphrase one resident, it is not a matter of if you will get cancer, but when and what type.

Do not misunderstand – this is not a denunciation of scientific research, or scientists, or the scientific method. It is rather an examination of an area that does not receive enough attention. As genomic companies aggregate our DNA, as scientists consider whether to revive extinct species, (de-extinction to use the term for a proposal to restore the thylacine ‘Tasmanian Tiger’), or AI researchers in their quest for what they define as ‘consciousness’, the obligations to humanity must be paramount in our considerations, not the relentless pursuit of corporate profits.

The Sydney Opera House, one of the most iconic structures in Australia (and possibly the world) turned 50 earlier this year. Officially opened in 1973, the story of its architectural design and construction involves labyrinthine intrigues, vitriolic conflict and multiple political clashes. Sixteen years in the making since it was first proposed, (Utzon won the design competition in 1957), it is remarkable that the Opera House was completed, given all the snarling controversy over its design and excessive budgetary strain.

Gradually becoming known as the ‘People’s House’, there is more to the story than just the controversies over its unique architectural design and construction. In 1960, Paul Robeson performed for audiences while the opera house was still being built. Invited by the construction workers, Robeson had been targeted by a McCarthyite campaign of exclusion and blacklisting by the American authorities. This was Robeson’s first world tour since the reinstatement of his passport.

In 1990, soon after his release from a South African prison, Nelson Mandela addressed thousands of cheering supporters from the steps of the opera house. In 2003, anti war protesters scaled the heights of the building to paint ‘No War’ on its side. This slogan denounced the American led (and Australian supported) invasion of Iraq.

Lyndal Rowlands, writing in Al Jazeera, notes a particular irony:

And while the Sydney Opera House may be known as “the people’s house,” Sydney itself has become one of the most expensive places to live in the world.

The creeping commercialisation of property and real estate – it could now be considered rampant – has impacted the opera house as well. In 2018, former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, indicating where his priorities reside, suggested advertising the Everest Cup, a horse race, on the Opera House building. Defending his decision, Morrison offered the pathetic excuse “it’s not like they are painting it up there.”

Let’s leave aside the reductive parochialism of the jumped-up advertising executive mislabeled ‘prime minister’, who regards public space only in terms of its utility as a giant billboard. I think the 50th anniversary of the Opera House’s official opening affords us an opportunity to reflect on how operatic performances can provide an inclusive platform for the entire community.

It is wonderful to see the Opera host the great works from the classical masters – Puccini’s Tosca, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Verdi’s La Traviata, just to name a few examples from Sydney Opera’s upcoming repertoire. Yes, we should learn from and respect the masters. Classical music, including opera, is regarded as an elite spectator sport in Australia. Western Sydney, the homeland of so-called mass culture – football, gambling, cricket, alcoholism and anti-immigration, is conducive to raising generations of anti-classical music people.

For young men raised on a musical diet of AC/DC, Cold Chisel and barbecue socialisation, professing an admiration of any classical music makes one vulnerable to social exclusion and charges of that all-purpose Australian homophobic slur. Real men don’t go to the opera; only effete losers like that wimpy kind of foreign-originated classical muck. Richard Wagner is hardly the kind of music to pump out from your stereo system while hooning in the four-wheel drive.

Be that as it may, let’s get back to my suggestion – Omar the opera. What is that? First performed in 2022 in the United States, Omar tells the story of Omar ibn Said (1770 – 1863), an enslaved sub-Saharan African man, who wrote of his experiences in the Arabic language. His memoir, which has survived through the decades since his death in 1863, is on digital display in the US Library of Congress.

Omar ibn Said was an Islamic scholar, kidnapped by slave traders from his homeland in West Africa (what is today Senegal/Mauritania). It was not unusual for people from his region to be literate; the Islamic emirate of Futa Toro was an established society with laws, literature and government. Omar ibn Said was sold into slavery in Charleston, South Carolina. He escaped, was recaptured and returned to slavery, this time in Bladen County, North Carolina. Being literate, as most of the Muslim slaves were, constituted a lethal threat to the institution of slavery.

Completing his memoirs in 1831, he died prior to the implementation of the Emancipation proclamation and the abolition of slavery. His perspective is highly unique, not only because he was literate, but also because he was a member of a religious minority in a time of increasing Christian evangelism. The opera, written by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels, tells an important story from a marginalised and oppressed community.

Surely the transatlantic trade of African chattel slavery was a uniquely American – and European – experience? That is true. So why should we import this opera, which is based on a particular American institution, into the Australian cultural repertoire?

In Australia, we have very consciously adopted those aspects of the European cultural experience which dovetail with the imperatives of the British empire. What is considered the cultural heritage of white Europeans finds a ready audience in Australia. If we are to question the relevance of Omar ibn Said’s story of slavery – and his use of Arabic – to the Australian scene, we could quite rightly question what relevance the Teutonic volkisch themes of Wagner’s operas have for Australian opera goers.

Music can give voice to those whose voices have been suppressed or silenced. Omar provides us with a particular opportunity to provide a platform for those whose perspective has thus far been ignored or written out of this history books.

Astronomy, and science in general, is not usually related to sociological or cultural issues. We do not want to return to the bad old days of astronomers, and the wider scientific community, having to justify their research subjects to political commissars or party functionaries. However, even in astronomy, the sociopolitical is never far away.

Mia de los Reyes, assistant professor of astronomy at Amherst College, has written a powerful article making the case that the Magellanic Clouds – galaxies visible from the southern hemisphere – should be renamed. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds – known to indigenous peoples – are named after Portuguese sailor and conquered, Ferdinand Magellan (1480 – 1521).

The Magellanic Clouds – satellite galaxies of the Milky Way – were observed and known to Polynesian peoples, Australia’s indigenous nations, and the indigenous people of Chile and Argentina. For instance, the Mapuche nation of Chile observed and named the Magellanic Clouds in their oral histories. Likening them to ponds of water, the Mapuche incorporated these astronomical features into their origin stories.

The Kamilaroi nation, indigenous to Australia, observed and recorded their findings of the Magellanic Clouds in their ‘Dreamtime’ stories. The word ‘Dreamtime’ is placed between quotation marks, not out of any disrespect, but because the word though widely used, is not accurate. The indigenous cosmology stories and oral traditions regarding their origins have been inaccurately translated as ‘Dreamtime’. Prior to Ancient Greece and Persia, the indigenous nations were developing their own astronomical knowledge, and used the stars to navigate their journeys – a kind of early GPS.

Arabic and Persian astronomers were well aware of the Magellanic Clouds. Astronomy is not a new subject in the Arab-Islamic worlds, but a deep and extensive discipline. Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, (903 – 986), named the Magellanic Clouds Al-Bakr, in his extensive accounts of astronomical observations.

Each nation named the celestial objects themselves, and so the Portuguese navigator was definitely not the first to have observed the clouds named after him. Magellan was not an astronomer, and made no important contributions to the field. However, he is known for his main activities – killing, enslaving and plundering the indigenous peoples he encountered when circumnavigating the globe.

In Guam, the Philippines and other nations, Magellan is remembered as a coloniser and conquistador who employed horrific violence for greedy, imperial ambitions. The Telhueche people, in modern day Argentina, were enslaved by Magellan, with the youngest and fittest manacled – they were told the manacles were gifts. Abducted and forced to work, thousands of Telhueche people died.

In the Philippines, where Magellan burned villages and killed indigenous inhabitants, his death in 1521 was celebrated as an act of defiance in 2021, on the 500th anniversary of his demise. The Philippine government held a series of events highlighting the indigenous contribution to Magellan’s much-celebrated circumnavigation of the globe.

Where does this process stop? Being woke is all well and good for our times, but surely historical figures are all tainted in some way. If we rename every monument, public place, building, statue, scientific observatory – we will end up driving ourselves insane. William Shakespeare, the Bard, wrote an antisemitic play. Should we ban his works, and rename public buildings honouring him? Where does this stop?

The general point is not in dispute; if we critically examine each and every work of art, literature, scientific endeavour throughout human history, we will have nothing that measures up to our modern standards. When we honour a person by naming a scientific object after them, we are elevating that person’s values and conduct. Magellan’s name is used for a lunar crater, an operational 6.5m pair of optical telescopes in Chile, and an upcoming giant telescope.

When we uphold Magellan as an honourable person worthy of our respect, we are ignoring the terrible pain and suffering he inflicted on indigenous peoples. In fact, we are performing a disservice to astronomy by dismissing or downplaying the indigenous nations’ knowledge of astronomy by elevating Magellan into a heroic figure.

Am I suggesting that every discovery and invention by white European men should be discarded? No, I am not. Should each telescope, currently pointing at the heavens, be smashed to pieces as outrageous devices of scurrilous Western imperialism because they are based on the original design of Galileo? No, of course not. Should we replace modern university courses on cosmology with the Maori ways of knowing? No, I am not.

We need to approach the history of science with a perspective of cultural pluralism. That does not make everybody right about everything, it simply means that indigenous nations, and nonwhite peoples generally, have their scientific achievements accorded respect.

No, renaming the Magellanic Clouds is not the highest priority of the political authorities. It is not the primary topic of conversation at parties. Renaming these galaxies will not solve the myriad economic and social problems of our capitalist system. Actually, while we are on the subject of economic problems, there is a serious issue in the astronomy community which requires urgent economic attention – the collapse of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.

Denied upgrades and underfunded for decades, astronomers and engineers warned that the predictable consequence of such systematic neglect would be the collapse of the telescope. That is precisely what happened in December 2020. So economic decisions do have an impact on the kind of science we practice. The Union of Concerned Scientists is demanding an urgent rebuild of the radio telescope.

By removing the name of a man who brought so much harm and suffering to his fellow human beings, we can begin a process of healing. Only then would the cosmos truly be said to belong to all of humanity.

Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910) did much more than just write the mammoth historical epic, War and Peace. Literature involves more than just reading huge and unwieldy tomes that sit gathering dust in the Classics section. Those works we regard as Classics are important, to be sure. Please read War and Peace, if that is your wish. However, literature helps us define our understanding of ourselves. Whom we admire as the ‘great authors’ can teach us about power relations – and how we view the world – in contemporary times.

Why start with Leo Tolstoy? Because he was not only a great novelist and writer, but an intelligent social commentator. Born into a wealthy family and serving as an officer in the Crimean War, Tolstoy articulated a critique of the Russian state and Orthodox Christianity. Retaining respect for the original message of compassion and empathy contained in the sayings of Jesus, he nevertheless rejected supernatural deities, attacking the theology of the Church as crafty superstitions. He remarked that there is no afterlife, and the biblical account of miracles is fictional.

His wide ranging criticisms of the Imperial Russian state and organised religion did not stop there. He stridently defended the Boxer Rebellion in China. That rebellion (1900-01) was a widespread and tumultuous uprising – a modern jacquerie – by the Chinese peasantry against the foreign encroachments and creeping annexation of Chinese territory. Tsarist Russia, one of multiple nations with economic interests in China, sent troops as part of a counter insurgency intervention to suppress that rebellion.

Tolstoy, a former Russian army officer, noted that the Chinese, having suffered decades of violent foreign occupation, responded with peaceful means in the first place. Seeing their magnanimous actions suppressed with horrendous violence by the occupying powers (Britain, France, the US, among others), the Chinese resorted to violent methods as a last resort. Supporting anti-imperialist movements in Asia, Tolstoy reached out to Mahatma Gandhi, lending his voice to the Indian campaign against British colonialism.

Why am I raising this subject? For two main reasons. Firstly, the Russian embassy in Australia, in line with Kremlin policies and objectives, is encouraging the building of statues and busts of Alexander Pushkin, arguably the greatest of the Russian playwrights and authors. Now, there is nothing wrong with promoting Pushkin – reading his works is very commendable. However, the campaign to raise awareness of Pushkin is more than just a literary exercise.

The Moscow government is attempting to weaponise Alexander Pushkin, mobilising Russian nationalist sentiment among the expatriate community. To be sure, all embassies engage in similar activities. Let’s face it, the reason that William Shakespeare, as brilliant as he was, has become the unrivalled bard (bardology) of the English-speaking world is not an altruistic concern for literature, but a deliberate effort by the British empire to solidify cultural ties to the English homeland.

The British empire, in its zeal to strengthen its transnational project of imperial expansion, relied on cultural ties as much as brute force to unite its disparate colonies. However, there is a second reason for discussing this subject. Ta-Nehisi Coates, African American writer and commentator, was answering a question that Saul Bellow raised back in the 1980s – ‘who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?’

That culture war remark, though later denied by Bellow, did raise awareness of a gap in our conception of literature’s ‘great authors’. We have a very narrow, exclusively white European-oriented view of what makes up the canons of literature. A direct response to Bellow’s question is easy to find; Zulu writers such as Benedict Wallet Vilakazi, Mazisi Kunene, and John Langalibalele Dube can rightly claim Tolstoy’s mantle in sub-Saharan Africa.

Before there was the English philosopher and darling of Western liberalism, John Locke, there was the Ethiopian philosopher and writer Zera Yacob (1599 – 1692). He, along with other African writers, articulated a concept of Enlightenment prior to the British heavyweights. But more than just listing African Tolstoys, there is a wider point to be made. Our curriculum needs to be globalised.

It is commendable to read Shakespeare, Pushkin and the greats. There is no disputing their immense contribution to world literature and culture. The Kremlin is promoting Pushkin worldwide, while in Ukraine Pushkin’s statues are being demolished as part of a widespread programme of de-Russification. The key difference between Moscow’s policies today and those of the Soviet period is that during the Soviet times, non-Russian authors were deliberately cultivated and promoted.

The state promotion of literature – the USSR did openly what the imperialist nations did covertly during the Cold War.

The ex-Soviet republics, such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, were encouraged by the official authorities to develop a literary culture indigenous to those republics. As long as you were loyal to the Communist project, non-Russian writers, musicians and authors were heavily subsidised by the state and promoted. Chingiz Aitmatov, (1928 – 2008), born in Soviet Kyrgyzstan, produced an impressive literary output during his career. Despite the political problems he faced, he continued his creative literary activities for decades.

The Nobel Prize winning poet and humanist Rabindranath Tagore was not only admired in his native India, but was strongly influenced by his visits to the USSR. This cross cultural fertilisation is what is lacking into today’s western influenced curriculum. Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in literature as a lyricist, and that decision generated a huge controversy. Well before him, Tagore, the Nobel laureate and Bengali literary giant, wrote the lyrics of what became the national anthems of three nations. Perhaps we should be aware of that before attacking Dylan’s status as a Nobel prize recipient.

Expanding and diversifying the literary curriculum does not involve the repudiation or cancellation of the existing repertoire of writers. It consists of elaborating our understanding of non-European cultures and their literary contributions. We should all become familiar with the work of the multiple authors who could qualify as the Tolstoy of the Zulus.

The Afghan national cricket team has been on a winning streak, defeating England and Pakistan, among others. Afghan expatriates and those living in their home nation have cheered wildly at the stunning success of their team, providing a much-needed boost of optimism amidst a generally sad situation for the Afghani people.

Let’s start with a confession from the outset – I find cricket incredibly boring. My fellow Australians – yes, I was born here regardless of what impression my foreign name gives you – are excited by the sport. I always cheer for the underdog, and the Afghan win, while not in a sport I enjoy, was something to behold. If Afghanistan plays Australia in the cricket, I will be cheering enthusiastically for Afghanistan. I am happy when smaller and/or poorer nations win in sport.

The Australian cricket team has been a resilient, successful team; they can afford to lose to a smaller nation. In fact, whenever the Australians squared off against the West Indies in the 1980s, I vociferously cheered for the West Indies.

The ‘Windies’ team, as any cricketing fan will tell you, were a formidable sporting superpower in the 80s. Their long running success has ensured their players a spot as outsize heroes in the Caribbean. The team was drawn from the various nations and dependencies that constitute the region.

Back in 1976, the West Indies triumphed in cricket over their old adversary England. The effect was electrifying; no longer would the Caribbean nations be dismissed as ‘calypso cricketers.’ The West Indian team trounced their opponents, multiple times. Witnessing a smaller nation – well, a Caribbean island region in this case – emphatically defeating their larger, more organised opponents is wonderful, and supersedes nationalist parochialism.

Morocco, Spain and transcending national boundaries

In December 2022, Morocco defeated Spain in a tense penalty shootout, advancing to the quarterfinals of the FIFA World Cup. Not only was this the first time that an Arab team had advanced so far in the football, the fact that they defeated Spain, the former colonial power in Morocco, added extra resonance to the result.

Displays of euphoria, and mass celebrations of Morocco’s unprecedented advance in the football, was not restricted to Moroccan nationals. True, Moroccan people cheered in the streets, waving their flag. But they also hoisted the Palestinian flag, and the latter became a noticeable fixture in the celebrations of Morocco’s win across the Arab world.

Ben Lewis, writing in SBS news, explained that Palestinian nationalism is the common platform of solidarity and standard bearer of pan-Arab nationalism. Defeating Spain in the soccer was not just a sporting triumph, but an important signal to the world that Morocco, and Arab nationalism by extension, was a potent force in the region and could not be ignored.

The Moroccan government, headed by long term monarch Mohammed VI, is one of a number of Arab regimes that has signed normalisation treaties with Israel. The Abraham Accords, as this series of bilateral agreements is known, signalled a defeat for Palestinian nationalism. The Arab governments, such as Morocco, indicated to the world that they are prepared to abandon demands for Palestinian statehood in exchange for diplomatic recognition and economic cooperation with Israel.

Sporting diplomacy

The Moroccan football team, and their Arab supporters, waved the Palestinian flag not just as part of their jubilant celebrations. They were also repudiating the open normalisation of ties with the Zionist state by their respective governments. To be sure, Morocco has maintained secretive, cooperative contacts with Tel Aviv for decades. Tel Aviv and Rabat have coordinated their efforts in combating revolutionary and pan-Arab nationalist sentiments when it suited their mutual interests.

There is another important observation to be made here; sporting diplomacy is not the exclusive preserve of oppressed or marginalised peoples. Sport events have long been used as a vehicle to promote colonialist and ultranationalist regimes. It is no secret that Hindu supremacist Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, during his trips to Australia, the US and other countries, uses cricket as leverage in building relationships, thus softening his hardened Hindu supremacist message with a sporting gloss.

Mike Meehall Wood and Nakul M Pande write in Jacobin that India’s politicians are never far from the cricket. PM Modi knows this, and he knows that cricket, through the transnational network that was the British empire, became a common sporting and cultural interest binding England’s former colonies with the English overlords. Cultural and sporting exports served to build ties with England’s far flung possessions.

While India’s diaspora community cannot vote in India’s elections, they can certainly build bridges between India and their host nations. Pro-BJP sentiment in the Indian diasporic communities is a useful platform for international support for the Hindutva supremacist project. Cricket is the perfect instrument to solidify ties between the homeland and the expatriates.

Rather than turning expatriate communities into partisans of an ethnosupremacist project, lets briefly look at a counter example. A massive and sustained multicultural community campaign is behind the stunning success of Luton Town football club. The club, languishing in relegation for at least thirty years, finally returned to the premier league.

Obviously, the players on the team deserve all the credit for their amazing turnaround. However, we would be remiss to forget a crucial dimension of their success – the solid community engagement by Luton town people, coming from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, combining to save their football club from complete dissolution.

It was the Luton town football fans who saved their club. The combination of a collective ethos, and treating each ethnic community equitably, resulted in a new form of cooperative management of Luton club. The first in the premier league to be a living wage employer, Luton survived and flourished despite concerted efforts by venture capital to dissolve it through mergers with other clubs.

Why do I cheer for Afghanistan in the cricket? Because ethnic or national pride as a basis for sporting enthusiasm is fine, but too narrow a perspective. Australians are supposed to be renowned for cheering the underdog. Encouraging the longshot to win is deeply embedded in the Australian folklore and sense of history – at least that is what we tell ourselves.

So, in that spirit, I cheer for the smaller nations – Jamaica in the athletics, Palestinians at the Olympics, and today, Afghanis in the cricket. National pride is all well and good, but I would like to see a world where interethnic solidarity is the norm.