Australians sure do like the word “Freedom”. They could almost wear it as cape, but since that would mean replacing our national flag – now a wearable tradition on high holy days like Australia Day, ANZAC Day, and any sporting event where our national team contests with some foreign country – that’s not gonna happen soon.
Besides, freedom is a concept which cannot be made into a clothing item. And we have so much freedom and are so enriched by it, we are continuously congratulating ourselves for being “the best country in the world”. Though, to be fair, that perception is actually a delusion and almost entirely held by people who have never been to another country, or if they have, it’s somewhere like Bali.
And just like we are deluded about being the best country in the world, we are deluded about having freedom.
We are so delusional about this, anyone who dares to question either delusion is immediately branded as “Un-Australian” and told to fuck off back to where they came from (even if they were born in Australia), or to simply leave if they don’t like it. So, the freedom we pride ourselves on certainly does not extend to those who think differently.
But how much freedom do we have, and can we consider ourselves “free”, compared to say the countries we are constantly told are far less free than we are? Like China, for example. Or Russia.
And what is it we imagine “freedom” actually is?
Let’s consider this democracy caper. Because democracy is all part of this freedom concept, right? We have the right to vote and we are free – and in fact compelled by law – to vote for whomever we like, right? Sure, but the caveat there is we can only vote for the people on the ballot papers we are given on election day. We cannot vote for anyone else. Can anyone appear on that ballot paper? Nope. If you want to try and get elected to Federal government, there are a lot of hoops to jump through, as you can see at the following link.
https://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/candidates/files/EM263-Nomination-Guide.pdf
Keeps the riff-raff out of the halls of power. One cannot have just anyone running for the trough…erm, parliament.
So, maybe not the freedom you imagined there, huh?
Yeah, but what about our freedom of speech, you bastard?
Seriously? You still think that is a thing, or indeed ever was?
This freedom of speech thing is one of our grand Australian delusions. There is nothing in our Constitution which explicitly protects this freedom of speech notion.
There are certain states in Australia which have Human Rights Charters and Acts, but if you look at them closely, you’ll find there are always exceptions to what you can say out loud or in print. Always. So, this nonsense about Freedom of Speech is just that. Nonsense.
You might recall you once had a right to silence, like when you were arrested, but that was taken from us some years ago, and you all exercised your freedom to shut the fuck up and do nothing about that…but I digress.
Right, then. “Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free…” we are told in the very first line of what is up there with the most un-inspirational national anthem ever. Well, we are certainly “young”. Our nation is barely 100 years old. But we are not free, so the national anthem is a lying sack of shit.
I will try and identify what our freedom actually consists of, but let me first point out what you’re not free to do…
You are not free to overthrow the government.
You are not free to take up arms in self-defense, nor as part of a duly constituted militia like that mob across the Pacific, which has this thing called a Bill of Rights and a Constitution that was not written and approved of by our imperial coloniser.
You are not free to go where you please, or when you please.
You are not free to drink alcohol in public places.
You are not free to indulge in recreational drugs.
You are not free to drive or ride at what you deem to be an appropriate speed even if the road is deserted.
You are not free to gamble in any place other than the places the government has told you it’s cool, because there’s always “ten per cent for the Big Guy”.
You are not free to help yourself to wood, or rocks, or animals, and you’re not allowed to kill anything no matter how much danger it puts you or your family in.
You are not free to own animals. Of any kind.
You are not free to modify any vehicles you may own, or any property you may own.
You are not free to read or watch what you please.
You are not free to choose who your friends are.
You can see where I am going with this, right? This is just the tip of the What You’re Not Free To Do iceberg. And it’s a mighty big iceberg.
What are you free to do then? Wherein lies your freedom? How is it manifest?
Protest! I have the right to freedom of assembly and freedom to protest! Sure. But only if the police give you permission. And anything that requires permission is neither a right or a freedom.
I am free to pack my bags and leave. You certainly are…maybe. Unless you were in a motorcycle club, or some other organisation the government doesn’t like, in which case you can’t get a passport. And it does not matter if you have never been convicted of any crime.
“This is all bullshit because I am a Sovereign Citizen, Australia is a corporation and I really don’t need to pay rego, have a license, obey police directives, or any of that other shit because I am free.”
And who let this idiot into the room? Because this is what sometimes happens when you actually realise you are not free, and never were, despite the delusions you’d held, and the echo chamber you’d surround yourself with. You just go mad and end up being beaten like an animal on the side of the road, hauled before a magistrate who has to briefly listen to your craziness, and end up doing time or selling everything you may own or have stolen (because property ownership is another kind of fiction you placate yourself with) to pay the fines the State you don’t recognise demands.
The rest of us are also mad, but in an entirely different way. We keep telling ourselves we are free and this is the best country in the world, and no amount of evidence to the contrary will ever shake most people from that view. It’s how we’re wired, because we’re very easy to wire like that.
So let’s take a brief look at the so-called totalitarian regimes where we have been told no-one is free, people are constantly oppressed and long to liberated by the great and good wars the West is compelled (against its will, of course) to wage on them so as to liberate them.
China is always thrown up as an example of oppression. Our media misses no opportunity to have a go at what it has decided constitutes human rights abuses in China. But what is the actual truth of the matter? I have never been to China, so I cannot speak from first-hand experience, but I have been to a dictatorship (the former Yugoslavia), so I have seen what one of these looks like up close.
What freedoms do the Chinese actually have then? Pretty much the same ones we tell ourselves we have.
“Legally, all citizens of the People’s Republic of China who have reached the age of 18 have the right to vote and stand for election, regardless of ethnicity, race, sex, occupation, family background, religious belief, education, property status, or length of residence, except for persons deprived of political rights…”
Sure, there’s one party, but this party has, in a very short period of time, hauled China out of its feudal past, and made it into an international superpower. It has raised the peoples’ standard of living, increased their life-span, and permits them to travel visa-free to 85 countries.
What does the China expect in return?
“It is the duty of all citizens to keep State secrets, protect public property, observe labour discipline, maintain public order, and respect social ethics, security, honour and interests of the motherland. Citizens of China have the sacred duty to defend the motherland and resist aggression.”
Big ask, huh? How dare they! This is not anything our Australian government would dare ask of us, so maybe that’s where we are freer than the Chinese.
Yeah, but they are not allowed to own anything because Communism! Sorry. You’re wrong. “The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China provides for the protection of private property. Private property is inviolable. The state, in accordance with law, protects the rights of citizens to private property and to its inheritance.”
But there is this caveat in China…
“Individuals cannot privately own land in China but may obtain transferable land-use rights for a number of years for a fee. Currently, the maximum term for urban land-use
rights granted for residential purposes is seventy years. In addition, individuals can privately own residential houses and apartments on the land (“home ownership”), although
not the land on which the buildings are situated.
Real estate may be transferred through sale, gift, or other legal means. When real estate is transferred, the land-use rights and home ownership are transferred simultaneously.”
You can, of course, own land in Australia. Until the government decides it needs it, and then you can’t.
The Chinese have no rights! They are slaves!
Oh, and you’re not? Did we not discuss what rights you actually DON’T have?
Then there is this…
“All Chinese citizens are equal before law and there is no discrimination on the basis of nationality, race, sex, occupation, family background, religious belief, education, property status or length of residence. All citizens are ensured food, clothing, shelter, primary education and decent burial.”
Is anyone in Australia guaranteed all of that?
Russia, which long ago cast off its Soviet mantle, and is a democracy despite what you have been told in the media to strengthen your ignorant prejudices.
But Putin! They are not free to elect anyone else! How can anyone keep being re-elected with a ninety-per cent majority?
Maybe because the electorate likes him? Maybe because he does what he says he’s going to do? Maybe because he dragged his country out of the IMF-approved apocalyptic horror-show of the Nineties, gave it back its dignity and increased the peoples’ standard of living, and real wages?
And voting is not compulsory in Russia, Russians have the freedom NOT to vote.
You might find this list of countries which do have compulsory voting interesting.
https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/voter-turnout-database/compulsory-voting
Yes, I know Russia now (the Soviet Union when I was younger), was the enemy de jour of the West – and since we are an irrevocable part of the West, our enemy as well, even though no threat has ever been made to us from Russia or the Soviet Union. And we have to hate them because we have been programmed that way, and we hate them because they oppress their people, and their people are not free, and so on and so forth. By natural extension then, Russia must be destroyed, and its people “freed”.
To be just like us, right?
I think you’ll find they do not want to be anything like us at all, and simply cannot ever be. They are wired differently to us.
I have not been to Russia either. But I speak the language and I have relatives there, so maybe I know a bit more about the place than most people. Still, I would like to go there to see for myself in case my relatives are lying to me about the way they live.
But I have been to Yugoslavia, which was a country run by a dictator, Josip Broz Tito, and was viewed as a totalitarian Communist state by the so-called “Free West”.
And what I saw there changed my view of what freedom is, and what it must be in order to be called “freedom”.
Because what we have here in Australia is not that. It’s not even close. What we do have is a delusion, and we live that delusion every day.
What the Yugoslavs lived, by comparison, was a reality. They knew perfectly well what they were not permitted to do. And that was not to make any attempts to topple the government. They KNEW this. They also knew what it would take to accomplish that. They had toppled governments before.
We do not know this. We think we can actually topple our government. That we truly even have the freedom to do this. Do you see our delusion? And remember, every male in that country did national service and had a gun in his cupboard.
Our imagined freedom does not provide us with that. Who are we ever gonna topple? What change could we possibly ever make?
Apart from that overt and obvious restriction, the Yugoslavs also always had to have personal photo ID on them. Yes, just like us.
Other than that, Yugoslavs were entirely free to do as they pleased and to live as they wanted. They could travel. They could own land. Tertiary education was free and of a very high standard. So was medical care. The food was fresh and plentiful. And the people were some of the happiest and most joyous I have ever seen. There was a true sense of community and identity. And they were not a classless society. There were highly educated and relatively wealthy people, there were working class folks, and there were farming villagers– and they all seemed to laugh and sing more than weep and wail.
I am also aware that Yugoslavia fell apart in the 90s. Outside interests stoked nationalist tendencies – much like they have been stoked in the Ukraine – and all in the interests of geopolitics and the great game the great powers have always played. Nothing at all to do with any freedoms, real or imagined. That it fell apart has nothing to do with the central theme of this piece, other than to maybe point out its people had the freedom to take up arms and change what they wanted changed, no matter what the subterranean drivers behind all that were.
Was Yugoslavia a perfect society? Of course not. No such thing has ever existed. But in simple terms of personal freedoms, I think China and Russia have, and the former Yugoslavia had, far more essential and crucial personal freedoms than we now do.
At the very least, these places harbour none of the delusions about freedom we comfort ourselves with.
All any person on this earth wants is to be able to provide food and shelter for themselves and their families. To live a life without fear and oppression. To live in dignity, to glean whatever happiness they can, and to enjoy that happiness for whatever time they have it.
Do they also want to be “free” on some esoteric level as well? Could it be you think they need to have the same delusion we do in Australia in order to be classified as “free”?
And I think that is the prime issue here. Australians are delusional and naïve. We cannot be blamed for being like that, because we have been designed, or socially-engineered, to be delusional and naïve. It makes us easy to govern, does it not? We keep telling ourselves we have it great compared to everyone else on earth, and if we say it long enough, we believe it. It’s an article of faith. And faith requires no proof. It’s faith.
We accept and comply with each and every thing inflicted upon us – from constant video surveillance, to 24-hour-a-day tracking via our phones. We accept a police force that is corrupt and kills our old people and indigenous folks. We are constantly being bludgeoned into submission for our own safety, and anyone who dares to speak against that particular god is instantly deemed a heretic. We accept everything, tolerate everything, and passively agree to go along to get along, forever believing we are free and this is the greatest country on earth.
Such is the power that hold us in thrall. And such is our delusion of freedom.
