Archiving the “strange death of Europe,” as Douglas Murray put it, and the West more broadly, at the hands of the neoliberal technocracy.
This is the latest from the War Down Under for the soul of Australia.
“Welcome to Country” quasi-religious humiliation rituals — to which the Aussies are by now well-acquainted, being de facto required at virtually every public event out of respect for Diversity™ — typically go off without a hitch, as criticism or opposition to them is tantamount to racism and, in fact, something akin to heresy.
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During these ceremonies, “Traditional Owners” of the land, meaning whatever faction of Aboriginal allegedly laid claim to the territory before the arrival of Europeans bearing such genocidal evils as the wheel and the written word, grant permission to their white subordinates to conduct whatever business they’re there to conduct, without which they would essentially be trespassing.
Via Reconciliation Australia (emphasis added):
Protocols for welcoming visitors to Country have always been a part of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. Boundaries were clear, and crossing into another group’s Country required a request for permission to enter.
When permission was granted the hosting group would welcome the visitors, offering them safe passage and protection of their spiritual being during the journey. Visitors had to respect the protocols and rules of the land owner group while on their Country.
Today, while these protocols have been adapted to contemporary circumstances, the essential elements remain: welcoming visitors and respect for Country.
Welcome to Country is delivered by Traditional Owners, or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who have been given permission from Traditional Owners, to welcome visitors to their Country.
Your local Aboriginal Land Council or Native Title representative body can advise on organising a Welcome to Country by a Traditional Owner in your area.
Welcome to Country occurs at the beginning of a formal event and can take many forms including singing, dancing, smoking ceremonies, and/or a speech.
Traditional owners are not welcoming people to Australia, they are welcoming to the land within their cultural boundaries which their ancestors have cared for, and lived on, for millennia.
Anyway, the people who built Australia into what it is today, dragging it into modernity from the Stone Age, have apparently had enough.
The humiliation ritual required on a day honoring the white forebearers of the country who sacrificed their lives on the Gallipoli Peninsula during the First World War was perhaps a bridge too far, even for the otherwise cowed Australians.
Australian patriots boo #Anzac Day Aboriginal humiliation ritual for four minutes straight pic.twitter.com/crXGCXHP99
— Ben Bartee (@BenBartee) April 26, 2026
The state responded predictably with condemnations, censorship, and arrests.
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Via The New York Times (emphasis added):
The annual dawn services marking Anzac Day in Australia are normally a solemn affair, with a hushed silence enveloping those gathered in the darkness to honor the country’s war dead.
But on Saturday, in three of Australia’s biggest cities, the services were disrupted by loud booing, raucous enough to register clearly on national broadcasts carrying the ceremonies live. Indigenous speakers were the targets.
The disruptions in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth occurred during the “Welcome to Country,” an Aboriginal custom that has become common at public events in Australia, meant to acknowledge the original inhabitants of the land. The booing was widely condemned by political, military and civic leaders, and it betrayed simmering tensions over the country’s identity…
The police in New South Wales, which includes Sydney, said they had arrested a 24-year-old man on “nuisance” charges during the service for booing, and that they had removed others from the event.
