Although, like most people, I find comfort amid life's uncertainties in having my current Weltanschauung reinforced, what I really find stimulating is a well-argued point which goes against what I had thought, and makes me readjust that Weltanschauung. Your article has done that. Thank you. Mind you, I may later find, of course, that your insights also need modification.

The reason that Gallipoli is important is because all Australians are educated from a very early age to believe, unquestioningly, that it IS important.

Australian children are inculcated into Gallipoli glamour as early as pre-school and are coached throughout childhood via a multi-million-dollar, public-funded national curriculum and lucrative Anzac industry to revere Gallipoli as encompassing everything it means to be Australian.

It's important because anyone who wants to write an article or book, or make a film, produce curriculum materials, take a pilgrimage tour etc will have no trouble whatever in receiving one of the hundreds, indeed thousands, of grants handed out every year by the Dept of Veterans Affairs, the RSL, the Department of Defence and the Australian War Memorial, which are little more than propaganda machines to militarise Australian culture and history.

Anyone who wishes to question the importance of Gallipoli would be hard-pressed to receive even a reply in a self-addressed envelope. Such people are routinely treated with the utmost disdain as ungrateful, misguided, naive, treasonable, un-Australian fools - definitely never to be treated as having said anything important about the manipulation of mass psychology to both accept and embrace war as a tragic but glorious necessity.

Gallipoli is also important because all countries have to have a Gallipoli. Every country has to revere some military event in their past, which created a sacrificial bloodbath of doomed young men who went willingly and unquestioningly to their deaths because somebody told them they should. Unquestioning obedience to authority is critical to keeping populations under control, so it is equally critical canonise those who paid the ultimate price for their unquestioning obedience.

Once you think past the hype of any military myths it is obvious that there will be some appalling behaviour from people involved on all sides. It is the nature of war. I think Gallipoli has been done to death, and it is unfairly glorified above other battles, but perhaps balance will be restored in future and historians will 'rediscover' other equally 'significant' events.

I have always been amazed that the Turks put up with our Gallipoli worship and Anzac pilgrimage. I can't imagine we'd be so hospitable if tens of thousands of Japanese wanted to, say, commemorate their ill-fated mini submarine attack on Sydney and laid claim to a piece of the waterfront to honour their dead.

Apparently Turkey has said no NSW politicians can go to Gallipoli next year because the NSW Government recognises the Armenian genocide. I'd like to see all politicians banned as a sign of respect: it is politicians who send soldiers to die, they have no business to be basking reflected glory.

When history becomes a circus the next generation loses. Just look at the guilt industry.

Interesting article. Australia hasn't experienced a war of independence or a murderous civil war like many other nations, so Gallipoli was created as "The National Myth".
It's appropriate, but not for the reasons the myth perpetuates, we fought another country's war on the other side of the planet, a tradition we still maintain.

We would have to be remarkably naive to believe that Australian soldiers didn't behave, individually and collectively as badly as any other nation's, or that they didn't take the logical approach of attempting to "get the hell out". There are many examples during WW1, of soldiers on both sides negotiating "informal" truces with the enemy, deserting, mutinying or generally "opting out of the war." Why should Australians be any different? Why should the Turks give a rat's about the graves of the invaders?

It's about time the Gallipoli myth was dead and buried and replaced with another national myth--Kokoda perhaps, perhaps not.

Our forces are not angels but they didn't and don't ascribe to the "whatever it takes" ethos of some groups in Australia. Gallipoli was a scarifying experience not only for the troops but also the home front and it was seared into the collective mind, everyone had close dead and maimed people across that war. It created itself. This was refreshed by the criminal National Socialist government doing a reprise in the 40's with the addition of sadistic, Japanese warlords. CCCP expansionism, Maoist aggression, the cauldron of Pol Pot and the insanity of Muslim middle east are steady reminders.

Such an education should not be forgotten and Gallipoli is an excellent reminder. A brutal campaign but both sides had respect for each other.

Your lies don't work any more. The Lefty campaign to kill off ANZAC day with plays like "The One Day of the Year" failed, the marches got bigger. Maybe you should get a female politician to thump a table and accuse them all of being "miss-ogenists", that works well.

Killarney "Australian children are inculcated into Gallipoli glamour as early as pre-school and are coached throughout childhood via a multi-million-dollar, public-funded national curriculum and lucrative Anzac industry to revere Gallipoli as encompassing everything it means to be Australian.
It's important because anyone who wants to write an article or book, or make a film, produce curriculum materials, take a pilgrimage tour etc will have no trouble whatever in receiving one of the hundreds, indeed thousands, of grants handed out every year by the Dept of Veterans Affairs, the RSL, the Department of Defence and the Australian War Memorial, which are little more than propaganda machines to militarise Australian culture and history."

This is the same with all enculturation. Take the "victimhood industry" for example. It has to be taught and funded by the millions. Kids and adolescents have to be taught through the education curriculum that the white male is the cause of all misery and that the socialist utopia requires the introjection of guilt into white males along with sprouting the fantasy of equality.

'The Lefty campaign to kill off ANZAC day with plays like "The One Day of the Year" failed, the marches got bigger.'

On the contrary, it was very successful. Not so much a campaign, but a general groundswell anti-war movement from the sixties through to the early nineties, virtually killed off Anzac Day. By about 1990, the RSL were bitterly complaining that attendance at dawn services around the country could be counted in single digits.

What changed this scenario was the wave of backlash conservatism, emanating from the US, which swamped the Western world from the late 80s onwards. In Australia, along with many other capitulations to conservatism, the Keating government launched a deliberate revival of the all but dead Anzac Day and Gallipoli tradition, and this was taken to the level of obsession by the Howard government. No amount of money, publicity or symbolic hyperbole has been spared in putting Anzac Day and Gallipoli front and centre of the entire culture.

Yes, the marches are getting bigger - commensurate with the ridiculously increasing budget allocated to promoting them, and which the media heavily profits from.

Unlike conflict, which is part of the human experience, war is unnatural. It's in people's natures to reject war - which is why it has to be glammed up and drenched with honour and glory to make it palatable to the masses. Take away the expensive promotional infrastructure of Anzac Day and people will most likely lose interest in it.

Australia hasn't experienced a war of independence or a murderous civil war
mac,
don't be too impatient, give it a few thousand more boat people without I.d. & you'll get that war.

Peter is President of Honest History, a coalition of historians and others supporting the balanced and honest presentation and use of our history in the context of the centenary of WWI. You can find out more by emailing admin@honesthistory.net.au

and historians will 'rediscover' other equally 'significant' events.
Candide,
It won't be long now before they'll start discovering truths left right & centre, it'll be necessary for continued funding. There are some real experts out there in doing that.

Personally (lived/visited Turkey on and off over 20 years) and I become upset when young backpackers, who no doubt draped an Oz flag on their shoulders while visiting, shove the nationalism down one's throat, without reflection.

Howard made Gallipoli popular as a supposedly integral part of Australian culture (and other perceived icons) and his political strategy of playing up to nationalism.

However, for all the supposed importance of and ties to Gallipoli local communities benefit little, and as of several years ago, neither local nor regional education institutions had student exchanges, sponsorships etc.. but Australia has an Honorary Consul in Canakkale (campaign name Turks use and opposite Gelibolu, while ANZAC day gets a few news lines, but not important in Turkey).

The focus has always been an annual one off celebration or event for backpackers and tourists, while public servants and politicians get to junket; but the significant travel spend goes to Istanbul and international travel companies., not the community.