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Keywords: Totalitarian

  • AUSTRALIA

    When safetyism leads

    • Julie Szego
    • 07 June 2024

    In response to campus protests, universities erred on the side of free speech when every other day, the prevailing ethos is one of ‘safetyism’, namely suppressing speech or inquiry if an identity group frames it as ‘harmful’ to them. Universities should strive to be uncomfortable and ‘unsafe’ for all, with no identity immune from robust scrutiny.

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  • RELIGION

    Silence has two faces

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 October 2019
    12 Comments

    It may seem paradoxical that one of the most effective ways of imposing silence is by imposing noise. The Romans did it with bread and circuses. More modern totalitarian regimes have done it with military processions and massive rallies. Governments in contemporary democracies do so by controlling what is fed to the media.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Left doesn't own the fight against racism

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 15 November 2016
    8 Comments

    Cultural totalitarianism, embodied in Trump in the US and Hanson in Australia, is a major injustice of our age. To fight it effectively, we have to enter into coalitions with those whose opinions we otherwise find distasteful. An anti-racism rally with only leftwing speakers is not going to make as big an impact as one with speakers across the spectrum. To insist the fight against racism is necessarily a leftwing issue is in some ways its own form of cultural bigotry.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Myanmar Mother Suu's moment in history

    • Amal Aung Zaw
    • 13 November 2015
    5 Comments

    The results resonate beyond the shores of Myanmar. The manner in which a fragile woman with the power of empty hands wrought a miracle, melting decades of totalitarian dominance, is the stuff of history. The world savours this moment as its own. This is the Gandhi moment, the Mandela moment of the 21st Century. In an era of ISIL killings and chronic violent wars in the middle east for 'democracy', a woman from the east has once again affirmed the moral superiority of non violence.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What IS has to do with evil

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 October 2014
    27 Comments

    IS - the Islamic State - is getting a bad press. Deservedly so, for its brutality and totalitarian instincts. In the headlines, references to 'evil' and 'pure evil' have been dominant. This characterisation is unhelpful for a number of reasons. We must be careful not to empty the word 'evil' of any meaning.

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  • INFORMATION

    Santamaria and the bishops in politics

    • Gerard Henderson
    • 11 March 2010
    2 Comments

    Towards the end of his life, the French philosopher Jacques Maritan thought it was a you-beaut idea to advocate Catholic/communist dialogue between the Vatican and Stalin's heirs in Moscow. Santamaria made mistakes, yet on the issue of Soviet totalitarianism he was smarter than Maritan. 

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  • RELIGION

    Frank Brennan rebuts 'authoritarian' abortion allegations

    • Frank Brennan
    • 30 September 2008
    24 Comments

    Frank Brennan responds to Greg Barns' Crikey article which accused him of issuing an authoritarian edict regarding the Victorian abortion bill.

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  • RELIGION

    Totalitarian abortion law requires conscientious disobedience

    • Frank Brennan
    • 24 September 2008
    25 Comments

    The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne has said Catholic Hospitals will not abide by Victorian legislation that compels health professionals to participate in abortions. Civil libertarians are well advised to support this stand, regardless of their moral views.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Games won't tame China's internet guard dog

    • Cat Juan
    • 11 August 2008
    2 Comments

    The internet was once touted as a force for democracy. China has successfully turned this threat to its own advantage, and could show the way to other totalitarian nations.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    History rises amidst film's humane depth

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 11 July 2007

    Lucky Miles is an outrageous buddy comedy set in 1990 in the Western Australian wilderness, with echoes of September 11, border security, and the totalitarian Indigenous intervention. This topicality borders on prophetic, as the film was conceived seven years ago.

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  • RELIGION

    God has more humour than Helen Clark

    • Peter Matheson
    • 02 April 2007
    1 Comment

    Lively humour is deadly earnest. It erupts in the yawning gap between our dawn dreams of joy and justice and the noonday reality of cruelty and corruption. No totalitarian regime tolerates it for long.

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