You’ve got to be Jo(h)king: History, the Left and Queensland

(This is a guest post from a friend of The Word From Struggle Street Jon)

It was the 40^th anniversary of the Athens Polytechnic uprising recently. On the 17^th of November 1973, tanks rolled onto campus, and in a bloody orgy of violence unwittingly sealed the demise of the regime of the Colonels. The Polytechnic uprising holds a vital place in Greek radical mythology – hell, there’s a public holiday for it – and it is a constant reference point by the media and the generation of ex-protestors – who now hold power in Greece and have set themselves up as the arbiters of radical memory – whenever another spate of political engagement emerges.

One ex-protestor, Mimis Androulakis, a student leader during the dictatorship period, “has argued that the Polytechnic Generation acts like a group of ‘vampires.’ In his view, through its deification, the Polytechnic Generation absorbs younger generations in its own past, rather than allowing them to develop their own genuine rebellions.”[1]

I want to briefly explore herein whether something similar can be seen to be occurring in Queensland. With the Newman conservative government rising to power, and a movement emerging to counter it which makes explicit and constant references to its ‘glory days’ during the rule of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, I want to ask whether a similarly parasitic relationship with the past is emerging, and point to a few ways it might be avoided. In the end, a successful movement needs to engage in a productive dialogue with the past, and with the currently global context of austerity, in order to be successful.