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In Godwin We Trust: Debunk[er]ing the Hitler/Trump Analogy

Academics have been busy in the last few years calling out ham-fisted analogies between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler, and the contemporary United States and 1930s Germany. It’s easy to laugh at clumsy historical references, but harder to make informed judgements about the validity or otherwise of these references. In our latest article, Dr Mathew […]

After COVID-19: Reviews of ‘Upturn’ and ‘What Happens Next?’

The Austrian economic historian’s Walter Scheidel’s 2017 book, The Great Leveler, argues that gross inequality is the natural state of human affairs. This structure is only interrupted by events such as mass war, revolution, state failure and pandemic disease. Does COVID-19 present an opportunity to halt growing inequality and reset our economic and social order? These […]

Australian Soldier Atrocities in Afghanistan: Why We Should Not Be Surprised

By Dale Blair The allegations of atrocities committed by Australian special forces in Afghanistan may be shocking, but they suggest continuity rather than rupture with our military past. In this article, Dr Dale Blair outlines Australia’s past involvement in war crimes, and the exalted status of Australia’s soldiers and official patronage that have obscured the […]

Echoes of Vietnam: Counterinsurgency, “warrior hero” culture, and war crimes in Afghanistan

By Mia Martin Hobbs In our latest article, Dr Mia Martin Hobbs finds important parallels between war crimes committed by the US and Australia in the Vietnam War and those alleged to have been committed by Australian Special Forces in Afghanistan. These echoes, she argues, should cause our politicians to think carefully before sending fighting […]

Jon Piccini reviews Kieran Finnane, ‘Peace Crimes: Pine Gap, National Security and Dissent’ (UQP, 2020)

In 1952 the Menzies government passed the Defence (Special Undertakings) Act, which banned entry to ‘prohibited area[s]’, as part of its defence against the ‘red menace’. That act was barely used until 2016, when a group of Christian peace protesters entered the Pine Gap base near Alice Springs. Jon Piccini reviews Kieran Finnane’s new […]

Managing the Federation During a Pandemic: Spanish Influenza and COVID-19

Global health pandemics, it would seem, make us reach for local remedies and cling to local identities. As state borders have closed and parochialism has increased, COVID-19 has made Australians more aware of their federal system of government than they have been for a long time. In this piece about the 1919 Spanish influenza outbreak, […]

What now for Black Lives Matter? Whatever happens under Biden, the role of African American women will be vital

AAP/AP/Paula Bronstein Clare Corbould, Deakin University During the northern summer, anti-Trump sentiment fused with anti-racist activism in the US, causing huge numbers of Americans to protest all around the country. President Donald Trump has been voted out of office, but the issues at the heart of Black Lives Matter remain as critical as ever. […]

Concepts of national security workshop: Australian and international perspectives

Australian Policy and History Network, Deakin University & National Security College, ANU 25 November 2020 How has the idea of national security evolved over the last 100 years? Who tells us how to feel secure/insecure and how has this changed over time? And how do Australian perspectives, contemporary and historical, compare with other conceptions […]

‘On Red Earth Walking: The Pilbara Aboriginal Strike’: Two Perspectives

On Red Earth Walking: The Pilbara Aboriginal Strike is a history of the great strike of marrngu (the Pilbara’s Aboriginal pastoral workers) during the later 1940s. This week we feature two reviews of the book, one from the historian and social scientist Tim Rowse, and the other from a former senior Commonwealth bureaucrat in Indigenous […]

Q&A with Richard Broinowski, author of Under the Rainbow: The Life and Times of E.W. Cole

E.W. Cole, proprietor of Cole’s Book Arcade in Melbourne’s Burke Street Mall, was an amazing man. He condemned the White Australian policy when it was unpopular to do so and had decidedly progressive views about religion. He published the famous Cole’s Funny Picture Books and met his wife through an advertisement he placed in the newspaper. Carolyn Holbrook […]

André Brett reviews Jack Vowles and Jennifer Curtin’s ‘A populist exception? The 2017 New Zealand general election’

A Populist Exception? The 2017 New Zealand General Election, eds Jack Vowles and Jennifer Curtin. Canberra: ANU Press, 2020, pp.286+xvi. Print: AU$60, ISBN 9781760463854. Online: free, ISBN 9781760463861. The dust is settling on New Zealand’s 2020 general election. There are still about 480,000 special votes to count—overseas voters, people who registered on election day, […]

Border Wars: History and Creative Imagination

In our latest opinion piece, Richard Trembath steps into the always-contentious debate about history, historical fiction and ‘narrative non-fiction’, prompted by the publication of Kate Grenville’s A Room Made of Leaves. Kate Grenville’s latest novel set in early colonial New South Wales, A Room Made of Leaves, was published in July this year to positive reviews […]