Stop the presses: Australian soldiers are racist

John Howard is quite right that we shouldn't be concerned in young Australian men dressing up in KKK robes (SMH). After all, they don't have much resonance in Australian society. What we should be far more worried by is the other uniforms the boys were wearing, namely those of the ADF. Unlike the Klan, the ADF is a real and enduring force for racism and imperialism in Australia and overseas. The ADF membership is a far more likely indicator than a white hood that these men have racist sympathies, because the ADF's explicit purpose is and has always been racist: to advance Australia's interests against those of non-Australian people. Even the notion of the defence of the territorial integrity of Australia should only be seen in these terms, since the far reaches of the country in which invasion might be a remote possibility are not so much part of the Australian nation as areas occupied and defended for the mineral wealth and other potential they represent for Australian capital.