Woke Left Want to Take the Harmony Out of Harmony Day

It was Harmony Day yesterday, a time to celebrate Australia’s rich cultural diversity. As my wife is Chinese, my daughter wanted to wear a Chinese dress to school, which she did, but despite my son’s school trying to bribe the student population with ice blocks to wear orange or dress up in cultural garb, he wasn’t having a bar of it and went dressed in school uniform. Fair enough. Of course, I support both my children’s views. If people want to dress up, fine, but equally, if they don’t want to celebrate Harmony Day, they shouldn’t be forced to.

On paper, Harmony Day or Harmony Week or whatever, is a feel-good exercise “to recognise diversity and inclusion in Australia”. Personally, it’s not my cup of tea — a bit too trite for my liking — but I appreciate that people want to celebrate it. However, there are certain segments of the Progressive Left, or the Woke Left, who don’t like the positive message that it sends, and want to take the Harmony out of Harmony Day.

Case in point, the Australian Greens. The once environmentally-focused party has now firmly attached itself to to the Woke Left, its politics demanding, no, requiring authoritarianism to work. Here’s their page on Harmony Day, “Addressing the Harm Must Be Part of Celebrating Harmony”. They state, “Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. In Australia, this day has been rebranded to Harmony Day. Rebranding the day might make us feel positive and comfortable, but does not actively encourage conversations about racism.” You see, the Greens don’t want to focus on harmony, they want us to focus on racism. I sometimes think that if it wasn’t for their ideological obsession with racism, they would no longer exist.

Here’s an article from taxpayer-funded SBS, “Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi says Harmony Week ignores the lived reality of racism.” Oh yes, “Feminist. Engineer. Migrant.”, Dr Mehreen Faruqi struggles everyday with racism on her senators salary. I believe it’s around $217,000 now. Australia is such a racist country that it only gives a poor migrant such a meagre salary.

Sorry, I got a bit sidetracked there. The article is called, “Australia’s ‘superficial, white-washed’ Harmony Week must be dumped, Greens say. The Greens are calling for what it says are ‘hollow’ Harmony Week celebrations to be dumped in favour of Anti-racism Week.” Yes, we can’t be seen to be celebrating harmony. The focus must be on racism!

Of course, our public broadcaster the ABC got on board, “Calls to ditch Harmony Day amid accusations it 'whitewashes historic and ongoing racism' in Australia”. Sorry, that was from last year, but you get the message, “Mehreen Faruqi wants Australia to no longer use the term Harmony Day.” Well guess what Dr Faruqi, you don’t have to. Just as my 12-year-old son doesn’t want to celebrate Harmony Day, nor do you. It’s a free country.

Look, you can celebrate whatever holiday you like. I don’t mind. But what I take issue with, and I think many Australians would agree with me, is when you try to force us to celebrate, or not celebrate a particular day, that’s where I draw the line. As I said, the Extreme Left require authoritarianism. If they just asked us to change Harmony Day, or Australia Day, or Christmas, we would just ignore them. The only way they can get their wish, is if they force us. And I’m not having it.

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Allégro by Emmit Fenn