Gosh. Golly gee whiz. Hot diggity dog. Bowl me over with a feather. And other such phrases.

Windschuttle is a famous (notorious?) revisionist historian in Australia well known for his biases, but I opened this book with the genuine desire to know more about this issue. I came away bleary-eyed, bewildered, and chortling like a Catholic schoolboy at a PG-rated film.

There are only two arguments in this book, and they’re both fantastic. I use that word in its literal sense.

The first argument is from the “scientists have made up climate change for nebulous and still-unrevealed reasons!” school of thought. Apparently, countless Australian historians and archaeologists have just invented much of the history of colonial Australia. Did you know that my Anglo ancestors didn’t actually have racist views? They threw pancake parties for Aboriginals and bought them all ponies! They were so kind.

Healthy scepticism is useful, and revisiting sources from scratch rather than relying on received wisdom is grand. Here, however, KW takes his scepticism way waaaay past the healthy yardline. Ironically, for someone who accuses almost all of his colleagues of acting with obvious bias and deceptive intent, he refuses to acknowledge that he might be less than impartial. Is Windschuttle German for “confirmation bias”, by any chance?

And why, you may ask, are historians on this crusade? Well, friend, that’s the second argument of the book! You see, the plan from Australian aboriginals is to secretly take over the country. Even better, they’re using us – that is, non-aboriginal Australians – to do it! That’s right! All of this messy reconciliation business is just a ploy to get an aboriginal state taking up 60% of the continent. Next up: all of it. ALL OF IT.
This is elaborate, B grade movie, “George W Bush flew the planes into the towers” bullshit. It’s right up there with the gays are planning to Pied Piper all of our children and the Jews are tracking my grandma’s bank account.

This book will no doubt find its audience, and bring comfort to Australia’s most nervous patriots. At the same time, please don’t tell my indigenous friends about it because they will be upset that they weren’t invited to be part of the conspiracy. Unfair, Secret Leaders of the Aboriginal Junta! My friends are cool! Let them play with you!

Hmm. I seem to have wandered off the point. Which is, at least, one thing I can’t accuse Mr Windschuttle of doing. His performance is a consistent thing of absurdist beauty, even if one rather suspects the performer isn’t in on the joke.
All this for only $44.95 plus postage? What a steal.

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