Recently on a visit to Warrnambool, I stumbled across the local war memorial, pictured above. The writing underneath the soldier reads:

The memorial is situated on a large roundabout, near the centre of town and overlooking the ocean. Off to the side, not on the roundabout, but next to a carpark is a plaque dedicated to the aboriginal servicemen and women from South Western Victoria who have served in war since WWI (because, you know, we wouldn’t want to remember the frontier wars). At the time of conscription in WWI, Indigenous Australians were not considered citizens.

Compared to the magnificent sight of the guardian angel overlooking the soldier, it seemed to me to look quite like an afterthought. I later learned that despite there being over 4000 war memorials in Australia, this was one of only few acknowledging the contribution of indigenous Australians, and the only one in Victoria.

Let me draw your attention back to the first memorial. See the angel above? The religious symbolism of this 90-year-old monument is striking amidst our modern secularism. (Not quite as striking as the local cult-following of the angel due to the unfortunate hand placement, but still).

ANZAC dawn services are shrouded with religious symbolism and ritual. The liturgy, the observed silence, the all-pervasive themes of sacrifice and honour, the mystical half-light of day break. It’s quite like church. In fact, it’s quite like an Easter dawn service. Except, at Easter services, there isn’t usually a military presence. Recently however, a friend came across a military tank at an ADF display at Easterfest, an Easter music festival. When asked about the tank, the man at the display said ‘it’s an instantly-recognisable eye-catching symbol of Anzac, and the Anzac story powerfully illustrates the Easter story of sacrifice’.

I would like to point out that the religious and nationalistic undertones of the more-than 300 million dollars of Anzacery commissioned by the government for the centenary are more than disconcerting. They are dangerous and likely to to increase intolerance. Let me explain using Terror Management Theory.

Over the last 30 years in psychology, there has emerged a body of literature around Terror Management Theory (TMT). The theory is this: The main thing differentiating us humans from other animals is the awareness of our own mortality. This is utterly terrifying. We have two mechanisms to keep this deep sense of angst at bay. The first is our cultural worldviews, containing literal (e.g. heaven, paradise) or symbolic (e.g. children, nationhood, fame) concepts of immortality . The second is our self-esteem, which can be described as our perceived value within our cultural worldview.

Now this isn’t just philosophy. TMT has been methodised and tested in hundreds of psychological studies which have shown that when people are reminded of death, even subliminally, they will become more nationalistic, more religious, more defensive of worldviews, and more accepting of violence towards groups that threaten their cultural worldview. For example, in one study, participants from Britain were more likely to be self-sacrificial after reminders of death when they also believed in the continuity of their cultural community (nationalism as symbolic immortality) (Routledge & Arndt, 2007). Another study in Gaza showed that when reminded of death, Israelis occupying the Gaza strip were more likely to perceive violence as legitimate, and more willing to participate in violence themselves (Hirschberger & Ein-dor, 2006).

Outside of experimental conditions though, it is easy to see how this dynamic exists in the real world. Tamils in Sri Lanka became increasingly nationalistic and increasingly supportive of the Tamil Tigers when the Sri Lankan Government began to discriminate against them. Similar patterns can be seen in other conflicts. Of course, there are many factors at play in these contexts, and TMT alone cannot account for everything, but I believe is has strong explanatory power.

TMT can help explain how suicide bombing and acts of terrorism can be psychologically justified. In the context of violent oppression and humiliation of your in-group, psychological immortality can be gained through martyrdom. However, suicide missions are a weapon of the weaker party. How close will any of us in comfortable Melbourne come to understanding this phenomena? Last week I learned that a boy from my uni had left to join ISIS and is now missing, so maybe this isn’t such a distant reality.

“Once we have warplanes and missiles, then we can think of changing our means of legitimate self-defence. But right now, we can only tackle the fire with our bare hands and sacrifice ourselves”

— founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yasin

The above is Rayner Hoff’s ‘Sacrifice’, the centrepiece of the Sydney War Memorial.

I hope you can see how TMT exposes the danger in our god-like worship of soldiers. Anzac is about remembering those who died in war, a reminder of death. The religiousness of the remembrance grants symbolic immortality to the Anzacs. And we ‘enter into the spirit of Anzac’. If that wasn’t enough, our feelings are also directed to nationalistic sentiments of sacrifice for our country. Australian flags are all about the place on Anzac day. If you are yet to be convinced of the hazardous potential of the whole narrative, here is an account of the ‘Anzac’ title employed during the Cronulla riots.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not at all advocating that Anzac day should be done away with or the diggers forgotten. But I do think we need to be careful who our heroes are. It’s true that some of the Anzacs displayed heroic deeds, but all soldiers who fought were still also victims of war. Missing from our Anzac narratives I believe are true accounts of the tragedy and trauma of war. Jane Rawson articulates here our unwillingness to talk about it.

The Anzac narrative is constructed. I was at a public lecture recently where an academic on the National Anzac centenary board told us that a project of his had to be severely altered in order for it to be awarded a grant. The others on the board argued that it ‘might be embarrassing for our politicians’. The project, ‘One Hundred Stories’, simply told the stories of soldiers from the first world war, full stories including trauma, abuse, violence and alcoholism upon returning to Australia.

On ANZAC day, let’s remember war for what it is, mourn the loss of soldiers on all sides, and never be afraid to ask questions about the legitimacy of Australia’s military engagements.

References

Hirschberger, G., & Ein-dor, T. (2006). Defenders of a lost cause: Terror

management and violent resistance to the disengagement plan.

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 761–769.

Routledge, C., & Arndt, J. (2007). Self-sacrifice as self-defence: Mortality

salience increases efforts to affirm a symbolic immortal self at the

expense of the physical self. European Journal of Social Psychology,

38, 531–541.