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You know you live in an authoritarian regime when you’re not only forbidden from uttering a word of criticism about designated groups, but ordered to celebrate them. If a regime decks public spaces with its banners and flags, and punishes any who desist, that’s authoritarianism. If even the mildest public dissent invites not just ostracism but police kicking down your door and literally dragging you from your home, you better believe that’s authoritarianism.
And if your armed forces are personally vetted for signs of “disloyalty” to an unelected ideology: that’s authoritarianism on stilts.
Defence insists Wear It Purple Day (WIPD) activities are voluntary for personnel after cadets claimed they were warned not to dress in military uniform during the annual LGBTIQ+ event because it would be considered a “protest”.
It’s voluntary, but you’ll be punished if you don’t participate.
For several years the Defence Department has encouraged members to take part in WIPD, but ADFA recruits said a directive was given last week outlining that regular uniforms would be prohibited this year.
An instruction purportedly sent to ADFA cadets on Wednesday, and seen by the ABC, states: “Please remember it is Wear It Purple Day tomorrow and the dress is civilian attire. No one is to wear uniform!
“Please ensure personnel remember this as wearing of uniform tomorrow will be seen as an active protest against LGBTQIA+, which is not in line with Defence policy.”
Which would be a more overt “protest”? Wearing your uniform as per the rules and norms of the ADFA, or wearing civvies in acknowledgement that WIPD exists, but desisting from actually wearing purple?
More to the point, though, why are the brass ordering cadets to display their allegiance to an unelected ideology, or else?
One current ADFA member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, has told the ABC that wearing civilian attire is virtually never permitted while studying at the officer training establishment […]
“Additionally, anyone in uniform will be required to explain why they have chosen to disobey a direct command from the CO.”
ADFA students claim the specific dress instructions ahead of Wear It Purple Day came from the executive officer of the Canberra military institution.
What on earth does any of this have to do with the military, anyway?
Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie, himself a graduate of ADFA, says military leaders at the officer training school are being “overtly political”.
“The ADF leadership should only be insisting on adherence to its values: service, courage, respect, integrity and excellence,” he said.
“To go beyond those values and ram home a political agenda — as they have with Wear it Purple Day — is to trample on our diggers and their freedom of conscience.
“That is not the spirit of ANZAC: it is coercive behaviour, and it is unacceptable.
“We have people with different religions, different backgrounds, different sexualities and we all have to live together, and we’ve got to be respectful of one another.
“I think that’s the principle the ADF leadership should be focusing on, along with mastering the profession of arms which is their core business.”
ABC Australia
They’re a modern, Western military. The only wars their masters are determined to win are culture wars. This is a military, remember, commanded by Woke inquisitors who are horrified that actual warriors have a “warrior culture”.
It could all be a cunning ruse, though. Perhaps the grand strategy is that, when our “diverse, inclusive” military next goes into battle, the enemy will simply die laughing.
