Comment: Sasha Uzunov – Editor, Alternate Comms
It has now become an annual ritual, like clockwork, for the governing body of Australian Rules Football, the Australian Football League (AFL), to issue a statement condemning Australia Day 26 January as a day of mourning for indigenous Australians.
Superficially, the AFL presents itself as “anti-colonial” in criticising British colonial settlement of Australia, but it is kabuki theatre, playacting, designed to mask its promotion of US nationalism, which ironically has, dare say it, “colonial issues” of its own.
Trying to get answers from the AFL is almost impossible. It simply will not respond to media requests on its blatantly contradictory “anti colonial” policy. It is a very touch subject – the clever use of “anti-colonialism” to distract the Australian public, which funds the AFL.
The AFL, which was known as the Victorian Football League (VFL) until 1990, was founded in 1896 by British people, the vast majority of whom were staunch monarchists. Twelve of the 19 clubs were founded by either British born or Australian born men who identified as culturally British as well as “Australian.”
The VFL remained culturally British well into the late 1970s, so much so that in 1975 it was involved in a political stoush with the Australian federal government. VFL refused to play Advance Australia Fair as the national anthem at its Grand Final. It stubbornly stuck to God Save the Queen.
In principle there is nothing wrong in being anti-colonial or criticising British colonial settlement of Australia beginning in 1788 and its impact on indigenous Australians. But how does the AFL reconcile that with promoting American nationalism, which has a bloody history of exterminating millions of native Americans (Indians) and keeping Africans as slaves? It makes no sense. What is also preposterous is the AFL’s deliberate, Orwellian re-writing of its own history by removing any references to its British heritage.
Since 1978 the AFL has had a relationship with the US NFL, a sports body repeatedly condemned by native Americans as being racist and neo colonial. The interesting thing is it was the US State Department that “assisted” in establishing this relationship.
The NFL has teams or clubs whose names glorify the extermination of native Americans. The Buffalo Bills is named in “honour” of 19the century US nationalist Buffalo Bill Cody, a Wild West figure, who took part in the deliberate extermination of native Americans to take their land.
The NFL team San Francisco 49ers refer to 1849 takeover of the city by US nationalists from Mexico and the genocide of California natives (Indians) that followed.
In recent times the AFL has deliberately associated itself with the US government and its foreign policy, offering football jumpers to an ambassador and even giving one to then US Vice President Joe Biden in 2016 when he was visiting Australia.
Even the disgraced ex US CIA Director and ex US Army General David Petraeus is hailed as a role model for Australians by the AFL. Bizarre.
The AFL must cut its ties to the US NFL and US nationalism, otherwise its “anti colonial” message remains nonsense.