Boo Who?

The issue is not whether we boo or not. The issue is who we boo. And just as importantly, who gets to decide who we boo.

In light of the booing during the Welcome to Country at several ANZAC Day dawn services across Australia, there has been widespread condemnation of, as well as widespread support of, the booing.

And as I read the comments on socials from those who supported it, they dip into racism pretty quickly. Some shocking statements are made.

But here’s what I don’t think (and it was a comment made by an Anglican minister online); I don’t think that the booing was “punching down”.

The booing occurred precisely because those doing it felt the exact opposite. They believed they were punching up – “sticking it to the man”. Let me explain.

‘Punching down” is a term we hear all too regularly. And it aligns with the critical theory and intersectionality crowd, in which all sacred and sacrosanct targets – on the right – are fair game for punching. Why? Because that’s punching up. And punching up is allowed.

Leaving aside the question of why an evangelical Anglican minister believes this critical theory category is grounded in gospel reality, it’s worth noting that it’s become part of the cultural language around who is fair game to boo and who is not, and what is fair game to desecrate and what is not.

In its lesser form it’s comedians traditionally having a laugh at the expense of Christians. That’s punching up.

In its more extreme form it is tenured academics gloating and praising Hamas para-gliders slaughtering and raping Israelis. For the hard left such action is laudatory because it is punching up. The hard left believes that no violence towards those on the right is unjust.

The conservative framework of society can be punched with impunity precisely because it is “up” – it holds all the power. Think Christianity, think big business, think Western values, think traditional ways of doing relationships and conservative ideas.

Historically comedians have been hesitant to punch down on minorities of all descriptions because that’s too easy a target. It’s not funny. Enter stage left, Ricky Gervais, and Dave Chappelle.

Gervais and Chappelle – in famously poking fun at trans and other “woke” heroes, revealed what we all kinda know in our gut – that when huge amounts of government and corporate money goes into supporting your cause, when the elite crowd of actors, global leaders, and sports stars are backing you up, then you are not as “down” as you might claim to be.

Yet is this not the goal of queer theory? To remove the normal pillars of society and replace them with the abnormal? To make the abnormal acceptable? Then to make the abnormal powerful so that the abnormal becomes the new norm?

Hence cultural leaders such as Gervais and Chappelle simply acknowledged this new normal as being more powerful – certainly in terms of soft power – than the old normal, and then proceeded to poke fun at it. Which then gave us all permission to follow suit.

The problem with the grievance industry in the modern West is that it has been way too successful for its own good. It has embeded itself in all levels of power in our society.

But once your grievances have been allayed, and once those who once prosecuted or persecuted you, are themselves prosecuted and persecuted, what then? Industries being industries must find new reasons for existing, must search out new battles to be fought. It’s the permanent revolution.

But back to the booing at ANZAC. It revealed two things at least. First, that there is a sense among those who support the booing, that their sacred ceremony is being hijacked by another ceremony that they view to be well-financed, and very much part of the establishment. They don’t believe they are punching down. They believe they are punching up.

ANZAC is an interesting beast. I’m intrigued by how sacred ANZAC has become in the past thirty years since John Howard became Prime Minister. Is it causation or correlation that as religion has drained away from the public imagination, ANZAC has ramped up in its importance? I don’t think so.

Those booing were incensed that their sacred ceremony was being desecrated by another sacred ceremony that they neither liked, nor recognised. So they booed – they desecrated.

You may not agree with their action, but unless you understand this reality you’ll be talking at cross purposes with each other. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of pat-answers and hang-wringing over the coming days, but the guts of this is about who gets the right to desecrate and who doesn’t.

But second, the booing is simply a case of the Right picking up the desecrating work-tools of the Left, and using them for their own purposes:

“Who says you can be the only tribe that is allowed to desecrate the sacred? Why can’t we employ your own methods to desecrate what you hold dear?”

The booing was a highly transgressive moment in an age in which the left has celebrated transgression and desecration. Good money is paid to transgress and desecrate. Funding is available.

So in a culture built upon desecration, who on the progressive side of politics can refute what happened on ANZAC with any conviction?

They might refute the cause, but they cannot surely argue with the principle, since it is their own principle. If the rules are that there are no rules when it comes to desecration, then it will eventually cut both ways. And I think that is where we are now.

Hence the right has watched as visiting conservative lecturer on campuses are hounded off site by whistles and sirens and loudhailers. The cry has been that not all speech is free. Desecration was the catch-cry.

The right has watched as shareholder meetings are crashed by activists, and great works of art doused in paint for some progressive cause or another. In fact the right watched as ANZAC statues were desecrated with red paint on the morning before the parades.

They’ve watched as non-affirming medicos lost their licences for refusing to align with affirm-only trans ideology in their practices. They’ve watched as the Olympic Games pokes fun at The Last Supper with a drag queen parody.

They’ve watched as rampant anti-Semitism around our major cities is excused on the basis of what is happening in the Middle East. The sheer irony of a Greens MP calling out the booing as racism while having nothing to say about the vilification of Jewish people ad nauseam for three years.

Desecration has been both a performative and substantive act. And now the right is saying “We’ll have some of that.” Which leaves the left with a conundrum. How can the “traditional” desecrators put a stop to this except via the very institutions they have historically attempted to desecrate? It’s a deep irony.

In his latest book, The Desecration of Man, Carl Trueman posits that those with the desire to desecrate the establishment have become drunk on the idea of desecration as an end in itself:

The revolution that modernity represents is a never-ending one. It is not that the old beliefs, values and practices are overthrown and something new and stable is put in their place. It is that the practice of overthrowing what is – whatever it may be – is itself the project. When transgression and negation become the great values of a society, then permanent revolution becomes the default cultural setting. Or to use theological language, when desecration is virtue, the profanation of all that is holy is not a moment or a phase. It is the ongoing norm.

Now I don’t think the right wants a permanent revolution. It wants a return to the social order that was, whether admitted or not, grounded in a creation reality that is based on the Bible. I hold my hand up, I’m a conservative!

But there’s a definite move here to play by the same rulebook as the progressives. A rulebook which states that there are no rules except the will to power. The booing was a rejection of the sacred story championed by the left being imposed on the traditional sacred story. Oil and water, so to speak.

Transgression of the sacred – whether right-wing sacred or left-wing sacred – is now not merely an acceptable weapon but a necessary one in the culture wars. Indeed it is the weapon of choice. Hence, while the goals of Marxism and critical theory are not accepted by the right, the strategies by which those goals were to be achieved are.

Here’s Trueman again:

The principles of critical theory are not monopolised by the left but have also found a home on the right. A good example was provided in the 2024 US presidential election campaign, when a rumour started online that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pet cats. The vice presidential candidate, JD Vance, subsequently made comments that indicated he was less concerned with the factual truth of the story and more with the way it focussed media on the suffering of ordinary Americans. It was a first class example of the kind of concept of truth that populates Marxist branches of critical theory.

ANZAC Day 2026 demonstrated that this reality has reached our shores. And now that transgression has occurred, there will likely be no going back.

I know there are another 363 days until the next ANZAC Day, but the Rubicon has been crossed. There will be boos next year. Of that you can be sure.