And they all came out on the day the Nazi died. Chumbawamba’s got their number.

The Nazis never really went away, they’re out there burning houses down and peddling racist lies…and we’ll never rest again until every Nazi dies.

Sing it loud.

Mon coeur! I swoon. I don’t understand a word that Claude Malhuret is saying, but I am dizzy with adoration now.

His speech sounded so lovely, I had to look up a translation. It’s even better in English.

My dear colleagues,

Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is evading, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.

Washington became the court of Nero, an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a jester under ketamine in charge of the purification of the public service.

It’s a drama for the free world, but it’s first a drama for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, that he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and threaten you to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is on a flat stomach. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down in front of Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is undoubtedly accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

Never in history has a president of the United States capitulated to the enemy. No one has ever supported an aggressor against an ally. No one has ever trampled on the American Constitution, made so many illegal decrees, revoked the judges who could prevent it, dismissed the military staff at once, weakened all counter-powers and took control of social networks.

It is not an illiberal drift, it is a beginning of confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only a month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.

I have confidence in the strength of American democracy and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war against a dictator, we are now fighting against a dictator supported by a traitor.

Eight days ago, at the very time that Trump passed his hand behind Macron’s back at the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against Europeans demanding the departure of Russian troops.

Two days later, in the oval office, the military service hide-and-seek gave moral and strategy lessons to the war hero Zelensky before dismissing him as a brother-in-law by ordering him to submit or resign.

That night, he took a step further into infamy by stopping the promised delivery of weapons. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it.

And first don’t make a mistake. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltics, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is the return to Yalta where half of the continent was ceded to Stalin.

The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.

What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with the first principle of prohibiting the acquisition of territories by force.

This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the aggressor, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to the spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.

To me Greenland, Panama and Canada, to you Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eastern Europe, to him Taiwan and the China Sea.

This is called “diplomatic realism” in the evenings of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago.

So we are alone. But the speech that we cannot resist Putin is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is doing badly. In three years, the so-called second army in the world has only managed to grab crumbs from a country three times less populated.

Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, and demographic collapse show that it is on the edge of the abyss. The American boost to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made during a war.

The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans come out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.

Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American release, to make it hold, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation.

It will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to bypass Moscow’s accomplices even within Europe by a coalition of only voluntary countries, with of course the United Kingdom.

Secondly, require that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what the agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.

Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we would have to build the neglected European defense, for the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and sunk since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.

Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. It is to recognize that France was right for decades in pleading for strategic autonomy.

It remains to build it. It will be necessary to invest massively, strengthen the European Defense Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, harmonize weapons and ammunition systems, accelerate Ukraine’s entry into the Union, which is today the first European army, rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence from French and British capacities, relaunch anti-missile and satellite shield programs.

The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And it will take much more.

Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be applied. For good.

But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.

We must convince public opinion in the face of weariness and fear of war, and especially in the face of Putin’s companions, the extreme right and the extreme left.

They pleaded again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr. Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defense.

They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is the capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain in Putin’s boot.

The peace of the collaborators who have refused for three years any help to the Ukrainians.

Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in recent days, Zelensky’s public humiliation and all the crazy decisions taken over the past month have ended up making Americans react.

Polls are falling. Republican elected officials are greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News becomes critical.

The Trumpists are no longer in majesty. They control the executive, Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks.

But in American history, the supporters of freedom have always won. They begin to raise their heads.

The fate of Ukraine is played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means of their common defense, and to make Europe the power it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.

Our parents defeated fascism and communism at the cost of all sacrifices.

The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.

Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.

Can you repeat that in Italian now? In Spanish? German? It would sound terrific in any language, except maybe Russian.

 "You should be thanking your lucky stars that it was the English who colonised you, and not the Dutch/Portuguese/Chinese/insert other group here. You'd all be dead if that were the case".

If I had a dollar... well, let's just say that reparations would no longer be necessary because my dream industrial warehouse convert in the inner north would be fully realised, and I could hire someone who can actually use a stove so I would never have to eat one of my own meals again. Anyway...

All Aboriginal people have heard this claim. Some racist has spat it at us, as a form of defence when we positively assert our identities, in a way of derailing our arguments. It's a lazy way of pointing at some "other", in a classic racist Australian tactic, in a bid to get us to shut up.

As it has turned out though, my family tree research has uncovered that I am the product of two different colonial products. I exist due to the British colonisation of Australia, as well as the Dutch colonisation of Sri Lanka. For all intents and purposes, because my life has been shaped by the former - from racist school yard taunts to becoming involved in the Indigenous sovereignty movement - I am reasonably across how it works to this day. I am the descendant of two people impacted by the wardship policies, three people who were "taken" by welfare due to this, and now, also, anthropologists and the protectorate system. My Arrernte heritage is why I have been othered my entire life, and fighting for pride in this when Australia remains so damn ignorant of its legacy is why I am who I am today. 

But now, I also am a member of the famous Ondaatje family. And as such, this taunt that racists have flung at me so many times over the years has been cast into sharp relief. Suddenly, I have been found myself needing to know more about the Dutch history of colonisation. My knowledge on this front, not unlike those who have throw this feckless taunt my way, is woefully lacking. And so beginneth another research journey for one who is, frankly, addicted to knowing everything she can.

There is no question that Dutch colonisation has been fucked. That it has led to pain, suffering, death, apartheid, and so many other things over the centuries. HOWEVER, what is inescapable about my Ondaatje line is that they are "Burgher" peoples, and that in contrast to the situation here in Australia, the Burghers are a distinct ethnic group that formed due to the intermarriage of colonials and locals. No such distinct ethnic group here, with its own customs and traditions, has formed due to intermarriage of Aboriginal people and colonisers. We are either "Black" or "White", and the act of positively identifying as Aboriginal is a form of resistance in the face of genocide, assimilation policies, and ongoing colonial agendas. In short, they tried to wipe us out, so it has set up a binary and a need to reinforce our Indigenous heritage in the face of erasure.

So what then is the difference between these colonial processes that has led to a different ethnic group versus an ongoing attempted annihilation? One night, I was drinking at a favourite dive bar in Adelaide, and I hit a fellow Aboriginal mate who knew more than I did up with this question. In a very surface level response, this friend stated that one of the key differences was, very simply, the motive for colonisation. In the case of the Brits here, the motive was the formation of a prison colony so they could shove society's undesirables elsewhere. In the case of the Dutch in Sri Lanka though, as well as religion, it was the spice trade.

What does this ultimately mean? In the case of the Brits, they were expanding their empire, and their goals meant that they were not reliant on the locals to do so, regardless of any sentiments expressed by the Crown. They wanted the space, they needed the land, and so they set out getting it by any means possible. There was no need to learn the local language. As long as Aboriginal people were dying around them and they were still safe, there was also no need to establish trade partnerships. There was some need to enslave locals and put them to work in order to make these ventures successful, but this was done by force and people were compelled to adhere as their homes were starved of resources required to rear non-native animals and crops.

Conversely, when trade is the driving reason for colonisation as what the case was in Sri Lanka, there is a compulsion for colonisers to build up relationships. To integrate into existing communities. My ancestor Quint Ondaatje was noted as being able to speak five different languages proficiently, and certainly, in both the case of Sri Lanka and Indonesia, Dutch colonisers are noted as learning the local language as a way of strengthening trade partnerships. Quint's (and my) ancestor Ondaatchi - the Tamil physician - was celebrated for his knowledge, was integral in providing health care to the colonisers, and he himself converted to Lutherism and adopted the names Michael and Jurgen. In short, in order to succeed in his career, he needed to walk in these two communities, and so too did his employer, the governor. So as such, because trade formed the basis of colonisation, it meant colonisers were more likely to learn the languages and customs, foster positive relationships, and marry in. Force could not be the (sole) basis of the exchange because had it been, the Dutch East India Company would have never have got off the ground. And so from this, a distinct ethnic group that remains as a remnant of that history exists, and I am a descendant of this legacy.

There's one further part to this: those who make the header jibe seemingly forget that the Dutch actually did come to this land before the Brits did. And while there was no active colonisation here by the Dutch, the tale of the Batavia shipwreck states that not only did the people onboard spent more time killing each other than any locals, but that also two mutineers were left on the mainland, where it is thought by some that they survived by marrying into the local communities.

Colonisation has devastated the world. It has led to genocide, enslavement, entitlement, and white surpremacy. The Israel-Palestine conflict exists to this day because colonial powers took it upon themselves to carve up lands that weren't theirs, in a bid to maintain allyships, access to resources, and wallpaper over their own genocidal ambitions. Globally, colonisation is directly responsible for the wealth and health disparaties between the global north and south. But if I have learnt anything from all this, it is that not all colonisation has operated the same.

I recently, truthfully, stated in a public speech that I believe "full decolonisation is not possible", and perhaps this was an individual rather than broader Indigenous community reflection. I think instead, we are in a point in history where we grapple with this legacy while also finding ways to protect land, culture, family, and history, and this comes about via a formal treaty agreement. But as well as me being at peace with the fact that I am the biggest city Black ever created, I now also know that I am the product of two colonial processes. My heritage is complex, and untangling it all when it makes up my very fibres is, in essence, near impossible. It raises other questions too, particularly with regards to how these forebears interacted with the White Australia Policy, and whether this colonial Dutch heritage was erased due to colonial British projects. But I am also thankful that, via knowing more about my roots, I have come to understand more about colonisation globally. As a knowledge-seeker dedicated to lifelong learning, I will always be thankful for that opportunity. 

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