Dr Neville Buch

Professional Historian and History Consultancy Services Brisbane

An Open Letter to Drew and Others Subject to Today’s Nonsense Political Rhetoric

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2–3 minutes
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27 July 2026

Dear Drew,

These Marxist groups have thrown out the idea of a working class revolution and substituted for it a revolution to eliminate “white, colonial heteronormativity”. I thought they were wrong with their working class revolution but they are absolutely ridiculous with its replacement. I am enjoying the delicious irony, if only so many people weren’t being hurt by it.

I agree except for the labelling that is currently happening, and I think, ironically, it is part of the same “nonsense political rhetoric” we are seeing today. The references to erroneous labels, such as “knowledge class” bubble, are part of the problem. I do not wish to be described as “pedantic” but it is more than just a label. It is a bubble of ignorance. But it is not a knowledge class, since it is “specialised ignorance”. These are cases of a person speaking, not what they really know, but what they have heard or been taught in academic specialisation.

I have been forced to mainly ‘publish’ on academia.edu because of the (intellectual) ‘collegial’ corruption in the official academic publishing industry. I am still genuine ‘collegially’ working with colleagues outside of the locked-down universities, on book manuscripts. However, the problem of “nonsense political rhetoric” continues even on the academia.edu platform. It is a problem across the political spectrum and has effected every corner of society. In phrase we can call it the “culture-history war”.

My argument has been that this is a mega-cultural conflict with American historical origins, and, in educational terms, involved what Frank Furedi spoke about as “dumbing down”. Again, the irony is that I think Furedi has also been caught up in his own nonsense labels: correctly pointing to the problem but without sufficient understanding.

Bibliography

Donath, C. R. (2013). Liberal Art: Art and Education for Citizenship in Kant’s “Critique of Judgment.” The Review of Politics, 75(1), 3–23. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23355712

Haskell, T. L. (1990). Objectivity is not Neutrality: Rhetoric vs. Practice in Peter Novick’s That Noble Dream. History and Theory, 29(2), 129–157. https://doi.org/10.2307/2505222

Jackson, R. (2007). Constructing Enemies: “Islamic Terrorism” in Political and Academic Discourse. Government and Opposition, 42(3), 394–426. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44483203

Jacoby, W. G. (2014). Is There a Culture War? Conflicting Value Structures in American Public Opinion. The American Political Science Review, 108(4), 754–771. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44154191

Kantola, J., & Lombardo, E. (2021). Strategies of right populists in opposing gender equality in a polarized European Parliament. International Political Science Review / Revue Internationale de Science Politique, 42(5), 565–579. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27117317

Moser, D. (2024). To What Extent Did the Music of the 1960s Counterculture Influence the Frame Alignment of Second-Wave Environmentalist Organisations? International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, 55(1), 91–138. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48778405

Nichols, R. (1996). Maxims, “Practical Wisdom,” and the Language of Action: Beyond Grand Theory. Political Theory, 24(4), 687–705. http://www.jstor.org/stable/192021

Shapiro, I. (1989). Gross Concepts in Political Argument. Political Theory, 17(1), 51–76. http://www.jstor.org/stable/191563

Zerilli, L. M. G. (2012). Value Pluralism and the Problem of Judgment: Farwell to Public Reason. Political Theory, 40(1), 6–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41502579

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Culture war and cultural wars concept or USA heritage and divided American politics as different philosophy as cultures and ideology in conflict in the United States in a 3D illustration style.
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Neville Buch (Pronounced Book) Ph.D. is a certified member of the Professional Historians Association (Queensland). Since 2010 he has operated a sole trade business in history consultancy. He was a Q ANZAC 100 Fellow 2014-2015 at the State Library of Queensland. Dr Buch was the PHA (Qld) e-Bulletin, the monthly state association’s electronic publication, and was a member of its Management Committee. He is the Managing Director of the Brisbane Southside History Network.
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