Stuart Macintyre: Anglophobe

Stuart Macintyre is a historian and former communist known for being one of the prime protagonists in the so-called "History Wars" here in Australia. He is also the chap that Kevin Rudd has decided should help write our national history curriculum for schools from the first year of school through to Year 12.

Unsurprisingly, Macintyre is one of those leftists who views Australian history since British settlement as little more than an appalling legacy of racism and genocide. Indeed, he is one of the leading proponents of this view. In his opinion, the sooner evil Anglo-Australia is relegated to the dustbin of history, the better. As this article points out:

Macintyre also harbours a deep distaste for this country’s British heritage. In the concluding chapter of A Concise History of Australia (1999), he is comforted by the prediction that, just as the Romans were displaced in Britain, Aborigines and Asians will eventually supplant the colonisers of British descent in Australia. Just as the only remnant of the Roman empire in Britain is “a thin slice of the island’s multi-layered past”, so too will the British colonisation be overlaid by the culture and practices of other peoples.

Personally, I'd like to know how someone with such strong biases was ever deemed the best choice to write the national history curriculum for a people and nation he so obviously loathes.