Why modern activism feels less like justice and more like identity

I was watching Rebel Without a Cause the other night, and it struck me that the title feels strangely modern.

Jim Stark, played by James Dean, isn’t oppressed. He isn’t poor. He doesn’t live under tyranny or injustice. He has parents, a home, and a reasonably comfortable life. Yet he’s restless, angry, searching for something to fight against.

He doesn’t really know what he’s rebelling against. He just knows he has to rebel against something.

Because without a struggle, without a cause, he feels adrift. And boy oh boy, don't we see that too much these days? Have we become a society of Jim Starks? Of Rebels Without a Cause?

People who protest for the sake of protesting... and so often have no bloody idea why or what they are protesting...

By The Boundary Rider, Dusty Gulch Gazette
Part bush philosopher, part realist, part stubborn old stockman -  I watch what others overlook and ask the questions most would rather avoid.

These days the world’s spinning faster than a willy-willy across the red dirt, and sometimes you’ve just got to stop, put the kettle on, and listen when a fair-minded bloke from overseas speaks up - especially one who’s got genuine affection for this sunburnt land of ours and remembers the blood we spilled together in the big wars.

One of our American readers dropped a comment the other day that hit like a cold stubby to the chest. Sincere. Confronting. Dead honest. He started by tipping his hat to the old ANZAC spirit and the mateship that bound Yanks and Aussies through hell and high water. But then he got blunt: sentiment’s all well and good, he said, but in 2026 it doesn’t pay the bills.

So here we go, as I write my first dispatch to the troops on the ground from where I am.. on the Boundary Fence... in the far off land of Australia...

A Stranger on the Line: Meeting the Boundary Rider

By Roderick “Whiskers” McNibble, Dusty Gulch Gazette

Last night I rode out past Dusty Gulch, further than usual, under a sky so wide it could swallow a station. The Honklanders - those blundering, honking, chaotic fiends - are now spreading beyond town limits, and this time, they aren’t alone. Reports had trickled in about swamp creatures skulking in the dust, Prentis Penjani orchestrating mischief in the shadows, and Maurice E Duck paddling through the mess like he owned the place. Odd colours flashed through the scrub, gates yanked loose, and posts left leaning like drunk soldiers. Proof was needed, and I was the one to go fetch it.

So many people from all walks of life have shaped our Aussie way of life, which makes us Australian, unashamedly and without apology. We were born out of true grit, sacrifice and reluctant citizenship in some cases, but our soldiers, our farmers, our women and our poets have celebrated the joy of being Australian.

We are from the land down under, and our poets’ voices still echo in the halls of our history and long may they do so. This is part of our celebration of the people who gave voice to being dinki-di, true blue Aussie. To Hell with those politicians and wimps who dishonour our ancestors.

As Australia Day approaches, I am reminded of a moment not long ago when ANZAC Day itself was quietly set aside. During the coronavirus lockdown, Australians were instructed by government decree that we could not gather, could not march, and could not honour our Diggers in the way generations before us had done -  publicly, collectively, and without apology.

Now it appears the 26th of January is again being dragged into manufactured turmoil. A small but noisy activist minority, aided and encouraged by Corporate Australia and elements of political and local government leadership, seeks to recast a national day of unity as something to be endured rather than celebrated. Perhaps the tide is turning -  but the pressure remains.

As ever, we are told that Australia should feel shame rather than gratitude; that participation in war was a moral failing rather than a grim necessity; that peace is best honoured by forgetting those who secured it; and that Australia Day itself should be replaced with ritual self-reproach under the banner of “Invasion Day”.

History tells a different story.