nt (Krztalizer) wrote in message ...

"Digger" sounds like how someone
would say the original name if they
had a touch of the sniffles...

"Digger" was an uncomplementary name for either dark-skinned or mixed race
folks in Australia, or at least it was in the past. Perhaps it was the local
equiv of "Sambo", who, when I was a kid, was a savvy and rather brave youg kid
that defeated a hungry pride of lions using only his wits. How that ever got
turned into a racial slur, I will never know!

On the contrary. "Digger" in Australia is very complimentary and
affectionate term though it is somewhat an anachronism that is applied
to older war vetrans.

I believe the origin can be traced the Goldfield rush of Australia
where the term also became associated with the Eureka Stockage
Rebellion. (Basically men had stopped servicing the needs of the
Elites and there was a manpower shortage as men worked for Gold and
their own fortune: this was seen as a problem by the Government and
tensions built up between the Golddiggers and the Government which
wanted more work and discouraged mining with buerocratic measures)

However the term is associated most strongly with the soldiers of the
ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Core) who in 1915 were landed
due to British aristocratic military incompetence at Galliolli into
whithering fire in a ferrociously defended turkish beach whose
defensive strategy was designed by the Germans for the Turks. The
ANZACS suffered heroic losses while displaying courage and
determination. "Digger" I believe refers to the act of digging a
trench.

The day of the landings and the events sorounding it is solemly
celebrated every year in Australia as a national holiday as it marks a
turning point in History and perhaps a point at which many Australians
saw them self more Australian than British. The American equivalent
would be Iwo Jima or the Alamo.


Almost any term, outside of the frame work of political correctness,
that a person of European-Western genetic and civilisational hertiage
uses if it can be construed or contextualised as 'racist' will be
construed or contextualised as racist. It simply provides moral
leverage to extract both protections and priveledges and we live in a
well peversely discredited guilt ridden western culture accutely
sensitive to such sophistry.