From Santamaria to Hizb ut-Tahrir

More sentimentality about the disastrous B A Santamaria from Tony Abbott. In fact Santamaria and his acolytes represented an attempt to import into Australia an obscurationist and anti-democratic Catholicism in opposition to the pragmatic Christian democratic approach that had characterised the Australian church up until then. Fantasies about a Catholic social order (Gerard Henderson is good on how muddled this was), and the reversing of the Reformation were tangled up with a malign 'anti-capitalism'. In interwar Europe this style of Catholic politics with its constant trashing of liberalism, democracy and the Enlightenment, contributed to the collapse of European democracy. It’s all reminiscent of Islamic fundamentalist fantasies such as those of Hizb ut-Tahrir. This recent outburst of Santamaria nostalgia is however less silly (if that was possible) than the ludicrous 'left' faning over his alleged criticism of 'economic rationalism' in the 1990s. The socialism of fools indeed, like bin Laden's anti-imperialism. A poll of Australian Catholics in the 1930s would have been interesting would it have shown the same tendencies towards radicalisation among the young that appear in some Islamic communities today? As for Santamaria's personality, consider his distinctly creepy manipulations of older ill men from Mannix to Menzies.