Matt McCarten: Anzac Day - we're comfortable with this historic illusion

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On Friday, New Zealand saluted our Gallipoli war dead who were butchered in their tens of thousands because of the incompetent British upper-class twits who led them.

As we know, the cream of our country's youth went off to join the other colonials of the British Empire to the killing fields in feudal Europe. I know it's unpatriotic and bad manners these days to mention, but many of these young volunteer soldiers were the same ones who, two years earlier, had saddled up their horses and rode into our cities to smash a general strike of workers.

Our then-conservative Government gave thousands of these young horsemen carte blanche to ride into town using hand-made batons to club workers into submission and smash the strike. After they won, these young farmers proudly nicknamed themselves "Massey's Cossacks" after our Prime Minister at the time...

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