The Aldi T-shirt Controversy

SUPERMARKET chain Aldi has announced it will remove a range of t-shirt designs after copping backlash over advertising "inflammatory" and culturally insensitive Australia Day shirts in its latest catalogue and online.

Users on social media called for the shirts, designed with a slogan that reads "Australia est. 1788", to be pulled from stores after deeming it profoundly racist.

The shirts are advertised on the Aldi website and through its catalogue.

While the First Fleet landed in Australia in 1788, Australia's indigenous population have inhabited the land for at least 40,000 years prior. Many still call Australia Day, Invasion Day. The shirts in question were not yet on sale, but the remainder of the range, without the offending slogan, is advertised to hit stores on January 11 and "will still be available", according to Aldi's statement.

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While the story itself functions as a distraction from more important issues, I just wanted to highlight an example of how the Political Correctness Movement goes out of its way to locate and 'expose' offense, and incite social division. They of course deny inciting social division, but what else can we call it when current events are incorrectly associated with events of the past and cause a certain group of people to become filled with frustration when the situation does not warrant it?

Firstly, the designers of the t-shirt made a factual error - Australia was not established in 1788, it was only officially called the "Commonwealth of Australia" in 1901. So, the t-shirt should read "Australia est. 1901" to be factually correct.

Secondly, how is it considered "racist and insensitive" to identify the date a country was established with an official name? Nobody is disputing that indigenous Australians lived there for thousands of years prior, but they did not have the landmass officially named and recognised by the international community at the time.

Thirdly, people tend to forget that recorded history only traces back so far. We do not know the true origins and resulting events of this giant landmass.

Australia as we know it was established in 1788, before that there were a lot of clans and tribes - that could be classified in to a few "nations" from an anthropological point of view but definitely not a political or cultural view. So in that way it is factually correct. So if it is politically incorrect to say Australia was established in 1788 then why celebrate Australia day on January 26? They are just a bunch of looking for something to do with their government supported lives.

Aldi's isn't a business I would of thought of as being controversial. I'm surprised!

Another example of PC gone mad in the fashion world:
'Property of an Aussie Boy' singlet pulled from ICE stores

And they call themselves liberals