December 22, 2005
Cronulla is quiet again; those intent on exploiting it are not
OBSESSIVE Howard-haters and publicity-hungry expats have been keen to exploit the Cronulla unrest for their own ends. The lawbreaking in Sydney's south, they have informed us and the world, is a manifestation of the deeply embedded racism in the Australian psyche. This racism, historically enshrined in the White Australia policy, has been reinvigorated by John Howard as part of his campaign to conscript blue-collar voters to the Liberal cause. As a result, racism is on the upswing, while support for multicultural tolerance is waning. In the aftermath of Hansonism and now Cronulla, this has sullied our image in the region and the world. We will pay a heavy price for giving the racist hordes the "dog whistle", and only a hefty increase in spending on multicultural affairs can drag us back from the brink. There has even been a partial echo of this view from the anti-multicultural Right, with some using the riot to claim vindication for their longstanding argument that the tolerance of Australians for a multi-ethnic, multiracial society is stretched beyond breaking point.
The only problem with this dire picture is that it is supported neither by the facts nor by the polling on which it relies. A poll in The Sydney Morning Herald was headlined "Voters disagree with PM on racism" and showed three in four respondents parting ways with Mr Howard's view that there is little "underlying racism" in Australia. But as our Newspoll this morning shows, when people are asked a more pointed question – "Do you agree that Australians are racist?" – the proportion plummets to well under half. True, today's Newspoll does indicate an increase in those opposed to multiculturalism, from nearly one in six in 1997 to nearly one in four today. But in the first place, there was bound to be some slippage in support, following events such as the racially motivated Sydney pack rapes in 2000, Labor's perpetual ethnic branch-stacking scandal and – above all – 9/11. Moreover, asking people what they think about multiculturalism is a bit like asking them what they think about public-private partnerships in infrastructure: most don't think about it at all. If ordinary people are unhappy about anything, it is the nation-of-tribes vision propounded by the ethnic essentialists in the multiculturalism industry. A vision of different groups rubbing along happily together in a tolerant, "melting pot" society, which is what multiculturalism should mean, would draw very wide public support.
How do we know? Partly because the big story about race, immigration and the Howard Government is not the story told by the Left, which is dominated by big chapters on Hansonism and the Tampa, with appendices on Vivian Alvarez and Cornelia Rau. The real story is of a massive immigration program, now approaching 140,000 newcomers annually, plus another 14,000 under the humanitarian and refugee rubric. And this acceleration has occurred without any visible sign of public disquiet or backlash, apart from the rumble on the sands at Cronulla, which had much more to do with a clash of ill-bred and lawless young males.
Moreover, confounding Germaine Greer's prediction of "a bloody summer in Australia", Sydney's southern beaches have calmed down nicely. Blanket policing has been a success, and on Tuesday NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney urged Sydneysiders to go back to the beach. Perhaps the real sociological point in all this is that, for many baby-boomers finding themselves in a post-theological world, anti-racism has become the new religion. In fact, there is a degree of racism in every society, and in every human being: to make one's mission the eradication of this ingrained element is an exercise in fanaticism. But the great corrective to the "deep underlying racism" view is a postwar record in immigration that remains the defining achievement of Australia in our time. Even now, a quarter of Australians were born overseas. Far from having anything of which to be ashamed in our treatment of immigrants, we have every reason to be proud.
Friday, December 23, 2005
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Bring back the politics of race harmony - Allan Patience, The Age
Bring back the politics of race harmony
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/bring-back-the-politics-of-race-harmony/2005/12/19/1134840793747.html
December 20, 2005
Page 1 of 2
Australia is paying the price for turning away from multiculturalism, writes Allan Patience.
An intelligent response to the Sydney events would be the revival of one of Australia's greatest achievements - multiculturalism.
The multiculturalism that began unfolding from the late 1960s was about people coming from different cultural backgrounds and learning to share their stories, to understand each other's points of view, to sympathise with the hardships they faced in coming to Australia, and to discover the advantages of living in harmony.
This revolved around a clear obligation for everyone born here, or choosing to live here, to respect certain core Australian values. These include allegiance to the practices of democratic government and the rule of law, believing in a fair go, just recognition for essential and voluntary work, a wonderfully irreverent sense of humour, security within and outside the country, a preference for egalitarianism, and a commitment to the right of everyone to fair access to education, health, employment, and housing.
These core values were the foundations on which all sound multicultural policies were built in the 1970s and 1980s. This was especially true of government initiatives on ethnic welfare services, education, SBS radio and television, and the sadly defunct Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs.
At their best, these policies made Australia a world leader. For a time, Australia's rates of inter-ethnic violence were among the lowest in the world and ethnic out-marriage rates were relatively high, leading to human links across cultural boundaries. The country was widely admired for its multicultural achievements.
What we failed to do was to establish how and why these achievements were so successful. Good multicultural researchers were hung out to dry by successive governments. A lot of excellent policy knowledge and experience was lost.
What multiculturalists do understand is that cultural change, if it's managed well, can be enriching as cultures rub up against each other. If people really want to be positive Australian citizens they must understand that all living cultures are always changing. Ethnic and religious leaders sometimes have to accept the responsibility to advocate positive change in their own communities.
It is also important to remind ourselves of what multiculturalism is not. It is not a defence of ethnic narcissism. Ethnic groups that believe they possess exclusive and unchanging identities superior to other cultures have no place in Australian society. Multiculturalism has never been an apology for patriarchy or for limiting human rights. It has nothing in common with mob violence, sexual predators, payback killings, religious intolerance, racial bigotry or acts of terrorism.
Bring back the politics of race harmony
Page 2 of 2
Australia is paying the price for turning away from multiculturalism, writes Allan Patience.
An intelligent response to the Sydney events would be the revival of one of Australia's greatest achievements - multiculturalism.
The multiculturalism that began unfolding from the late 1960s was about people coming from different cultural backgrounds and learning to share their stories, to understand each other's points of view, to sympathise with the hardships they faced in coming to Australia, and to discover the advantages of living in harmony.
This revolved around a clear obligation for everyone born here, or choosing to live here, to respect certain core Australian values. These include allegiance to the practices of democratic government and the rule of law, believing in a fair go, just recognition for essential and voluntary work, a wonderfully irreverent sense of humour, security within and outside the country, a preference for egalitarianism, and a commitment to the right of everyone to fair access to education, health, employment, and housing.
These core values were the foundations on which all sound multicultural policies were built in the 1970s and 1980s. This was especially true of government initiatives on ethnic welfare services, education, SBS radio and television, and the sadly defunct Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs.
At their best, these policies made Australia a world leader. For a time, Australia's rates of inter-ethnic violence were among the lowest in the world and ethnic out-marriage rates were relatively high, leading to human links across cultural boundaries. The country was widely admired for its multicultural achievements.
What we failed to do was to establish how and why these achievements were so successful. Good multicultural researchers were hung out to dry by successive governments. A lot of excellent policy knowledge and experience was lost.
What multiculturalists do understand is that cultural change, if it's managed well, can be enriching as cultures rub up against each other. If people really want to be positive Australian citizens they must understand that all living cultures are always changing. Ethnic and religious leaders sometimes have to accept the responsibility to advocate positive change in their own communities.
It is also important to remind ourselves of what multiculturalism is not. It is not a defence of ethnic narcissism. Ethnic groups that believe they possess exclusive and unchanging identities superior to other cultures have no place in Australian society. Multiculturalism has never been an apology for patriarchy or for limiting human rights. It has nothing in common with mob violence, sexual predators, payback killings, religious intolerance, racial bigotry or acts of terrorism.
The architects of Australian multiculturalism warned against ethnic minorities being excluded from mainstream society because of economic, educational, language or cultural barriers.
If policies are not in place to stop this happening, people in the minority groups will soon be over-represented in poverty, unemployment, crime, and similar statistics.
Policies to counter structural inequality include the provision of English language and skills training programs, accessible translations and interpreting services, and well-targeted community welfare programs. They also require effective public education programs for the wider community so that mainstream citizens understand the problems minorities face and what to do to alleviate these problems.
The past decade has seen a sustained and deliberate white-anting of Australia's multicultural achievements. The campaign has been fostered by neo-conservative elements in the Federal Government and inflamed by shock-jocks on talkback radio. The ugly consequences of these opportunistic politics are evident in the riots in Sydney's south and west. If unchecked, the disturbances will spread.
There is a crimson thread of racism still running through Australia's hard culture. There is no point in denying this. Our racism has to be confronted intelligently, through wise education programs, sensitive legislation, and a bill of rights. And it will never be dealt with until an acceptable apology for the stolen generation is offered and a treaty with Aborigines is finally signed and sealed.
What more needs to be done?
First, political parties must abandon electoral strategies that promote fear and loathing. Second, research has to be conducted into flawed and failed social policies that are aggravating the shutting out of ethnic minorities from mainstream Australian society, and new policies - some of which will need to be quite radical - will have to be implemented.
Third, a new Institute of Multicultural Affairs needs to be established, to conduct cogent public education programs about our multicultural achievements and how they can be sustained and progressed. Rather than be made to stand alone, it should be placed in a university that has the resources and community connections to ensure its survival.
Over the past decade there has been too much making scapegoats of minorities for cheap electoral advantage and macho political point-scoring. It has serious long-term implications for Australia's survival as a coherent and decent society. The warning signals must be heeded.
Professor Allan Patience is a visiting fellow in the research school of Pacific and Asian studies, Australian National University, Canberra.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/bring-back-the-politics-of-race-harmony/2005/12/19/1134840793747.html
December 20, 2005
Page 1 of 2
Australia is paying the price for turning away from multiculturalism, writes Allan Patience.
An intelligent response to the Sydney events would be the revival of one of Australia's greatest achievements - multiculturalism.
The multiculturalism that began unfolding from the late 1960s was about people coming from different cultural backgrounds and learning to share their stories, to understand each other's points of view, to sympathise with the hardships they faced in coming to Australia, and to discover the advantages of living in harmony.
This revolved around a clear obligation for everyone born here, or choosing to live here, to respect certain core Australian values. These include allegiance to the practices of democratic government and the rule of law, believing in a fair go, just recognition for essential and voluntary work, a wonderfully irreverent sense of humour, security within and outside the country, a preference for egalitarianism, and a commitment to the right of everyone to fair access to education, health, employment, and housing.
These core values were the foundations on which all sound multicultural policies were built in the 1970s and 1980s. This was especially true of government initiatives on ethnic welfare services, education, SBS radio and television, and the sadly defunct Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs.
At their best, these policies made Australia a world leader. For a time, Australia's rates of inter-ethnic violence were among the lowest in the world and ethnic out-marriage rates were relatively high, leading to human links across cultural boundaries. The country was widely admired for its multicultural achievements.
What we failed to do was to establish how and why these achievements were so successful. Good multicultural researchers were hung out to dry by successive governments. A lot of excellent policy knowledge and experience was lost.
What multiculturalists do understand is that cultural change, if it's managed well, can be enriching as cultures rub up against each other. If people really want to be positive Australian citizens they must understand that all living cultures are always changing. Ethnic and religious leaders sometimes have to accept the responsibility to advocate positive change in their own communities.
It is also important to remind ourselves of what multiculturalism is not. It is not a defence of ethnic narcissism. Ethnic groups that believe they possess exclusive and unchanging identities superior to other cultures have no place in Australian society. Multiculturalism has never been an apology for patriarchy or for limiting human rights. It has nothing in common with mob violence, sexual predators, payback killings, religious intolerance, racial bigotry or acts of terrorism.
Bring back the politics of race harmony
Page 2 of 2
Australia is paying the price for turning away from multiculturalism, writes Allan Patience.
An intelligent response to the Sydney events would be the revival of one of Australia's greatest achievements - multiculturalism.
The multiculturalism that began unfolding from the late 1960s was about people coming from different cultural backgrounds and learning to share their stories, to understand each other's points of view, to sympathise with the hardships they faced in coming to Australia, and to discover the advantages of living in harmony.
This revolved around a clear obligation for everyone born here, or choosing to live here, to respect certain core Australian values. These include allegiance to the practices of democratic government and the rule of law, believing in a fair go, just recognition for essential and voluntary work, a wonderfully irreverent sense of humour, security within and outside the country, a preference for egalitarianism, and a commitment to the right of everyone to fair access to education, health, employment, and housing.
These core values were the foundations on which all sound multicultural policies were built in the 1970s and 1980s. This was especially true of government initiatives on ethnic welfare services, education, SBS radio and television, and the sadly defunct Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs.
At their best, these policies made Australia a world leader. For a time, Australia's rates of inter-ethnic violence were among the lowest in the world and ethnic out-marriage rates were relatively high, leading to human links across cultural boundaries. The country was widely admired for its multicultural achievements.
What we failed to do was to establish how and why these achievements were so successful. Good multicultural researchers were hung out to dry by successive governments. A lot of excellent policy knowledge and experience was lost.
What multiculturalists do understand is that cultural change, if it's managed well, can be enriching as cultures rub up against each other. If people really want to be positive Australian citizens they must understand that all living cultures are always changing. Ethnic and religious leaders sometimes have to accept the responsibility to advocate positive change in their own communities.
It is also important to remind ourselves of what multiculturalism is not. It is not a defence of ethnic narcissism. Ethnic groups that believe they possess exclusive and unchanging identities superior to other cultures have no place in Australian society. Multiculturalism has never been an apology for patriarchy or for limiting human rights. It has nothing in common with mob violence, sexual predators, payback killings, religious intolerance, racial bigotry or acts of terrorism.
The architects of Australian multiculturalism warned against ethnic minorities being excluded from mainstream society because of economic, educational, language or cultural barriers.
If policies are not in place to stop this happening, people in the minority groups will soon be over-represented in poverty, unemployment, crime, and similar statistics.
Policies to counter structural inequality include the provision of English language and skills training programs, accessible translations and interpreting services, and well-targeted community welfare programs. They also require effective public education programs for the wider community so that mainstream citizens understand the problems minorities face and what to do to alleviate these problems.
The past decade has seen a sustained and deliberate white-anting of Australia's multicultural achievements. The campaign has been fostered by neo-conservative elements in the Federal Government and inflamed by shock-jocks on talkback radio. The ugly consequences of these opportunistic politics are evident in the riots in Sydney's south and west. If unchecked, the disturbances will spread.
There is a crimson thread of racism still running through Australia's hard culture. There is no point in denying this. Our racism has to be confronted intelligently, through wise education programs, sensitive legislation, and a bill of rights. And it will never be dealt with until an acceptable apology for the stolen generation is offered and a treaty with Aborigines is finally signed and sealed.
What more needs to be done?
First, political parties must abandon electoral strategies that promote fear and loathing. Second, research has to be conducted into flawed and failed social policies that are aggravating the shutting out of ethnic minorities from mainstream Australian society, and new policies - some of which will need to be quite radical - will have to be implemented.
Third, a new Institute of Multicultural Affairs needs to be established, to conduct cogent public education programs about our multicultural achievements and how they can be sustained and progressed. Rather than be made to stand alone, it should be placed in a university that has the resources and community connections to ensure its survival.
Over the past decade there has been too much making scapegoats of minorities for cheap electoral advantage and macho political point-scoring. It has serious long-term implications for Australia's survival as a coherent and decent society. The warning signals must be heeded.
Professor Allan Patience is a visiting fellow in the research school of Pacific and Asian studies, Australian National University, Canberra.
Monday, December 19, 2005
What A Riot, Mate! - Ilana Mercer, FrontPageMagazine.com
The international coverage continues...another 'version' of the discussion on racist behaviour in Australia....
What A Riot, Mate!
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20590
By Ilana Mercer
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 19, 2005
“When an Arab torches a school, it's rebellion. When a white guy does it, it's fascism,” says French-Jewish philosopher, Alain Finkielkraut. His observation vis-à-vis the riots in France has been validated by the coverage of the “race riots” in Australia. These began in Cronulla, south of Sydney, and soon spread to other beach suburbs, where Anglo-Aussies descended on “people of Arabic and Mediterranean background” in a territorial display of fury.
Hardly a dog of a commentator missed the opportunity to lift his leg in protest against the “white teenagers” and the “racist white mobs.” However, they quickly resumed racially neutral language—and the passive voice—when Arabs were implicated. Thus BBC News reported that “a man [Anglo] was stabbed in the back [by a Lebanese] in south Sydney.”
Yes, the Anglos—also the blokes whose Anglo-Celtic forefathers established Australia’s political order and “civic culture”—were not described as disenfranchised or alienated. Such existential exigencies are the exclusive preserve of the “Lebs” (Lebanese, in local parlance). Or of France’s Noble Savages. In the latter’s case, it took the “mullahs of the media” a good week before they deigned to mention the rioters’ ethnic identity. And even then, reporting was saturated with Rousseauian reverence.
Nor were experts on hand in TV studios or over op-ed pages to “analyze” what might have “driven” young surfer Aussies to alight on the "Lebs" with such anger.
Buried in the clucking about “white racist gangs” were a few richly revealing words, a hint at the straw that broke the koala’s back: Lebanese had brutally beat two Cronulla lifeguards. The Australian says lifesavers “epitomize Australia’s white traditions and Anglo-Saxon roots.” Other provocations: Lebanese were in the habit of loitering around bikini-clad white girls, calling them prostitutes and exhorting them to “cover up,” as have they been implicated in a string of racially motivated, gang-rapes of young white girls. The presence among Anglo-Aussies of a camarilla of Sami Al-Arians has done nothing to ease coexistence. Ditto the memory of the 2002 Bali bombing, in which approximately 160 Australians were slaughtered.
For fingering the French rioters as “blacks or Arabs with a Muslim identity,” latte sippers across the Continent labeled Finkielkraut, Europe’s leading conservative philosopher, the "new neo-reactionary.” (Entre nous: I’d garner the same honorific for my roundup on France’s rioters). He had pointed out—and proven—that the rioters were staging an anti-republican pogrom, rooted in a fundamental hatred of France and the French. Rioters had raged to the sounds of Monsieur R’s rapper “lyrics”—“I piss on France,” he rapped, and they did. But did the cognoscenti condemn this racial hatred? Not on your life.
Freedom of speech is heavily proscribed in Europe and Australia. Aussies and Europeans can end up jailed and jobless for mouthing about Muslims (but not the reverse). So Finkielkraut recanted (and Oriana Fallaci fled).
As in France, Australia’s Muslims have inflicted on their hosts harm that exceeds by far the scratches and other scurrilities they suffered from the surfers. Soon after the riots erupted, a Uniting Church hall adjacent to a mosque was burned to the ground and four churches in Sydney's southwest were attacked. A Catholic Archbishop has had to entreat Middle Easterners not to target Christmas celebrations, after these hoodlums threatened, spat on, and shot at parents and kids who convened to sing carols at a primary school in western Sydney.
Decades of indoctrination by the “managerial professional elites” were supposed to emasculate the surfer dudes for good. They were expected to toke it up or turn the other cheek. Instead, they fought back against what they perceive as a threat to their land and life.
A threat that commenced approximately 40 years ago, when Australian central planners decided in favor of mass importation of immigrants from the Third World. Hitherto, a limited and selective immigration policy had guaranteed newcomers reinforced the ethnic and cultural composition of the founding folk. If this sounds familiar, it’s because “Camelot knight-errant” Ted Kennedy engineered a similar coup in the United States.
The statist revolution was (and still is) directed from above by a treacherous political class which has shared the ideological cockpit with “intellectuals” (a misnomer, if ever there was one), who hate their country’s history and inhabitants (aboriginals excluded). This hatred has fueled their quest to marginalize North-Western Europeans, whose “culture” has facilitated “the fundamental constitutional norms associated with the rule of law, representative government and individual rights,” to quote Andrew Fraser (now banned in Oz).
An 18-year-old Anglo, wearing mirrored sunglasses and a baseball cap, arrived on the beachfront riding an undersized push-bike. As he sifted a fistful of sand through his fingers, he told “The Australian”:
“This is what we're fighting for. Like our fathers, our grandfathers, fought for these beaches and now it's our turn.”
More bathos than pathos, perhaps. But not half bad, considering this parting shot comes from someone who was raised on a diet of state-sponsored multiculturalism and cultural relativism, and who has been taught to hate his heritage.
Ilana Mercer is the author of Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Culture, and a columnist for WorldNetDaily.com and the Free-Market News Network. For more about her work, visit IlanaMercer.com.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
What A Riot, Mate!
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20590
By Ilana Mercer
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 19, 2005
“When an Arab torches a school, it's rebellion. When a white guy does it, it's fascism,” says French-Jewish philosopher, Alain Finkielkraut. His observation vis-à-vis the riots in France has been validated by the coverage of the “race riots” in Australia. These began in Cronulla, south of Sydney, and soon spread to other beach suburbs, where Anglo-Aussies descended on “people of Arabic and Mediterranean background” in a territorial display of fury.
Hardly a dog of a commentator missed the opportunity to lift his leg in protest against the “white teenagers” and the “racist white mobs.” However, they quickly resumed racially neutral language—and the passive voice—when Arabs were implicated. Thus BBC News reported that “a man [Anglo] was stabbed in the back [by a Lebanese] in south Sydney.”
Yes, the Anglos—also the blokes whose Anglo-Celtic forefathers established Australia’s political order and “civic culture”—were not described as disenfranchised or alienated. Such existential exigencies are the exclusive preserve of the “Lebs” (Lebanese, in local parlance). Or of France’s Noble Savages. In the latter’s case, it took the “mullahs of the media” a good week before they deigned to mention the rioters’ ethnic identity. And even then, reporting was saturated with Rousseauian reverence.
Nor were experts on hand in TV studios or over op-ed pages to “analyze” what might have “driven” young surfer Aussies to alight on the "Lebs" with such anger.
Buried in the clucking about “white racist gangs” were a few richly revealing words, a hint at the straw that broke the koala’s back: Lebanese had brutally beat two Cronulla lifeguards. The Australian says lifesavers “epitomize Australia’s white traditions and Anglo-Saxon roots.” Other provocations: Lebanese were in the habit of loitering around bikini-clad white girls, calling them prostitutes and exhorting them to “cover up,” as have they been implicated in a string of racially motivated, gang-rapes of young white girls. The presence among Anglo-Aussies of a camarilla of Sami Al-Arians has done nothing to ease coexistence. Ditto the memory of the 2002 Bali bombing, in which approximately 160 Australians were slaughtered.
For fingering the French rioters as “blacks or Arabs with a Muslim identity,” latte sippers across the Continent labeled Finkielkraut, Europe’s leading conservative philosopher, the "new neo-reactionary.” (Entre nous: I’d garner the same honorific for my roundup on France’s rioters). He had pointed out—and proven—that the rioters were staging an anti-republican pogrom, rooted in a fundamental hatred of France and the French. Rioters had raged to the sounds of Monsieur R’s rapper “lyrics”—“I piss on France,” he rapped, and they did. But did the cognoscenti condemn this racial hatred? Not on your life.
Freedom of speech is heavily proscribed in Europe and Australia. Aussies and Europeans can end up jailed and jobless for mouthing about Muslims (but not the reverse). So Finkielkraut recanted (and Oriana Fallaci fled).
As in France, Australia’s Muslims have inflicted on their hosts harm that exceeds by far the scratches and other scurrilities they suffered from the surfers. Soon after the riots erupted, a Uniting Church hall adjacent to a mosque was burned to the ground and four churches in Sydney's southwest were attacked. A Catholic Archbishop has had to entreat Middle Easterners not to target Christmas celebrations, after these hoodlums threatened, spat on, and shot at parents and kids who convened to sing carols at a primary school in western Sydney.
Decades of indoctrination by the “managerial professional elites” were supposed to emasculate the surfer dudes for good. They were expected to toke it up or turn the other cheek. Instead, they fought back against what they perceive as a threat to their land and life.
A threat that commenced approximately 40 years ago, when Australian central planners decided in favor of mass importation of immigrants from the Third World. Hitherto, a limited and selective immigration policy had guaranteed newcomers reinforced the ethnic and cultural composition of the founding folk. If this sounds familiar, it’s because “Camelot knight-errant” Ted Kennedy engineered a similar coup in the United States.
The statist revolution was (and still is) directed from above by a treacherous political class which has shared the ideological cockpit with “intellectuals” (a misnomer, if ever there was one), who hate their country’s history and inhabitants (aboriginals excluded). This hatred has fueled their quest to marginalize North-Western Europeans, whose “culture” has facilitated “the fundamental constitutional norms associated with the rule of law, representative government and individual rights,” to quote Andrew Fraser (now banned in Oz).
An 18-year-old Anglo, wearing mirrored sunglasses and a baseball cap, arrived on the beachfront riding an undersized push-bike. As he sifted a fistful of sand through his fingers, he told “The Australian”:
“This is what we're fighting for. Like our fathers, our grandfathers, fought for these beaches and now it's our turn.”
More bathos than pathos, perhaps. But not half bad, considering this parting shot comes from someone who was raised on a diet of state-sponsored multiculturalism and cultural relativism, and who has been taught to hate his heritage.
Ilana Mercer is the author of Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Culture, and a columnist for WorldNetDaily.com and the Free-Market News Network. For more about her work, visit IlanaMercer.com.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
Perils of multicultural education - Kevin Donnelly, The Australian
Kevin Donnelly: Perils of multicultural education
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17604345%255E7583,00.html
December 19, 2005
IF there is one positive thing to come out of the violence in Cronulla, it will be a long hard look at how schoolchildren are educated about Australian culture and what they are taught about their responsibilities as members of a civil society.
Judged by the age of many of those involved in abusing women, the mob violence at Cronulla beach and the subsequent destruction of personal property, many would have been of school age during the 1980s and '90s. While Al Grassby and Gough Whitlam sowed the seeds, this was a time when governments under the leadership of Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating spent millions on the multicultural industry.
With the support of left-liberal academics, teacher unions and curriculum writers, the prevailing orthodoxy uncritically promoted cultural diversity, denigrated or ignored Australia's mainstream Anglo-Celtic tradition and taught children that our society is riddled with racism, inequality and social injustice.
The national Studies of Society and Environment curriculum developed during the Keating years argued that children must be taught "an awareness of and pride in Australia's multicultural society" and "develop an understanding of Australia's cultural and linguistic diversity".
The 1993 Australian Education Union's curriculum policy argued that children must be taught that they "are living in a multicultural and class-based society that is diverse and characterised by inequality and social conflict".
Not only was the then academically based school curriculum, especially in subjects such as history and literature, condemned as Eurocentric, patriarchal and socially unjust, but examinations were seen as favouring rich, white kids and culturally biased against recent migrants.
Fast forward to more recent years and little has changed.
The 1999 Australian Education Union policy on combating racism argues that government polices "are founded upon a legal system which is inherently racist in so much as its prime purpose is to serve the needs of the dominant Anglo-Australian culture".
The AEU also states that racism in Australia is both overt and covert and that "both forms of racism are still widely practised in Australian society", especially as a result of the school curriculum supposedly being based on "the knowledge and values of the Anglo-Australian culture".
On reading curriculum documents developed during the '90s, once again, it becomes obvious that all adopt a politically correct approach to issues such as multiculturalism and how we define ourselves as a nation.
Cultural diversity is uncritically celebrated and students are taught, in the words of the Queensland curriculum, to "deconstruct dominant views of society" on the basis that the Australian community is riven with "privilege and marginalisation".
In Western Australia, as evidenced by the Curriculum Framework document, students are told they must value "the perspective of different cultures" and "recognise the cultural mores that underpin groups and appreciate why these are valued and important".
The curriculum policy of the South Australian branch of the AEU is underpinned by "five core values". One of the underlying values is that there should be respect for diversity and "no discrimination on any grounds".
The contradictions and weaknesses evident in the way multiculturalism has been taught in schools are manifold. Tolerance, the rule of law and a commitment to the common good are the very values needed if people are to live peacefully together.
Cultural relativism and an uncritical acceptance of diversity denies such values and leads to what Robert Hughes terms, in his book The Culture of Complaint, the balkanisation of society.
It's also the case that Australia's legal and political system, while imperfect, best safeguards such values. Instead of denigrating Australian society, students should be taught the benefits of our Anglo-Celtic culture: a culture strongly influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition and from which our laws and morality have grown.
Much of the way history and politics is now taught also centres on the rights of the individual. Instead of emphasising responsibilities and giving allegiance to what we hold in common, individuals are free to define themselves how they will and to act as they wish.
By defining Australian society as socially unjust and divisive there is also the danger of promoting a victim mentality. Whereas past generations felt part of a wider community and believed that hard work would be rewarded, recent generations see only inequality and their right to be supported.
Nobody should condone the violence in Cronulla perpetrated by those wearing the Australian flag or the actions of young Lebanese Muslims abusing women, destroying property and burning churches. But we also need to recognise that the PC approach to teaching multiculturalism in schools in part underpins the recent violence. As the American liberal historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr has argued: "The militants of ethnicity now contend that the main objective of public education should be the protection, strengthening, celebration and perpetuation of ethnic origins and identities. Separatism, however, nourishes prejudice, magnifies differences and stirs antagonisms."
Kevin Donnelly is author of Why Our Schools are Failing (Duffy & Snellgrove, 2004).
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17604345%255E7583,00.html
December 19, 2005
IF there is one positive thing to come out of the violence in Cronulla, it will be a long hard look at how schoolchildren are educated about Australian culture and what they are taught about their responsibilities as members of a civil society.
Judged by the age of many of those involved in abusing women, the mob violence at Cronulla beach and the subsequent destruction of personal property, many would have been of school age during the 1980s and '90s. While Al Grassby and Gough Whitlam sowed the seeds, this was a time when governments under the leadership of Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating spent millions on the multicultural industry.
With the support of left-liberal academics, teacher unions and curriculum writers, the prevailing orthodoxy uncritically promoted cultural diversity, denigrated or ignored Australia's mainstream Anglo-Celtic tradition and taught children that our society is riddled with racism, inequality and social injustice.
The national Studies of Society and Environment curriculum developed during the Keating years argued that children must be taught "an awareness of and pride in Australia's multicultural society" and "develop an understanding of Australia's cultural and linguistic diversity".
The 1993 Australian Education Union's curriculum policy argued that children must be taught that they "are living in a multicultural and class-based society that is diverse and characterised by inequality and social conflict".
Not only was the then academically based school curriculum, especially in subjects such as history and literature, condemned as Eurocentric, patriarchal and socially unjust, but examinations were seen as favouring rich, white kids and culturally biased against recent migrants.
Fast forward to more recent years and little has changed.
The 1999 Australian Education Union policy on combating racism argues that government polices "are founded upon a legal system which is inherently racist in so much as its prime purpose is to serve the needs of the dominant Anglo-Australian culture".
The AEU also states that racism in Australia is both overt and covert and that "both forms of racism are still widely practised in Australian society", especially as a result of the school curriculum supposedly being based on "the knowledge and values of the Anglo-Australian culture".
On reading curriculum documents developed during the '90s, once again, it becomes obvious that all adopt a politically correct approach to issues such as multiculturalism and how we define ourselves as a nation.
Cultural diversity is uncritically celebrated and students are taught, in the words of the Queensland curriculum, to "deconstruct dominant views of society" on the basis that the Australian community is riven with "privilege and marginalisation".
In Western Australia, as evidenced by the Curriculum Framework document, students are told they must value "the perspective of different cultures" and "recognise the cultural mores that underpin groups and appreciate why these are valued and important".
The curriculum policy of the South Australian branch of the AEU is underpinned by "five core values". One of the underlying values is that there should be respect for diversity and "no discrimination on any grounds".
The contradictions and weaknesses evident in the way multiculturalism has been taught in schools are manifold. Tolerance, the rule of law and a commitment to the common good are the very values needed if people are to live peacefully together.
Cultural relativism and an uncritical acceptance of diversity denies such values and leads to what Robert Hughes terms, in his book The Culture of Complaint, the balkanisation of society.
It's also the case that Australia's legal and political system, while imperfect, best safeguards such values. Instead of denigrating Australian society, students should be taught the benefits of our Anglo-Celtic culture: a culture strongly influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition and from which our laws and morality have grown.
Much of the way history and politics is now taught also centres on the rights of the individual. Instead of emphasising responsibilities and giving allegiance to what we hold in common, individuals are free to define themselves how they will and to act as they wish.
By defining Australian society as socially unjust and divisive there is also the danger of promoting a victim mentality. Whereas past generations felt part of a wider community and believed that hard work would be rewarded, recent generations see only inequality and their right to be supported.
Nobody should condone the violence in Cronulla perpetrated by those wearing the Australian flag or the actions of young Lebanese Muslims abusing women, destroying property and burning churches. But we also need to recognise that the PC approach to teaching multiculturalism in schools in part underpins the recent violence. As the American liberal historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr has argued: "The militants of ethnicity now contend that the main objective of public education should be the protection, strengthening, celebration and perpetuation of ethnic origins and identities. Separatism, however, nourishes prejudice, magnifies differences and stirs antagonisms."
Kevin Donnelly is author of Why Our Schools are Failing (Duffy & Snellgrove, 2004).
Racism Kiosk detects personal prejudices - Anthony Ham, The Age
This article summarises what I would like to be tackled in an 'Australian Racism Survey' to be conducted in 2006....and first mentioned in a public forum on 9/12/05. Thanks to Michael Hince for alerting me to it. Sue Ellson
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/are-you-a-racist/2005/12/16/1134703611157.html
Racism kiosk detects personal prejudices
By Anthony Ham, Madrid
December 17, 2005
THE impact of unprecedented levels of immigration in Spain is about to become clearer thanks to an invention dubbed the "racism kiosk".
The "racismomaton" is designed like a photo booth but instead provides an insight into the attitudes of ordinary Spaniards towards foreigners. Now touring the country, the racism kiosk flashes images of foreigners' faces onto a computer screen while participants press buttons to signify their instinctive reactions.
During the rapid succession of images, which lasts for less than five minutes, respondents must choose between options ranging from "peace" and "happiness" to "sadness", "fear", "hate" and "war". The advent of the racism kiosk comes as Spain is undergoing major demographic change.
During its four decades of dictatorship, Spain was a country of emigrants and it was not until 1991 that more people came to live in Spain than left it.
By 2000, 900,000 foreigners were living in Spain. This has soared to 4.5 million, a 500 per cent increase in just over five years. Spain now receives 22 per cent of Europe's immigrants and is home to a higher proportion of immigrants (almost 10 per cent of the population) than France.
Earlier this year an amnesty granted legal residence to more than 700,000 formerly illegal immigrants, a policy that had little impact on the Government's high popularity.
Nonetheless, there are signs that Spaniards are becoming less tolerant. A recent government study found that 53 per cent of Spaniards believe there are too many immigrants in the country. Four years ago, the figure was 31 per cent.
Another survey, by Madrid's Complutense University, suggested that 32 per cent of respondents dislike foreigners compared with just 8 per cent in 1996.
According to Julio Fernandez, the artist from the Basque region of Spain who invented the kiosk, "mass immigration has arrived so fast in Spain that people's attitudes haven't kept up with the times. With my kiosk, I want to make people aware of subconscious prejudices they didn't know they had."
Mr Fernandez said he was "not interested in consciously racist people".
Instead, he said, "our hypothesis is that there is, among unconscious racists, a subset who would change their attitudes after a rational thinking process. Racismomaton aims to be a catalyst for these people to begin to think consciously on the issue."
Brenda Martinez, said: "The machine told me I am slightly racist and I am surprised because I thought I was an open-minded person."
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/are-you-a-racist/2005/12/16/1134703611157.html
Racism kiosk detects personal prejudices
By Anthony Ham, Madrid
December 17, 2005
THE impact of unprecedented levels of immigration in Spain is about to become clearer thanks to an invention dubbed the "racism kiosk".
The "racismomaton" is designed like a photo booth but instead provides an insight into the attitudes of ordinary Spaniards towards foreigners. Now touring the country, the racism kiosk flashes images of foreigners' faces onto a computer screen while participants press buttons to signify their instinctive reactions.
During the rapid succession of images, which lasts for less than five minutes, respondents must choose between options ranging from "peace" and "happiness" to "sadness", "fear", "hate" and "war". The advent of the racism kiosk comes as Spain is undergoing major demographic change.
During its four decades of dictatorship, Spain was a country of emigrants and it was not until 1991 that more people came to live in Spain than left it.
By 2000, 900,000 foreigners were living in Spain. This has soared to 4.5 million, a 500 per cent increase in just over five years. Spain now receives 22 per cent of Europe's immigrants and is home to a higher proportion of immigrants (almost 10 per cent of the population) than France.
Earlier this year an amnesty granted legal residence to more than 700,000 formerly illegal immigrants, a policy that had little impact on the Government's high popularity.
Nonetheless, there are signs that Spaniards are becoming less tolerant. A recent government study found that 53 per cent of Spaniards believe there are too many immigrants in the country. Four years ago, the figure was 31 per cent.
Another survey, by Madrid's Complutense University, suggested that 32 per cent of respondents dislike foreigners compared with just 8 per cent in 1996.
According to Julio Fernandez, the artist from the Basque region of Spain who invented the kiosk, "mass immigration has arrived so fast in Spain that people's attitudes haven't kept up with the times. With my kiosk, I want to make people aware of subconscious prejudices they didn't know they had."
Mr Fernandez said he was "not interested in consciously racist people".
Instead, he said, "our hypothesis is that there is, among unconscious racists, a subset who would change their attitudes after a rational thinking process. Racismomaton aims to be a catalyst for these people to begin to think consciously on the issue."
Brenda Martinez, said: "The machine told me I am slightly racist and I am surprised because I thought I was an open-minded person."
Beazley warns against segregation - Editorial, The Australian
Beazley warns against segregation
December 18, 2005
FEDERAL Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has warned Australia should avoid segregation in the wake of Sydney's recent race riots.
Mr Beazley said it was "a very sad thing" when a week before Christmas police have warned people to stay away from popular beaches in Sydney's east and south.
Armed with new powers passed by parliament this week, up to 2,000 police officers are on duty today amid fears of a repeat of last Sunday's riot at North Cronulla beach in Sydney's south where crowds turned on anyone of Middle Eastern appearance.
Further violence in other beachside suburbs such as Maroubra also broke out last weekend in apparent retaliatory attacks.
"We must never ever in this country go down the path of segregation, we do not want a segregated society," Mr Beazley said on the Macquarie Radio Network today.
"We are a terrific country ... and it glories in its multicultural character."
Mr Beazley said he supported the NSW government's response to the violence, giving police more power to close beaches.
"I support absolutely what (NSW Premier) Morris Iemma's government is doing," Mr Beazley said.
"The only people who should be in a position showing force in this community are the authorities, in this case the police.
Mr Beazley said the recent violence broadcast around the globe would do "a great deal of damage" to Australia's image.
"It fits in with the stereotype of Australians that we got away from," he said.
"In the region around us for years and years we were stereotyped as exclusive and racist and the rest of it. It was never true and it's not true now.
"We are not a racist country by any description."
Mr Beazley said "it was a crying shame" the antidote to the violence such as the talks between community members, politicians and the police response, did not make headlines around the globe.
December 18, 2005
FEDERAL Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has warned Australia should avoid segregation in the wake of Sydney's recent race riots.
Mr Beazley said it was "a very sad thing" when a week before Christmas police have warned people to stay away from popular beaches in Sydney's east and south.
Armed with new powers passed by parliament this week, up to 2,000 police officers are on duty today amid fears of a repeat of last Sunday's riot at North Cronulla beach in Sydney's south where crowds turned on anyone of Middle Eastern appearance.
Further violence in other beachside suburbs such as Maroubra also broke out last weekend in apparent retaliatory attacks.
"We must never ever in this country go down the path of segregation, we do not want a segregated society," Mr Beazley said on the Macquarie Radio Network today.
"We are a terrific country ... and it glories in its multicultural character."
Mr Beazley said he supported the NSW government's response to the violence, giving police more power to close beaches.
"I support absolutely what (NSW Premier) Morris Iemma's government is doing," Mr Beazley said.
"The only people who should be in a position showing force in this community are the authorities, in this case the police.
Mr Beazley said the recent violence broadcast around the globe would do "a great deal of damage" to Australia's image.
"It fits in with the stereotype of Australians that we got away from," he said.
"In the region around us for years and years we were stereotyped as exclusive and racist and the rest of it. It was never true and it's not true now.
"We are not a racist country by any description."
Mr Beazley said "it was a crying shame" the antidote to the violence such as the talks between community members, politicians and the police response, did not make headlines around the globe.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Youth culture: 'Born in the USA' - Joseph Wakim, Online Opinion
Youth culture: 'Born in the USA'
By Joseph Wakim - posted Wednesday, 14 December 2005
It is the year 2020. It is an age when people’s preferred method of communication is through fingers on keypads, rather than through their mouths. Non-verbal language has been relegated to a chapter on human evolution in science books. It is equated with the skills of primates because 21st century humans have allowed their eye contact, body posture and facial expressions to fade into extinction. When communities need to socialise, they dread face to face encounters, like nocturnal creatures that are disoriented when forced into the sunlight.
Even courtship rituals have changed as any chance encounter is followed by each partner rushing to their wrist-worn PCs. Even humans sharing the same room prefer to text each other rather than call out when dinner is ready or a meeting is called. It gives new meaning to digital communication - using the digits of their hands rather than the organic gestures of the hands and organic sounds of the vocal chords.
Discrimination too has become extinct. Cyber forums such as chat rooms provided an equalising and “level playing field” that is blind to skin colour, disability, age, genre, location, race or creed. Even dyslexic, stuttering and speech impaired persons participate as equal citizens in this cyber-world where their messages are auto-corrected and without ethnic accents.
This may read like the makings of a science fiction thriller and the makings of the next generation gap. But digital tools can never substitute the organic pools that shape who we are.
It is IT toys that most markedly differentiate the current youth generation from their parents’ generation. Computer literacy is now a given in Australian schools, with children teaching their parents how to operate mobile phones, remote controls and CD burners. In turn, youth are investing their money in personalised ring tones, personalised top 40 on their iPods and personalised web sites. On the surface, these toys define their identity. But like fingers of the hand, they are an extension and expression of identity rather than the palm pilot that drives identity.
These two-dimensional mediums pretend to be unique, but ultimately reveal conformity to a narrow range of the latest fads. The real diversity lies in the three-dimensional human interactions, where class, culture, age and gender intersect.
In my own experience, the cyber space between my generation and my children’s generation pales into insignificance when compared with the generation gap of my immigrant parents’ generation. If it is a digital river that separates me from my children, it was an ocean that separated me from my parents’ generation.
Today, I can assist my children with their homework, converse openly about growing up and can even help them with dusted-off, but similar, topic assignments that I had completed and archived a generation ago in Australia. I can watch the same TV programs in English, enjoy revamped versions of songs and serials from my generation and use mobile phones to stay in touch 24-7. My parents enjoyed none of these bridges.
My parents were like a million other Australians who immigrated here post World War II. They endured a culture shock without interpreters.
First, my parents from North Lebanon left a Middle Eastern country in the 1960s for a Western country “down under”. Suddenly, a “white Christmas” became cosmetic and disorienting. Many of their staple food essentials were not even available in the Australian market until they grew imported seedlings in their own back gardens. Second, they had elementary education at primary school level like most of their contemporaries. They were barely literate in Arabic while English was foreign as well as written in the opposite direction - right to left. How could they help me and my siblings with our homework or even read the school newsletters? Third, they moved from a close knit village environment to an urban metropolis where “stranger danger” was the edict. The pace and privacy of big city life compounded their shock and alienation.
These three factors alone were enough to trigger a generation gap between my siblings and my parents. We would converse in English - the language of our school peers and television - while mistakenly associating our mother tongue with backwardness and a culture that was ostensibly left behind by our parents. This needs to be contextualised with the white Australian policy at that time, when our parents were actively discouraged from sustaining their culture and their names were Anglicised for convenience. To exacerbate their alienation, this era was pre-SBS, pre-ethnic media, pre-AMES, pre-interpreters and indeed pre-multiculturalism.
These chasms of culture are still being reconciled today, with my parents’ generation still nostalgic about the intimacy of their own childhood era - their good old days. Unlike my parents, my children’s generation does not stand still on the edge of a cliff, pondering “us versus them”. Instead, this cyber generation dives into a sea of sub-cultures, becomes saturated in a smorgasbord of choices through the mass media, then emerges with a hybrid identity. In this post-modern age, when neat, linear identity is declining, identity is now quintessentially eclectic.
I am acutely aware that much of the evolving cultural identity of our home-grown and much maligned “Lebanese” youth is indeed “made in the USA”. Anyone who spends time with the youth in question would immediately recognise the influence of the American hip-hop culture: phrases such as “Yo bro” and “Give me five” are direct imports from the cultural West not the (Middle) East. Their attire also resembles their hip-hop heroes, with their baggy jeans, Fila jackets, Adidas athletic shoes, Nike baseball caps (or beanies) and goatees.
Hip-hop was developed primarily by African and Hispanic Americans in socially and economically oppressed areas of New York in the late 1970s, especially the Bronx and Harlem. Rap music addresses issues of zero tolerance policing, economic disadvantage, victimisation, oppression, social disadvantage and defiance. With the global “war on terror”, some in Sydney’s south-west over-identified with their non-white brothers in the American ghettos.
The youth in question have hybrid and hyphenated identities spanning three dynamic cultures - Australian (local), American (global) and ancestral. Some of this tri-partite fusion has been packaged and marketed in the Fat Pizza cult, where phrases such as “fully sick bro” epitomise their code language for this identity.
We cannot choose our ethnicity but we can choose our social sub-culture.
Youth identity is not always defined or indeed restricted by some linear formula or boundary. Indeed, many identities defiantly transcend national boundaries, especially for those who are living in a Diaspora. Communities dispossessed of their homeland reconstruct their land in cyberspace. For some of these groups, the virtual world created on the Internet is becoming a reality.
Many civilisations that were once dominant empires have become persecuted minorities under a new empire. For example, the Assyrians stem from Mesopotamia and Babylon, a region now covered by Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. This Christian population speaks Aramaic and Syriac, a derivation of the language spoken by Jesus Christ. Today, more than 50 web sites provide a new Assyrian landscape complete with libraries, schools, entertainment, language, social clubs, art, sport and history. For the first time in more than 2,000 years, Assyrians have a (virtual) homeland that they can visit regularly, and salvage their once endangered identity in a protected environment.
Many other Diasporas share this experience: Kurds have more than 60 sites and Palestinians have more than 100.
The profound meaning derived from daily visits to these virtual homelands does not imply that the Australian identity is eroded or undermined. One can fulfil all the obligations of national citizenship while belonging to an international community.
This opens up new doors for youth in these groups to not only inherit their ancestry by name, but rebuild it by deeds. For example, they can surpass their parents by posting family trees on the Internet. Rather than arguing that they have descended from the Phoenicians, some Lebanese can educate each other about the world’s first alphabet, its vocabulary and meanings. They can evolve from oral folk-lore passed down from generations to digitally mapping out their culture on a living and updated web-site that is constantly under construction. This is where the digital revolution intersects with the organic evolution.
Article edited by Angus Ibbott.
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Joseph Wakim founded the Australian Arabic Council and is a former multicultural affairs commissioner.
By Joseph Wakim - posted Wednesday, 14 December 2005
It is the year 2020. It is an age when people’s preferred method of communication is through fingers on keypads, rather than through their mouths. Non-verbal language has been relegated to a chapter on human evolution in science books. It is equated with the skills of primates because 21st century humans have allowed their eye contact, body posture and facial expressions to fade into extinction. When communities need to socialise, they dread face to face encounters, like nocturnal creatures that are disoriented when forced into the sunlight.
Even courtship rituals have changed as any chance encounter is followed by each partner rushing to their wrist-worn PCs. Even humans sharing the same room prefer to text each other rather than call out when dinner is ready or a meeting is called. It gives new meaning to digital communication - using the digits of their hands rather than the organic gestures of the hands and organic sounds of the vocal chords.
Discrimination too has become extinct. Cyber forums such as chat rooms provided an equalising and “level playing field” that is blind to skin colour, disability, age, genre, location, race or creed. Even dyslexic, stuttering and speech impaired persons participate as equal citizens in this cyber-world where their messages are auto-corrected and without ethnic accents.
This may read like the makings of a science fiction thriller and the makings of the next generation gap. But digital tools can never substitute the organic pools that shape who we are.
It is IT toys that most markedly differentiate the current youth generation from their parents’ generation. Computer literacy is now a given in Australian schools, with children teaching their parents how to operate mobile phones, remote controls and CD burners. In turn, youth are investing their money in personalised ring tones, personalised top 40 on their iPods and personalised web sites. On the surface, these toys define their identity. But like fingers of the hand, they are an extension and expression of identity rather than the palm pilot that drives identity.
These two-dimensional mediums pretend to be unique, but ultimately reveal conformity to a narrow range of the latest fads. The real diversity lies in the three-dimensional human interactions, where class, culture, age and gender intersect.
In my own experience, the cyber space between my generation and my children’s generation pales into insignificance when compared with the generation gap of my immigrant parents’ generation. If it is a digital river that separates me from my children, it was an ocean that separated me from my parents’ generation.
Today, I can assist my children with their homework, converse openly about growing up and can even help them with dusted-off, but similar, topic assignments that I had completed and archived a generation ago in Australia. I can watch the same TV programs in English, enjoy revamped versions of songs and serials from my generation and use mobile phones to stay in touch 24-7. My parents enjoyed none of these bridges.
My parents were like a million other Australians who immigrated here post World War II. They endured a culture shock without interpreters.
First, my parents from North Lebanon left a Middle Eastern country in the 1960s for a Western country “down under”. Suddenly, a “white Christmas” became cosmetic and disorienting. Many of their staple food essentials were not even available in the Australian market until they grew imported seedlings in their own back gardens. Second, they had elementary education at primary school level like most of their contemporaries. They were barely literate in Arabic while English was foreign as well as written in the opposite direction - right to left. How could they help me and my siblings with our homework or even read the school newsletters? Third, they moved from a close knit village environment to an urban metropolis where “stranger danger” was the edict. The pace and privacy of big city life compounded their shock and alienation.
These three factors alone were enough to trigger a generation gap between my siblings and my parents. We would converse in English - the language of our school peers and television - while mistakenly associating our mother tongue with backwardness and a culture that was ostensibly left behind by our parents. This needs to be contextualised with the white Australian policy at that time, when our parents were actively discouraged from sustaining their culture and their names were Anglicised for convenience. To exacerbate their alienation, this era was pre-SBS, pre-ethnic media, pre-AMES, pre-interpreters and indeed pre-multiculturalism.
These chasms of culture are still being reconciled today, with my parents’ generation still nostalgic about the intimacy of their own childhood era - their good old days. Unlike my parents, my children’s generation does not stand still on the edge of a cliff, pondering “us versus them”. Instead, this cyber generation dives into a sea of sub-cultures, becomes saturated in a smorgasbord of choices through the mass media, then emerges with a hybrid identity. In this post-modern age, when neat, linear identity is declining, identity is now quintessentially eclectic.
I am acutely aware that much of the evolving cultural identity of our home-grown and much maligned “Lebanese” youth is indeed “made in the USA”. Anyone who spends time with the youth in question would immediately recognise the influence of the American hip-hop culture: phrases such as “Yo bro” and “Give me five” are direct imports from the cultural West not the (Middle) East. Their attire also resembles their hip-hop heroes, with their baggy jeans, Fila jackets, Adidas athletic shoes, Nike baseball caps (or beanies) and goatees.
Hip-hop was developed primarily by African and Hispanic Americans in socially and economically oppressed areas of New York in the late 1970s, especially the Bronx and Harlem. Rap music addresses issues of zero tolerance policing, economic disadvantage, victimisation, oppression, social disadvantage and defiance. With the global “war on terror”, some in Sydney’s south-west over-identified with their non-white brothers in the American ghettos.
The youth in question have hybrid and hyphenated identities spanning three dynamic cultures - Australian (local), American (global) and ancestral. Some of this tri-partite fusion has been packaged and marketed in the Fat Pizza cult, where phrases such as “fully sick bro” epitomise their code language for this identity.
We cannot choose our ethnicity but we can choose our social sub-culture.
Youth identity is not always defined or indeed restricted by some linear formula or boundary. Indeed, many identities defiantly transcend national boundaries, especially for those who are living in a Diaspora. Communities dispossessed of their homeland reconstruct their land in cyberspace. For some of these groups, the virtual world created on the Internet is becoming a reality.
Many civilisations that were once dominant empires have become persecuted minorities under a new empire. For example, the Assyrians stem from Mesopotamia and Babylon, a region now covered by Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. This Christian population speaks Aramaic and Syriac, a derivation of the language spoken by Jesus Christ. Today, more than 50 web sites provide a new Assyrian landscape complete with libraries, schools, entertainment, language, social clubs, art, sport and history. For the first time in more than 2,000 years, Assyrians have a (virtual) homeland that they can visit regularly, and salvage their once endangered identity in a protected environment.
Many other Diasporas share this experience: Kurds have more than 60 sites and Palestinians have more than 100.
The profound meaning derived from daily visits to these virtual homelands does not imply that the Australian identity is eroded or undermined. One can fulfil all the obligations of national citizenship while belonging to an international community.
This opens up new doors for youth in these groups to not only inherit their ancestry by name, but rebuild it by deeds. For example, they can surpass their parents by posting family trees on the Internet. Rather than arguing that they have descended from the Phoenicians, some Lebanese can educate each other about the world’s first alphabet, its vocabulary and meanings. They can evolve from oral folk-lore passed down from generations to digitally mapping out their culture on a living and updated web-site that is constantly under construction. This is where the digital revolution intersects with the organic evolution.
Article edited by Angus Ibbott.
If you'd like to be a volunteer editor too, click here.
Discuss in our Forums
See what other readers are saying about this article!
Click here to read & post comments.
1 post so far.
Comments
1 comment Printable version
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Joseph Wakim founded the Australian Arabic Council and is a former multicultural affairs commissioner.
Cultural divide from Sydney may save Melbourne - Paul Austin, The Age
Cultural divide from Sydney may save Melbourne
By Paul Austin
December 14, 2005
ANALYSIS
Illustration: Tandberg
WHEN Steve Bracks declares that Sydney-style race riots won't happen here, his confidence is fuelled by two arguments — the long and successful history of migration in Victoria, and the absence of ethnic ghettos in Melbourne. But there is a third, perhaps more powerful argument that Bracks won't go to — the lack of political and media leadership on race-related issues in Sydney compared with Melbourne.
That argument — which is put by Labor figures in Victoria and NSW — is that the political and media culture in Sydney has helped create the conditions for race riots.
Bob Carr, NSW Labor premier for 10 years, was on occasions accused of playing the race card. Some Labor figures in Victoria accuse him of having "demonised" some minority groups.
No one could accuse Bracks — or his Victorian Liberal predecessor, Jeff Kennett — of doing the same. The political consensus here meant that One Nation never took hold in Victoria as it did in some other parts of Australia.
And Sydney's talkback radio and tabloid newspaper culture is different — and more incendiary — than Melbourne's. When Alan Jones tried his hand at TV current affairs, the show failed in Melbourne. When another Sydney shock-jock, Stan Zemanek, was transplanted into Melbourne radio, he failed to win a substantial following.
What of Bracks' two arguments? On the first, he believes Victoria has a more mature multicultural community than NSW. Migration here dates back to the gold rush of the 1850s, and the biggest post-World War II influx of southern Europeans into Australia was to Victoria.
It's not as if there was no racism: many Italian or Greek Australians can tell stories of being called "dago", "wog" or worse at school. But Bracks believes their experience has made it easier for the subsequent waves of migrants to Melbourne, from South-East Asia, the Middle East and most recently the Horn of Africa.
As Bracks says, migration and multiculturalism are now embedded in the political, social and cultural institutions of the city and the state: the Premier happens to be of Lebanese heritage, the Lord Mayor, John So, is of Hong Kong/Chinese background, and the head of the AFL, Andrew Demetriou, is of Greek origin.
Furthermore, Victorian police are ahead of their counterparts in other states in building relations with ethnic communities. And Bracks has a strong relationship with the local Islamic Council; it was briefed and consulted after September 11 and after the Bali bombings.
The Premier's second argument relates to property prices: new arrivals to Sydney have few choices as to where to settle. In Melbourne, by contrast, affordable housing is spread more widely: from Sunshine in the west to Springvale in the east and beyond. As a result, there are fewer examples of what might be called ethnic enclaves in Melbourne than in Sydney.
Bracks' confidence rests on firm foundations. We must hope it proves to be well-founded.
By Paul Austin
December 14, 2005
ANALYSIS
Illustration: Tandberg
WHEN Steve Bracks declares that Sydney-style race riots won't happen here, his confidence is fuelled by two arguments — the long and successful history of migration in Victoria, and the absence of ethnic ghettos in Melbourne. But there is a third, perhaps more powerful argument that Bracks won't go to — the lack of political and media leadership on race-related issues in Sydney compared with Melbourne.
That argument — which is put by Labor figures in Victoria and NSW — is that the political and media culture in Sydney has helped create the conditions for race riots.
Bob Carr, NSW Labor premier for 10 years, was on occasions accused of playing the race card. Some Labor figures in Victoria accuse him of having "demonised" some minority groups.
No one could accuse Bracks — or his Victorian Liberal predecessor, Jeff Kennett — of doing the same. The political consensus here meant that One Nation never took hold in Victoria as it did in some other parts of Australia.
And Sydney's talkback radio and tabloid newspaper culture is different — and more incendiary — than Melbourne's. When Alan Jones tried his hand at TV current affairs, the show failed in Melbourne. When another Sydney shock-jock, Stan Zemanek, was transplanted into Melbourne radio, he failed to win a substantial following.
What of Bracks' two arguments? On the first, he believes Victoria has a more mature multicultural community than NSW. Migration here dates back to the gold rush of the 1850s, and the biggest post-World War II influx of southern Europeans into Australia was to Victoria.
It's not as if there was no racism: many Italian or Greek Australians can tell stories of being called "dago", "wog" or worse at school. But Bracks believes their experience has made it easier for the subsequent waves of migrants to Melbourne, from South-East Asia, the Middle East and most recently the Horn of Africa.
As Bracks says, migration and multiculturalism are now embedded in the political, social and cultural institutions of the city and the state: the Premier happens to be of Lebanese heritage, the Lord Mayor, John So, is of Hong Kong/Chinese background, and the head of the AFL, Andrew Demetriou, is of Greek origin.
Furthermore, Victorian police are ahead of their counterparts in other states in building relations with ethnic communities. And Bracks has a strong relationship with the local Islamic Council; it was briefed and consulted after September 11 and after the Bali bombings.
The Premier's second argument relates to property prices: new arrivals to Sydney have few choices as to where to settle. In Melbourne, by contrast, affordable housing is spread more widely: from Sunshine in the west to Springvale in the east and beyond. As a result, there are fewer examples of what might be called ethnic enclaves in Melbourne than in Sydney.
Bracks' confidence rests on firm foundations. We must hope it proves to be well-founded.
Racism in Cronulla - Duncan Kerr, Online Opinion
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3952
Racism in Cronulla
By Duncan Kerr - posted Wednesday, 14 December 2005 Sign Up for free e-mail updates!Sign Up for free e-mail updates!
In 1968 British Conservative Enoch Powell warned of “blood in the streets” if immigration to the UK from Commonwealth countries continued. We chose to differ: recognising that immigration - much less migrants themselves - was not the problem, Australia has adopted policies such as multiculturalism which have been remarkably successful in preventing Powell’s racist prophecies becoming reality in this country. But those strong foundations are steadily being undermined.
At the weekend Defence Minister Senator Hill endorsed an assessment that terrorism was the “greatest threat” facing Australia. He is wrong. Far greater than the threat of criminal terrorism is the disintegration of our society as a result of ethnic mistrust and hatred. For those who scoff that “this couldn’t happen here”, look beyond the violence in Cronulla to the torching of Sydney mosques after the September 11 attacks, the increasing violence and intimidation endured by Muslim women wearing headscarves and the bigotry and odium that is the currency of local talk-back radio. The history of the 20th century is thick with examples where intolerance took violent forms against groups who had believed they were accepted and valued.
People take their lead in large measure from the characterisations of their society made by its leaders. So when those leaders focus on fear and difference, not commonality, the result is an “us and them” society and the beginning of social decline. On several fronts, the Howard Government has contributed to the inflammation of prejudices ignited by the terrorist attacks of 2001.
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First, a succession of laws aimed at preventing and punishing terrorist activity have been introduced and passed. Australians of Islamic background have expressed concern that members of their community will be disproportionately targeted by the extra powers granted to police and intelligence agencies, such as preventive detention, surveillance and control orders. The government has made little effort to reassure that this will not be the case.
Then there was Howard’s famous statement 2001 that “we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”. Again, this tough approach was perceived to be directed at people from certain backgrounds, namely people from predominantly Muslim countries in South Asia. Howard’s apparently suspicious attitude towards people from particular backgrounds was also revealed that year when he said, “I don’t want people of that type in Australia” in reference to asylum seekers who were (wrongly) accused of throwing their children overboard.
And this year a number of members of the Howard Government spoke in favour of a ban on Muslim girls wearing headscarves to school. Victorian Liberal MP Sophie Panopoulos said, “My personal view is I would put a ban on headscarves, as governments have overseas. That’s up to individual schools and state governments but if a school has a uniform that’s pretty much it.” Bronwyn Bishop was one of several other Liberals who agreed, saying, “[t]hey should not wear them. They should wear the school uniform because it's a great leveller and a great integrator and part of building a cohesive society.”
Displaying an extraordinary lack of political guile (an anomaly which might reveal his agreement with the sentiment), John Howard refused to confront the MPs, defending their right to express their views. “Oh look, somebody's entitled to express a view. I don't think, I mean I don't support it. Let me make that clear … I don't support it. But somebody's got a right to express that view.”
Finally, the prime minister refused to label the behaviour at Cronulla beach on the weekend as racist, saying, “I'm not going to put a general tag (of) racism on the Australian community. I think it's a term that is flung around sometimes carelessly and I'm simply not going to do so.” Fair enough. After all, it would be wrong to label the Australian community as a whole as racist. But it would not be “careless” to say that many people at Cronulla at the weekend engaged in racist behaviour and speech. News footage shows it all. People screaming “f**k off Lebs”, mobs attacking innocent beachgoers who looked as if they were of “Middle Eastern appearance.”
Those at the receiving end of the violence will take little comfort from Howard’s careful use of words …
The effects of an isolated act of terrorism, while shocking and possibly deadly, are limited compared to the long-term effects of a society in which violence has become an acceptable form of addressing problems. Unless we make at least the same efforts in resisting the breakdown of community cohesion as we are committing to prevent the comparably limited effects of an isolated act of terrorism, Australia faces an ugly future.
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Hon. Duncan Kerr is Federal member for Denison (Tas) and was Federal Attorney General and Minister for Justice in the Keating government. He is author of Elect the Ambassador: Building Democracy in a Globalised World.
Racism in Cronulla
By Duncan Kerr - posted Wednesday, 14 December 2005 Sign Up for free e-mail updates!Sign Up for free e-mail updates!
In 1968 British Conservative Enoch Powell warned of “blood in the streets” if immigration to the UK from Commonwealth countries continued. We chose to differ: recognising that immigration - much less migrants themselves - was not the problem, Australia has adopted policies such as multiculturalism which have been remarkably successful in preventing Powell’s racist prophecies becoming reality in this country. But those strong foundations are steadily being undermined.
At the weekend Defence Minister Senator Hill endorsed an assessment that terrorism was the “greatest threat” facing Australia. He is wrong. Far greater than the threat of criminal terrorism is the disintegration of our society as a result of ethnic mistrust and hatred. For those who scoff that “this couldn’t happen here”, look beyond the violence in Cronulla to the torching of Sydney mosques after the September 11 attacks, the increasing violence and intimidation endured by Muslim women wearing headscarves and the bigotry and odium that is the currency of local talk-back radio. The history of the 20th century is thick with examples where intolerance took violent forms against groups who had believed they were accepted and valued.
People take their lead in large measure from the characterisations of their society made by its leaders. So when those leaders focus on fear and difference, not commonality, the result is an “us and them” society and the beginning of social decline. On several fronts, the Howard Government has contributed to the inflammation of prejudices ignited by the terrorist attacks of 2001.
Advertisement
First, a succession of laws aimed at preventing and punishing terrorist activity have been introduced and passed. Australians of Islamic background have expressed concern that members of their community will be disproportionately targeted by the extra powers granted to police and intelligence agencies, such as preventive detention, surveillance and control orders. The government has made little effort to reassure that this will not be the case.
Then there was Howard’s famous statement 2001 that “we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”. Again, this tough approach was perceived to be directed at people from certain backgrounds, namely people from predominantly Muslim countries in South Asia. Howard’s apparently suspicious attitude towards people from particular backgrounds was also revealed that year when he said, “I don’t want people of that type in Australia” in reference to asylum seekers who were (wrongly) accused of throwing their children overboard.
And this year a number of members of the Howard Government spoke in favour of a ban on Muslim girls wearing headscarves to school. Victorian Liberal MP Sophie Panopoulos said, “My personal view is I would put a ban on headscarves, as governments have overseas. That’s up to individual schools and state governments but if a school has a uniform that’s pretty much it.” Bronwyn Bishop was one of several other Liberals who agreed, saying, “[t]hey should not wear them. They should wear the school uniform because it's a great leveller and a great integrator and part of building a cohesive society.”
Displaying an extraordinary lack of political guile (an anomaly which might reveal his agreement with the sentiment), John Howard refused to confront the MPs, defending their right to express their views. “Oh look, somebody's entitled to express a view. I don't think, I mean I don't support it. Let me make that clear … I don't support it. But somebody's got a right to express that view.”
Finally, the prime minister refused to label the behaviour at Cronulla beach on the weekend as racist, saying, “I'm not going to put a general tag (of) racism on the Australian community. I think it's a term that is flung around sometimes carelessly and I'm simply not going to do so.” Fair enough. After all, it would be wrong to label the Australian community as a whole as racist. But it would not be “careless” to say that many people at Cronulla at the weekend engaged in racist behaviour and speech. News footage shows it all. People screaming “f**k off Lebs”, mobs attacking innocent beachgoers who looked as if they were of “Middle Eastern appearance.”
Those at the receiving end of the violence will take little comfort from Howard’s careful use of words …
The effects of an isolated act of terrorism, while shocking and possibly deadly, are limited compared to the long-term effects of a society in which violence has become an acceptable form of addressing problems. Unless we make at least the same efforts in resisting the breakdown of community cohesion as we are committing to prevent the comparably limited effects of an isolated act of terrorism, Australia faces an ugly future.
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Hon. Duncan Kerr is Federal member for Denison (Tas) and was Federal Attorney General and Minister for Justice in the Keating government. He is author of Elect the Ambassador: Building Democracy in a Globalised World.
Editorial: Racism not endemic - Editorial, The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17558450%255E7583,00.html
December 14, 2005
Sydney's riots result from a clash of cultures not racism
ACCORDING to academic and sundry other Howard haters, Sunday's riot at Cronulla beach, and retaliatory affrays in seaside suburbs since, occurred because the Prime Minister and his allies have demonised young Lebanese Australians. The Opposition is no better for not denouncing racist politics, some suggest. And because ordinary Australians are inclined to racism, they readily accept what they are told. It is all nonsense and demonstrates a contempt for ordinary Australians, especially those who support mandatory detention for illegal immigrants and the Government's tough terror laws. We saw the same elitist assumptions during Pauline Hanson's brief period of popularity. One Nation supporters were upset about all sorts of issues – many felt excluded from Australia's prosperity. And some blamed migrants, even Aborigines, for their troubles. But according to the Howard-haters, the Prime Minister encouraged them in their prejudice. Certainly, the Government lied outrageously to make political capital from the children overboard affair, but this does not mean millions of Australians, from John Howard down, are racists who want people persecuted on the basis of where they, or their ancestors, were born. The vast majority of the one million people who voted for Ms Hanson in 1998 did not then believe some people had no right to call Australia home because of their ethnicity. Neither do that many Australians now, including most who worry that gangs of young men of Middle Eastern origins disturb Sydney's peace.
In his desperate desire to find someone other than Carl Scully, his accident prone Police Minister, to blame for the weekend riot at Cronulla, Premier Morris Iemma has said it was a demonstration of Australian racism. He is probably right that some in the mob baying for blood believe people of Middle Eastern birth or ancestry, all labelled as Lebanese, come from an inherently inferior culture. But this does not mean they speak for us all. The way Australia has successfully accepted millions of migrants over 50 years makes it manifest they do not. About 20 per cent of all Australians come from non-English-speaking families who have been in Australia for only one or two generations. Certainly, there is a great deal of prejudice directed against migrants, especially those who affect to despise Australia. But there is a world of difference between prejudice directed against migrants, which time heals, and racism, which festers for centuries. Every immigrant group since 1945 has suffered some sort of prejudice. But the examples of endemic race hatred are much harder to find.
There is no doubting that some members of the Lebanese community who have arrived here in the past 30 years have never adjusted to the Australian way of life. And sadly, it seems some of their sons, native Australians, have been brought up to believe being male entitles them to unearned respect from all others, especially women. These riots were clashes that appear to be based in culture, rather than race or religion. None of this excuses, but may explain, some of the context of the Cronulla riot, and Monday night's counter-attack when gangs of Middle Eastern youths swarmed across seaside Sydney attacking property – and people, if they got a chance. These were are all appalling affrays, insults to Australia's well-earned reputation as a safe haven for people from all over the world. But they do not demonstrate Australia to be burdened by race hatred or led by politicians who pander to prejudice. The best way to demonstrate this is for the worst offenders in the recent riots to be prosecuted – and treated exactly the same before the courts.
December 14, 2005
Sydney's riots result from a clash of cultures not racism
ACCORDING to academic and sundry other Howard haters, Sunday's riot at Cronulla beach, and retaliatory affrays in seaside suburbs since, occurred because the Prime Minister and his allies have demonised young Lebanese Australians. The Opposition is no better for not denouncing racist politics, some suggest. And because ordinary Australians are inclined to racism, they readily accept what they are told. It is all nonsense and demonstrates a contempt for ordinary Australians, especially those who support mandatory detention for illegal immigrants and the Government's tough terror laws. We saw the same elitist assumptions during Pauline Hanson's brief period of popularity. One Nation supporters were upset about all sorts of issues – many felt excluded from Australia's prosperity. And some blamed migrants, even Aborigines, for their troubles. But according to the Howard-haters, the Prime Minister encouraged them in their prejudice. Certainly, the Government lied outrageously to make political capital from the children overboard affair, but this does not mean millions of Australians, from John Howard down, are racists who want people persecuted on the basis of where they, or their ancestors, were born. The vast majority of the one million people who voted for Ms Hanson in 1998 did not then believe some people had no right to call Australia home because of their ethnicity. Neither do that many Australians now, including most who worry that gangs of young men of Middle Eastern origins disturb Sydney's peace.
In his desperate desire to find someone other than Carl Scully, his accident prone Police Minister, to blame for the weekend riot at Cronulla, Premier Morris Iemma has said it was a demonstration of Australian racism. He is probably right that some in the mob baying for blood believe people of Middle Eastern birth or ancestry, all labelled as Lebanese, come from an inherently inferior culture. But this does not mean they speak for us all. The way Australia has successfully accepted millions of migrants over 50 years makes it manifest they do not. About 20 per cent of all Australians come from non-English-speaking families who have been in Australia for only one or two generations. Certainly, there is a great deal of prejudice directed against migrants, especially those who affect to despise Australia. But there is a world of difference between prejudice directed against migrants, which time heals, and racism, which festers for centuries. Every immigrant group since 1945 has suffered some sort of prejudice. But the examples of endemic race hatred are much harder to find.
There is no doubting that some members of the Lebanese community who have arrived here in the past 30 years have never adjusted to the Australian way of life. And sadly, it seems some of their sons, native Australians, have been brought up to believe being male entitles them to unearned respect from all others, especially women. These riots were clashes that appear to be based in culture, rather than race or religion. None of this excuses, but may explain, some of the context of the Cronulla riot, and Monday night's counter-attack when gangs of Middle Eastern youths swarmed across seaside Sydney attacking property – and people, if they got a chance. These were are all appalling affrays, insults to Australia's well-earned reputation as a safe haven for people from all over the world. But they do not demonstrate Australia to be burdened by race hatred or led by politicians who pander to prejudice. The best way to demonstrate this is for the worst offenders in the recent riots to be prosecuted – and treated exactly the same before the courts.
The Rise of Islamophobia in ‘White Australia’ - Ghali Hassan, Global Research
The Rise of Islamophobia in ‘White Australia’
by Ghali Hassan
December 14, 2005
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“A BARE-CHESTED youth in Quiksilver board shorts tore the headscarf off the girl's head as she slithered down the Cronulla dune seeking safety on the beach from a thousand-strong baying mob”. Sydney Morning Herald, 12 December 2005.
Islamophobia in Australia is not something suddenly appeared over the horizon because of the weather. To the contrary, racism against Muslims has always been part of Australia’s psyche. Whether it is against neighbouring Indonesia, Malaysia or Muslim Australians; the pall of racism is permanently hovering over Australia. Government policies, including the criminal war against Iraq and the introduction of the so-called “anti-terrorism” laws have legitimised racism against Arab and Muslim Australians.
The Runnymede Trust in Britain defined Islamophobia as: “The unfounded hostility towards Islam. It refers also to the practical consequences of such hostility in unfair discrimination against Muslim individuals and communities, and to the exclusion of Muslims from mainstream political and social affairs”. Islamophobia is anti-Semitism, which “has fed racist hostility against people of Middle Eastern, Arab and South Asian origin and has in turn been bolstered by racial prejudice and xenophobia”.
Islamophobia is encouraged by the Howard-Bush claims that they are engaged in a “war of civilizations” against Muslims. Islamophobia is growing rapidly in Australia in that it is now not uncommon to see white male Australians abusing Muslim women (wearing the Hijab or headscarf) in buses, on beaches and on the streets of Australia’s big cities. “Aussie” males are real machismos when it comes to women. It should be noted that insulting or harassing Muslim women wearing the hijab is not an offence in Australia, as this considered part of the Bush-Howard mission of “liberating” Muslim women.
Australia has no Bill of Rights and no federal Religious Freedom Act. Only Queensland and Victoria have recently extended the anti-discrimination laws to cover religious vilification, and this has strong opposition from the Christian parties. In all other Australian states racism is part of free speech, but criticising the Government complicity in war crimes in Iraq is not. Anti-Muslims hatred and racism are central to the Government policies in “multicultural” Australia.
Australia’s shallow “multiculturalism” produces ‘an ethnicised Muslim identity’ subjected to racism and discrimination in education, at work and in public. It consciously and deliberately enforces the “Others” feeling in the general community, and creates a mentality of superiority among ‘White Australians’. It requires subordination of those who are from ethnic minorities. Shallow “multiculturalism” is designed to marginalise ethnic groups and isolates them into ghettoised communities. This form of institutionalise racism reinforces the disadvantage already experienced by members of the Muslim Community, and restrict their integration in the wider Australian community. At the same time, Anglo-Saxon values are presented as a unique paradigm applicable to the whole community, if not the world at large.
Australia projects self-image as a “tolerant”, “welcoming”, and “Fair Go” country. Anglo-Saxon Australians often hallucinate about their images and their “easygoing lifestyle”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Australians work much longer hours than any other member of the OECD countries and obesity among Australians is rising at unparalleled rates. Violent crimes and violence against women are among the highest in Western countries. Racism is widespread, but it is buried in shallow ground. “Deep down we have this fear of people who are different from us”, said Tasmanian Labor MP Harry Quick. Like the French, Australians are living in denial of deep-seated racism.
The country is ruled by an elitist Anglo-Saxon dominant class to which smaller ethnic groups have to conform. It systematically advantages the Anglo-Saxon class and marginalises (subordinates) the non-Anglo-Saxon ethnic groups, such as those from Muslim and Arab backgrounds. This creates a permanent under the surface racial mentality, which is often exploited by politicians, rightwing thugs and other groups within the Anglo-Saxon class. Australia’s “Fair Go” was meant only for white Anglo-Saxon Australians, with a dividing line between the dominant and the subordinate classes.
All over Australia the gap between ‘the have’ and the ‘have not’ is widening steadily, with well-documented racism against ethnic minorities, particularly against Muslims. The Anglo-Saxon rich are congregating around the beaches and in leafy suburbs, while the poor are pushed further into the poorer suburbs – where most of the about 300,000 Muslim Australians live – with little prospect of finding decent employment or education.
A recent study on racist attitudes conducted by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 2003 found one in eight Australians interviewed admitted they were prejudiced, particularly towards Muslim Australians. The study, conducted by a team led by geography senior lecturer Dr. Kevin Dunn, also found some Australians were living in denial of such prejudice though 80 per cent of those surveyed recognized racism was a problem. When asked if they ever met a Muslim. ‘NO’, they said.
A report, entitled ‘Respect and Racism in Australia’, prepared in June 2004 by Racism Monitor Group of the University of Technology in Sydney (UTS) reveals that; Australian Arabs Muslims community “has been and continues to be unfairly targeted” specifically, and that racism is so frequent that “it has become almost accepted” and Muslims do not feel 'entitled' to make complaints. Racism against Muslims is openly promoted, and continues to contribute to decrease in the process of integration. It is propagated by politicians as a tool to instil fear in the community and justify draconian policies.
As it has been predicted, the “Anti-terrorism Bill”, introduced here recently has encouraged, if not incited Islamophobia. The new laws enforced a pre-existing fear in the Muslim community. Muslims are made to feel alienated, and (as if they) do not truly belong in Australia. The Bill, as it is called, designed specifically to discriminate against Australians from Muslim and Arabic backgrounds. The recent violent attacks on members of Australia’s Muslim Community were just a few cases.
At least 5000 “White Australians” invaded the south eastern Sydney suburb of Cronulla’s foreshore and beachside streets on Sunday (11 December 2005) chasing two young Muslim Australians of Lebanese origin. Racist thugs and Neo-fascist opportunists attacked and assaulted individuals and small groups of Muslim Australians. The racially motivated violence, which has been boiling for sometimes is misleadingly portrayed in the media as “the local boys trying to protect their beach and community”. It is also alleged that the violence is in retaliation to a rumours that Muslim youths assaulted two lifeguards earlier this month.
The media – the most controlled in the Western world – not only play a crucial role in inciting and legitimising these criminal acts. They also ‘perpetuate historically inherited stereotypes and cultural imaginaries that form part of the national collective memory bank’. Anti-Muslims hatred is a best seller in Australia. TV, radio, the printing press and publishing houses are competing for the best available distortion of Islam and Muslims. In fact one can become a celebrity overnight in Australia, by simply producing a distorted image of Arabs and Muslims. It is a topic promoted as much as playing Cricket.
Media grunts led by the right-wing columnist Andrew Bolt of the Melbourne Herald Sun, Janet Albrechtsen of Murdoch’s The Australian newspaper, and Alan Jones of Sydney Radio 2GB and others are fuelling racism and influencing community’s attitudes. Indeed, Alan Jones is encouraging racially-motivated violence against Muslims on his popular redneck talk. Anti-Muslims hatred is rising because of media bashing of Muslims and Government policy of incarcerating of the mainly Muslim refugees. “Sections of the media took [the attack on Cronulla beach] far too far and one can only surmise that the way this issues was dealt with on talkback radio amounts to incitement”, said Mr. Keysar Trad, president of Islamic Friendship Association of Australia.
Many flawed reasons have been provided to justifying the violent attacks against Muslims and to cover up racism as central to the violence. The racially motivated attack in Cronulla “is revenge for the Bali bombings and the September 11 attacks”, declared Bruce Baird, a Federal Liberal backbencher in Canberra. It seems that the destruction of the Iraqi society and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi women, children and men by the Anglo-American armies is not a sufficient holocaust to satisfy Mr. Cook violent revenge. Whatever the reason was, “it shows that there is underlying racism running deeply in the Australian psyche”, said Huranda Seyit, director of the Forum on Australian-Islamic Relations. It is remarkable that Muslims are the first to call on Muslim youth in the Community to “calm down, and refrain from any further violence”. Why shouldn’t "White Australians” do the same?
Opportunist politicians have been the only beneficiaries of violence and racism against Australians from non-Anglo-Saxon backgrounds. “This is a great day” for Australia, said John Moffitt, leader of the Australia First Party, a rightwing collection of thugs. Others want to go back to the old days of “White Australia Policy”. Defunct racist politicians such as John Stone of the National Party are attacking Islam, and advocating the banning of Muslim immigrants and abolishing “multiculturalism”.
Liberal MPs Bronwyn Bishop and Sophie Panopoulos have repeatedly attacked Islam, using Muslim women dresses as the pretext to incite Australians to stand up against the Muslim hijab in schools. The purpose of this old “colonial feminism” is not to defend Muslim women rights, but to promote racism, denying Muslim women education, and their rights to wear whatever suites them. What have these two MPs said about the abuses and torture of Iraqi women by the occupying forces and their leaders? Instead of rejecting their views, the Government has encouraged this kind of racism, and allows Nazis-like groups such as the Australia First Party and the Patriotic Youth League to flourish.
Australian Muslim women were always the immediate targets of the racially-motivated violence. The daily Melbourne, The Age reported on November 13, 2005 that; “’Fatimah’ [a Muslim woman] was punched, kicked, spat on and abused, told to ‘go home to her own country and left with an injury to her right eye’. Her sister, she said, had a knife thrust towards’ her face”. The West Australian Sunday Times (13 November 2005) is labelling every Muslim a “terrorist”, and the victims are always, Australian women of Muslim backgrounds. ”I think families are staying home and avoiding going out, particularly women who wear the hijab, because we have seen that they are particularly targeted”, said Australian Arabic Council deputy chairman, Mr. Taimor Hazou.
Islamophobia is a serious threat to the Australian society. It is reminiscent to that of anti-Jews hatred in Europe in recent history. “Racism in Australia is rooted in every area of Australian society, from government to schools to courts to churches…. Racism is an endemic and chronic problem that must be addressed and solved”, writes the Australian author, Anne Pattel-Gray. “Racism is embedded in Australian culture and federal politicians should not ignore it”, added MP Harry Quick.
Sydney Police alleged to have evidence that Neo-Nazis and “white supremacist” groups, including right-wing politicians were among the crowd attacking Muslims at Cronulla beach. Meanwhile those who are promoting and selling racism are sitting and laughing in their party rooms, radio and TV stations, and editorial news rooms around Australia. In order for tolerance to establish its roots deep in society, the head of racism must be cut off and buried.
A tolerant non-racial society is an egalitarian society free of racial categories. “As Australia increasingly globalizes it must shed the ignorant roots of intolerance and embrace the multiplicity of nationalities already within its borders. If the North Cronulla riots are not incentive enough for change, then Australia risks a future plagued by disunity and disgruntled reaction to the faux ideals of egalitarianism”, writes Bede A. Moore, editor of The Harvard Crimson, a publication of Harvard University.
The racist “White Australia Policy” is not dead; it is still here hovering over Australia. What is needed is an anti-racism bill to protect marginalised Australians from the threat of racially-motivated violence, and to counter the rise of Islamophobia.
Global Research Contributing Editor Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
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The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=HAS20051214&articleId=1485
by Ghali Hassan
December 14, 2005
GlobalResearch.ca
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“A BARE-CHESTED youth in Quiksilver board shorts tore the headscarf off the girl's head as she slithered down the Cronulla dune seeking safety on the beach from a thousand-strong baying mob”. Sydney Morning Herald, 12 December 2005.
Islamophobia in Australia is not something suddenly appeared over the horizon because of the weather. To the contrary, racism against Muslims has always been part of Australia’s psyche. Whether it is against neighbouring Indonesia, Malaysia or Muslim Australians; the pall of racism is permanently hovering over Australia. Government policies, including the criminal war against Iraq and the introduction of the so-called “anti-terrorism” laws have legitimised racism against Arab and Muslim Australians.
The Runnymede Trust in Britain defined Islamophobia as: “The unfounded hostility towards Islam. It refers also to the practical consequences of such hostility in unfair discrimination against Muslim individuals and communities, and to the exclusion of Muslims from mainstream political and social affairs”. Islamophobia is anti-Semitism, which “has fed racist hostility against people of Middle Eastern, Arab and South Asian origin and has in turn been bolstered by racial prejudice and xenophobia”.
Islamophobia is encouraged by the Howard-Bush claims that they are engaged in a “war of civilizations” against Muslims. Islamophobia is growing rapidly in Australia in that it is now not uncommon to see white male Australians abusing Muslim women (wearing the Hijab or headscarf) in buses, on beaches and on the streets of Australia’s big cities. “Aussie” males are real machismos when it comes to women. It should be noted that insulting or harassing Muslim women wearing the hijab is not an offence in Australia, as this considered part of the Bush-Howard mission of “liberating” Muslim women.
Australia has no Bill of Rights and no federal Religious Freedom Act. Only Queensland and Victoria have recently extended the anti-discrimination laws to cover religious vilification, and this has strong opposition from the Christian parties. In all other Australian states racism is part of free speech, but criticising the Government complicity in war crimes in Iraq is not. Anti-Muslims hatred and racism are central to the Government policies in “multicultural” Australia.
Australia’s shallow “multiculturalism” produces ‘an ethnicised Muslim identity’ subjected to racism and discrimination in education, at work and in public. It consciously and deliberately enforces the “Others” feeling in the general community, and creates a mentality of superiority among ‘White Australians’. It requires subordination of those who are from ethnic minorities. Shallow “multiculturalism” is designed to marginalise ethnic groups and isolates them into ghettoised communities. This form of institutionalise racism reinforces the disadvantage already experienced by members of the Muslim Community, and restrict their integration in the wider Australian community. At the same time, Anglo-Saxon values are presented as a unique paradigm applicable to the whole community, if not the world at large.
Australia projects self-image as a “tolerant”, “welcoming”, and “Fair Go” country. Anglo-Saxon Australians often hallucinate about their images and their “easygoing lifestyle”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Australians work much longer hours than any other member of the OECD countries and obesity among Australians is rising at unparalleled rates. Violent crimes and violence against women are among the highest in Western countries. Racism is widespread, but it is buried in shallow ground. “Deep down we have this fear of people who are different from us”, said Tasmanian Labor MP Harry Quick. Like the French, Australians are living in denial of deep-seated racism.
The country is ruled by an elitist Anglo-Saxon dominant class to which smaller ethnic groups have to conform. It systematically advantages the Anglo-Saxon class and marginalises (subordinates) the non-Anglo-Saxon ethnic groups, such as those from Muslim and Arab backgrounds. This creates a permanent under the surface racial mentality, which is often exploited by politicians, rightwing thugs and other groups within the Anglo-Saxon class. Australia’s “Fair Go” was meant only for white Anglo-Saxon Australians, with a dividing line between the dominant and the subordinate classes.
All over Australia the gap between ‘the have’ and the ‘have not’ is widening steadily, with well-documented racism against ethnic minorities, particularly against Muslims. The Anglo-Saxon rich are congregating around the beaches and in leafy suburbs, while the poor are pushed further into the poorer suburbs – where most of the about 300,000 Muslim Australians live – with little prospect of finding decent employment or education.
A recent study on racist attitudes conducted by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 2003 found one in eight Australians interviewed admitted they were prejudiced, particularly towards Muslim Australians. The study, conducted by a team led by geography senior lecturer Dr. Kevin Dunn, also found some Australians were living in denial of such prejudice though 80 per cent of those surveyed recognized racism was a problem. When asked if they ever met a Muslim. ‘NO’, they said.
A report, entitled ‘Respect and Racism in Australia’, prepared in June 2004 by Racism Monitor Group of the University of Technology in Sydney (UTS) reveals that; Australian Arabs Muslims community “has been and continues to be unfairly targeted” specifically, and that racism is so frequent that “it has become almost accepted” and Muslims do not feel 'entitled' to make complaints. Racism against Muslims is openly promoted, and continues to contribute to decrease in the process of integration. It is propagated by politicians as a tool to instil fear in the community and justify draconian policies.
As it has been predicted, the “Anti-terrorism Bill”, introduced here recently has encouraged, if not incited Islamophobia. The new laws enforced a pre-existing fear in the Muslim community. Muslims are made to feel alienated, and (as if they) do not truly belong in Australia. The Bill, as it is called, designed specifically to discriminate against Australians from Muslim and Arabic backgrounds. The recent violent attacks on members of Australia’s Muslim Community were just a few cases.
At least 5000 “White Australians” invaded the south eastern Sydney suburb of Cronulla’s foreshore and beachside streets on Sunday (11 December 2005) chasing two young Muslim Australians of Lebanese origin. Racist thugs and Neo-fascist opportunists attacked and assaulted individuals and small groups of Muslim Australians. The racially motivated violence, which has been boiling for sometimes is misleadingly portrayed in the media as “the local boys trying to protect their beach and community”. It is also alleged that the violence is in retaliation to a rumours that Muslim youths assaulted two lifeguards earlier this month.
The media – the most controlled in the Western world – not only play a crucial role in inciting and legitimising these criminal acts. They also ‘perpetuate historically inherited stereotypes and cultural imaginaries that form part of the national collective memory bank’. Anti-Muslims hatred is a best seller in Australia. TV, radio, the printing press and publishing houses are competing for the best available distortion of Islam and Muslims. In fact one can become a celebrity overnight in Australia, by simply producing a distorted image of Arabs and Muslims. It is a topic promoted as much as playing Cricket.
Media grunts led by the right-wing columnist Andrew Bolt of the Melbourne Herald Sun, Janet Albrechtsen of Murdoch’s The Australian newspaper, and Alan Jones of Sydney Radio 2GB and others are fuelling racism and influencing community’s attitudes. Indeed, Alan Jones is encouraging racially-motivated violence against Muslims on his popular redneck talk. Anti-Muslims hatred is rising because of media bashing of Muslims and Government policy of incarcerating of the mainly Muslim refugees. “Sections of the media took [the attack on Cronulla beach] far too far and one can only surmise that the way this issues was dealt with on talkback radio amounts to incitement”, said Mr. Keysar Trad, president of Islamic Friendship Association of Australia.
Many flawed reasons have been provided to justifying the violent attacks against Muslims and to cover up racism as central to the violence. The racially motivated attack in Cronulla “is revenge for the Bali bombings and the September 11 attacks”, declared Bruce Baird, a Federal Liberal backbencher in Canberra. It seems that the destruction of the Iraqi society and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi women, children and men by the Anglo-American armies is not a sufficient holocaust to satisfy Mr. Cook violent revenge. Whatever the reason was, “it shows that there is underlying racism running deeply in the Australian psyche”, said Huranda Seyit, director of the Forum on Australian-Islamic Relations. It is remarkable that Muslims are the first to call on Muslim youth in the Community to “calm down, and refrain from any further violence”. Why shouldn’t "White Australians” do the same?
Opportunist politicians have been the only beneficiaries of violence and racism against Australians from non-Anglo-Saxon backgrounds. “This is a great day” for Australia, said John Moffitt, leader of the Australia First Party, a rightwing collection of thugs. Others want to go back to the old days of “White Australia Policy”. Defunct racist politicians such as John Stone of the National Party are attacking Islam, and advocating the banning of Muslim immigrants and abolishing “multiculturalism”.
Liberal MPs Bronwyn Bishop and Sophie Panopoulos have repeatedly attacked Islam, using Muslim women dresses as the pretext to incite Australians to stand up against the Muslim hijab in schools. The purpose of this old “colonial feminism” is not to defend Muslim women rights, but to promote racism, denying Muslim women education, and their rights to wear whatever suites them. What have these two MPs said about the abuses and torture of Iraqi women by the occupying forces and their leaders? Instead of rejecting their views, the Government has encouraged this kind of racism, and allows Nazis-like groups such as the Australia First Party and the Patriotic Youth League to flourish.
Australian Muslim women were always the immediate targets of the racially-motivated violence. The daily Melbourne, The Age reported on November 13, 2005 that; “’Fatimah’ [a Muslim woman] was punched, kicked, spat on and abused, told to ‘go home to her own country and left with an injury to her right eye’. Her sister, she said, had a knife thrust towards’ her face”. The West Australian Sunday Times (13 November 2005) is labelling every Muslim a “terrorist”, and the victims are always, Australian women of Muslim backgrounds. ”I think families are staying home and avoiding going out, particularly women who wear the hijab, because we have seen that they are particularly targeted”, said Australian Arabic Council deputy chairman, Mr. Taimor Hazou.
Islamophobia is a serious threat to the Australian society. It is reminiscent to that of anti-Jews hatred in Europe in recent history. “Racism in Australia is rooted in every area of Australian society, from government to schools to courts to churches…. Racism is an endemic and chronic problem that must be addressed and solved”, writes the Australian author, Anne Pattel-Gray. “Racism is embedded in Australian culture and federal politicians should not ignore it”, added MP Harry Quick.
Sydney Police alleged to have evidence that Neo-Nazis and “white supremacist” groups, including right-wing politicians were among the crowd attacking Muslims at Cronulla beach. Meanwhile those who are promoting and selling racism are sitting and laughing in their party rooms, radio and TV stations, and editorial news rooms around Australia. In order for tolerance to establish its roots deep in society, the head of racism must be cut off and buried.
A tolerant non-racial society is an egalitarian society free of racial categories. “As Australia increasingly globalizes it must shed the ignorant roots of intolerance and embrace the multiplicity of nationalities already within its borders. If the North Cronulla riots are not incentive enough for change, then Australia risks a future plagued by disunity and disgruntled reaction to the faux ideals of egalitarianism”, writes Bede A. Moore, editor of The Harvard Crimson, a publication of Harvard University.
The racist “White Australia Policy” is not dead; it is still here hovering over Australia. What is needed is an anti-racism bill to protect marginalised Australians from the threat of racially-motivated violence, and to counter the rise of Islamophobia.
Global Research Contributing Editor Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
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A place under the sun for all Australians - James Jupp, The Australian
James Jupp: A place under the sun for all Australians
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17559574%255E7583,00.html
December 14, 2005
THE massive race riot in Cronulla in Sydney's south at the weekend has been described as the worst such incident since the Lambing Flat attack on the Chinese in 1860. This is exaggerated. The Kalgoorlie riots of 1934, directed against southern Europeans, and the Battle of Brisbane during World War II, directed against US servicemen, were worse and lives were lost.
That nobody was killed in Cronulla is a tribute to the efficient intervention of the police rather than the moderation of the rioters.
What made Cronulla different was that those taking part were much better off, better educated and from more respectable homes than the miners who enforced White Australia more than a century ago. Cronulla is essentially a white ghetto compared with many other parts of multicultural Sydney. Its residents are mostly Australian-born, with Australian parents of British and Irish origin. The overseas-born come mainly from Britain and New Zealand. Moreover, it is isolated by geography and has no nearby ethnic neighbours. As in many other cities with changing populations, such areas tend to defend themselves from what they see as invaders. This can lead, as in the US, to gated suburbs and the deliberate exclusion of others.
The idea of invasion is important in understanding what happened. The population centre of Sydney is Parramatta, which means that as many live to the west of there as towards the beaches. To enjoy the beach means that many from the working-class and ethnic west will come down to the beach suburbs. These do not belong to those who live there. But many inhabitants believe that they do. Battles for territory are typical of race riots in other cities.
Another important social feature is the existence of a hoon culture, with young men believing that physical force is a sign of being a real Australian. This is usually combined with the even more dangerous belief that getting drunk is equally Australian. Although many Muslims are likely to avoid the second feature, they are susceptible to the first.
Attitudes to aggression and towards women are not very liberal throughout the Middle East and may have been passed on by parents escaping from such societies in the 1970s. The so-called Lebs are the Australian sons of such parents. They resent that they are not accepted as equally Australian, which they legally are, of course.
This has been made worse by issues such as the "crusade" against terrorism, the notion of a clash of civilisations, the detention of overwhelmingly Muslim asylum-seekers, even criticism of the completely harmless headscarf for women.
In a society permeated with irresponsible and often racist discussions on talkback radio, even the least informed people of Arab background are likely to feel unwanted and resentful. The riot at Cronulla will only increase this resentment.
For 30 years, Australia has officially been a multicultural society, a sensible response to mass immigration. This means that there is no single ethnic, racial or religious group that can call itself Australian to the exclusion of others. This has been repeated over and over again, but is obviously not accepted by many Australians of British or Irish descent, including the mob at Cronulla waving their Australian flags.
Does this mean that multiculturalism has failed? There are many reasons for believing that this is not so, race riots notwithstanding. That every leading public figure, government and Opposition, state and federal, denounced the rioters is evidence that official opinion leaders are agreed on the desirability of maintaining a harmonious multicultural society.
The problem is that in neither "Aussie" Cronulla nor "Leb" Canterbury-Bankstown do young men listen to such leaders. On the contrary, they reject them.
The central problem of Australian multiculturalism is that it has been preached to the converted and especially targeted at ethnic communities, which already know that Australia is a multicultural society. It has focused on individual goodwill and tolerance within a liberal framework of ideas and institutions. But the hoon culture of many young men of all ethnicities is outside these frameworks.
Official multiculturalism has been too self-congratulatory. Public figures interminably preach the wonders of people of different origins living together in harmony. But they do not go too deeply into the evidence that there is widespread prejudice, considerable social disadvantage and exclusion from many positions of influence and affluence in politics, the public service, commerce and industry. There is inadequate research into real life in the western suburbs of Sydney or the northern suburbs of Melbourne.
There will not be social harmony as long as many Australians go on thinking that only those of a particular descent or culture are real Australians. Multiculturalism will not work until it is placed back in the centre of national policy rather than being left to the states and territories, as it largely has been since 1996. It will not work unless public and private funds support ongoing research into real-life situations on the ground in areas of actual or potential conflict.
It will not work unless the tiny but poisonous racist groups are crushed with the force of laws that they are already breaking. It will not work while politicians and some sections of the media play the race card to earn support and approval. As the years go on, the vast majority of "ethnic" Australians will have been born here and will be as entitled to equality and respect as anyone else. They will also be equally obliged to respect others.
Multiculturalism also will not work unless public figures with access to youth come out strongly against racism and exclusion. This includes sporting figures and entertainers. Traditional public figures - politicians, clergy, academics - have little credibility with the most dangerous age groups. Above all, those who support multiculturalism should stop being denounced as elites, latte drinkers or doctors' wives, among other epithets. This is cheap abuse.
The inescapable fact is that Australians are drawn from all across the world; they can and must live together. That does not mean everyone must love everyone else. But it does mean that all avenues for advancement and all public spaces must be open to all. Including Sydney beaches.
James Jupp is director of the Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies at the Australian National University and author of From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17559574%255E7583,00.html
December 14, 2005
THE massive race riot in Cronulla in Sydney's south at the weekend has been described as the worst such incident since the Lambing Flat attack on the Chinese in 1860. This is exaggerated. The Kalgoorlie riots of 1934, directed against southern Europeans, and the Battle of Brisbane during World War II, directed against US servicemen, were worse and lives were lost.
That nobody was killed in Cronulla is a tribute to the efficient intervention of the police rather than the moderation of the rioters.
What made Cronulla different was that those taking part were much better off, better educated and from more respectable homes than the miners who enforced White Australia more than a century ago. Cronulla is essentially a white ghetto compared with many other parts of multicultural Sydney. Its residents are mostly Australian-born, with Australian parents of British and Irish origin. The overseas-born come mainly from Britain and New Zealand. Moreover, it is isolated by geography and has no nearby ethnic neighbours. As in many other cities with changing populations, such areas tend to defend themselves from what they see as invaders. This can lead, as in the US, to gated suburbs and the deliberate exclusion of others.
The idea of invasion is important in understanding what happened. The population centre of Sydney is Parramatta, which means that as many live to the west of there as towards the beaches. To enjoy the beach means that many from the working-class and ethnic west will come down to the beach suburbs. These do not belong to those who live there. But many inhabitants believe that they do. Battles for territory are typical of race riots in other cities.
Another important social feature is the existence of a hoon culture, with young men believing that physical force is a sign of being a real Australian. This is usually combined with the even more dangerous belief that getting drunk is equally Australian. Although many Muslims are likely to avoid the second feature, they are susceptible to the first.
Attitudes to aggression and towards women are not very liberal throughout the Middle East and may have been passed on by parents escaping from such societies in the 1970s. The so-called Lebs are the Australian sons of such parents. They resent that they are not accepted as equally Australian, which they legally are, of course.
This has been made worse by issues such as the "crusade" against terrorism, the notion of a clash of civilisations, the detention of overwhelmingly Muslim asylum-seekers, even criticism of the completely harmless headscarf for women.
In a society permeated with irresponsible and often racist discussions on talkback radio, even the least informed people of Arab background are likely to feel unwanted and resentful. The riot at Cronulla will only increase this resentment.
For 30 years, Australia has officially been a multicultural society, a sensible response to mass immigration. This means that there is no single ethnic, racial or religious group that can call itself Australian to the exclusion of others. This has been repeated over and over again, but is obviously not accepted by many Australians of British or Irish descent, including the mob at Cronulla waving their Australian flags.
Does this mean that multiculturalism has failed? There are many reasons for believing that this is not so, race riots notwithstanding. That every leading public figure, government and Opposition, state and federal, denounced the rioters is evidence that official opinion leaders are agreed on the desirability of maintaining a harmonious multicultural society.
The problem is that in neither "Aussie" Cronulla nor "Leb" Canterbury-Bankstown do young men listen to such leaders. On the contrary, they reject them.
The central problem of Australian multiculturalism is that it has been preached to the converted and especially targeted at ethnic communities, which already know that Australia is a multicultural society. It has focused on individual goodwill and tolerance within a liberal framework of ideas and institutions. But the hoon culture of many young men of all ethnicities is outside these frameworks.
Official multiculturalism has been too self-congratulatory. Public figures interminably preach the wonders of people of different origins living together in harmony. But they do not go too deeply into the evidence that there is widespread prejudice, considerable social disadvantage and exclusion from many positions of influence and affluence in politics, the public service, commerce and industry. There is inadequate research into real life in the western suburbs of Sydney or the northern suburbs of Melbourne.
There will not be social harmony as long as many Australians go on thinking that only those of a particular descent or culture are real Australians. Multiculturalism will not work until it is placed back in the centre of national policy rather than being left to the states and territories, as it largely has been since 1996. It will not work unless public and private funds support ongoing research into real-life situations on the ground in areas of actual or potential conflict.
It will not work unless the tiny but poisonous racist groups are crushed with the force of laws that they are already breaking. It will not work while politicians and some sections of the media play the race card to earn support and approval. As the years go on, the vast majority of "ethnic" Australians will have been born here and will be as entitled to equality and respect as anyone else. They will also be equally obliged to respect others.
Multiculturalism also will not work unless public figures with access to youth come out strongly against racism and exclusion. This includes sporting figures and entertainers. Traditional public figures - politicians, clergy, academics - have little credibility with the most dangerous age groups. Above all, those who support multiculturalism should stop being denounced as elites, latte drinkers or doctors' wives, among other epithets. This is cheap abuse.
The inescapable fact is that Australians are drawn from all across the world; they can and must live together. That does not mean everyone must love everyone else. But it does mean that all avenues for advancement and all public spaces must be open to all. Including Sydney beaches.
James Jupp is director of the Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies at the Australian National University and author of From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Is Islam the problem? - Andrew West, Sydney Morning Herald Blog
http://blogs.smh.com.au/thecontrarian/archives/2005/12/is_islam_the_pr.html
(There are a lot of comments on this article at the above link)
Is Islam the problem?
Andrew West
December 13, 2005 01:33 AM
Australia does not have a race relations problem. We have a clash of cultures and that's a big difference -- and maybe the problem is certain forms of Islam.
Of course, the marauding boneheads who rampaged through Cronulla on Sunday don't make this distinction. If they did, perhaps they would realise that when they screech "Lebs out" they are also referring to the majority of Lebanese Australians who are Maronite Christians, in communion with the Roman Catholic Church.
By their chants, they are also demanding the expulsion of NSW Governor Marie Bashir and her husband, Sir Nicholas Shehadie, two of the finest citizens this state has ever produced; and Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, one of the most outwardly knockabout political leaders in Australia. Lebanese all.
The problem is not the blood that runs through people's veins. Any form of discrimination based on race or ethnicity -- based on the colour of one's skin or hair or eyes -- is inherently immoral, illogical and evil.
But culture and religion are behavioural. They involve values.
People can be born into a particular culture or religion but sooner or later they reach an age of reason where they can embrace or reject their precepts. And if people freely embrace a culture that is antithetical to the prevailing social mores -- in our case, I would hope, liberal, enlightenment values -- then we are entitled to judge, object, censure and even discriminate.
Which brings us to this extremely prickly issue of radical Islam.
My colleague on this paper, Nadia Jamal, has mounted a strong and sophisticated argument that the issue is not religion but culture, specifically the patriarchal culture that prevails in many traditional Muslim households. This is a good point but I think it diplomatically sidesteps the fact that some strains of Islam do, indeed, sanction attitudes and behaviour that are not simply patriarchal but repressive.
When groups of young Muslim men stalk the beaches of Sydney making sexually threatening comments against women in bathing costumes, as they indisputably do; and when they believe they act with the license of a sheik who claims that such women are responsible for their own sexual violation, is their religion, at least in part, to blame?
I do not embrace multiculturalism, as such, because I do not believe all cultures are compatible with non-discriminatory liberalism. I prefer a multi-ethnic, non-racial society, which has at its core a canon of values that include racial and gender equality.
I admit to feeling a little uneasy at the sight of a Muslim woman shrouded not simply in a headscarf but a face-concealing, head-to-toe chador, and wonder just how much choice she has had in deciding her lifestyle. I am not hugely sympathetic to a Muslim seeking asylum because he claims to have been discriminated against because of his support for sharia law.
I cannot celebrate such culture in the way that I celebrate Italian National Day in Leichhardt or the Tet festival in Cabramatta or Greek Orthodox Easter or a Seder at Passover or a service of Eritrean Orthodox Church, such as the one I attended a couple of years ago in a borrowed Church of England in London, or lunch with a couple of Palestinian intellectuals.
Some multicultural theorists will squawk and say that I prefer only a soft multiculturalism (if they insist on calling it that) that does not offend western liberal values. They would be spot on. My acceptance ends when the assault on the liberality of society itself begins.
None of this erases the points I made yesterday, condemning the lynch-mob mentality of the Cronulla crowds, boozed up, in their thousands, chasing down lone Lebanese teenagers.
But I accept the need to distinguish between cultural and ethnicity and ask some tough questions.
DUE TO THE OVERWHELMING RESPONSE, THE ONLY COMMENTS THAT WILL NOW BE ACCEPTED ARE THOSE THAT ARE SIGNED OFF WITH A GENUINE NAME -- FIRST NAME AND SURNAME -- AND WITH A GENUINE EMAIL ADDRESS LISTED.
(There are a lot of comments on this article at the above link)
Is Islam the problem?
Andrew West
December 13, 2005 01:33 AM
Australia does not have a race relations problem. We have a clash of cultures and that's a big difference -- and maybe the problem is certain forms of Islam.
Of course, the marauding boneheads who rampaged through Cronulla on Sunday don't make this distinction. If they did, perhaps they would realise that when they screech "Lebs out" they are also referring to the majority of Lebanese Australians who are Maronite Christians, in communion with the Roman Catholic Church.
By their chants, they are also demanding the expulsion of NSW Governor Marie Bashir and her husband, Sir Nicholas Shehadie, two of the finest citizens this state has ever produced; and Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, one of the most outwardly knockabout political leaders in Australia. Lebanese all.
The problem is not the blood that runs through people's veins. Any form of discrimination based on race or ethnicity -- based on the colour of one's skin or hair or eyes -- is inherently immoral, illogical and evil.
But culture and religion are behavioural. They involve values.
People can be born into a particular culture or religion but sooner or later they reach an age of reason where they can embrace or reject their precepts. And if people freely embrace a culture that is antithetical to the prevailing social mores -- in our case, I would hope, liberal, enlightenment values -- then we are entitled to judge, object, censure and even discriminate.
Which brings us to this extremely prickly issue of radical Islam.
My colleague on this paper, Nadia Jamal, has mounted a strong and sophisticated argument that the issue is not religion but culture, specifically the patriarchal culture that prevails in many traditional Muslim households. This is a good point but I think it diplomatically sidesteps the fact that some strains of Islam do, indeed, sanction attitudes and behaviour that are not simply patriarchal but repressive.
When groups of young Muslim men stalk the beaches of Sydney making sexually threatening comments against women in bathing costumes, as they indisputably do; and when they believe they act with the license of a sheik who claims that such women are responsible for their own sexual violation, is their religion, at least in part, to blame?
I do not embrace multiculturalism, as such, because I do not believe all cultures are compatible with non-discriminatory liberalism. I prefer a multi-ethnic, non-racial society, which has at its core a canon of values that include racial and gender equality.
I admit to feeling a little uneasy at the sight of a Muslim woman shrouded not simply in a headscarf but a face-concealing, head-to-toe chador, and wonder just how much choice she has had in deciding her lifestyle. I am not hugely sympathetic to a Muslim seeking asylum because he claims to have been discriminated against because of his support for sharia law.
I cannot celebrate such culture in the way that I celebrate Italian National Day in Leichhardt or the Tet festival in Cabramatta or Greek Orthodox Easter or a Seder at Passover or a service of Eritrean Orthodox Church, such as the one I attended a couple of years ago in a borrowed Church of England in London, or lunch with a couple of Palestinian intellectuals.
Some multicultural theorists will squawk and say that I prefer only a soft multiculturalism (if they insist on calling it that) that does not offend western liberal values. They would be spot on. My acceptance ends when the assault on the liberality of society itself begins.
None of this erases the points I made yesterday, condemning the lynch-mob mentality of the Cronulla crowds, boozed up, in their thousands, chasing down lone Lebanese teenagers.
But I accept the need to distinguish between cultural and ethnicity and ask some tough questions.
DUE TO THE OVERWHELMING RESPONSE, THE ONLY COMMENTS THAT WILL NOW BE ACCEPTED ARE THOSE THAT ARE SIGNED OFF WITH A GENUINE NAME -- FIRST NAME AND SURNAME -- AND WITH A GENUINE EMAIL ADDRESS LISTED.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Australia may now be drifting into fascism - Tony Kevin, tonykevin.com
Australia may now be drifting into fascism
Rascism and fascism are both concerned with power. Tony Kevin below
suggests that 'Fascism is a concentration of state power, often with
powerful corporate and corporate media support.'
Callers to talk back radio today have indicated that they believe that
some of the unrest that is occurring in Sydney is a result of the three
new pieces of legislation approved by the Australian Government -
terrorism, industrial relations and voluntary student unionism. What are
your views? If this writing is of interest, you can read more at
www.tonykevin.com Sue Ellson
/
/http://www.tonykevin.com/HENDERSON-KEVIN.html
*_ _*
*_A RECENT EXCHANGE OF CORRESPONDENCE, TONY KEVIN – GERARD HENDERSON _*
1. EMAIL FROM TONY KEVIN TO GERARD HENDERSON, SENT 2.24 pm, 7 DECEMBER 2005
Dear Gerard,
I'd like to offer to speak at the Sydney Institute, either alone or in
debate as you prefer, on the topic
*"That Australia may now be drifting into fascism"* {or "sliding into
fascism", as you prefer}.
I have not capitalised the word "fascism" because there are many
varieties of it, each defined by time and place. As someone said - I'll
get the quote right if this proposal proceeds - fascism does not always
arrive on the doorstep with a toothbrush moustache and dressed in a
Gestapo uniform. It creeps in unawares. It can be quite country-and
culture-specific.
The other important point to make about fascism is that most of the time
and for most of the people, life can be pretty normal, even good, under
fascism The TV series "Heimat" illustrated this beautifully. I have my
own first-hand memories - useful now - of how "normal" life was for
millions of Soviet citizens under late Communism (I worked in Moscow
1969-71), a time which was a variant of fascism as I define it below,
when I was Third/Second Secretary at the Australian Embassy, responsible
for all domestic political reporting.
The Muscovites were as sports-mad as we are. They loved their picnics
and BBQs as we do. Many had rich and fulfilling family lives. They hated
dissidents like Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov for rocking the boat. Party
apparatchiks were a despised and mistrusted subculture But people were
patriotic and loved their armed forces. They just wanted to have good
lives and keep out of politics. Most of them succeeded most of the time.
Fascism is a concentration of state power, often with powerful corporate
and corporate media support, and the erosion or absence of strong checks
and balances - i.e. it is the failure of pluralism or civil society. It
does not require an exceptionally strong or charismatic Fuhrer or Duce -
fascist states can have leaders as grey as Howard.
That is the kind of state I would argue we are drifting into now in
Australia. Some of my examples come from - the recent /Australian
Financial Review/ /Magazine/ on “Power in Australia”, continuing exposed
DIMIA abuses, the story of how the new anti-terror legislation was
passed, the deepening plight of Australian Muslims, the Howard-Costello
leadership dynamics, how whistleblowers and dissidents are marginalised
or silenced, federal-state aspects of our version of fascism (how power
is comfortably divided up between the two levels of governance), the
role of a token Opposition, how corruption is manifested in Australia ...
I would not have comfortably used the phrase 'fascism" in an Australian
political context a couple of years ago. Now I do. I think it is useful.
"McCarthyism" is becoming a euphemism for it, I notice lately.
Last year you declined my offer to speak on SIEV X at the Sydney
Institute. You said the Institute discusses issues, not cases of alleged
abuse of governance. Well, fascism in an Australian context is an issue.
You wrote about it this week. John Howard may not like it, but the word
is coming into our national political lexicon.
As to my credentials, you might look at recent files on my website
www.tonykevin.com and see what is going up
there over the past few months. I take active part in Australian public
life as a small-l liberal humanitarian - rallies, submissions, articles,
etc. Some good news is coming my way tomorrow, and I will speak to a
large public meeting in Bega on Friday.
You have now twice in 15 months referred to my work by name in your
column. I know that does not of itself give me entree - please don't
bother to count up how many times you have mentioned Bin Laden or Saddam
Hussein - but like you I am a legitimate part of Australia's political
commentariat or intelligentsia.
Your claim to welcome all points of view at the Institute, as long as
expressed in civilised and interesting ways, will be tested by this
proposal. I hope you will agree.
Please note that this is a potentially publishable letter, and please
frame your response (or decision not to respond) accordingly. Of course
if we do proceed it becomes working correspondence and will not be
published by me without your agreement.
I am copying this letter to two mutual friends whose opinion, on this
suggestion and on me as a public person and speaker, you might value.
Regards
Tony Kevin
2. EMAIL FROM GERARD HENDERSON TO TONY KEVIN, 12.37 pm , 8 DECEMBER 2005:
Dear Tony
I refer to your email of 7 December 2005 requesting that you address The
Sydney Institute on the topic “That Australia may now be drifitng into
fascism” or a similarly worded subject.
The Sydney Institute has become an important forum for debate and
discussion – and /The Sydney Papers/ (which publishes addresses
delivered at the Institute) has become an important historical record.
This has come about primarily as a result of the quality of the talks
given at The Institute and the discussion which follows.
As you will be aware, a wide variety of views are heard at The Sydney
Institute. At the level of Australian politics – this includes the
Liberal, National, Labor, Democrats and Greens parties.
However, *I have had a consistent policy of not inviting individuals who
might be classified as having views consistent with what I term the
Lunar Right and/or the Lunar Left. I do not believe that the proposition
that Australia is in a pre-fascist condition warrants a platform at the
Institute*.* If others disagree, then I am sure that you will readily
find a forum for your thesis.
In conclusion I should clarify two points
* In your email of 7 December 2005 you wrote: “Last year you
declined my offer to speak on Siev X at The Sydney Institute. You
said that the Institute discusses issues, not cases of alleged
abuse of governance.” This is not correct. As I pointed out in my
letter to you dated 25 August 2004;
“The essential criteria for addressing the Institute are that the
speaker has something to say which will draw an audience and which is
worth publishing in /The Sydney Papers/. There are, however, some
additional criteria. Speakers at the Institute are expected to avoid
both defamation and/or conspiracy theories. That’s why, for example,
Pauline Hanson was not invited to address the Institute.
I do not rule out your addressing the Institute some time in the future.
However, I am concerned that a thesis of /A Certain Maritime Incident/
turns on the assertion that the Australian Defence Force was complicit
in, or indifferent to, the deaths of passengers on the Siev X. This is a
highly serious allegation – which, as far as I can determine, is not
supported by any conclusive evidence. In /A Certain Maritime Incident/
(at Page 240) you go so far as to suggest that Labor conspired with the
Howard Government to hush up the Siev X tragedy. I do not believe that
so vast a conspiracy warrants publication in /The Sydney Papers/.”
Your assertion that I claimed The Sydney Institute does not discuss
governance issues is simply an invention on your part.
* In your email of 7 December 2005 you refer to the fact that I have
quoted you on two occasions in my column over the past 15 months.
As you will be aware, I accurately quote from commentators with
whom I agree or disagree. If you choose to write in the /Crikey/
newsletter that Kim Beazley’s suggestions about national security
in Australia can in any way be equated with “what the Nazis did in
the Kracow and Warsaw ghettos in World War 2” then this is not
only monumental hyperbole but, more seriously, demeans the memory
of the real victims of real fascism.
Best wishes
Yours sincerely
Gerard Henderson
*[* Bold- TK]*
EMAIL FROM TONY KEVIN TO GERARD HENDERSON, 3.57 pm, 8 DECEMBER 2005
Dear Gerard
Thank you for your letter, abusive as it was.
I thought I could perhaps have approached you at this key moment in
Australian hIstory, with the passage of this dangerous anti-terrorism
law, on a basis of decency and our previous cultural associations, and
as a fellow member of Australian civil society who might have some
understanding of the path down which our government is now taking our
country.
That was obviously a mistaken expectation I had of you - for you have
here fallen back obediently into your self-chosen role as Howard
propagandist.
So be it. I won't offer to speak at the Sydney Institute again.
I will publish this correspondence, as I indicated.
Regards
Tony Kevin
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Living in Harmony Australia Blog
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 12:45:33 +1100
From: tony kevin
To: sueellson
References:
dear sue
thanks for this. you are of course very welcome to copy or link any of my
writing, which is all archived on my site www.tonykevin.com onto your site.
we share similar values.
best
tony kevin
----- Original Message -----
From: Sue Ellson
To: tonykevin
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2005 11:18 AM
Subject: Living in Harmony Australia Blog
> Hello Tony
>
> I subscribe to Google Alerts...and your name has appeared in an article
> I have read today.
>
> I would like to invite you to contribute some of your writing to the
> Living in Harmony Australia Blog at
> http://livinginharmonyaustralia.blogspot.com/
>
> The first post on 8/11/05 describes the purpose behind the blog...but of
> course I would like you to decide what you would like to contribute....
>
> I look forward to hearing from you
>
> --
>
> Sue Ellson
Rascism and fascism are both concerned with power. Tony Kevin below
suggests that 'Fascism is a concentration of state power, often with
powerful corporate and corporate media support.'
Callers to talk back radio today have indicated that they believe that
some of the unrest that is occurring in Sydney is a result of the three
new pieces of legislation approved by the Australian Government -
terrorism, industrial relations and voluntary student unionism. What are
your views? If this writing is of interest, you can read more at
www.tonykevin.com Sue Ellson
/
/http://www.tonykevin.com/HENDERSON-KEVIN.html
*_ _*
*_A RECENT EXCHANGE OF CORRESPONDENCE, TONY KEVIN – GERARD HENDERSON _*
1. EMAIL FROM TONY KEVIN TO GERARD HENDERSON, SENT 2.24 pm, 7 DECEMBER 2005
Dear Gerard,
I'd like to offer to speak at the Sydney Institute, either alone or in
debate as you prefer, on the topic
*"That Australia may now be drifting into fascism"* {or "sliding into
fascism", as you prefer}.
I have not capitalised the word "fascism" because there are many
varieties of it, each defined by time and place. As someone said - I'll
get the quote right if this proposal proceeds - fascism does not always
arrive on the doorstep with a toothbrush moustache and dressed in a
Gestapo uniform. It creeps in unawares. It can be quite country-and
culture-specific.
The other important point to make about fascism is that most of the time
and for most of the people, life can be pretty normal, even good, under
fascism The TV series "Heimat" illustrated this beautifully. I have my
own first-hand memories - useful now - of how "normal" life was for
millions of Soviet citizens under late Communism (I worked in Moscow
1969-71), a time which was a variant of fascism as I define it below,
when I was Third/Second Secretary at the Australian Embassy, responsible
for all domestic political reporting.
The Muscovites were as sports-mad as we are. They loved their picnics
and BBQs as we do. Many had rich and fulfilling family lives. They hated
dissidents like Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov for rocking the boat. Party
apparatchiks were a despised and mistrusted subculture But people were
patriotic and loved their armed forces. They just wanted to have good
lives and keep out of politics. Most of them succeeded most of the time.
Fascism is a concentration of state power, often with powerful corporate
and corporate media support, and the erosion or absence of strong checks
and balances - i.e. it is the failure of pluralism or civil society. It
does not require an exceptionally strong or charismatic Fuhrer or Duce -
fascist states can have leaders as grey as Howard.
That is the kind of state I would argue we are drifting into now in
Australia. Some of my examples come from - the recent /Australian
Financial Review/ /Magazine/ on “Power in Australia”, continuing exposed
DIMIA abuses, the story of how the new anti-terror legislation was
passed, the deepening plight of Australian Muslims, the Howard-Costello
leadership dynamics, how whistleblowers and dissidents are marginalised
or silenced, federal-state aspects of our version of fascism (how power
is comfortably divided up between the two levels of governance), the
role of a token Opposition, how corruption is manifested in Australia ...
I would not have comfortably used the phrase 'fascism" in an Australian
political context a couple of years ago. Now I do. I think it is useful.
"McCarthyism" is becoming a euphemism for it, I notice lately.
Last year you declined my offer to speak on SIEV X at the Sydney
Institute. You said the Institute discusses issues, not cases of alleged
abuse of governance. Well, fascism in an Australian context is an issue.
You wrote about it this week. John Howard may not like it, but the word
is coming into our national political lexicon.
As to my credentials, you might look at recent files on my website
www.tonykevin.com
there over the past few months. I take active part in Australian public
life as a small-l liberal humanitarian - rallies, submissions, articles,
etc. Some good news is coming my way tomorrow, and I will speak to a
large public meeting in Bega on Friday.
You have now twice in 15 months referred to my work by name in your
column. I know that does not of itself give me entree - please don't
bother to count up how many times you have mentioned Bin Laden or Saddam
Hussein - but like you I am a legitimate part of Australia's political
commentariat or intelligentsia.
Your claim to welcome all points of view at the Institute, as long as
expressed in civilised and interesting ways, will be tested by this
proposal. I hope you will agree.
Please note that this is a potentially publishable letter, and please
frame your response (or decision not to respond) accordingly. Of course
if we do proceed it becomes working correspondence and will not be
published by me without your agreement.
I am copying this letter to two mutual friends whose opinion, on this
suggestion and on me as a public person and speaker, you might value.
Regards
Tony Kevin
2. EMAIL FROM GERARD HENDERSON TO TONY KEVIN, 12.37 pm , 8 DECEMBER 2005:
Dear Tony
I refer to your email of 7 December 2005 requesting that you address The
Sydney Institute on the topic “That Australia may now be drifitng into
fascism” or a similarly worded subject.
The Sydney Institute has become an important forum for debate and
discussion – and /The Sydney Papers/ (which publishes addresses
delivered at the Institute) has become an important historical record.
This has come about primarily as a result of the quality of the talks
given at The Institute and the discussion which follows.
As you will be aware, a wide variety of views are heard at The Sydney
Institute. At the level of Australian politics – this includes the
Liberal, National, Labor, Democrats and Greens parties.
However, *I have had a consistent policy of not inviting individuals who
might be classified as having views consistent with what I term the
Lunar Right and/or the Lunar Left. I do not believe that the proposition
that Australia is in a pre-fascist condition warrants a platform at the
Institute*.* If others disagree, then I am sure that you will readily
find a forum for your thesis.
In conclusion I should clarify two points
* In your email of 7 December 2005 you wrote: “Last year you
declined my offer to speak on Siev X at The Sydney Institute. You
said that the Institute discusses issues, not cases of alleged
abuse of governance.” This is not correct. As I pointed out in my
letter to you dated 25 August 2004;
“The essential criteria for addressing the Institute are that the
speaker has something to say which will draw an audience and which is
worth publishing in /The Sydney Papers/. There are, however, some
additional criteria. Speakers at the Institute are expected to avoid
both defamation and/or conspiracy theories. That’s why, for example,
Pauline Hanson was not invited to address the Institute.
I do not rule out your addressing the Institute some time in the future.
However, I am concerned that a thesis of /A Certain Maritime Incident/
turns on the assertion that the Australian Defence Force was complicit
in, or indifferent to, the deaths of passengers on the Siev X. This is a
highly serious allegation – which, as far as I can determine, is not
supported by any conclusive evidence. In /A Certain Maritime Incident/
(at Page 240) you go so far as to suggest that Labor conspired with the
Howard Government to hush up the Siev X tragedy. I do not believe that
so vast a conspiracy warrants publication in /The Sydney Papers/.”
Your assertion that I claimed The Sydney Institute does not discuss
governance issues is simply an invention on your part.
* In your email of 7 December 2005 you refer to the fact that I have
quoted you on two occasions in my column over the past 15 months.
As you will be aware, I accurately quote from commentators with
whom I agree or disagree. If you choose to write in the /Crikey/
newsletter that Kim Beazley’s suggestions about national security
in Australia can in any way be equated with “what the Nazis did in
the Kracow and Warsaw ghettos in World War 2” then this is not
only monumental hyperbole but, more seriously, demeans the memory
of the real victims of real fascism.
Best wishes
Yours sincerely
Gerard Henderson
*[* Bold- TK]*
EMAIL FROM TONY KEVIN TO GERARD HENDERSON, 3.57 pm, 8 DECEMBER 2005
Dear Gerard
Thank you for your letter, abusive as it was.
I thought I could perhaps have approached you at this key moment in
Australian hIstory, with the passage of this dangerous anti-terrorism
law, on a basis of decency and our previous cultural associations, and
as a fellow member of Australian civil society who might have some
understanding of the path down which our government is now taking our
country.
That was obviously a mistaken expectation I had of you - for you have
here fallen back obediently into your self-chosen role as Howard
propagandist.
So be it. I won't offer to speak at the Sydney Institute again.
I will publish this correspondence, as I indicated.
Regards
Tony Kevin
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Living in Harmony Australia Blog
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 12:45:33 +1100
From: tony kevin
To: sueellson
References:
dear sue
thanks for this. you are of course very welcome to copy or link any of my
writing, which is all archived on my site www.tonykevin.com onto your site.
we share similar values.
best
tony kevin
----- Original Message -----
From: Sue Ellson
To: tonykevin
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2005 11:18 AM
Subject: Living in Harmony Australia Blog
> Hello Tony
>
> I subscribe to Google Alerts...and your name has appeared in an article
> I have read today.
>
> I would like to invite you to contribute some of your writing to the
> Living in Harmony Australia Blog at
> http://livinginharmonyaustralia.blogspot.com/
>
> The first post on 8/11/05 describes the purpose behind the blog...but of
> course I would like you to decide what you would like to contribute....
>
> I look forward to hearing from you
>
> --
>
> Sue Ellson
Racial Violence in Sydney - R.P.BenDedek, Kings Calendar
In the Article I sent you, I made the following comments:
What has happened as a result of this, is that Australians are beginning
to feel under obligation to become what they are not, and to adopt
cultural practices or ideas with which they have no affinity, and in the
process, feel that they cannot 'be natural', 'speak the truth' about
anything, or 'have an opinion' that is not officially sanctioned.
It's like being in a pressure cooker, and one day, there will be a
violent explosion, as average Australians refuse to be told what to
think and believe and feel about just about everything.
One of the results of these constant accusations that 'we Australians'
are racists, is that 'we Australians' feel that 'we' in fact, are the
victims of 'reverse racism'. Our culture, our traditions and especially
our religious beliefs are publicly denigrated, despite the fact that
such behaviour is by definition, discriminatory.
I think it is fair to say, that Australians could care less where you
come from, what religion you are, what language you speak, or what your
affiliations are, as long as you make the effort to 'be Australian'; to
be one of us, and not 'one of them!'
http://www.kingscalendar.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=viewnews&id=247
Political Correctness : Corrupting Democracy.
http://www.kingscalendar.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=viewnews&id=278
R.P.BenDedek
Hubei Radio &TV University Wuhan.
Hubei GuangBo DianShi DaXue (LuXiang)
(+86) (027) 8752 6349
Magic City Morning Star News Column
http://magic-city-news.com/cat_index_33.shtml
The King' Calendar : The Secret of Qumran
http://www.kingscalendar.com/kc_free_files_no_frames/TOC.html
What has happened as a result of this, is that Australians are beginning
to feel under obligation to become what they are not, and to adopt
cultural practices or ideas with which they have no affinity, and in the
process, feel that they cannot 'be natural', 'speak the truth' about
anything, or 'have an opinion' that is not officially sanctioned.
It's like being in a pressure cooker, and one day, there will be a
violent explosion, as average Australians refuse to be told what to
think and believe and feel about just about everything.
One of the results of these constant accusations that 'we Australians'
are racists, is that 'we Australians' feel that 'we' in fact, are the
victims of 'reverse racism'. Our culture, our traditions and especially
our religious beliefs are publicly denigrated, despite the fact that
such behaviour is by definition, discriminatory.
I think it is fair to say, that Australians could care less where you
come from, what religion you are, what language you speak, or what your
affiliations are, as long as you make the effort to 'be Australian'; to
be one of us, and not 'one of them!'
http://www.kingscalendar.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=viewnews&id=247
Political Correctness : Corrupting Democracy.
http://www.kingscalendar.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=viewnews&id=278
R.P.BenDedek
Hubei Radio &TV University Wuhan.
Hubei GuangBo DianShi DaXue (LuXiang)
(+86) (027) 8752 6349
Magic City Morning Star News Column
http://magic-city-news.com/cat_index_33.shtml
The King' Calendar : The Secret of Qumran
http://www.kingscalendar.com/kc_free_files_no_frames/TOC.html
Racism in Australia - R.P. BenDedek, Kings Calendar
Was doing some work on site today and came across two previous entries on racism in australia - just thought I'd let you know.
Racism in Australia : Immigrants live in fear! http://www.kingscalendar.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=viewnews&id=161 AUSTRALIAN Race problems - Redfern Sydney Published on 02/17/04 http://www.kingscalendar.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=viewnews&id=89
R.P.BenDedek
Hubei Radio &TV University Wuhan.
Hubei GuangBo DianShi DaXue (LuXiang)
(+86) (027) 8752 6349
Magic City Morning Star News Column http://magic-city-news.com/cat_index_33.shtml
The King' Calendar : The Secret of Qumran http://www.kingscalendar.com/kc_free_files_no_frames/TOC.html
Racism in Australia : Immigrants live in fear! http://www.kingscalendar.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=viewnews&id=161 AUSTRALIAN Race problems - Redfern Sydney Published on 02/17/04 http://www.kingscalendar.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=viewnews&id=89
R.P.BenDedek
Hubei Radio &TV University Wuhan.
Hubei GuangBo DianShi DaXue (LuXiang)
(+86) (027) 8752 6349
Magic City Morning Star News Column http://magic-city-news.com/cat_index_33.shtml
The King' Calendar : The Secret of Qumran http://www.kingscalendar.com/kc_free_files_no_frames/TOC.html
Muslims next door: Brace for change - Editorial, seattletimes.com
Muslims next door: Brace for change
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2002674909_islamed11.html
After being ignored, excluded or blissfully anonymous, American Muslims and Islam can expect a cultural embrace both liberating and alarming.
Following the shocks of 9/11 and the Iraq war, the larger, myopic Christian culture in the United States is discovering its Muslim neighbors. A nation is introduced to the talents, achievement and economic presence it overlooked.
For Islam, the opportunity for its faithful to examine and explore their beliefs will be unsettling. It has been for others. Every group that comes to the United States has to deal with two realities, explains Patricia O'Connell Killen, professor of religion at Pacific Lutheran University: Religion is voluntary and there is a pluralism of religious options.
Back home, the call to prayer from the minaret spoke to communities of like-minded believers without challenge or distraction, Killen said. Here, they have to figure out how to be religious in a voluntary, pluralistic context colored by a Christian ethos.
Periodically, the U.S. is challenged to re-examine cherished myths about itself. For all the talk about freedom of conscience, there is a fear about the amount of diversity the country can handle and still have shared values.
Religious tension is as old as the republic. German immigrants in the 1850s sued to stop schools from forcing their children to read from the King James version of the Bible. They wanted their Catholic Douai Bible text.
Waves of immigration brought newcomers who did not fit the homogeneous profile of the nation's Founders. How to balance liberty of conscience with fear of social chaos?
After World War II, Jews and Catholics were brought inside the circle. By the mid-1960s, the doors were opened wider to the Middle East, Asia and South Asia. For scholars, one benchmark of a faith's emergence in the broader culture is the diversity of faiths represented by military chaplains, whose ranks now include Muslims and Buddhists.
Other increments of inclusion reflect a growing awareness of values and practices.
The first airport chapel in America was Catholic. Now, 14 of 40 airport chapels serve all faiths. Two New Jersey sports arenas are setting aside prayer space for Muslim fans. A Northwest-based mutual fund describes itself as grounded in Islamic values. Lending institutions work to open home-buying to Muslims, who, as an article of faith, cannot pay interest.
Mosques and Islamic centers are sponsoring Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops that have an exclusively Muslim membership.
A quote from The Pluralism Project at Harvard University is especially revealing: "Enabling Muslims to explore the roots of their faith more freely is, in my mind, America's gift to Muslims."
A fresh start for America's estimated 3 million Muslims means an opportunity to explore Islam unadorned by the culture of a homeland. This can be upsetting for parents and grandparents whose faith blends traditional teachings and nostalgia for how it was practiced back in Pakistan or Indonesia.
If there is a theological tension between Islam and modernity, it is not evident in the embrace of technology from Bridges TV, the American Muslim Network on cable TV, to IslamiCity.com on the Internet.
Islamic advocacy groups led by students and professionals have been around for decades. Religious councils denounced terrorism. Latino Muslims are part of the faith's diversity.
A Muslim sorority is organizing at the University of Kentucky. Hardly a surprise. Generations of anxious students cluster around the familiar at Catholic Newman Centers and Baptist Student Unions -- download evening prayers on your iPod -- -- to ease the move away from home.
Religious expression changes where freedom inspires the faithful to explore. Muslim parents who want their children prepared to compete for admission to medical school will duel with parents who want a more-conservative curriculum at the local Islamic school.
America will make room for Islam. Religious freedom will shape its practice and expression.
The pattern is as old as the nation.
======================================================================
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======================================================================
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======================================================================
Copyright (c) 2005 The Seattle Times Company
www.seattletimes.com
Your Life. Your Times.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2002674909_islamed11.html
After being ignored, excluded or blissfully anonymous, American Muslims and Islam can expect a cultural embrace both liberating and alarming.
Following the shocks of 9/11 and the Iraq war, the larger, myopic Christian culture in the United States is discovering its Muslim neighbors. A nation is introduced to the talents, achievement and economic presence it overlooked.
For Islam, the opportunity for its faithful to examine and explore their beliefs will be unsettling. It has been for others. Every group that comes to the United States has to deal with two realities, explains Patricia O'Connell Killen, professor of religion at Pacific Lutheran University: Religion is voluntary and there is a pluralism of religious options.
Back home, the call to prayer from the minaret spoke to communities of like-minded believers without challenge or distraction, Killen said. Here, they have to figure out how to be religious in a voluntary, pluralistic context colored by a Christian ethos.
Periodically, the U.S. is challenged to re-examine cherished myths about itself. For all the talk about freedom of conscience, there is a fear about the amount of diversity the country can handle and still have shared values.
Religious tension is as old as the republic. German immigrants in the 1850s sued to stop schools from forcing their children to read from the King James version of the Bible. They wanted their Catholic Douai Bible text.
Waves of immigration brought newcomers who did not fit the homogeneous profile of the nation's Founders. How to balance liberty of conscience with fear of social chaos?
After World War II, Jews and Catholics were brought inside the circle. By the mid-1960s, the doors were opened wider to the Middle East, Asia and South Asia. For scholars, one benchmark of a faith's emergence in the broader culture is the diversity of faiths represented by military chaplains, whose ranks now include Muslims and Buddhists.
Other increments of inclusion reflect a growing awareness of values and practices.
The first airport chapel in America was Catholic. Now, 14 of 40 airport chapels serve all faiths. Two New Jersey sports arenas are setting aside prayer space for Muslim fans. A Northwest-based mutual fund describes itself as grounded in Islamic values. Lending institutions work to open home-buying to Muslims, who, as an article of faith, cannot pay interest.
Mosques and Islamic centers are sponsoring Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops that have an exclusively Muslim membership.
A quote from The Pluralism Project at Harvard University is especially revealing: "Enabling Muslims to explore the roots of their faith more freely is, in my mind, America's gift to Muslims."
A fresh start for America's estimated 3 million Muslims means an opportunity to explore Islam unadorned by the culture of a homeland. This can be upsetting for parents and grandparents whose faith blends traditional teachings and nostalgia for how it was practiced back in Pakistan or Indonesia.
If there is a theological tension between Islam and modernity, it is not evident in the embrace of technology from Bridges TV, the American Muslim Network on cable TV, to IslamiCity.com on the Internet.
Islamic advocacy groups led by students and professionals have been around for decades. Religious councils denounced terrorism. Latino Muslims are part of the faith's diversity.
A Muslim sorority is organizing at the University of Kentucky. Hardly a surprise. Generations of anxious students cluster around the familiar at Catholic Newman Centers and Baptist Student Unions -- download evening prayers on your iPod -- -- to ease the move away from home.
Religious expression changes where freedom inspires the faithful to explore. Muslim parents who want their children prepared to compete for admission to medical school will duel with parents who want a more-conservative curriculum at the local Islamic school.
America will make room for Islam. Religious freedom will shape its practice and expression.
The pattern is as old as the nation.
======================================================================
TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE SEATTLE TIMES PRINT EDITION
Call (206) 464-2121 or 1-800-542-0820, or go to
https://read.nwsource.com/subscribe/times/
HOW TO ADVERTISE WITH THE SEATTLE TIMES COMPANY ONLINE
For information on advertising in this e-mail newsletter,
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Muslim young appeal for help - Editorial, Australian Sunday Telegraph
http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?article=10304
Muslim young appeal for help
11-12-2005
Australian Sunday Telegraph:
YOUNG Muslims want the Federal Government to educate their parents about Australia to head off culture clashes at home.
They say a misunderstanding of Australian culture and laws is a major cause of inter-generational conflict between young Muslims and their migrant parents at home.
The issues that chafe the most include restrictions imposed on girls but not boys, including on when and where they are allowed to go out. They also want Islamic education to focus on clarifying the difference between religious practice and culture and pre-marriage counselling with parental seminars.
The recommendations were formulated at a summit attended by young Muslim leaders last week.
Australian Multicultural Foundation executive director Hass Dellal said the summit clearly showed that young people considered themselves both Australian and Muslim.
He said those attending spoke frankly and openly about the good things about being Australian.
They also discussed the problems they faced being Muslims in this country, Mr Dellal said.
"They very much see themselves as being part of this country and it was surprising to some extent to see how much the issue of inter-generational conflict came up," he said.
Delegate Iktimal Hage-Ali, of Punchbowl, said the issue was most acute between newly-arrived migrant parents and their children. "We are always taught to respect our parents, and we do, but in some families there is a clash because the parents have a certain view of Australia that is not accurate," she told The Sunday Telegraph.
"They may have come from countries where there is suspicion about police or they might have a view about how dangerous it is if their children are going out.
"I have Italian friends and the same issues arose with them in the past. I'm confident that it will disappear in another generation."
Ms Hage-Ali said young Muslims were proud Australians who loved their country, contrary to the stereotypes. She said education for parents to end isolationism should be conducted through a series of community forums.
Among other proposals put forward are improving literacy and English skills for older Muslims.
The Federal Government is considering the proposals.
Muslim young appeal for help
11-12-2005
Australian Sunday Telegraph:
YOUNG Muslims want the Federal Government to educate their parents about Australia to head off culture clashes at home.
They say a misunderstanding of Australian culture and laws is a major cause of inter-generational conflict between young Muslims and their migrant parents at home.
The issues that chafe the most include restrictions imposed on girls but not boys, including on when and where they are allowed to go out. They also want Islamic education to focus on clarifying the difference between religious practice and culture and pre-marriage counselling with parental seminars.
The recommendations were formulated at a summit attended by young Muslim leaders last week.
Australian Multicultural Foundation executive director Hass Dellal said the summit clearly showed that young people considered themselves both Australian and Muslim.
He said those attending spoke frankly and openly about the good things about being Australian.
They also discussed the problems they faced being Muslims in this country, Mr Dellal said.
"They very much see themselves as being part of this country and it was surprising to some extent to see how much the issue of inter-generational conflict came up," he said.
Delegate Iktimal Hage-Ali, of Punchbowl, said the issue was most acute between newly-arrived migrant parents and their children. "We are always taught to respect our parents, and we do, but in some families there is a clash because the parents have a certain view of Australia that is not accurate," she told The Sunday Telegraph.
"They may have come from countries where there is suspicion about police or they might have a view about how dangerous it is if their children are going out.
"I have Italian friends and the same issues arose with them in the past. I'm confident that it will disappear in another generation."
Ms Hage-Ali said young Muslims were proud Australians who loved their country, contrary to the stereotypes. She said education for parents to end isolationism should be conducted through a series of community forums.
Among other proposals put forward are improving literacy and English skills for older Muslims.
The Federal Government is considering the proposals.
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