The new released report on anti-Semitism in Australia by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) makes for interesting reading. The ECAJ has focused on the rise of a new far-right group Antipodean Resistance, which is campaigning around universities and inner-city areas, with markedly increased activity.
Antipodean Resistance channels European anti-Semitism of the old skool: Jews as simultaneously untermenschen and running the world through everything from the White House to Greenpeace — an ideology that many thought had been chased to the fringes of life in the West. But it has been roaring back since the crash of 2008, and the failure for any recovery to follow it.
Like the vast bulk of anti-Semitism/Jew-hatred, it is a product of the right. Christian nationalism requires a notion of purity and totality; Jews, original witnesses to Christianity’s non-Christian origins, and transnational people, shatter that myth. Other types of racism — especially Muslim-hatred — often recrudesce to Jew-hatred. It’s a necessary journey for the right-wing paranoid mindset. Such beliefs will, are, ushering in street violence and intimidation against Jews, by the broken and malign people who form the bulk of the hard right.
But the willingness of the ECAJ to call this out, is in stark contrast with other Australian-Jewish peak bodies and groups — in particular The Australian Jewish News, which is so obsessively focused on left-wing campaigns critical of Israel, that it barely turns its attentions to these matters at all. This takes the AJN into some strange places. The daily read of a fairly elderly population is currently billing and cooing over Nick Cave, for his decision to play gigs in Israel.
You won’t find much about the rise of the far-right in Australia in the AJN. Nor of the increasing acceptance that anti-Semitic and Nazi-sympathetic/accepting figures are getting. Bottle-blonde right-wing troll boy Milo Yiannopoulos was recently outed as sympathetic to outright racist and anti-Semitic US hard-right figures. His tour of Australia has gone unremarked in the AJN. Local five-act tragedy Mark Latham has hooked up with Canadian outfit The Rebel Media, which publishes the bile of Tommy Robinson, the former leader of street-fighting group, the English Defence League.
The Spectator Australia (still publishing at time of writing) publishes the “High Life” columns of ageing playboy Taki, which endlessly restates the “shifty Jews make good lawyers” sort of crap that the eurotrash love. And the hard work of covering the ever-mutating combinations of hard-right groups is left to the anarchist Slackbastard blog.
Why does the AJN turn so little attention to the hard-right anti-Semitic threat? If they’ve done any newspaper reports on such figures, they haven’t made it to the paper’s online archive. Because it wants to label left-wing criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic — and real, actual, violent anti-Semitism would make such a charge look absurd.
The most recent time the AJN landed a blow on “anti-Semitism” was a beat-up about a “Judas” accusation levelled at a Port Phillip City councillor, Dick Gross, relating to planning matters — a stupid stunt in which someone left a mock-up of 30 pieces of silver on his desk. Gross, who has inspired, erm, strong opinions over the years on his varying trajectories on planning matters, is Jewish, so the stunt was taken as anti-Semitic, especially when it was found that the accuser was, shock, a Greens donor! The horror! Not a donor! The Oz was happy to take up the beat-up.
This sort of nonsense — attacking a political party for the actions of someone who has no official role in it — may serve as part of a wider war of position. But it doesn’t do much for Jewish-Australians, especially Jewish youth, who will be facing increasing — though still small — risks of violence from hard-right groups. Right-wing Zionist groups have a bad history of giving a free pass to right-wing anti-Semitism, for political gain. For the AJN more tell it as it is, less Tel Aviv, would be the go.
Et tu, grundle? Equating islam with race?
Yep, there’s always one. “Islam is not a race” so abusing Muslims is all right. Judaism isn’t a race either, Jewish people come in all colours and appearances. Who would identify Netanyahu as Jewish if he were an anonymous pedestrian in a Sydney street? Neither Islam nor Judaism is a race but both groups are “racialised” by bigots. The anti-Jewish bigots are often, not surprisingly, also anti-Muslim.
Why not outright say ‘religion with race’, AR?
Race = political exclusion, & religion = political exclusion, thus religion = race.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_fallacy 🙂
So when those non-racist charmers in the pub referred to Sam Dastyari as a “monkey” exactly which point of Islamic theology were they critiquing?
Saying that *would* be racist, IMO anyway. They’d likely call him that if he was a devout Iranian ‘xtian’
Guy,
I didn’t realize you are an avid reader of the Jewish News. I normally only read it like most of the readership, for the hatched matched and dispatched section. Normally I rely on the New York Times, BBC, ABC and the Melbourne Age for my news as the Jewish News is terribly parochial.
Unfortunately the journalists and much of the readership of the Jewish News are confused by an overlap of the extreme rabid right and the extreme left, as there has been a noticeable tendency for the latter to borrow the mythology , memes etc. from the former. You know just substitute the appropriate words starting with J for Z etc. and it’s amazing what you can get away with.
Not quite what I read, AR. The stated equation appeared to be Islamophobia with racism. I’d say that’s an entirely defensible proposition. Not only for the obvious reason that the ulterior motives of most Islamophobes are invariably racist. But more so because the historically quite recent idea of ‘race’ is itself a fabrication to exploit fear. Everyone everywhere exhibits evidence of genetic hodge-podgery, yet racial purity is exalted (when in fact common language is by far the more critical glue – so much so that when Arendt said the one thing she missed hearing German – I think even the angels might have wept). So yes, you’re right: Islam certainly isn’t a race. As far as the intent of the idea of ‘race’ is concerned, it’s better (which is it totally qualifies).
Just so I know what approximates the current PC level, can one be islamophobic but not racist?
Of course. You’d just need to have been born and raised in one of those plastic medical bubble things, with no human contact, media access, or pluralist education. In essence, you yourself would need to be an abstraction, because it’s only by totally unrealistic abstracting that you can arrive at a non-racialist conception of Islamophobia. Muslims are overwhelmingly dark-skinned people, and to suggest that irrational fear of them disregards their predominant skin colour because theoretically that’s possible, is manure.
Or, alternatively, never moved beyond the bien pissant wanker world and believed that all kultur is equal, with free magic ponies and unicorn poop for all.
It’s not post-modernist cultural relativism to say you mustn’t conflate the rational critique of a religion, its interpreters, and whatever their more insidious influences with the predominant skin colour of its believers. That’s just to disregard the actuality of klu klux klan-level racialist contempt. I accept (and actually sympathise with you, entirely) that you personally reserve the right to rate religions on humanist scales. What I don’t accept is that our moral certitude eliminates the need for tolerant, tempered, political coexistence.
It occurs to me that Crikey (as an alternative publication) has to make up its mind regarding the quality of reporting or opinion expressed. Is the publication to be a latter day Reader’s Digest or is it to be a substantial and informative publication? If the latter, then for a beginning , the writers, in general, are going to have to make an effort to get their terminology into some sort of order.
“Like the vast bulk of anti-Semitism/Jew-hatred, it is a product of the right. Christian nationalism requires a notion of purity and totality; Jews, original witnesses to Christianity’s non-Christian origins, and transnational people, shatter that myth. Other types of racism — especially Muslim-hatred — often recrudesce to Jew-hatred”
I have selected the forgoing sentence because it seems (to me) representative of the entire article. Let’s begin.
(1) anti-Semitism does not mean anti-jew. A Semite is a person from a geographical region that extends from Lebanon to across North Africa.
(2) In the context of the article – what, specifically are “the right”?
(3) There is no such thing as “Christian nationalism” Nationalism is a specific term of political ideology that possesses definite characteristics. A survey of history, contrary to the popular drivel that is articulated by the media very few wars have had their origins in religious matters.
Indeed wars have been motivated, in the main, by political considerations and the surprising aspect, in the context to the article, is that the political divide has UNITED Protestants and Catholics (to confine the matter to European wars).
As to Muslim-hatred or Jew-hatred one need only survey the comments on Crikey to ascertain just how disposed many contributors are to merely follow a (not in every case logical) point of view. Yet; an entire populus of a country can be wound up like a clock with the right orator holding a megaphone.
The remark “This sort of nonsense — attacking a political party for the actions of someone who has no official role in it — may serve as part of a wider war of position “ is deserving of credit but, on the other hand, it ought to be unnecessary if the author is writing for an informed readership.
Lastly, although not referred to in the article the person photographed is merely a result (or a reaction) of (inter alia) PC that has perverted general interaction and the anti-Hillary, Obama, (Bush, Sr & Jr) and indeed the W.J. Clinton brigade. Yes – there are nutters everywhere but as Marx put it – let’s not confuse the essence with the phenomenon.
Post scriptum.
(1) Islam is, by comparison, is thoroughly non-nationalistic (witness the extent of conversion from circa 700AD to the present) but the case is not quite so clear for Judaism.
(2) That Germany attacked France twice in a century or thrice in a century and a bit (considering the last 30 odd years of the 19 century) is hardly evidence of Christian Nationalism. More could be said but only at the risk of moving off-topic.
Where’s the outrage???
TWO YEARS AGO – that’s where it is! That’s when this pillow-biting little squirt of rat-spunk actually mattered. That’s when YOUR insipid bilge about “where’s the outrage” would’ve actually mattered.
Not after the Grauniad spent a few days all over him last week. But how does it feel to become Crikeys Neil Mitchell?