slackbastard

From Cronulla the plan was to take the train west — to Lakemba, to Liverpool — to interview young men of Lebanese descent, Muslim men, about their take on nationalism. Unfortunately, all requests for an interview were declined, albeit politely. I detect a feeling of exasperation towards a media they see as roundly unsympathetic.

One reticent youth, Ali, from the Lebanese Moslem Association, tells me over the phone that the idea of nationalism is alien to the values of Islam. “We don’t believe in it, in waving flags or this allegiance to a country or to a Prime Minister”, he says in a timid Australian drawl. “For us, we believe in one thing only — Allah.”

Herein may lay the problem — if there’s a new whipping boy, it’s Islam. The bombings in Bali, the terror of rapist Bilal Skaf, the sermons of Sheikh al Hilaly, all have worked to stoke the nationalists’ ire. But is there a problem at all? Full-scale riots in beachside suburbs aside (and it’s worth noting Australian beach culture has a history of tribalism), is there any real harm in nationalism, particularly the iconographic style: the flags, the tattoos, the car bumper stickers? After all, many of us identify as nationalists, or patriots at least. We cheer our Olympians, wave the national colours at the cricket and get all puffy-chested on Anzac Day.

Is it merely a case of harmless pride in being Aussie? Or is it more sinister? A kind of politically-correct racism that no longer says: “You’re not welcome”, but rather: “We’re better than you”.

Either way, there’s certainly a new fear. And the new breeding ground is cyberspace. A simple Google search uncovers a trove of right-skewed, nationalist, pro-white sites. Many, as you’d expect, are quite inflammatory and all done under this idea of “free speech”. Most are blogs, written under pseudonyms with no contact details. There’s a wide-held distrust of the media, who are viewed as leftie-sympathisers and pro-migration; which, as you can imagine, makes interviewing these bloggers difficult.

These furtive groups were thrown into the spotlight last December with the shooting death of 15-year-old Melbourne teenager Tyler Cassidy. Three policemen killed Cassidy after he bailed them up with a knife in the northern suburb of Northcote. Rather than acknowledge the mixed-up kid he was, the media instead latched onto his membership of the Southern Cross Soldiers (SCS), a nationalist youth group that is widely described as violently pro-white.

The group has virtually no structure, making it hard to find anyone willing to act as a mouthpiece. Using the social networking sites I track down one member willing to be interviewed. He’s a 16-year-old from Melbourne, a mere foot soldier, who will only talk under the moniker “Nova1”. He tells me there’s been an enormous interest in the group following Cassidy’s death. “He was just a fucked up kid, he was depressed”, he says of the shooting. “It had nothing to do with SCS or him being a white supremacist. The media want to paint us that, but we’re not.”

So what are they?

“We’re nationalists, we’re proud Australians. We like Australia the way it is. You’ve got all these Lebanese groups, these clerics, promoting hatred against Australians; well we’re saying enough is enough… why are these people here? These Muslim rapists, their violence; that idiot Sheikh al Hilaly, spouting his nonsense; disrespecting women; who’s keeping these people in check? They wanted to plant bombs at the AFL grand final. They’re animals, no better than dogs.”

He tells me the SCS’ job is to “keep these people in check because the politicians have failed”, although he can’t expand further when I ask him what that may actually entail.

Of the flags and the tattoos he says: “We love our country, so what! Everyone’s so hell bent on embracing immigrants that if you show any pride in Australia you’re called a racist. Yes, there is a real fear that the people who come to the country disrespect the country.

“Journalists want to portray the SCS as Nazis, as white supremacists, they want to spread this fear to sell their newspapers, they want everyone to believe we’re violent, we’re hell-bent on another ‘Cronulla’. It’s crap — they’ve never even bothered to interview us, to hear our side.

“But I tell you we’re growing, a lot of people now feel this way. I guess you can hide your head in the sand if you want to, or you can open your eyes that migration is the problem.”

If nationalism is on the rise, then it’s all being done under the shadow of the Australian flag. Which in many ways is odd. Australians aren’t great flag-wavers. We’re often embarrassed by our kitschy national symbols. At last count, 40 per cent wanted the flag changed. Few of us know the words to the anthem.

But white Australians have had a troubled history with any new migrant. Take the anti-Chinese riots in the Goldfields in the 1850s, the White Australia Policy that dominated our immigration for two-thirds of the 20th century, to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation a decade ago.

Why it’s happening now may be less clear than in the past — who’s doing it is easier to define. They’re white, middle-class and young.

When three blonde teenagers were photographed at Sydney’s Manly Beach on Australia Day, draped in the flag, FUCK OFF WE’RE FULL inked across their stomachs, it caused a predictable shit storm. The three, all from well-to-do backgrounds, defended their action as harmless because it wasn’t aimed at anyone in particular.

When a Darwin store stocked Australia Day T-shirts with the slogan THIS IS AUSTRALIA. WE EAT MEAT, WE DRINK BEER AND WE SPEAK FUCKING ENGLISH customers queued around the corner to get one. Following bad behaviour by flag-clad thugs during Australia Day celebrations on the Gold Coast, one of the area’s largest RSLs promptly banned all young people from its Anzac Day service.

In an essay published a few days later in The Sydney Morning Herald, writer John Huxley argued the flag had somehow morphed into a kind of weapon — the very thing intended to unite us was doing the opposite. However, Huxley also argued it was the thugs and not the flag that needed curtailing, and cited Big Day Out organisers’ misguided attempts to ban the flag in 2007. Put simply, when Stephanie Rice drapes herself in the national colours it’s a symbol of chest-beating pride — when Pauline Hanson does, it’s hatred and derision.

Professor John Stratton is head of cultural studies at Perth’s Curtin University and is a specialist in race, multiculturalism and youth culture. He doesn’t believe we’re seeing a new rise of nationalist fervour. Rather, Stratton argues, pride in the flag, a white nervousness, fear of immigrants, has existed in Australia since time immemorial. “Australians don’t like migrants, never have”, Stratton says. “They don’t welcome them easily, there’s this constant debate about how many migrants come to the country, whether we can support them, whether they’re the right sort of migrant. Ever since the White Australia Policy became one of the first acts of Parliament as far back as 1901 we’ve been totally preoccupied about who comes in the country.”

In the past, Stratton argues, this xenophobia would’ve manifested itself in direct attacks on new arrivals. However in these more politically correct climes, the 2009 version has moved from shouting down immigrants to shouting up the Anglo-Australian culture. No one likes being called a racist. A patriot is entirely different.

Stratton also singles out the policies of the Howard government that turned back asylum seekers, interned refugees and gave us a “War on Terror”. He believes this created cultural dread that anyone who came to this country was out to do us harm. Not that he paints Howard a racist, merely a shrewd politician who cannily exploited the fears of the electorate.

“You only need turn on the news to see the world’s a disaster”, he says. “Look at Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, Zimbabwe, there’s wars in the Congo, Africa’s got deep problems. Then there’s this huge financial crisis and what that will do will increase unemployment, there’ll be even more of this nationalism, this attitude of, ‘We don’t want these migrants coming here and taking our jobs’.”

~ White With Fear: Flagging a New Hate, John Bastick, Rolling Stone, No.690, May 2009 [Part One].

The Durban Review Conference / Festival of Hate Against Israel and the West (April 20–24, 2009) done come and gone… more or less. It took place without the participation of a number of member states, chief among them the United. On the eve of the conference on April 19 the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay expressed “shock” at this decision — why, I dunno.

The US statement cites, as its main stumbling block, the current text’s reaffirmation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA), the outcome document agreed by consensus at the end of the 2001 World Summit against Racism in Durban, South Africa – but not agreed by the US or Israel which had both left the Conference before it reached its conclusion.

The Australian Government — which continues to function under KRudd, as it did under HoWARd, as the US’ deputy sheriff in South-East Asia and the world stage — also decided to boycott the event. Minister for Foreign Affairs, Stephen Smith, April 19:

…Australia, however, cannot support a document which reaffirms the 2001 Durban Declaration and Program of Action in its entirety – as is currently the case. The 2001 Declaration singled out Israel and the Middle East. Australia expressed strong concerns about this at the time. The Australian Government continues to have these concerns. Regrettably, we cannot be confident that the Review Conference will not again be used as a platform to air offensive views, including anti-Semitic views.

Of additional concern are the suggestions of some delegations in the Durban process to limit the universal right to free speech.

In recent weeks, I have spoken to a number of my foreign ministerial colleagues who share these concerns about the process. Canada (January 23, 2008), Israel, Italy and the United States have already indicated that they will not participate.

As noted by Smith, other states to boycott the event include Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand/Aotearoa, Poland, Sweden and, of course, Israel. Ten states in total (including Australia and the US).

The KRudd Government’s decision to boycott the conference was applauded by Zionist groups in Australia, and criticised by others: see, for example, Opportunity to end racism goes to waste, John Langmore, The Age, April 21; Rudd UN boycott a ‘lost chance’ to fight racism, Daniel Flitton, The Age, April 23.

One of the main arguments put forward as to why UN member states should boycott the event is based on the characterisation of the Durban conference in 2001 as an ‘anti-Semitic hatefest’ (Greg Sheridan in The Australian: “It degenerated into a vile and hateful anti-Semtitic jamboree.”). This appears to be quite wrong, a fact pointed out on December 12, 2008 by Rupert Colville, Spokesperson of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, partly in response to an earlier editorial in The Australian:

A Google search on 10 December, using “fest” in conjunction with ‘Durban’ and ‘hate’ or ‘anti-Semitic,’ produced 49,900 web-page hits.* “Hate-fest” is not a common phrase, but it has been used in connection with the Durban process by people ranging from the Canadian Prime Minister to other politicians, academics, journalists, anti-Durban NGOs and a huge number of bloggers and other commentators.

The 2001 World Conference was indeed marred by the grotesque behaviour of some anti-Israel NGOs at the parallel NGO forum. Their inexcusable anti-Semitic actions, coupled with some difficult debates at the state level, have unfortunately cast the entire 2001 Conference and next year’s review in a negative light that is, by and large, unmerited.

Next year’s conference will focus on the 2001 outcome document, known as the Durban Declaration and Plan of Action (DDPA), which was adopted by consensus at the end of the 2001 World Conference. The DDPA consists of 341 paragraphs, of which six refer to the Middle East, anti-Semitism and directly related issues.

The first of those says: “We recall that the Holocaust must never be forgotten.” The second says “We recognize with deep concern the increase in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in various parts of the world, as well as the emergence of racial and violent movements based on racism and discriminatory ideas against Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities.”

The remaining four paragraphs include references to “the plight of the Palestinian people” and “the right to security for all States in the region, including Israel,” as well as calling upon “Israel and the Palestinians to resume the peace process, and to develop and prosper in security and freedom.”

The contents of the DDPA were agreed by all the states present at the end of the 2001 conference. It is a fundamental, thorough and very wide-ranging framework document on racism and related issues. It takes a vivid imagination to turn it into the manifesto of a “hate-fest.”

At the conference itself, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a ‘controversial’ speech, in the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, and in which the war hero with a wonky leg denounced Zionism and Security Council support for Israel (“the most cruel and repressive racist regime”), provided a potted history of Western imperialism, blamed Zionists for the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and opined that:

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the true root of racism is the lack of human understanding as God’s chosen creatures and deviation from the true path of human life and human missions in creation. Due to negligence in worshipping God with awareness and pondering on the philosophy of life and the path towards human perfection – which leads to the natural outcome of being committed to divine values and mankind – the horizon of human insight has declined. And limited and temporary interests became the criteria of evaluation and actions by human beings. Therefore, the seeds of evil power took their shape and by neglecting fair chances for others’ growth, it added to the boundaries of its development.

And so on: the President made no reference to racism inside Iran, which I can therefore only assume does not exist.

A few comments:

The campaign to boycott the event was about as successful as it was ever going to be. Israel, the United States, and a handful of their international allies did not attend: scores of other states did send delegates, as did many NGOs.

All this fuss over God & the State naturally brought to mind dead Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. In addition to expressing vile anti-Semitism, Bakunin also had some more interesting thoughts on this subject. Contra Ahmadinejad, Bakunin wrote “All religions, with their gods, their demi-gods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the prejudiced fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties”; “In a word, we reject all legislation, all authority, and all privileged, licensed, official, and legal influence, even though arising from universal suffrage, convinced that it can turn only to the advantage of a dominant minority of exploiters against the interest of the immense majority in subjection to them. This is the sense in which we are really Anarchists.”

Notwithstanding the boycott by Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and, the United States, the outcome document of the Durban Review Conference was adopted by consensus on April 21 [PDF]. It makes no reference to Israel or the Middle East.

The response of Zionists and other critics of Durban II are surveyed by the blog ‘Muzzlewatch’; Australian blogger Antony Lowenstein also has some comments; while the Israeli group Gush Shalom issued the following statement:

Iranian Farce and Israeli grotesque
April 20, 2009

A conference against racism attended by Iranian President Ahmedinajad is a farce – but the campaign against this conference, conducted by Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman, is grotesque. Ahmedinajad and Lieberman are twins, perfectly fit for each other’s company, both of whom built a political career upon the dissemination of hatred, the constant issuing of inflammatory racist statements designed to arouse the darkest of passions. The Netanyahu-Lieberman government is completely unable to respectably represent Israel in the international arena and defend the country’s most basic interests.

See also : Blasphemy! Bolt! Hate-fest! Dirka Dirka! (March 14, 2009).