The walkout of writers shows how promiscuous the politics of safety can be

What might we discern from the wreckage of the Bendigo Writers Festival?

To recap, nearly 60 per cent of its participants withdrew on the eve of the festival, protesting against the last-minute introduction of a code of conduct. That code, drafted by La Trobe University (which was presenting some sessions), required participants to have “conversations that are inclusive, thoughtful and welcoming to diverse perspectives” and to “avoid language or topics that could be considered inflammatory, divisive or disrespectful”. Appended were definitions of both antisemitism and Islamophobia, inviting the reasonable inference that the war on Gaza was top of organisers’ minds. Ultimately, more than 20 sessions were cancelled, including the opening and closing ceremonies.

It later emerged that an antisemitism advocacy group had pressured the festival to remove an ardent Palestinian-Australian speaker on the grounds of alleged antisemitism. The whole thing was, to be frank, disastrous.

The reasons for writers’ withdrawals are subtly varied. Some withdrew as an act of solidarity, over what they saw as the silencing of Palestinian voices. A related argument criticised the code of conduct for silencing criticism of Israel, and especially stifling discussion of genocide that is inherently “inflammatory” and “divisive”. Another objection regarded the guidelines as impossibly vague and unworkable. The broadest objection, articulated most clearly by the Australian Society of Authors, reiterated in bold type the inviolable principle that “freedom of expression is a fundamental right”.

Hereabouts, there’s a tension. The festival organisers explained that La Trobe introduced the code because it “felt it was necessary to emphasise the importance of safety and wellbeing for all participants”. If that language strikes you as familiar, it’s because it distils progressive politics’ dominant expression over the past decade or so. It is in progressives’ hands that confronting speech has been reconceived, not as offensive, but as unsafe. On this basis, speech could constitute harm, or even “violence”, and should therefore be curtailed. Such safety discourse became all the rage, especially on university campuses where various academics and invited speakers faced regular student complaints or student-led “deplatforming” campaigns.

Until two years ago, such claims have always revolved around speech alleged to be racist, misogynist, homophobic or transphobic. That is, they have gathered around matters of progressive concern, and policed a progressive consensus (with some complications around transphobia). The kink in the Bendigo Writers Festival was that “safetyism” was being invoked in the name of a cause progressives largely reject. In the chiefly progressive context of a writers’ festival, the politics of safety short-circuited.

Gaza has cut diagonally across such principles. Conservatives, whether in the Coalition or on the editorial pages of the Murdoch press, once positioned themselves as free-speech crusaders against safetyism, denouncing it as a censorious means of imposing leftist orthodoxy by force. Now, they suddenly find themselves policing protests, arguing that the speech of some make Jews feel unsafe, especially on university campuses. The same people who campaigned to abolish racial vilification laws like section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act began to demand punishment of what they considered antisemitic speech. Coalition senators began grilling university administrators in committee hearings about campus protests, and insisted they listen to the “lived experience” of Australian Jews – effortlessly borrowing from the progressive glossary.

Meanwhile, progressives found themselves unmoved by claims that Jews felt unsafe on university campuses or in the city amid ongoing protest. This was summarily dismissed not only as a matter of fact, but on the basis that such feelings could not trump the right to speech and protest. Gaza has led lots of people to adopt principles they had previously opposed. Free speech and safetyism have been swapped like trading cards.

True, not all those who withdrew in Bendigo resorted to free speech arguments. There is no sense those wishing specifically to stand in solidarity with Palestinian voices, or insisting they use their platform to call out genocide, would stand in similar solidarity with a silenced Israeli voice, or object to the removal of a speaker who wished to mount, say, a defence of white settlement in Australia. Their commitment to safety politics is consistent, just partial. It applies only to the marginalised, and not the powerful. Of course, this presumes such categories are uncontestable, and we’re seeing how that now plays out. So, for instance, it currently seems to exclude Zionists, even if that describes a majority of Australian Jews (who define it in lots of different ways), and even if that community is facing very real prejudice and intimidation.

But all this shows just how promiscuous these politics of safety can be. I understand the appeal, especially to those who feel the marketplace of ideas tends to favour the rich, the powerful, the culturally dominant. That it tends to sideline marginalised, minority voices. But if the only way it can be invoked consistently is to make some prior judgment about who deserves such safety; if we must first tabulate oppressor and oppressed, powerful and meek, then the whole thing becomes an exercise in power anyway: a contest over who decides such things. At that point, it becomes a weapon that, however useful it appears in a given moment, will eventually be used against you. Unfortunately, some of safetyism’s proponents never seem to have considered that possibility until now, and some of its long-standing critics seem unaware of their sudden conversion to it.

Now that we’re here, now that people across the political spectrum have been singed by safetyism’s flame, might we take this opportunity to reassess? Could we draw a common lesson, based on a newly common experience, that in arenas dedicated to public debate, safety makes a poor organising principle? Because if we look closely, in this wreckage lies a certain celebration of what we’ve long had. Not free speech absolutism, but a broad public debate silencing a carefully defined hate speech and little else. Painful, imperfect, in need of more representative voices, but at least capable of surviving beyond one’s own politics, of being applied consistently and – perhaps most important – inconveniently. That may seem a modest virtue, but this heightened moment shows it might be a vital one.

Waleed Aly is a broadcaster, an author, an academic and a regular columnist.

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