What kind of Australia do we want to be? Let’s stop dodging the hard questions

The worst terrorist attack in Australian history has triggered no shortage of hot takes. Pro-Israel writers blame critics of Israel. Anti-Israel activists blame Israel for putting a target on Jews’ backs. Lefties blame conservatives for suppressing legitimate criticism of Israel. Conservatives blame the prime minister for allowing anti-Jewish sentiment. Some say we mustn’t scapegoat Muslims or collectively blame pro-Palestinians. Others say the attack proves that Israel is not to blame for antisemitism, “the world’s oldest hatred”.

And everyone agrees on the answer: Say no to hate. Well, that’s nice, innit?

One of our groups, Jewish Australians, can no longer gather in public without a legitimate fear of violence. In the aftermath of last Sunday, the same is probably true for Palestinian and Muslim Australians, who deserve our sympathy and care. How do we pull back?

Multiculturalism isn’t easy. You can’t sustain a mosaic of different communities in a peaceful equilibrium without tethering them to something universal. For my generation, which grew up in the 1990s and 2000s, that tether was liberalism, meaning respect for free speech, for women, for gay people, for tearing down dogmas, for playing the ball not the person, for judging people by their arguments and behaviour, not by their skin colour or tribe.

But the past decade has seen a shift away from defending universal values towards fetishising group identities. We’ve valorised “difference”, obeyed new language rules, pandered to grievances, and flaunted our virtuousness via ever more outraged social media posts about the controversy du jour.

This allows us to dodge hard questions: how to address the demographic anxiety some Australians feel about high immigration, how to integrate insular migrant communities into the mainstream, how to defuse ancient beefs, how to criticise religious fanaticism without insulting people’s faiths, how to balance free speech against extreme beliefs.

Fleshing out such questions is what allows multiculturalism to survive. But we’ve dropped our bat and walked off the field, preferring to recite cliches about how we oppose all forms of bigotry and how difference is our strength. In the vacuum, many Australians now get their moral guidance from provocateurs, ideologues and algorithms, rather than from the tradition that gave us the Enlightenment.

Standing up for universal principles may require courage, but no great insight. It isn’t rocket science to oppose fanatically religious, homophobic, infidel-hunting, blasphemy-obsessed, Jew-hating, anti-Enlightenment jihadist sympathisers. It goes without saying that most Australian Muslims abhor such views – a nuance that is lost on the kind of xenophobic bigots who will gain popularity if the rest of us refuse to take religious lunacy seriously.

This is not to say that if only we had all tut-tutted a bit more about jihadism, then Islamic State supporters would have thrown in the towel. The ineffable, sloshing vibes that constitute a “culture” are complex. But when a culture rewards loud pronouncements of easy groupthink – while penalising contrarianism and rational analysis – it is not optimally defusing its internal threats.

Week after week, chunks of our cities were overtaken by protesters carrying signs that had nothing to do with Israeli policies, such as “globalise the intifada” and “by any means necessary”. The ubiquitous “from the river to the sea”, benign-sounding to bystanders, proposes that an Arab state ought to sit on top of all the land of Israel – that Jewish people should live at the pleasure of rulers whose theocratic education would make Australia’s most radical imam look like a Jew-loving hippy. Is such a sentiment just innocent political speech? Or, in the wake of the jihadism on October 7, 2023, could it be understood as a threat to conquer the world’s only Jewish safe space?

If this subtext seems a bit in-the-weeds for a layperson at a rally, that’s understandable. Luckily, laypeople had two other terrific options: they could hold their tongues, or they could speak with some Jewish people and then decide what to do.

Jewish Australians were avoiding parts of their own cities every weekend for fear of being heckled. More Australians attend these marches than the total number of Jews in Australia. The scale, logistics and co-ordination of the protests were staggering.

According to British police and US intelligence, Iranian agents have posed as online activists to create unrest in Western countries, encouraging Gaza protests and providing organisers with financial support. When the Albanese government, to its credit, expelled the Iranian ambassador in August, it was because the Islamist fanatics who run Iran were accused of firebombing Jewish-Australian schools, homes, vehicles and synagogues to make it look like spontaneous home-grown anger. Tehran has been actively pursuing a strategy to divide Australians.

So if you found yourself marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge chanting slogans you didn’t write, about a complex issue you’re not really across, surrounded by crowds chanting the same thing, which others found intimidating … you may, in fact, not have been elevating the discourse. “Intifada” technically means “uprising”, but in the context of Palestinian resistance it implies exploding buses, drive-by shootings and suicide bombers in cafes. (See: “Second Intifada” in Wikipedia, kids). Presumably, most of the protesters didn’t know this. After last weekend, they do. The Intifada has been globalised.

This is the point in the article where one ought to do a lot of bum-covering and throat-clearing, acknowledging, for example, that “Free Palestine” is not antisemitic (most of the world’s Jews also wish for a Palestinian state that accepts Israel), and that it is disingenuous of pro-Israel hawks to cry antisemitism at every criticism of Israeli policies. But must we swaddle every claim in both-sidesism? Might this squeamishness not be part of the problem?

Imams who indoctrinate young Australians into harbouring theocratic hang-ups about female impurity, Jewish depravity, homosexual deviance and infidel blasphemy are inconsistent with what made Australia the kind of country that attracted migrants in the first place. If we can’t figure out what’s wrong with such beliefs – or, rather, if we feel the need to pretend that we can’t figure it out – then by what values will Australian multiculturalism be sustained? “Say No to Hate”?

Genuine grievances can’t be wished away. Many Australians are worried about demographic change, high immigration, migrant integration and cultural unity. When the only people talking openly about such issues are Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce, we’re not bringing our best team to the field.

It’s up to all of us to refresh multiculturalism by tethering it to universal values and admitting that it demands sacrifices all around. It demands that people in the majority make themselves uncomfortable, around unfamiliar languages, faiths, customs and food. And it demands that people in the minority give up dogmatism, grudges and cultural feuds.

Yes, it’s uncomfortable. But if liberals won’t defend Australian values, voters will elect illiberals to do the job.

Josh Szeps is the host of the podcast Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps.

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