The unravelling of Australian society

Jan 28, 2025
Sydney, Australia. 18th Feb, 2024. Thousands of people participated in a rally on February 18th in Central Sydney in support of Jewish Australians, amidst rising antisemitism. The rally was organized by the Christian group Never Again Is Now. Antisemitic incidents have surged in Australia since the conflicts between Israel and Hamas broke out last October. Credit: George Chan/Alamy Live News Contributor: Yu Pang George Chan / Alamy Stock Photo Image ID: 2WK2H0X

Australian society has never really been a cohesive entity. In the past its various socio-economic, religious, ethnic, cultural, and political factions have simply hung together largely through a sense of xenophobia about the outside world (read Asia) rather than a commitment to national unity based on shared values and mutually beneficial interests. But today xenophobia is compounding into fear and loathing on the campaign trail and in the interstices of a society that is in danger of unravelling. 

Without question, the recent spate of attacks on Jewish synagogues and property in Australia is utterly reprehensible. Opinion polls show that the attacks are driven by a rise in antisemitic prejudices, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne. There is a similar rise in anti-Muslim sentiments across the country. But these things are not coming out of the blue. They are just the latest evidence that Australia’s social cohesiveness, which has always been fragile, is on the verge of unravelling.

Some unconscionable politicians are enthusiastically exploiting the divisions now opening across Australian society, resorting to the basest kinds of populism. A particularly serious aspect to this perverse turn in Australian politics is the deliberate fuelling of a belief that the Netanyahu government’s genocidal actions in Gaza and the West Bank are somehow justifiable, when by any moral measure they clearly are not. Netanyahu’s egregious supporters in Australia must be very satisfied with this development.

This points to the fact that Australia today is facing a twofold crisis.

The first aspect of the crisis relates to how political leaders, right-wing figures in the Jewish community, and the usual media suspects, are confecting what amounts to a moral panic about antisemitism in the Australian community. Of course antisemitism anywhere at any time is disgusting. But to amplify it and use it as a political weapon to manipulate public opinion – as Peter Dutton, for example, is doing – is despicable.

The second aspect of the current crisis relates to the structuring of Australian society which has always been fragile. From the earliest days of white settlement, conflicts between Anglo-Scottish Protestants and Irish Catholics set in train divisions in the community that lingered on well into the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century the displacement and massacring of Indigenous Australians (as scrupulously documented by the late Professor Lyndall Ryan) established a pattern of terrible violence that persists even today. Violence was also directed at Chinese gold seekers in the 1850s, setting in train a tradition of anti-Asian racism that still belimes contemporary Australia (lest we forget Pauline Hanson).

Racist prejudices directed at post-World War II Greek and Italian immigrants lingered on well into the 1970s, but have largely been eclipsed by the growth of anti-Asian sentiments, as evidenced by attacks on immigrants from Asia, some murderous (for example, the stabbing of Indian students in the 1990s in Melbourne), others verbal (for example, Peter Dutton’s hysterical claims that fears of attacks by “African gangs” were making Melbournians reluctant to go out to restaurants).

We need to understand why the recent outbreaks of antisemitism and Islamophobia are motivating people with deeply-felt grudges against mainstream Australian society to act on those grudges. Little is yet known about the hooded perpetrators who under the cover of night paint swastikas on Jewish properties or try to set them alight. It is likely that many of these individuals lead miserable lives – as education dropouts, as unemployed youth, as drug addicts, some who are caught up in criminal networks, some with mental illnesses, some who are just plain dumb. They are nearly all victims of a society that blames them rather than understands their plight and acts to alleviate it.

Through its dissemination of lies, right-wing propaganda and false information, the social media are amplifying the resentments and psychopathic anger that many marginalised individuals are feeling in today’s Australia, some for real not imagined reasons. The lies, propaganda and false information spread like wildfire by the social media are motivating some of the marginalised to seek revenge on those they are blindly led to believe are the perpetrators of their misery. Scapegoating is the name of this nasty political game.

It is interesting to speculate about the sources of the mis-information and distorting propaganda circulating so dangerously among social media outlets, inflaming divisions within Australian society and recruiting the thugs responsible for the latest outbursts of antisemitism. The Federal Police are investigating allegations about overseas sources that are accused of recruiting (and presumably paying) guileless fools who feel a need to demonstrate their anger at being marginalised, encouraging them to prey on Jewish (or Islamic) organisations.

Who or what are these “overseas sources”? Some suggest they are hostile forces like the Russian FSB (the successor to the KGB). The Russians can easily (and usually correctly) be found to be interfering nefariously in other countries’ affairs. An outlandish possibility is that groups within Israel itself (for example Mossad) could be the source, seeking to drum up public sympathy for the Jewish diaspora (hence Netanyahu) in countries like Australia. Or the sources may be home grown neo-Nazi or similar anti-social organisations. The fact is that at this stage we simply don’t know, or our government doesn’t want us to know.

We need to address the shocking social, economic and educational conditions that are marginalising too many people in contemporary Australia, especially young people. The destructive growth of socio-economic inequality in the country over the past forty years has to be turned around, and fast. Radical reforms in employment, housing, education and welfare programs are urgently needed to begin healing the growing social divisions that are threatening to unravel Australian society. If that is allowed to continue it will become a sure pathway to a  fascist-like future for the country.

In the meantime the moral panic about antisemitism that elements in the Government, the Coalition and the media are trumpeting so wildly has to be exposed as grossly overblown and horribly simplistic. The Albanese government’s typically sotto voce approach to the issue is unforgivable. The moral panic is being deployed by all parties as a smokescreen for Australian politicians and media commentators to hide that grim fact that the holocaust which the Netanyahu government has unleashed on the Palestinians is a crime against humanity. Leaders in the Israeli government and the Israeli Defence Force must be brought before the International Criminal Court as soon as possible. To shy away from condemning their actions in the strongest possible terms and with strong measures is unconscionable. It ought to be profoundly un-Australian.

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