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The Forum > Article Comments > Pogrom talk > Comments

Pogrom talk : Comments

By Dirk Moses, published 11/1/2006

Dirk Moses argues the media commentary on the Cronulla riots has been disappointing and failed to offer any new perspectives.

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Part 3 of 4

Parts 1 and 2 were posted yesterday

We don’t give a damn about the 9/11 atrocity or the Bali murders any longer, that’s your domain.
We don’t give a damn about the hill tribes in Northern Lebanon and even less about their alleged lawlessness. We have enough of our own to deal with. Lawlessness not hill tribes. We don’t give a damn about the geo – whatever. That’s just generalised verbage. We don’t despise anyone on any basis unless it is in accordance with the terms noted above. Nor do we exclude anyone unless it is on the same terms and we’ve pointed out the anguish they cause but they just carry on and on and on without listening.
What we care about is that some duckheads want to run around attacking women and surf-lifesavers with apparent impunity from prosecution and with no condemnation from their kith and kin. And make a mental note lot’s of that behaviour pre-dated 11 September 2001.

Is Piers that fat bloke? (With thank’s to Fatty.)

‘…uncovering the female body and having access to it’…Christ, most of my male mates would laugh at the pomposities contained in that remark and the women would grin and sneer at the inferences. They prefer to think they’d shared theirs, not given mere access.

‘I don’t pretend to have the answers…’ Yes you do. But it‘s the wrong answer. You blame us as racist. That’s not an answer it only antagonises us and that will result in, as VGC says, we

‘Aussies will treat this like a joke and will not even engage in debate because it is just too ridiculous for word’

Your conclusion confirmed the point of your article. You think we Aussies are racist, the white ones sit atop your imagined ethnic hierarchy and we should all allow some Australians to behave outside our common laws. ‘Given the persistence of an ethnic hierarchy, it is not as simple as asking everyone to play by the rules?’ Why not? Your less than simple suggestion is not the way it is in our Australia
Posted by keith, Friday, 20 January 2006 4:38:02 AM
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Part 4

Bashir and Shehadie were husband and wife.
Brice is Governor of Queensland and would have made a wonderful hooker.
There’s only ever been one pub in West End… The Melbourne.

I don’t censor reading choices. I’m simply too busy to discuss idiotic ideas. (How’s the comprehension?). You have a problem with my manliness? I don’t have to prove mine by talking about my strengths. You don’t like the way I express myself? …go indulge in a self-examination.
I haven’t been whinging as you depicted. (Comprehension is becoming an issue between us.) I am whinging you labelled me racist because of the behaviour of a few violent Anglos in Cronulla. I’m whinging about the excuses proffered for the behaviour of Lebanese Muslim youth gangs in Sydney. Your article excuses that behaviour too,
‘… it is not surprising that many Muslim Lebanese Australians feel alienated from mainstream culture. Not a week passes when some talk-back jock calls for them to profess their loyalty to the country. In some cases, plainly, the message has been internalised: we Lebanese Muslim youths are indeed foreigners here.’
I’m whinging about the lack of condemnation from the Lebanese Arab Muslim community. You ignore that, yet you condemn the Anglo Australians at Cronulla and Australians who weren’t.

Throughout your article you transferred media attitudes onto us Australians. Do you really think they reflect our attitudes? No? Then clearly say so. We’ve probably more in common with you than you realise. Do you see yourself as engaged in a pogrom or racist? No…neither do we...you or us.

If we both have courage… we’d undertake an exercise in self-criticism …like VGC…you’d retract your aspersion. I’d re-assess my insults and offer a retraction too…and we’d part peaceably but may still dislike each others attitudes but we’d contain any enmity…mate.

Is mine an entrenched position? Probably, but the truth mostly is.

I played footie and cricket sadly not at the ‘Gabba, Ballymore or Lang Park.

My Aussie chorus would be aghast at my spouting of opinions so publicly.

I’m an immigrant. Where from? No-one gives a rats…, for I’m Australian!
Posted by keith, Friday, 20 January 2006 4:42:44 AM
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Dear Keith
I always value and appreciate your posts. They clearly relfect thought and research... but this bit.. could do with a bit of reflection

"…Christ, most of my male mates would laugh"

as Craig Blanch gave me a 'nudge' about using a capital 'i' for indigenous, may I humbly give you a nudge here ? :)

C.T. STUDD who was one of the Cambridge Seven (top cricketers and graduates who gave up their careers to goto China as missionaries)
once said
"If Christ be God, and died for me, no sacrifice I can make can be too great for Him"

He followed through on that and lived and served to his dying breath among the Africans in Congo,

"Difficulties, dangers, disease, death, or divisions don't deter any but Chocolate Soldiers from executing God's Will. When someone says there is a lion in the way, the real Christian promptly replies, "That's hardly enough inducement for me; I want a bear or two besides to make it worth my while to go." C.T.STUDD

http://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/mscambridge7.html

In other words.. "Christ" is close to many our hearts.

Keep up the good work mate... appreciated
Posted by BOAZ_David, Friday, 20 January 2006 9:12:47 AM
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Davo, for once you're correct about something, yes racism is more fluid and transient, insidious and overt 'emotion' and this is my point. To depend solely on culture and cultural explanations infers a intransigence in social and cultural relations between protagonists. Yes common ground can be made between cultures but this can only truly be meaningful once both sides admit their racism inform their ideas and actions. Racism has a longer history (at least since the advent of the West) than cultural dichotomies and conflict. It’s only a small leap from thinking someone's religious or cultural expressions or beliefs are in inadequate and inferior to ascribing these same inadequacies to biological determininants of how people look and speak and then rationalising this with a historical overview that gives it logical persuasion.

I am not arguing for a Left Liberal multiculturalism (which tends to exoticize everything and everyone) but rather a critical race examination of cultural differences.
For this to happen we all require a much more sophisticated understanding of what racism is. This requires the dominant cultural group to understand its own racial construction and ethnicity objectively. In this case a question I ask is , “What does it mean to be white, (besides never having to explain what it means to be white).

Simply saying 'I'm Australian' avoids deeper interogations into these important questions about power and privlidge.

Again, I sense this is the same frustration that Dirk Moses has in regards to media representations and commentary on the riots. But he does not go this far in his analysis (and he should have). What held him back is indeed interesting
Posted by Rainier, Friday, 20 January 2006 9:41:22 AM
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Keith,

Outlining your case in this systematic way greatly improves the focus of this discussion. I am sure all are grateful for the trouble to which you have gone. Given the word limit, I shall omit discussions of gender till tomorrow.

1. You contend that my argument about pogroms implicates all Australians and is therefore racist. After rereading what I wrote, I can see how you came to this conclusion. My expression was clumsy. I should have written that pogroms are conducted by MEMBERS OF the majority IN ITS NAME against a subordinate minority.

The condemnation of the violence in all sections of Australian society was palpable. And yet the relationship of the majority of Australians (whose core comprises Anglos, Rainier rightly notes) to the pogromists is ambivalent, as I tried to suggest (but without adequate precision). “While we condemn their violence, we also UNDERSTAND the reasons for it.” That is why the media, and you it appears as well, subscribe to the provocation thesis I mentioned in my article. And that is why you persist in suggesting that the attack on the lifesavers and, allegedly, on [our?] women is the cause of the pogrom. Once again, I have to ask, how do you explain the excess of the event, namely, that ALL Mediterranean-looking people were targeted and not just THOSE SPECIFIC men who committed the assaults?

2. Now the same temptation to, in effect, excuse the subsequent revenge attacks confronts the Lebanese Muslim community. Why? Because that is the nature of group life. We can’t escape it, because our individual identities are also constituted by our group membership(s). That is why we feel intense pride or shame for the actions of other members of our group (ethnicity, nationality, religion, sport’s club). And that is why some posters here can speak of the desire in the Shire for cultural homogeneity. The mixing of cultures leads to “carnage”, wrote one. Note the rhetorical violence (again).

Rainier: ich stimme mit Ihnen überein aber den Abstraktionsgrad Ihrer Interventionen ist zu hoch für dieses Forum. Wir sitzen ja nicht im Uni-Seminar.
Posted by D. Moses, Friday, 20 January 2006 2:07:40 PM
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3. It is true that the animus in the term “Wog” has lessened over the decades, but it remains readily available as we saw in the pogrom rhetoric directed against “Lebs and Wogs.” Plainly, Australia is not as ethnically-neutral as you and your circle of friends like to believe.

Also consider this: by identifying you and your friends as Australians and making yourself spokesman of the nation, all the while demanding answers from the Lebanese Muslim community (three times you do this. Incidentally, in today’s Herald you’ll see a report about the trial of one of the youths that beat up the lifesaver on 3 December. No impunity after all), are you not expressing the very ethnic hierarchy you deny?

Besides, how do you know that the revenge attacks have not been condemned by community leaders? Are they supposed to fax you in Brisbane? Take a look at the lively debate among the youth of this community (http://forums.muslimvillage.net/). This OLO discussion is problematic in so far as seems to be conducted by Anglos (or their functional equivalents) ABOUT ‘them’ and without ‘their’ participation.

4. You are tired of apparent Lebanese-Muslim feelings of victimization. But consider this: your initial postings were very emotional, even abusive, because you felt I was tarring you and the nation as racist. Reread your first intervention. Like some of BD’s early ones, it is suffused with considerable rhetorical violence. Now imagine for a moment that you belonged to a group whose young men are depicted weekly in the media as rapists and terrorists; indeed, that you are one of those young men. If you try to engage with young people from these communities – I have them in my classes – you’ll find intense distrust of the media and feelings of persecution. If you think it is exaggerated, ask yourself why, and reflect for a moment on your own vehemence in relation to an internet article by an obscure academic. Your indignation appears to me to be a textbook expression of the wrath of the people.

More tomorrow.
Posted by D. Moses, Friday, 20 January 2006 2:16:38 PM
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