dirk the way your getting stuck into miranda i suspect that you have the hots for her.

so stop pretending you hate her and just ring her up for a date.

Much more subtle than Greg Barns' diatribe about Australia, but still with the thinly disguised sneer at how most Anglo Aussies are racist against the "other".

Did anyone else notice that Moses chided Miranda Devine for using a Nazi Germany reference (albiet one event) but made no mention of Rev Smith's article on this very site which compared Australia to fascist Germany?

Looks like Moses is just out to give another group of Australians a black arm band to play the victim.

t.u.s.

Dirk Moses here. It is true, I don't mention Father Dave's article and his misleadingly alarmist reference to the Reichstag fire and civil freedoms. That is because it had not appeared when I sent mine to ONO a week ago.

The defensive comments of some folks here are noteworthy. They bear out what I say in my first paragraph: that too many people are unable to engage with arguments that discomfort them. And that they think they have all the answers. Yet, at least with the two dismissive comments here, none are ventured.

dirk, good article

for those that knock the article can you explain the following

why did aussie males with a culture that only whimps hit women attacked in mob style women purely because they were of middle east appearance?

did they believe they were the ones that attacked the lifesavers?

do you condone the attacks if not why are you not condemning them?

on an earlier post someone was claiming that anglo-saxons haven't formed gangs.

give me a break, study the history of organised crime first of all it was the Irish mob, followed by the Sicilian Mafia and then the Colombian gangs and to a large extent now the Russian mafia.

What is the common theme, family connections, hence organized crime and the such consists of groups from the one racial background.

When was the last time you heard of a crime syndicate made up of Russians, Greeks, Turks and Irish?

Quite frankly it was a pogrom nothing else,those that want to delude themselves need to wake up

Dirk

It was with great trepidation I read your article past your initial inaccuracy regarding the Cronulla riot, note not riots, for I had read your bio and I understood you to be truly an academic, a learned person. I knew I would have to respond in a manner befitting real intellect.

I was wrong. Most of my truckie mates could manoeuver their oversize interstate rigs through the holes in the superficial argument you presented as an intellectual's expert opinion....

I'm tired tonight so I'll do it tomorroww besides your article... well it really does deserve some attention from a perspective that is based in daily experience and a truly thoughtful, and critically so, view from we who have never been cloistered or who have suckled from the public purse in any way.

Commentary on the riots has also been disappointing from our esteemed academics, as well it seems.

Dirk’s first paragraph leaves the reader with the impression that a non-partisan appraisal of the event and its causes is to follow. But that’s not the case. I particularly love how the unabashed racist Greg Barnes “vents his spleen”, but Miranda Devine is accused of despising immigrants, Alan Jones incites pogroms and Piers Akerman de-nationalises Muslims. Moses also accuses Devine of using “cheap Nazi analogies”, but then of course goes on to introduce Nazi imagery throughout the rest of the article, slyly comparing Australian society with 1930’s Germany. Dirk is the last person who should be getting indignant about Nazi analogy.

The whole article is just another rant against Australian society. Like it or not Dirk, this country has a history. We have a culture. We are proud of both. Our history didn’t start with the disastrous advent of multiculturalism, no matter how much you wish for it. No one is saying that immigrants must forget where they come from. Why should they? Most people whose families have been here for 200 years still identify with their Scottish or Irish or English origins so it’s a bit much to expect others to not do the same. By the same token we’re all Australians first.

The whole problem is one of spine (or should I say, lack of it). The police have to get a spine and enforce the law. They must prosecute law-breakers no matter their ethnic origins. The judiciary has to get a spine and start actually punishing people for anti-social behaviour. We’ve seen it once with a youth jailed for carrying a tree branch. Pity we haven’t seen it in too many other instances. People like jelly-backed Dirk need some spine as well. They need to stop their condescending attitudes to immigrants that have them cast as victim, as poor helpless urchins powerless against the pogroms, disenfranchisement and bigotry of the dominant white patriarchal society.

By the way, go ask a Jew who actually experienced Kristallnacht what a pogrom is you fools.