Australians often respond to tragedy with compassion and solidarity. Too often, that moment is quickly overtaken by a cycle of performative outrage – loud, divisive, and indifferent to the care it claims to express.
Like many Australians, I am sickened by the tragedy and yet heartened by the compassion shown across cultural and religious lines. In moments of shock and loss, people have come together quietly and decently, offering support rather than suspicion, care rather than blame.
What is harder to stomach is how quickly grief gives way to the politics of misery – a perpetual, performative outrage machine that feeds on escalation rather than care.
What follows this shift is strikingly consistent. Those who ask reasonable questions, seek evidence, or urge restraint are recast as suspect, even hostile. Context is treated as complicity, and moral certainty is prized over understanding. What emerges is not discussion but performance – calibrated for visibility, amplification, and moral display rather than truth or accountability.
To describe this dynamic, imagine a deliberately exaggerated metaphor: Zionista and the Perpetual Performative Outrage Machine. Not as humour, but as shorthand for a system in which outrage becomes the product and misery the currency. In this mode, grief is crowded out by spectacle, complexity is flattened, and the politics is no longer about care or justice, but about sustaining noise.
The cost of this dynamic is not abstract. It corrodes trust, chills legitimate inquiry, and fractures the fragile solidarity that often emerges in the immediate aftermath of tragedy. When outrage becomes performative, empathy narrows rather than expands. Communities retreat into defensive postures, good-faith actors withdraw, and space for collective mourning or understanding collapses. What remains is noise – loud, self-affirming, and ultimately indifferent to the people it claims to defend.
Media dynamics play a central role in sustaining this cycle. In the race for attention, outrage is easier to package than nuance, and moral certainty travels faster than care or caution. Selective framing, truncated context, and the amplification of the most incendiary voices reward escalation while sidelining restraint. The result is not informed public understanding, but a feedback loop in which performance is mistaken for leadership and volume for moral clarity.
This pattern is visible in countless public exchanges following tragedy. A reasonable question is posed, often seeking clarity or evidence, and is met not with engagement but with accusation. Images or fragments are circulated without context, dissent is reframed as hostility, and inquiry is treated as moral failure. What matters is not what is true or helpful, but what signals outrage most effectively.
There are incentives driving this behaviour. Performative outrage offers instant visibility, moral positioning without responsibility, and the appearance of virtue without the burden of care, repair, or accountability. For some actors, outrage is not a response but a strategy – a way to mobilise attention, rally identity, and silence scrutiny. In this environment, escalation is rewarded and restraint is misread as weakness.
Responsible leadership in moments of tragedy looks very different. It centres victims and communities rather than commentators. It prioritises accuracy over immediacy, restraint over amplification, and solidarity over spectacle. It allows space for grief without weaponising it, and for questions without turning them into tests of loyalty. Above all, it recognises that care is not loud, and accountability is not performative.
Australians have repeatedly shown they are capable of compassion, solidarity, and restraint in the face of loss. What undermines that capacity is not disagreement or inquiry, but the politics of misery – the perpetual performative outrage machine that converts grief into spectacle and division into currency. We should be clear-eyed about this dynamic, not to inflame it further, but to refuse to participate in it. In moments that demand humanity, noise is not leadership – and outrage is no substitute for care.
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Hi Lachlan, yours is an interesting discussion that was, I guess, prompted by the recent tragedy in Sydney, but actually it has a wide application. To quote you:
“.. how quickly grief gives way to the politics of misery…”
I think this attitude arises from the unfounded notion of “politics of entitlement” which, in Australia, presumes to include free speech and rational criticism of authority. This is a valued feature of both our culture, constitution and governance. Sure, some people will over-step the mark of “a fair go” to gain a personal advantage but when vitriol and mis-information impose on the reasonable comforts of others then rules become activated. George Brandis (former LNP Attorney General) said that “…People do have a right to be bigots…”. I think he meant that bigoted people can think what they like but must curb the content and tone of their spoken word so as to express their opinions rationally and without intimidation or offence to others. In other words truth over emotional rhetoric.
I find the current trend to enforce censorship over free speech to satisfy the interests of a foreign government to be offensive. Australia already has adequate racial vilification laws in place and these have been successfully tested against allegations of religious intolerance. What is lacking, perhaps, is the hesitancy of law enforcement agencies to apply these laws in a reasonable and accurate manner so that courts will meter out justice. The hyperbolic attitude of mainstream media feeds unfounded anxieties. As to the recent appointment of a federal “special envoy”; the terms of reference should include all religions and belief cultures – not just one! Australians may be critical of other nations but we do not interfere and similarly, no foreign government has the right to agency in either the governance or “education” of Australians.
Hi Mediocrates, thank you for such a thoughtful and careful engagement with the article. I appreciate you taking the time to read it in the spirit it was intended.
I agree with you that what I describe as the “politics of misery” has a much wider application than any single incident. It often emerges from a distorted sense of entitlement, where free speech is conflated with the right to intimidate, misinform, or escalate emotion without responsibility. As you rightly note, free speech and rational criticism of authority are core to our culture and governance, but they rely on good faith, restraint, and accuracy to function.
On George Brandis, I think your reading is probably the most charitable and legally coherent interpretation. As Attorney-General, he should have chosen his words more carefully. My own view is that he was attempting to draw a distinction between holding beliefs and expressing them in ways that cause harm or intimidation, but the phrasing he used was loose enough to be weaponised by those acting in bad faith. That imprecision has had a long afterlife, and it still surfaces in debates like this one.
I also share your concern about hyperbolic media coverage and the way it amplifies anxiety rather than understanding. When outrage becomes the default lens, nuance is lost and existing legal frameworks are treated as if they are either inadequate or irrelevant, when in fact Australia already has tested and workable laws around vilification and incitement. As you suggest, the issue is often less about the absence of law than about inconsistent or hesitant application.
Your point about the special envoy is also well taken. Any approach that appears to privilege one belief system over others risks undermining social cohesion rather than strengthening it. Australians are capable of robust debate and criticism of foreign governments without external intervention or moral instruction, and that principle cuts both ways.
Thanks again for engaging so constructively. It’s precisely this kind of measured discussion, grounded in evidence rather than escalation, that I hoped the article might encourage.
I would also add that Australia’s response should not narrow its focus to a single form of hatred in isolation. Antisemitism is real and must be confronted decisively, but so must Islamophobia, racism, religious intolerance, and political intimidation in all their forms. A framework that genuinely protects all Australians — across faiths, cultures, and beliefs — is ultimately the most effective way to reduce antisemitism as well, not weaken the response to it.
My concern is that Australia risks being funnelled into an overly narrow framing that treats one form of hatred as exceptional rather than addressing the broader conditions that allow bigotry to take root. When protections are applied consistently and universally, social cohesion is strengthened and grievance politics loses its oxygen.
I also share the unease many feel about being pressured into adopting external ethical or political frameworks that have themselves been the subject of serious international criticism. Australia’s democratic traditions, legal standards, and pluralistic values are robust enough to address hatred without importing contested doctrines or privileging one set of interests over the equal dignity of all communities.
If we get the principles right — fairness, consistency, restraint, and equal protection — we reduce harm across the board. That, in my view, is both the most ethical and the most effective path.
Worse will come. https://maxgrossarchive.com/2025/12/22/blowback-in-bondi/
A refreshing read, Max Gross. The next Guinness is on me.
The capacity of the human mind to compartmentalise never ceases to astound. No doubt several thousands of IDF servicemen (and women), all heavily indoctrinated in the service of unswerving belief in the sub-humanity of the Palestinian people and their deserved fate – just putting them out of their suffering, we’re doing them a service – going about their business of slaughtering as many as possible on a good day’s killing when the guns don’t jam and the ammo supply keeps up to demand and our Big Friend across the oceans keeps topping up for us, then at the end of it all, when the Capo says we can have a couple of day’s rest, why, we’ll go home to our families, hug our mamas and tell them how much we love them, pinch our little sister’s bābē’s cheeks and make goo goo gurgles… how lovely it is to see the delight on the little sprite’s face, and if we’re lucky, some coochy coochy time with our lovers behind closed doors with the Do Not Disturb sign on the handle, then a hearty meal with all the family & relatives before we gear up and go back to work… to the killing fields, to rid the vermin, to cleanse, for Israel, for God, and for the well-being of the Jews.
I came across some young Israelis several years ago in northern NSW, hanging out with the hippies at an alternative stay place in the bush; all these guys were ex-IDF, recently released from their mandatory service tenure. They had a magic mushroom party which was slightly surprising given the possibility for psilocybin to potentiate deep insight into trauma and buried memories. I was struck by the schism of these men… once armed and dangerous and potentially brutalising any Palestinian who crossed their paths, and now seemingly happily tripping away in far-off Australia. For my two-bob’s worth, I see Jews as a deeply traumatised people, in denial, fearful and vengeful & aggressive and determined to get their own way, whatever the cost.
We have seen in recent days, the broader Australian community reaching out to the Jewish diaspora – even that is a disputed term for what is essentially a religious minority. At the same time we have seen some at the Bondi commemoration draped in the Israeli flag and booing the Australian Prime Minister and, according to media reports, denying him the opportunity to speak to the gathering to express the outrage and sympathy the Australian. community share.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Prime Minister lectures our government on real or perceived deficiencies in keeping our community safe whilst he announces the creation of nineteen new settler communities in the occupied West Bank effectively preventing the establishment of a Palestinian homeland and this after the obliteration of Gaza.
Typically the UN and many world leaders (but not Trump) express their opposition to the actions of the Israeli government and Bibi Netanyahu right on cue calls out what he euphemistically and conveniently labels as antisemitism.
So, we end up in this dichotomy comprising of the Zionist insistence on unwavering support for anything Israel does but expressing alarm and demanding vengeance when rogue sections of the community respond with brutal aggression.
Globalization cannot be stopped as it has become the (to some nagging) state of mind – everyone is in a diaspora of sorts, and perhaps more than ever interdependent.
As old affiliations dissolve to make way for universality, self-righteous supremacists will of course push harder to maintain a grip on power and money by forming affiliations and engaging agents provocateur – sometimes deadly ones.
It’s all happening at great pace.
It doesn’t take much objective thought to ascertain from where the main resistance arises, and why. However, because of the great pace, even transethnic, transcultural, transnational subtleties can be trigger points.