Jane Caro said authoritarianism ‘thrives on controlling, squashing and censoring ideas it does not like. I refuse to participate in that.’ Here’s why her refusal matters for all of us.
By Sue Barrett
Authoritarianism is rising all around us. It does not arrive with a flourish of trumpets or the march of boots; often, it arrives in the quiet room where a festival board decides which ideas are “safe” and which must be scrubbed from the record. It thrives on controlling, squashing and censoring ideas it does not like. I refuse to participate in that.
In 1979, my high school principal Peter Gebhardt wrote in my reference: “Sue has a bright personality, a strong character and has a keen sense of what is right and wrong. She will not be bullied or tyrannised into prevailing views and attitudes.“
He wrote this because he witnessed something firsthand during my last four years of high school at the height of the women’s movement and rampant misogyny. I went to a private boys school that had just turned co-ed. The ratio was eight boys to one girl. I often refer to this as my introduction to corporate Australia in a macabre way.
As a girl at this school, you had three choices: stay invisible, fawn over the boys to be popular, or stand up for yourself. You know which option the principal was referring to and the one I chose. It was in that schoolyard, surrounded by an 8 to 1 ratio, that I first learned to map the rigged tables I now help others identify. I realised early on that if you do not have a seat at the table, you are likely on the menu.
I share this not to congratulate myself on teenage rebellion, but because that ability to stand up for yourself and fight against systems that seek to stifle and suppress becomes more crucial with every passing year. The stakes are higher now than ever. We are not just fighting playground bullies. We are fighting the systematic erosion of the democratic freedoms that underpin everything else.
When Authoritarianism Wears a Respectable Suit
Jane Caro, in her decision to withdraw from the 2026 Adelaide Writers Festival, cuts through the noise with surgical precision: “Authoritarianism is rising all around us. It thrives on controlling, squashing and censoring ideas it does not like. I refuse to participate in that.”
She is not alone. Yanis Varoufakis tore up his invitation on camera. Randa Abdel-Fattah was disinvited. Bob Carr, former Premier of NSW and Australia’s former Foreign Minister, was identified as an individual “of concern.”
Let that sink in: a former Premier and Foreign Minister deemed “of concern” at a writers festival. This is about the systematic suppression of voices that challenge power. It is happening across Australia, from writers festivals to state parliaments.
This is not the first controversy at Adelaide Writers’ Week. In 2023, Palestinian writers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd faced similar criticism. Some, like journalist Julie Szego, argued that their statements constituted antisemitism rather than political criticism, and that exclusion would be justified boundary-setting, not censorship. Yet those writers still appeared, despite the controversy and corporate pressure.
The critical difference in 2026? Randa Abdel-Fattah was disinvited entirely.
The question is not whether specific individuals’ rhetoric crosses lines – reasonable people disagree – but whether the pattern of increasingly restrictive responses (2023: controversy but writers appear; 2026: disinvitation and director resignation) represents democratic discourse or authoritarian escalation.
This is escalation. And it is happening not just at Adelaide, but across Australia.
The Pattern: From Adelaide to Parliament House
Within days of the Bondi Beach attack on 14 December 2025, NSW Premier Chris Minns rushed through the Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. It gives police power to ban protests for up to three months following terrorism declarations. Victoria Police declared the entire Melbourne CBD a “designated area” from 30 November 2025 to 29 May 2026.
What connects Adelaide, NSW and Victoria? Moral disengagement operating through identical mechanisms. I have spent several years developing frameworks to help people recognise these patterns.
Here is how authoritarianism disguises itself as reasonableness:
- Moral Justification: “We are protecting community safety” (NSW’s Terrorism Bill) or “We are protecting the festival” (Adelaide Writers Festival disinvitations).
- Euphemistic Labelling: NSW calls it “protecting social cohesion” while banning public assemblies for up to three months. Victoria creates “designated areas” instead of saying “zones where your rights are suspended.”
- Displacement of Responsibility: “The Board decided,” “The police advised,” “The law requires it.” No individual takes ownership. NSW Premier Chris Minns claims he is just responding to “community concerns.”
- Diffusion of Responsibility: “Everyone agreed it was the sensible thing to do.” Accountability vanishes into the collective. Minns speaks as if calm and rights are mutually exclusive.
- Distortion of Consequences: “No one is being silenced, they can speak elsewhere,” while excluding them from major platforms. Victoria declared the entire CBD a “designated area” for six months, claiming it is a minor inconvenience. These are the infrastructure of suppression.
- Dehumanisation: Labelling critics as “divisive,” “extreme” or “problematic” rather than engaging with their actual arguments. Writers critical of Israeli policy are deemed “of concern.”
- Attribution of Blame: “They brought this on themselves by being controversial.” The Bondi Beach attack, which had no connection to Palestine solidarity work, was weaponised to justify banning protests.
- Advantageous Comparison: “At least we are not as bad as [other country].” Setting the bar at rock bottom to justify local overreach.
How Mainstream Media Inflames Authoritarianism
Mainstream media should hold power to account. Instead, it is increasingly complicit in inflaming the very authoritarianism it should expose. This is not journalism; it is propaganda that manufactures consent for the erosion of democratic rights.
When the Murdoch media, Nine, Seven and even our publicly owned ABC News run false accusations of antisemitism against Palestine solidarity activists, they create the justification for protest bans. When media treated Special Envoy Jillian Segal’s plan to defund dissenting institutions as reasonable policy rather than McCarthyist overreach, they made censorship respectable. When mainstream media abdicates its responsibility as the fourth estate, citizens must fill the void.
The Personal Cost of Truth Telling
Speaking out comes at a cost, a cost that mainstream media’s failure makes inevitable. In 2022, major Australian publications ran false accusations against me. In 2024, an elected state official attempted to have me removed from a professional board through a formal complaint based on false claims. I have received death threats and intimidation for my civic engagement and truth telling.
When vested interests threaten individuals, they are by extension threatening all Australians who dare to participate in democracy. Randa Abdel-Fattah has faced sustained harassment. Jane Caro receives abuse for speaking out. Journalists who report honestly face campaigns to have them fired. This is the direct consequence of mainstream media inflaming authoritarianism.
Naming Vested Interests and Demanding Your Seat
At the Adelaide Writers Festival, the facts are stark. Randa Abdel-Fattah was disinvited. Who communicated with the Board? Why has the Board not publicly explained its decision-making process? The outcome is clear: voices critical of Israeli policy were excluded. When the process is hidden, the table is rigged.
When we founded Voices of Goldstein, we operated from a simple principle: create an inclusive, open democracy where we can agree and disagree respectfully. We brought together people from Labor, Greens, Liberals and independents. We created spaces where conversations could happen even when people disagreed profoundly.
The Framework for Democratic Capability
From the Schoolyard to the Ballot Box
I have developed this framework because I have spent my life watching how power operates when it thinks no one is looking. From that 8 to 1 ratio in the 1970s schoolyard to the corporate boardrooms of the 1990s and the “teal” revolution of 2022, I have seen a consistent truth: systems are not broken by accident. They are rigged by design.
For thirty five years in business and a decade in community activism, I have watched vested interests use silence and exclusion as their primary tools. I realised that if we want a different world, we cannot just complain about the “prevailing views” my principal warned me about; we must build the capability to dismantle them.
This framework is my distillation of how we move from being bystanders to being architects of our own democracy. It is about equipping you with the same “mapping” skills I learned as a teenager to ensure you never find yourself on the menu again.
1. Naming Vested Interests
The Strategy: Transition from noticing to naming. Vested interests thrive on being seen as “the standard” or “neutral.” When a board or a government makes a decision, they often hide behind the collective.
- Action: Audit the “seats.” Ask: Who is in the room and what are they protecting? Map the financial or political ties of decision makers. When you explicitly name the interest (e.g. “This isn’t a safety policy; it is a donor-protection policy”), the facade of reasonableness collapses.
2. Spotting Rigged Tables
The Strategy: Identify the “Invisible Barrier” of exclusion. A table is rigged when the “rules of the game” are set to guarantee a specific outcome before you even arrive.
- Action: Look for the absence of affected voices. If a policy on protest is made without protesters, or a festival line-up is scrubbed without the director’s consent, the table is rigged. Refuse to participate in “tick-a-box” consultations. Publicly point out that the table is missing the very legs it claims to stand on.
3. Recognising Bad Faith
The Strategy: Expose the “Virtue Signal” smokescreen. Bad faith actors use high-minded language like “social cohesion” or “community standards” to justify the suppression of dissent.
- Action: Apply the “Evidence Test.” When an authority invokes “safety” or “integrity” to silence a voice, demand the specific data or threat assessment that justifies it. If they cannot produce it, label the tactic for what it is: “You are weaponising virtue to avoid accountability.”
4. Demanding Your Seat
The Strategy: Shift from asking permission to claiming space. Power is rarely given; it must be occupied. The Voices movement showed that a seat at the table is won through community mobilisation, not institutional invitation.
- Action: Organise your own “table.” Use Kitchen Table Conversations to build a base of shared values. Use FOIs, open letters, and collective bargaining to wedge the door open. If they will not give you a seat, bring a crowd so large they can no longer close the door. Go to Community Independents Network
5. Leading for Fairness
The Strategy: Change the conversation from extraction to shared value. Rigged systems are extractive; they take your rights and give back nothing. Fair systems are generative.
- Action: Model the alternative in your own leadership. In your business or community group, ensure that transparency is the default setting. Move the goalposts from “What can we get away with?” to “How does this decision add value to the most vulnerable person in this system?”
6. Building Alternatives
The Strategy: Prototype the new systems while the old ones fail. We do not just refuse authoritarianism; we make it obsolete by building better ways of being together.
- Action: Support and create participatory systems. Whether it is participatory budgeting in your local council or community-backed independent candidates, invest your time in systems where everyone belongs. By building a functional alternative, you prove that the “rigged table” was never necessary in the first place. o to Community Independents Network
Resistance is not enough
We cannot just refuse authoritarianism; we must build the alternatives. Democracy looks like participatory budgeting, co-determination and media that exposes capture.
We are dangerously close to accepting that power decides who speaks and who is silenced. I refuse. That teenage girl standing up in a sea of boys in 1979 understood that a strong character and a keen sense of right and wrong are not liabilities. They are essential.
Forty seven years later, I am still standing up. Will you refuse with us?
You know what to do.
Onward we press.
This article was originally published on Sue Barrett
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Excellent article, but it must be kept in mind that the now open, brazen authoritarianism is not confined to Adelaide, or Australia.
It’s operating openly in the EU, the UK, and the US.
So the question must be asked — what are they protecting from dissent?
It cannot be Zionism.
Jacques Baud was not sanctioned for criticism of Israel.
So what is the common factor in the crackdown on dissent?
They are protecting the liberal world order.
A world order that now struggles to fulfill its promises to the masses, its dreams and illusions.
A world order in deep economic trouble, that becomes more militaristic by the day, because warfare is good for business.
But warfare needs the consent of the masses, hence the crackdown on dissent.
Yes, it sickens me also. How long must decent educated people byfoggled by hobgoblins with no idea of what the actual is?
………………….
Very, VERY sad to see Malinauskas mixed up in this, they are lower even the Likudists on this lie-telling binge.
There are some seriously good articles appearing on this site, and the standard is only going up, this is one of them.I thank Michael and Carol Taylor for making it happen.All is not lost yet.
Thankyou Sue Barrett and the many other contributors.
Bob Carr, former Premier of NSW and Australia’s former Foreign Minister, was identified as an individual “of concern.”
At risk of being accused of opportunistically jumping on a bandwagon, I had the occasion, several years ago, of attending a couple of gatherings where the former premier/foreign minister was also in the room… not many people, a reasonably intimate bunch so close observation was possible… we didn’t speak to each other but as a fly on the wall, as an inveterate observer of other people’s behaviours… I carried away the sense that this man is an arrogant prick, up himself, too big for his boots.
Unsurprising that he’d seek to influence the AWF re. Randa Abdel-Fattah’s participation. Coincidentally or not, he’s been embedded in the eastern Sydney coastal suburbs for decades, and is no doubt totally au fait and intimate with the Jewish community.
Canguro,
I think you may like to visit the Bob Carr situation again to see if you got that right.
I have been a bit of a fan for BC,and yes,he does have a forthright manner, but what has got him into trouble recently is his criticism of Israel.
He has accused Israel of genocide, and lots more, and the Zionists don`t like it.
I could be wrong but i don’t think I am this time.
I agree with you Harry Lime. There is some cracking good stuff appearing in AIMN lately, and this piece is one of them, along with David Tyler’s and other recent pieces. More power to you all, and about time I sent another donation. Thank you all
I’m starting to think this rise in authoritarianism is an even greater threat than climate change. Both of which seem to be given free reign in Australia, and the world at large.
Another issue for BC, like Howard’s favourite ‘environmentalist’ Tim Flannery, both are patrons of SPA Sustainable Population Australia, originally ZPG Zero Population Growth (imported from fossil fuel US version).
Think they need a heads up?
SPA before their time, I guess in ’80s (article in Tanton’s journal The Social Contract), hosted the late dec. white nationalist, white Australia admirer and ZPG director John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton; acknowledged by SPA in article by Malcolm King decade+ ago in (Atlas Koch!) AIP’s Online Opinion.
Now Tanton Network is partnered with Koch Heritage Foundation on Project 2025; latter Koch’s muse was ‘segregation economist’ James Buchanan (masked by Hayek,mRand et al). Tanton Network acolytes &/or fans of Raspail’s ‘Camp of the Saints’ (published by Tanton’s TSCP inspired ‘The Great Replacement’) allegedly include Bannon, Miller, Musk, Carlson, Orbán, Le Pen et al.; not to forget our own ABF Terror Unit……
In the US it was alleged & reported by Media Matters & NYT 2022 on then Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson, an acquaintance of the late Tanton, that NewsCorp management inferred their editorial from Carlson, in article titled ‘If you are business with Fox News, you are on the hook for its white nationalism’
Simultaneously, Fox News (normie) personnel were shocked at seeing a friend of Tanton’s, Brit born and former National Review (was a colleague of Abbott’s Danube Inst lead, John O’Sullivan who is editor at large & also Quadrant’s Euro correspondent) journalist Peter Brimelow, had been reporting directly to the top post Roger Ailes….
Tanton influence is all over our immigration policies (ditto UK), and presenting as environmental &/or security ‘solution’ using lexicon of dog whistles &/or greenwashing (carbon & bigotry) eg. sustainability, carry capacity, degrowth etc. based on ’70s fossil fueled Club of Rome promoted junk science ‘limits to growth’ (debunked soon after by University of Sussex in ‘Models of Doom’).
Tanton was described by former Nancy Reagan aide Linda Chavez as ‘the most influential unknown man in America’ (NYT) and ‘the architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement’ (SPLC Southern Poverty Law Center).
Tanton’s basic objective was white minority rule achieved by immigration and related policy nudging and electoral strategy for the white nativist right ie. ‘we need to get people talking about immigration’….and don’t get caught hanging out with KKK (his own letters describe asking a good ole boy for a tour of deep south lynching sites….).
Boy, don’t we hear about that immigration + population ‘crisis’ non stop…….yet no public &/or media demographers explain the impact of ageing; that’s their target audience…..
Forgot, Nancy MacLean in excellent ‘Democracy in Chains’ explained how Kochs et alhave been ‘playing a long game’ which locally Oz media are not equipped to decode or counter……
Now we see symptoms of Koch Heritage Project Esther with Israel to denigrate the centre and left for alleged anti-semitism, often defined by white Christian nationalists…
Missed by all, but in US media May 2025, following quite from the NYT
‘The Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement. Even before President Trump was re-elected, the Heritage Foundation, best known for Project 2025, set out to destroy pro-Palestinian activism in the United States…..
…..Concerns are encapsulated in the following:
‘But critics such as Mr. Jacoby say the think tank is exploiting real concerns about antisemitism to advance its broader agenda of radically reshaping higher education and crushing progressive movements more generally.
Project Esther exclusively focuses on antisemitism on the left, ignoring antisemitic harassment and violence from the right. It has drawn criticism from many Jewish organizations amid increasing calls for them to push back against the Trump administration.’
‘An open letter from three dozen former leaders of major Jewish establishment groups, including a former national chair of the Anti-Defamation League, recently warned that “a range of actors are using a purported concern about Jewish safety as a cudgel to weaken higher education, due process, checks and balances, freedom of speech and the press.”’
Finally, last gasp, Varoufakis lacks credibility, ditto Chomsky, Sachs et al for spouting Kremlin talking points while his former government friend and colleague Tsipras complained that Varoufakis was always travelling to promote his books, in between crazy economic ideas for Greece in crisis….
What a scary read, Sue, full of the ‘awarenessness’ we should all accept.
The naivety of many current and past sports stars, especially the uneducated, makes them targets for journalists who twist questions to make their subjects agree to things they don’t understand.
The anonymity of religious zealots allow vested interests to influence decisions and a disingenuous media perpetuates such biased decisions by publishing outright lies, by omitting truths that don’t suit their purpose or simply ignoring achievements.
ps
Bob Carr is complex, allowing both Canguro and Douglas to be right, in their descriptions of him.
Bob Carr has been representing the ALP rank and file who can be at at odds with Canberra. So are a few other retired or disenchanted Labor politicians, usually on the government’s spineless responses to Palestine, et al.
People don’t seem to have “got” what the Adelaide Writer’s Festival is about also..
And now we have a cringeworthy editorial cave-in re Wilcox “divisive” cartoon from Independent. Always. Not., where it refers to an earlier editorial calling on the Prime Minister “to announce a Commonwealth royal commission that investigates every aspect of the events leading up to Bondi, with the scourge of antisemitism front and centre./Our reasoning was that this is the only form of inquiry with the scope to root out the rise of antisemitism in this country, which has only accelerated since the appalling Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, and throughout Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza.”
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/wilcox-cartoon-was-divisive-and-we-apologise-for-the-hurt-it-has-caused-20260111-p5nt6s.html (paywall)
Hard to know where to start but here the ‘rigged game’ as described above with such clarity by Sue Barrett – as where ‘the “rules of the game” are set to guarantee a specific outcome before you even arrive’ – is here exemplified by the editorial’s presumptive correlation of the rise of community antisemitism with a terrorist act allegedly perpetrated by half-crazed lone actors adhering to extremist antisemitic religious ideology. Thus the masthead is complicit in some strategic political game to normalise a category conflation where ‘extremism’ is reduced to just another ingredient baked into the big cake of ‘antisemitism’, thus permitting the editorial rationale “that this is the only form of inquiry with the scope to root out the rise of antisemitism in this country, which has only accelerated since the appalling Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, and throughout Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza.”
But let’s not wait for a Royal Commission before jumping to the findings.
PS Pedantic of me I know, but I note that the adjective “appalling” is permitted for the Hamas attacks, but not for Israel’s “bombardment of Gaza” which remains a neutral fact unsullied by editorial qualification.
Perhaps a squirming apology by the paper is one way to avoid firing Wilcox and paddling into another censorship debacle under pressure from vested interests.
More aspects to be considered regarding authoritarian control….
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/01/grief-proximity-and-the-failure-of-moral-judgement/?
Tricky thing that judgement, happens to includes a lot of cognitive biases.
A top article (again) in AIMN. Thank you. Then the informative comments complete more information of the entities lurking in the dark working to undermine democracy for their personal benefit.
@ Jen: Perhaps the biggest threat to Australia is from the Zionism, a 19th century colonist settler theology originating in Vienna and entangling itself with the ancient Judaism.
It is naturally difficult to distinguish between these theologies when one uses the Knesset to authorise a Hannibal Directive attack on a music festival to satisfy two rabid rabbis and protect an allegedly corrupt Prim Monster. Funny how the estimated death toll during the Gaza genocide is 70,000+ Palestinian landowners & residents that makes the Bondi tragedy simply pale into insignificance.
Certainly the whingeing Zionist lobby in Australia was quick to make a fuss. Funny how the Zionists ignore the historical massacres of Australian Aborigines until about 1930 when making comparisions.
Thank you Sue for a highly perceptive article.
The USA has become a fascist imperialist state very much like Germany in the 1930’s, the UK has become an authoritarian police state, and Australia is being led towards an authoritarian police state.
Sooner or later there will be another financial crisis. Australia escaped the last one because our largest trading partner was not affected much by the crisis. Our trade with China is mainly supplying raw materials, as that wanes what protection will we have from the next crisis?
When a crisis comes that has a deep effect on Australians what will be the reaction of our government? Will it be to shield the working classes or to protect the corporations at the expense of Australians?
If it is to be protect the corporations then there is likely to be a reaction from the masses.
Who is it that is passing laws restricting mass protest? Labor, because they can do it without the unions kicking up a fuss.
Who is it that is setting up surveillance of the people? Both Labor and the Coalition.
Who is it that is normalizing police brutality towards socialist progressives? presently Labor, but the Coalition would be doing the same. There is some evidence to suggest Labor may even have cultivated far right extremism to use in this purpose – neoNazis were allowed to protest and that protest was used as an argument to shut down all protests (except industrial – can’t upset unions, yet) and the common musing that if you wanted to avoid being arrested and bashed at a protest dress all in black was based on the obvious difference in treatment meted out towards different groups of protesters.
Both Labor and Coalition governments are imperialist governments, in the sense that they have embedded Australia deep into the USA imperialist apparatus; they have played down imperialist acts by the USA and actively suppressed dissent within Australia against genocidal supremist-colonialist actions by Israel.
The Zionist theology complements that support for imperialism, as exercised through the USA; as does AUKUS, which is nothing more than a donation to an imperialist fascist regime to attack China.
The influence of Australian Zionists on Labor serves the same purpose – to suppress dissent and set up a police state to suppress mass protest.
Andrew Smith says, somewhat hyperbolically, that “Varoufakis lacks credibility.”
Speaking only for myself, given the impossibility of plumbing the arcane reaches of Mr Smith’s mind and his motives, but having watched several Varoufakis docos and read a couple of his books, I’d much rather sit with him over a coffee or retsina than his keyboard protagonist, any day. Hell, I’ll even pick up the tab.
Kanga, well spotted.
Mr Smith never actually tells us why these well-positioned analysts lack credibility.
To get an idea of what is going on in states of the US that the Trump administration doesn’t like – when consideration to who is behind the Trump administration this is pure fascism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ws1r6CaSXs
Canguro, agreed, and the Australia Institute is trying to raise funds to bring Yanis Varoufakis out to Australia to speak on fighting fascism.
So here we are, after less than a week of utter madness courtesy of the thought police, who in their well-intentioned consideration of the sensitivity of the Bondi victims and community at large, decided it would be appropriate to disinvite an Australian-Palestinian author from appearing at the Adelaide Writers Week… an action of such profound stupidity that it led to the withdrawal of more than 180 invitees & speakers, the wholesale resignation of the festival board including the widely-admired chair Louise Adler, who took the opportunity on the way out to pen a scathing criticism on the pernicious influence Jewish zealotry is having on the traditional notion of free speech in this country, along with the showcasing of the now-cancelled event to a global audience as a textbook example of how not to go about things that could have been handled in a much much better manner.
It’s a tricky subject, no doubt. Palestinians have a very legitimate gripe about the annihilation of their people and the destruction of their lands and livelihoods. Certain sections of society would prefer these truths are not discussed, instead, preferring a default register of sympathy towards Jews, Zionism, the Holocaust backstory and so on.
The conflation of the presence of a Palestinian speaker at the Writer’s Week with the Bondi massacre was a gaffe of astounding blindness & ignorance, given the shooters were Indians. The subsequent obduracy in digging down on the decision, along with ringing in the SA Premier for his two bob’s worth, demonstrated the utter unsuitability of the festival board, who, perhaps, would have been better assigned to the cake-judging competitions at the Royal Adelaide Show.
Sir Les Patterson must be rolling in his grave at this masterclass demonstration of local parochialism at its best. God help us all.
@ Canguro
Can I ask what you mean by your use of the phrase “Jewish zealotry”(e.g., “pernicious influence Jewish zealotry is having on…” etc)?
I read Louise Adler’s resignation piece and note that she twice uses the term “pro-Israel lobbyists” but not once uses the word “Jewish” let alone the phrase “Jewish zealotry”, which seems to be an improvisation of your own.
While anyone can inadvertently misquote, I believe that the historical moment with its acute sensitivities requires extra vigilance regarding the language used to express opinions on what you in your own comment concede is a “tricky subject”.
To rephrase a writer’s text right before our eyes merely emphasises the ease with which one can slip into the careless language that leads to the endless misunderstandings that play into the hands of Peter Greste’s polarisers.
I was myself once here called an antisemite by a writer I respect for using the phrase “Jewish lobby” in a comment, a phrase I had erroneously assumed was a collective noun commonly referring to the Zionist lobby. It was careless of me and caused offence.
Yet all I was attempting to do – no doubt ineptly – was to plead Orwell’s case for clear and precise language at a unique, terrible moment in time when it seemed that conflation, not of events and persons (these being mainly politically constructed associations) but of words used to applied to events, persons, and even our responses to them, were being exploited for political/ideological purposes (the most egregious of these instances being Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu accusing Albanese for fuelling antisemitism, when the gunmen had already been identified as radicalised Isis terrorists).
As for Les Patterson turning in his grave, perhaps you are referring to his anti-wokeness which, together with his creator’s racism, homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, and so on, has been finally laid to rest alongside the various alter egos into which Humphries’ bêtes noire were projected with such hilarious impunity for so long.
Herbert, an interpolation. I may be mistaken but I think it’s a safe bet to assume that anyone lobbying on behalf of the Jewish diaspora, or Israel, or the Zionist cause, is likely to be Jewish.
Again, I may be mistaken, but the general impression I’ve gleaned from years of observation is that the Jewish people, given, some not all, are extremely quick to rush to their own defence at whatever cost is borne by their protagonists / antagonists. It’s never their fault, always someone elses. They’re the eternally crucified, put down upon, beaten and vilified, and by God they’re as mad as hell and are going to do something about it. They see mountains where molehills exist, hordes of critics where one or two rational voices raise objections, and they suffer that classic syndrome of seeing the spinter in the eye of the other whilst ignoring the log in their own. Zealotry, classically, is that never-ending obsession with ensuring that all voices of objection are pursued until trampled into the dust, and while Louise Adler was careful to not use the term explicitly, I’m in no doubt that she had Jewish zealots in mind as per their ruthless pursuit of Abdel-Fattah.
As for the reference to Les Patterson, explicitly, it referred to the gob-handed all-round cloddish behaviour of the board of the Adelaide Festival and Writer’s Week prinicpals who single-handedly wrecked a prestigious and important event and in so doing kicked an own-goal in full view of the eyes of the world.
I was born the other side of the planet in a generation which is almost lost in history, and bullying was the norm as I grew up.
We had hate speech (reserved for all things German), and were coached by parents with the little ditty:-
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”.
I think the community standards given to me as a kid, are still valid, and I am slightly gobsmacked as our Parliament spend time selecting certain phrases which will now be taboo, as instructed by a select few.
As the planet is threatened with climate change, and our resources are spent on weapons of war!
What many of these abhorrent Trumpian people fail to relaize is that Karma can be and is indeed an actual reality on their life.
You only have to remember how the majority of the moustached one’s people ended up, either by committing suicide, publicly hanged or locked away to be forgotten until they died, so clearly, they don’t know too much about reality or its history.
Depending on your spiritual perspective, it’s either an eye for an eye or you hurt me I’ll hurt you back.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/01/09/roaming-charges-125/
@Canguro
Thank you for your interpolation Canguro – presumably of words into another’s mouth.
You are describing deeply traumatised people, I think.
But then, I am trying not to generalise.