Immigrants: Searching for hope in in a time of hopelessness

Fiddler on the Roof is humorous, yet dark story of a Jewish family, set in Ukraine about 1905. Ukraine was part of Imperial, Czarist Russia, and the first Russian Revolution occurred in 1905.

A bit of blame is thrown around and another pogrom is called for: Let’s blame the Jews for the problems. The local administrator in the town that the story is set in is apologetic, but is carrying out orders as the Jewish community is moved on from where they had lived, alongside the non-Jewish population for generations. Rather than deal with the festering sore which culminated in the 1917 revolution where the Czarist regime was overthrown, resulting in a struggle for power between the red and white factions, a civil war to see who would rule Russia, blame the Jews.

In the closing scenes, dialogue between the expelled Jews, asks “where to this time” saw hope in joining relatives in America, New York, Chicago.

Nothing new there, really.

Denial is always easiest when there is some one to blame for whatever the grievances may be, and it is inevitably ‘low hanging fruit’ which is targeted, in this case, Jews, who traditionally had lived along side the mainstream culture, yet identifying as Jews.

Hope rested with settling in America, but there too times would be challenging, especially for a people who live alongside the cultural mainstream. The President of the USA at that time was Teddy Roosevelt, who declared in a speech to the Knights Columbus that:

“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americans… The one absolutely certain way of brining this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with other citizens of the American Republic… The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.” ( This land is our land. An immigrant’s manifesto by Suketu Mehta: Random House 2019, Page 161).

American culture has changed since that time, but resentment at ‘others’ coming in has not, grievance that things will change as all these strange people come in, especially those of different cultures, speaking different languages, having different religions.

The mob is easily stirred, the call to patriotism, to be culturally pure has been a repeated theme in history and has resulted in riots and legal battles, and even all out wars. But the fickleness of the mob is well illustrated in the Dreyfus Affair, in France between 1894 and 1906.

Hannah Arendt addresses that in The Origins of Totalitarianism, where she calls it “the alliance between the mob and capital.” She devotes a complete chapter on The Dreyfus Affair, detailing the mastications of blame allocation and the divisions it caused in France over a twelve year period, and well summarised and contextualised by Suketu Mehata in This Land is Our Land:

“When the rich see that anger is building in their countries about economic deprivation, they inflame or create anger and resentment against scapegoats – like foreigners, during Arendt’s time, and immigrants or Muslims or African Americans today – which makes the mob change direction, turn their attention from demanding redistribution of wealth, and focus on the politically weak, the new comers, the minorities. The new robber barons have come to power, and intend to hold on to it, on the wings of xenophobia.” (Ibid. Page 146).

The build up of Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and anti Immigration rhetoric, the politicising of hatred, seeking scapegoats is deflecting from the real issues, the sense of hopelessness which is leading to a nihilism.

It has names. Several of them, and here are two: The “Trauma and Lie Matrix,” and “Pandemic of Fear,” concepts which “typically refer to how prolonged stress, trauma and systematic fear shapes human behaviour and societal narratives.” (National Institutes of health.gov) (NIH).

It’s their own fault that poor people are poor, it is the woman’s fault she suffers violence from her partner, it is the woman’s fault she was raped, look at what she was wearing, how drunk she was, or any other excuse which takes blame away from the man, or the wealthy person. And so it goes, we can blame African mobs for the fear of going out in the evening, we can blame immigrants for taking our jobs when there is no substantiation of that claim, or any other which seeks to throw blame around.

That at a glance looks a bit like living under a ‘Trumpish’ administration, and listening to the latest news from One Nation, the tool kit for sowing discontent, throwing up scapegoats but not coming up with solutions beyond building fear so that those blamed for causing the prolonged stress, trauma and systematic fear can be somehow eliminated… An Australian version of ICE perhaps? Pauline Hanson is not averse to mass deportations… “back to where you came from.”

As with the official opposition, no mention is made of the real causes for the traumas, the growing inequality, the un-affordability of housing for those who do not have the backing of the bank of Mum and Dad, who struggle with ever increasing rent costs, those forced to live on the streets, forced out of homes through costs, domestic violence, or eviction because the landlord sold the property, cashing in on the escalating price of houses. Rather there is  a dedication to vote against the tax change before the parliament, there is fear that family wealth tax in the offing, fear that there may even be a death tax. FEAR!

And who has the most to lose? Those with the most, apparently, and those with the most are lining up behind One Nation, The Liberals and the Nationals.

Blame it on the immigrants generally but single out a particular group of immigrants, Muslims this time, or Indians…. Remember the Greek and Italian “ghettos” of the 1950’s, yet, Friday night out was at a Greek or Italian restaurant, the White Australia Policy, yet there were Chinese who had come during the gold rushes, had retained their ethnicity, had married within their communities, and yes, there were Chinese Restaurants, even ‘China Town’ in the major capitals.

It’s the same song line as used in the Brexit campaign in Britain ten years ago, it is the song line used in the US by Trump, but not only Trump, going back to Teddy Roosevelt, as he is backed by the Robber Barons of that time who were quite happy to use the new immigrants as an underpaid labour force as they built their railways and sky-scrapers with no thought given to occupational health and safety. The same song line used in Denmark, Hungary, France, and the emerging neo Nazis in Germany. And each time amplifying the threat that these people, the immigrants will change our society, their loyalty will never be with us, they will bring the very things over with them that they are seeking to escape.

The rhetoric from Pauline Hanson and her One Nation cohort is nothing new, and it is not an Australian phenomena, it is the parlance of right-wing extremism throughout the world, but wait, let’s be a bit more objective, get rid of the right wing stuff, it was the same rhetoric used by Stalin in his purges, and he could hardly fit a right wing mould, he was Communist (Or was he?) Labels can too easily cover our own biases, and the marginalisation they may cause. Our judgementalism can be a mirror used to show hypocrisies.

Just this morning a Christian sent me a youtube link where Muslim women were  humiliated as they were asked ‘do you follow sharia law?’, and the sad fact is that when we look at religious-based laws, such as the Ten Commandments, we fall short. Even when we take away the list and look at the summary of the law as in the sermon on the mount, where Jesus is quoted saying that ‘the first (commandment) is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. The second, to love your neighbour as yourself’, an almost impossible standard, as is living to the standard of Sharia Law. So rather than point the accusing finger to humiliate others, try living up to the standards you set for yourself.

Finger pointing and blame throwing are dangerous, destructive activities.

The rhetoric is aimed at the disaffected, the people who suffer most or are most fearful of change, the people who have lost jobs as manufacturing industries are off-shored, who are mortgage stressed, those who spend too much time on social media being fed the lies and threats of the influencers such as Tommy Robertson, spouting white suprematist entitlement. Or look up to the multi billionaire class, those with the most who still have not got enough, who have the power to buy into media organisations to control the news cycle and news narrative, to drive their own agendas. Even to ‘buy’ governments.

In many respects, the issues raised but offer no solutions except to marginalise and protect the most privileged, that includes the attitudes of some police in dealing with domestic violence, it includes the support of a liquor industry when alcohol is prevalent in so many cases of violence, the closing of refuge centres because some men find out where their women are ‘hiding’, or that neighbours fear that occurring, the refusal of councils and governments to properly fund such refuges. And here there is particular reference to the closing of a refuge centre by the Perth City Council when the current leader of the Western Australian opposition was Lord Major.

The privileged do not like their privilege challenged, and that in large measure is behind the current divisive politics. Unfortunately, the people who would most benefit from an empathetic approach to the problems being raised are too willing to be seduced by the arguments rather than listen, or even contribute to finding solutions.  And that is not new. History is full of such blame throwing.

At what point do we start accepting some responsibility for the chaos which is the world today?

So Pauline Hanson hates the burka, so why wear one? She does not have to. There are many things we may nor like, but we are fortunate enough to make decisions as to whether we go along with those things or not.

We may not like Islam, but we demand the right to believe what we believe, whether that is to follow no belief, to profess to be atheist, or follow the Christian religion of your choice, and there are quite a few, which was an issue a couple of hundred years ago, even caused one of the most destructive wars in Europe, and because of persecution founded settlements in what is now the USA and in Southern Africa, even the settlement of Adelaide was because of religious persecution in Germany during the 1800s.

The first Muslim mosque  was built in South Australia in 1861 in the outback town of Marree, by Afghan cameleers, brought here to transport supplies for the construction of the overland telegraph and the rabbit proof fence.

The culture wars are interesting, and endemic in the grievance politics of today.

Remember the old General Motors commercial, “We love football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars”? Even at that time football could be Aussie Rules or Rugby, (could that be Rugby League or Rugby Union), depending on which state you were from, but now football is something we used to call soccer. Meat pies are still around but the fast foods industry has diminished the humble pie as a national favourite, yes we still have kangaroos, including as an AFL team, but the Holden car is no longer top of the pops.

Culture changes over time.

And so we look at the hope people have, the need to leave homelands, to seek a new life is not one taken lightly. During the 1970’s we had an influx of Vietnamese who risked their lives to escape the violence of unifying North and South Vietnam. More than 80,000 moved to Australia in the immediate aftermath of the war. Today more than 300,000 Vietnamese born people live in Australia. The initial reaction was one of resentment and yes, the area of Newtown in Sydney became a bit of a ghetto for a while, but that community has integrated comfortably into mainstream society, many starting small businesses, market gardens, retail stores, restaurants. There has even been a Vietnamese State Governor.

That work ethic is evident in pretty much all immigrant communities. When we see Indians in the transport industry, and taking on roles which Australians are not keen to do. Talking with a neighbour who works in the prison system, many prison officers are from India, and again we have restaurants and retail outlets owned and operated by Indian immigrants.

Looking at the growing Muslim immigrant community, again we see that apart from gathering in mosques for Friday services, many small businesses, cafe’s, kebab stores, small business ventures in transport and other service industries are being established.

The health and medical industry from the most basic of positions as carers and cleaners, nurses, doctors and specialists are filled by immigrants from all quarters of the world, Asia, Middle East, Africa, South and Central America.

And so we could go on with the dangers of immigration… Did I say dangers?

The main danger in immigration is that we deny hope to those who risk so much to find a life in a safe environment, one where there is no war, there is no discrimination. Where there is opportunity to live a fulfilling life, and a place where their children can flourish with an education system which allows for career development, which offers hope instead of the hopelessness of where they have come from.

We have a choice to make.

Looking back over history, since the foundation of New South Wales as a prison colony to the opening of the continent to be the diverse nation it is today, we have depended on immigration as our economies have grown, as our culture has developed.

The choice we make will determine what this nation will look like in times when I am long gone from it, but my children and grand children will be here, revelling in the cultural diversity or stagnating in an inward looking monoculture where diversity is frowned on.