Joe Hildebrand: Greater challenge is to fully expose true nature of vicious extremism
The real cause of anti-Semitism in Australia isn’t that it’s legal, because it’s not. The real problem is that it’s cool, writes Joe Hildebrand.
Opinion
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It only takes one letter of the alphabet to expose the violent hatred that extremist activists have for the Jewish people and to understand the fear that Australian Jews are feeling.
You will see why at the end of this column, but first we have to get there. Because how we got there is precisely the point.
On Thursday, the special envoy for anti-Semitism released a report that called for a raft of measures to combat the epidemic of physical, verbal and ideological attacks on Jewish Australians we have seen – and they have experienced – since the October 7 terror attacks of 2023.
Among the many other worthy recommendations is more regulation of social media, more monitoring of mainstream media and a general crackdown on hate speech.
This is a wholly understandable response. Perhaps even a necessary one given where we are.
But trying to restrict or regulate words or opinions, however vile they may be, is only addressing the symptoms of the problem. It does nothing to address the cause and may even turn such activists into martyrs for theirs.
Of course, incitement to violence cannot be tolerated by any civilised society. This is where the free speech argument must always hit a brick wall. But it is the attitudes themselves that are the root of the problem, not the way in which they are expressed.
If you ban someone for saying something racist or anti-Semitic on social media, you’re not actually stopping them from being racist or anti-Semitic. You’re just forcing them to do it somewhere else.
Indeed, countless authorities and media outlets in Germany tried to ban the Nazis in the lead-up to Hitler’s rise to power. Spoiler alert: It didn’t work.
This doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done, it just means you’re not confronting the real problem.
And the real problem today is not that people express anti-Jewish views – under the fig leaf of “anti-Zionism” – it’s that they hold them and feel empowered to act on them.
It is that the ferocity and spread of the anti-Israel movement has become so legitimised by cultural elites – academics, activists and artists – that it effortlessly tips over into anti-Semitism and, ultimately, abuse and violence.
In other words, the real cause of anti-Semitism in Australia isn’t that it’s legal, because it’s not. There are already clear laws against it.
The real problem is that it’s cool. And that is something no law can stop. Hating Israel, which inevitably descends into hating Jews – as countless campus attacks and synagogue burnings have shown – is so hot right now. It’s hip.
So hip we had oh-so-edgy performers at England’s Glastonbury music festival openly brief their slavish crowds on the latest new slogan they should be chanting at their protests and riots. This was of course “Death, death, to the IDF”. A concept so passionately embraced by activists around the globe that all of them have chanted it but none has actually done it. They really are so stunning and brave: “Er, yes your honour, I want all the Israeli soldiers to die and I plan to achieve this by shelving an E and jumping up and down in a moshpit.”
That chant and that sentiment has now found its way to Australia. You can hear it as rioters storm Israeli restaurants in Melbourne or shout outside the offices of NSW MPs.
For most of us, it’s embarrassingly pissweak. Literally swearing death to your enemies while all you’ve managed to achieve is up-ending a plate of hors d’oeuvres.
But imagine you’re the target. Imagine a mob chanted “Where are you?” the day after a terror attack on your people and activist academics said you should be made to feel uncomfortable in your own community and your place of worship has been firebombed.
And now just change that one little letter. Imagine if instead of all these mobs chanting “death, death to the IDF”, they’re chanting “death, death to the ADF”. Would Australians simply shrug their shoulders and say “Hey, it’s not like we’re the ones they wish were dead – they just want to kill the Australian Defence Force”?
How long would we let people gleefully call for the death of our people on the streets before considering it a real threat?
And how long have we let this happen to Jewish Australians?
So banning words is merely a Band-Aid. The greater challenge is to fully expose the true nature of the vicious extremism that has infected the academic and activist and artistic left. If only they were creative enough to imagine it was themselves the chanting mobs were coming for, they would realise how far gone they really are.
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