Joe Hildebrand: The real enemy is extremism

Extremism is the enemy, not race or religion. And unless we are clear about that, the extremists will win – because we will seem as intolerant as they are, writes Joe Hildebrand.

Synagogues firebombed, nurses spouting Jewish hate, high school students chanting “Allahu Akbar!”

The conclusion for many is inescapable: Social cohesion is broken. Australian multiculturalism has failed. Western civilisation will fall But it isn’t, it hasn’t and it won’t.

It is easy to despair about the state of our country right now, let alone the state of the world.

But Australia will survive, as will the world and the West.

In fact, the very reason why so many think the West is doomed is the very reason it will survive.

Let’s start with Australia. We are both the most multicultural nation on Earth and the most successful multicultural nation on Earth.

Flowers and messages of hope and support left at the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea, Melbourne, in the wake of a firebomb attack. Picture: Alexander Bogatyrev/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The first is due to accidents of history and geography but the second is due to the great people we are. We should be enormously proud of this.

Australia had no interest in being remotely multicultural for the first half of its life, to which the decades-long White Australia policy bears testament.

When Australia couldn’t populate quickly enough on our own, we then rushed to import “Ten Pound Poms”. Picture: Sidey and Lea/Mirrorpix via Getty Images

Fearful of our remote place on the globe, with the vast Asian continent separating us from our British settlers, the cry of “populate or perish” was raised in order to protect us from “the yellow peril”.

Sadly, we couldn’t populate quickly enough on our own – shame on you shaggers! – and so we then rushed to import “Ten Pound Poms”. Nobody complained about that immigration influx – except, of course, the Poms themselves.

But then we ran out of Brits and so, in the decades after World War II, we began to share boundless plains with other European nations, mostly Greeks and Italians. They were called “wogs” and “wops” and “dagos” at the time but I doubt a single anti-multiculturalist would take issue with that intake today. There would be no Snowy Hydro, no muscle car mechanics and no fish and chip shops – three Aussie icons gone.

Of course, this was still to fend off the Asian hordes, but then Vietnam happened. Australia gave refuge to thousands of South Vietnamese fleeing the communist north.

Who on the Right would begrudge that? Again the answer is none, any more than they would evict the one Chinese restaurant that miraculously exists in every Australian country town.

Then, in the 1980s, we took thousands of Lebanese, both Christian and Muslim, fleeing the civil war in their home country. Nobody takes issue with the Maronites, but it’s fair to say the Muslims still face an uphill PR battle.

And here we get to the nub of it. Insufferable Lefty elites accuse those who oppose multiculturalism of being racist. In fact, they are not racist enough!

Conservative commentators, many of whom are among my best friends, decry “multiculturalism” but they have no problem with Italian or Greek or Vietnamese or Chinese or Indian cultures, and they are outspoken in support of Jewish Australians – another proud legacy of our multicultural success story.

The only people they are actually concerned about is Muslim Australians or, more particularly, the minority of those Muslims who have dogmatic or extreme views.

So let’s be blunt. Even from their perspective, it is not really immigration that is the problem, it is just one particular subset of migrants. Or, to put it another way, it’s not multiculturalism that my beloved friends are really worried about, it’s extremism. And rightly so. No sane person questions that. The only question is what we do about it.

The simple solution would be to stop Muslims from entering Western nations. And, like most simple solutions, it would be both stupid and wrong. In fact it does a disservice both to Muslims and the West itself.

An anti-racist protest in London in 2024. Extremism is the enemy, not race or religion. Picture: Ray Tang/Anadolu via Getty Images

It is undeniable that European nations have recently been overrun by an influx of Muslim migrants or that Australia is arguably the greatest destination du jour for anyone who can get here.

But these are not Ten Pound Poms who we are begging to come to our shores. Our problem is not that we desperately want them, our problem is that they desperately want to come here. Everyone who tries to get into Australia wants to be a part of it. They want to be like us and share in what we have.

It might be freedom from war and persecution, or the hope of economic and social freedom. Either way, this is a full-throated and physical embrace of Western values, not a rejection of them.

Yes, there will always be cultural barriers to overcome but these are typically dissolved in a generation.

And, yes, there are always extremists and radicals in any cohort, just as we have white Australian upper-middle-class socialists demanding the obliteration of capitalism or democracy or Israel at our leading universities. We do not ban Christianity because some Methodist’s daughter ends up becoming a Marxist.

The point is, it is those ideologies that are toxic, not the culture or nationality of those who hold them.

Extremism is the enemy, not race or religion. And unless we are clear about that, the extremists will win – because we will seem as intolerant as they are.