Hmm.. Any specific cause for this sudden burst of racism or has this been going on for a long time? Sorry, I'm a little out of the loop when it comes to Aussie affairs. =X

Well, supposedly there have been tensions on this beach for some time (maybe any aussie readers can add what they know?) - two lifeguards were beaten up I think and some women are claiming to be harrassed by youth gangs, supposedly Muslim? I don't know the validity of these claims.

Anyway, what fools. The lot of them.

According to the news reports it has been brewing for a while over tensions between Austrailain Lebanese (a.k.a "lebs") and the local surfer dude population. The locals don't like the way that the Lebanese treat them etc. etc. When one of their own were beat up thet decided it was payback time. Read the article that Anna has linked.

"This break is for locals only, brah!"

okay, the article says that 'trouble' has been brewing for some time. And that a huge 'nationalist' party was planned for this day? If so, why were the police so obviously unmanned for the task of keeping order? Other articles I've read also mention texting and a sort of spontaneous gathering. This sort of thing happned in the riots in France. I'd be scared to be a police commissioner if it's so easy to mobilize this way - how can you have a rapid response.

What kind of thugs chase a young girl and try and rip her headscarf off? I literally feel ill.

When I was there Christmas, '03, the Indian cricket team was in town playing Australia. The Australian press (the Sydney Morning Herald) mentioned that the Indians in the crowd were openly rooting for the Indian team (like the Indians accuse Muslims in India of rooting for Pakistan), but it may have been true, because the local TV stations interviewed many downright ebullient Indians (after a test victory) with Australian accents. :-) They call the Indian cricketers the Swami Army--Swaaameee Ahmeee, as transfigured by the Australian drawl. Some of the white Australians showed up to the matches in turbans.

The Indian cricket team performed well; Laxman in particular had a great series. When he walked into an Indian restaurant (accompanied by his parents) where I was having dinner, many of the Australian women commented on how hot he was.He got celebrity treatment during his strictly vegetarian meal. What a difference from the geeky software engineer image prevalent in America. Here was a respected, world class jock. And they love their cricket there--I saw all these burly white guys in the financial district checking the scores at their lunch break.

He later had an arranged marriage to a Brahmin from his community. Man, the action that guy turned away. :-)

From what I know, there is racism directed against Indians in both Australia and New Zealand. An Indo-New Zealander told me that the Indians are called "curries". A doctor told me that her colleagues lament how they are being overrun by Indians and Chinese.

wow. scary. but also rife with implication. probably a lot more to it than a binary black and white

from this article:

"Authorities had expected trouble today after two violent incidents at the beach last week - an attack on two lifeguards on Sunday and a brawl later in the week in which youths turned on a media crew. A series of text messages then began circulating, encouraging members of two rival groups of beach users to attack each other."

Emphasis mine.

*I didn't realize this was tied to the beating of the medial crew I saw reported, which was pretty brutal.

**This whole thing should have been clamped down on hard before any violence ever got started....

Gangs of Lebanese extraction have been linked fairly frequently to quite a few highly publicised gang rapes in the southern suburbs of sydney (i.e. the places where the riots occurred). The "westies" tend to be of immigrant descent (usually, Lebanese, Vietnamese and Sri Lankan) and the "surfies" tend to be of white Australian descent. The surf lifesavers represent all that's good about the (predominantly white) Aussie lifestyle. So it's quite easy to spin something like that out of control and get a crowd riled up.

wow. scary. but also rife with implication. probably a lot more to it than a binary black and white

i agree that there's probably more to it, still doesn't warrant this type of retardery. chasing young girls and then triumphantly waving their headscarves like trophies? attacking police/emergency vehicles who/which are just trying to do their job? assaulting "their own" when they dare speak out against racism? shudder, cringe, wince.

I just got back from my honeymoon in Australia just about a month ago.... we were there for three weeks and I didn't notice any racism at all, and we traveled through both the big cities and small towns... in fact, every single person we encountered was incredibly friendly and nice.... however, we never made it to Cronulla. So, just from my own experience (which, of course, is only from a tourist's perspective) was that the majority of Australians were pretty egalitarian.

On the other hand, it's fairly clear that a greater influx of immigrants would correlate with a greater incidence of racism (until immigrants became accepted in society). And judging from Sydney, the number of immigrants (Asian, Lebanese, etc.) is not diminishing, which means that race riots would only increase over time.

that's some useful background info which i haven't read anywhere else, Vishra-- thanks.

Well, I wanted to post a defence of Australian race relations on the post on the Italian Court Ruling, where one poster suggested that Australia was on par with Italy at best. Far from it, I wanted to say, Ausltralia is light years ahead of Italy, it's on par (if not better) than the UK/US. Then Cronulla happened...

There have been some tensions with the Lebanese community fo some time, a few years ago two young girls were gang-raped by Lebanese Youths. The whole issue was given a nasty racial slant - partly because the youths made specific comments on the Australian-ness (read: Anglo-Celtic ethnicity) of the victims, and naturally the tabloid media had a field day. The Lebanese community in Sydney has been under pressure for some time now.

More information from the Melbourne braodsheet The Age www.theage.com.au and sister paper in Sydney, Sydney Morning Herald at www.smh.com.au.

The issue is definitely more complicated than black and white, as Raju suggests.

my impression is that there is a problem with lebanese muslims specifically. there are tensions between white ozzies and other groups (and hell, stuff between anglo ozzies and greek ozzies), but the gang rape issue is illustrative of a tendency for there to be organized and effective antagonism from muslim minorities toward majorities in many western nations. you can explain it away, but the overall pattern is there.*

to illustrate the issues that i think differentiate muslims from non-muslims, in my experience FOB east asians and non-muslim south asians tend to keep apart and keep to themselves when they hang out in public places. but, i've had several incidents where muslim males (they dressed with the whole schtick) were obviously irritated that my gf was wearing shorts in a park where they were congregated. one time a guy kept staring in an irritated fashion and all of us ended up glaring at each other and it was unpleasant. i've talked to other women who have had this experience with many "observant"** muslim males, they gotz issues with the ladies.

anyway, racism sucks. but there aren't any saints either.

* why doesn't it happen as much in the USA? i think because muslims are ethnically fractured and strongly skewed toward higher education. less ability to mobilize via common lines of affinity and less reason for resentment.

** they are observing a certain type of islam obviously.

Tensions have been steadily rising in Australia over the last couple of years between Muslim immigrants and the local population. I daresay a France like situation is going to erupt soon.

Gang rapist claims right to assault

By Natasha Wallace
December 10, 2005

THE eldest of four Pakistani gang rapist brothers has admitted lying at trial and apologised to his victims but said he thought he had a right to rape the "promiscuous" teenage girls.

MSK, 27, told the NSW Supreme Court yesterday that this was because the girls did not wear headscarves, were drinking alcohol and were unaccompanied when they went to his Ashfield home. MSK also blamed his intoxication, "cultural beliefs" and an undiagnosed mental disorder.

Gang rapist claims right to assault

but the gang rape issue is illustrative of a tendency for there to be organized and effective antagonism from muslim minorities toward majorities in many western nations.

Razib, could you provide examples? This is a pretty bold claim, and it also implies a kind of premeditation/strategy. I'm just curious, b/c my context is distinctly US-oriented.

I knew that far-right/anti-immigrant politics had more play in Australia but the intensity of this really surprised me.

I went through and read a lot of the articles from Australian papers on google news. This article from the Daily Telegraph (which i've heard has an anti-immigrant stance?) was the first of the initial raft that was more critical of the Lebanese role in the runup to this.

There is no doubt that many regular users of Cronulla beach feel, as do many Anglo-Australians (particularly women) who come in regular contact with large numbers of Middle Eastern migrants, that Australia's easy-going casual culture is under attack from young Middle Eastern males.

The reports of women being abused for being immodestly dressed, or travelling alone, or drinking alcohol, are too numerous to be dismissed.

The worrisome part is that the newest articles say gangs of lebanese people are out vandalising as some sort of retribution - and a white guy got stabbed. That doesn't bode well, hopefully cooler heads prevail. Someone's gotta realize how badly outnumbered they are.

An Indo-New Zealander told me that the Indians are called "curries".

Don't browns there call themselves curries too? Never knew it was that racist.

Razib, could you provide examples? This is a pretty bold claim, and it also implies a kind of premeditation/strategy. I'm just curious, b/c my context is distinctly US-oriented.

in the UK you have brown people, 1/2 muslims, 1/2 non-muslim. which group riots? now, granted, the muslims are not as well off, but i have been told (here) that mirpiris did not start off poorer than sikhs, who have prospered.

in france, you have blacks and north africans. which group is the locus for tension with society? the source of the greatest tension with the white french?

in the netherlands you have many immigrant groups, including christian ambonese from indonesia and hindus from suriname. but the problems occur on the moroccon-dutch fissure.

in germany you have many groups, including germans from russia (nearly a million of them showed up in the past 20 years from the former soviet union, many do not know german well), italians, spanish, etc. but the turks cause the big problems.

in spain you have muslims and non-muslims, the latter from latin america, the former from morocco. who blue up the subways in madrid?

each one can have explains which mitigate the impact of islam, but taken together i think it makes a persuasive case that muslims are particularly indigestable. this does not mean that i think muslims are NOT absorbable, but, i think there are repeated dynamics that are occurring. many of these nations there are muslims from one ethnic group who come to do low SES tasks. unlike black africans or hindu surinamese these muslims espouse a religion which has had millenia of interaction with european christian civilization, and a historical claim to superiority. i believe that the juxtposition between their abject inferiority (educationally, economically) vs. a vi the mainstream in comparison to their idealized image of themselves as superior to the kufir is problematic. this does not mean that hindus or sikhs do not exhibit attitudes of superiority, but, they come from societies which are segmented and so can acclimate to minority status. anyway, that is a simplistic model, saudi salafi ideology spread via petrodollars in diaspora communities plays a role. the israel-palestine question plays a role. there is nothing that that is determinate, but an intersection of variables makes muslims particular problematic. i don't think that's a bold claim at all.

blue = blew :) no, i'm not a retard. seriously.

ok, here is the sort of back-story of why i think non-neo-nazi ozzies have gone beserk: Muslim cleric: women incite men's lust with 'satanic dress':

A Muslim sheik told followers at a public meeting in Bankstown that women who were raped had incited men's lust by dressing immodestly and only had themselves to blame.

Sydney-born Sheik Faiz Mohamad, 34, a former boxer who teaches at the Global Islamic Youth Centre in Liverpool, made the comments during a lecture for more than 1000 people at Bankstown Town Hall.

now, thinking women are 'asking for it' is not a muslim view, it is relatively common in many cultures, and the west itself has worked hard to move past that warped set of values. personally, i believe that in complex societies hierarchy and stratification is inevitable to some extent, and ergo, i also think patriarchy is also inevitable (my reasoning draws from work that i have seen which suggests that males can form larger stable groups than females, etc.). some muslims are promoting reactionary views drawing upon an interpretation of their religion. liberals who lambast christian fundamentalists expressing anywhere close to this attitude tend to be less enthusiastic on piling on these types. not all diversity is good (depending on what your values are).

*mental note to update and re-read comments sections before posting

Apologies for repeating info others posted on.

Ananthan, yes, browns here took the sting out of "curries" and "curry munchers" as the Greeks and Italians took the sting out of "wog," we made it our own.

The Daily Telegraph is a strongly right-wing Murdoch paper that has long held anti-immigrant views. However, there has been a right-wing, anti-immigrant swing in media reporting and commentary recently. It's extremely worrrying.

There are reports of retaliation from Lebanese gangs in response, with about 60 men taking baseball bats to cars and a pub frequented by the Bra Boys club, whose members protested in large numbers yesterday. Turf War or Race War?

Ananthan, yes, browns here took the sting out of "curries" and "curry munchers" as the Greeks and Italians took the sting out of "wog," we made it our own.

That is EXACTLY what the NZ kid said: "we made it our own."

I forgot to mention the Sikh gurdwaras in remote parts of the North Island (NZ). Sikh dairy farmers have done well there.

Australia is fucked up. Has been for a long, long time. Southeast Asian refugees and immigrants have taken the brunt of it for a long, long time (see Romper Stomper starring a young and scary Russell Crowe) for a window on the madness. I wouldn't go there if someone paid me.

the aborgine community should yell, scream and tell all the white people to "go back to their country" then the rioters and their apologist justifiers will shut up

First, I would request that no one ever lump Australia and New Zealand together when it comes to race relations or anything for that matter. I am from New Zealand, and while it is not perfect, the willingness of New Zealanders to embrace other cultures is one of its strengths. I think it is highly unlikely that you would ever see any violence in New Zealand like what is described in the article. I have found racism much more prevalant in the every day attitudes of Australians, but having said that, I think it is important not to generalize about all Australians. There are racists everywhere. I live in New York and I encounter racism. The idea that reading this article etc would then lead me to say 'you couldn't pay me to live in Australia' is like me saying based on my experiences in say Texarkana I would never move to the US. Unfortunately, there are racists everywhere. I would just say the racists are a little more uncouth and blunt in Australia and less sophositicated than the ones on the Upper East Side who mistake me for a nanny...

I don't pretend to be an expert on the Leb/Australian community, but I believe they hail from an especially virulent, hardcore Shi'a background. Also if I'm not mistaken, this community spawned the horrible Dyab Abu Jahjah, who heads the horrible Arab European League. Jahjah moved to Belgium in the mid-80s after living thru the Leb civil war, where he is actively attempting to export to Belgium all the hideous notions that caused so much death and destruction in his home country.

My Japanese ex-girlfriend now lives in Australia. She reports that she can't go out on Pearl Harbor day - December 7, even though, as I recall, Australia was not attacked on that day.

Meanwhile my Japanese wife certainly faces occasional racism in the US, but December 7 passes unnoticed.

What's with Australia?

"but I believe they hail from an especially virulent, hardcore Shi'a background."

I think this is a pretty inflammatory thing to say without any basis of knowledge, as the speaker herself admitted.

What's with Australia?

i don't know, but the japanese were a far greater imminent threat to oz than they were to the us. they came might close to to cape york peninsula....

polling on racism in oz. note that attitudes are most negative toward middle easterners.

Hmm..am I the only Aussie to de-lurk here? :-)

Ex-Lawyer et al, I would say exactly the same things about Australia as being very accepting of other cultures and I would also have said that these sorts of race riots would be unimaginable here...Makes you wonder...have I been living under a rock or is it a Sydney specific issue?

It's been really interesting to see the perceptions of Australia and Australian racism overseas. It concerns me that people overseas perceive Australia as an incredibly racist country full of regular attacks on our Southeast Asian population. I've lived here for about twenty one years as a Sri Lankan descended Australian and have had few if any problems with racism. While there is an undercurrent of racism, as you say, it's generally pretty "average" racism that you'll find anywhere from the UK to the US. There's no hard and fast and every experience is different. Having said that there is a lack of minority presence in higher positions in Australian life - from boardrooms to politics though this is changing in the latter case. Mind you I will admit that a more subtle racism is now being preached by the media of late under the guise of "cultural" clashes.

NZ has certainly dealt better with the whole issue of indigenous peoples than Australia has and so it's possible that its acceptance of multiculturalism may be at a deeper level than in Australia. But is it really less racist? The current govt (from what I understand so please feel free to correct) is in coalition with parties such as NZ First.

Alot of us from places other than Sydney have been caught unawares by this, and the response from Sydney-siders I know has been "It's been a long time coming." The rest of the country is in shock.

But is it really less racist? The current govt (from what I understand so please feel free to correct) is in coalition with parties such as NZ First.

for readers out of the know, NZ first is headed by a man of at least part maori origin.

razib, you're right about attitudes towards the Japanese. It's more a generational thing here - the Japanese did attempt to invade and bombed Darwin during WWII. Alot of older Australians are still very racist towards the Japanese. Younger Australians tend to be less inclined that way..

First, I would request that no one ever lump Australia and New Zealand together when it comes to race relations or anything for that matter.

I am guilty of that conflation, and in my short stay I recognized that the two countries had very different cultures. I did also notice that lots of Browns from NZ had settled or were trying to settle in Australia, particularly doctors. That may be because there were more opportunities there.

Someone remarked that NZ is what England was fifty years ago, before it became the fucked up multiracial, atheistic cesspool that it is today (just kidding :)

I did also notice that the Maoris were in a markedly inferior economic postion in relation to the whites.

What's with Australia?

Autralia's treatment of the indigenous population easily rivals the American genocide/Manifest Destiny.

Consider this: In 1872, when the first settlers arrived in Tasmania, there were 5000 aboriginals (who lived by hunting, sewing and making fire); they had little contact with mainland aboriginals and so were terribly isolated. They did not know what to make of the Europeans.

By 1830, there were 72 left. They had been used for sex, slave labor, were tortured, mutilated, etc. They were hunted and their skins sold for govt. bounty. When the males were killed, the females were turned loose with the heads of their hubbies around their necks. Males were also castrated and children usually clubbed to death.

When the last Tasmanian was killed in 1869, he grave was opened by a European, and a tobacco pouch was made from his skin as a souvenir.

Prof. John Gray of the LSE has written quite a bit on aborigines.

Incidentally, the aboriginals (who I met selling 'native' souvenirs) look like South Asians; I wondered if there was an ancient link.

I also agree that its not appropriate to make judgements about all Australians based upon their history.

Incidentally, the aboriginals (who I met selling 'native' souvenirs) look like South Asians; I wondered if there was an ancient link.

well, there is an ancient link between all humans :) but yes, there is a minimal link, especially in southern india. it seems that the abos of oz swept out of africa via the indian ocean route, and some of descendents of this migration left their genetic imprint in southern india. though the physical similarity is greater than any genetic one (i.e., last common ancestor was probably 40,000 years ago :)

see the journey of man for more.

razib: yes, Winston Peters is part Maori but has also made a number of inflammatory comments towards migrants in the past, hence the reference. He has been made Foreign Minister.

yes, Winston Peters is part Maori but has also made a number of inflammatory comments towards migrants in the past, hence the reference

does that mean racism? i.e., the pogromish behavior highlighted above is entirely different from the comments and positions of winston peters. the maoris are already at a disadvantage vis-a-vi the whites, i can understand why they would be suspicious of newcomers. that doesn't mean i agree with that position necessarily, but, if i was a maori-first type i am not sure i would think any differently.

it isn't racist to want your country to be a certain way. that's why pakistan was created. that's why bangladesh was created. most of us here are immigrants or the children of immigrants, so we obviously empathize with the plight of those on the move and looking for better prospects. economics is not a zero sum game. but, sometimes people are marginalized by newcomers. oz & nz are cases in point.

from the articles, it seems like the people rioting are used to being violent. violent people tend to use whatever is handy. when a group of violent (young) men get together, they tend to just be idiots of any stripe. i wonder if this episode has more to do with ijiots using a diffuse racism to their benefit than an organized racist campaign? this might just be a young male turf war between the surfer gang and the lebanese gang. i have read before about lebenese gangs in aus.

i'm sure there is racism as part of it, but...a group of young toughs of any community aren't representative of much beyond the tendency of young men to be total and complete morons (especially if girls and beer and involved)

notwthistanding there might be more serious issues

razib, you're quite correct and I agree with you completely, it probably wasn't the best way to argue the point. It's more that NZ First, apart from being headed by a Maori, is an average nationalist, law-and-order anti-immigration party, and is in power-sharing. Ironically, NZF seeks to reduce compensation for Maoris from loss of native lands allowed under the treaty of Waitangi . We've had similar comments from Aboriginal leaders here. NZ is very similar to Australia in many aspects, though their response to indigenous issues are far superior to ours. My understanding is that your average rural NZ would be similar to your average rural Australian.

And I may be totally wrong :-)

it isn't racist to want your country to be a certain way. that's why pakistan was created.
My grandfather escaped from Karachi late. My mom preserved the skull cap till recently (not sure what happened to the burka). None of the desi countries are even nominally secular, except India. Theocracies are communal in the pejorative sense. And being communal is as wrong as being racist.

Southeast Asian = Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Hmong. Not Sri Lankan.

Raju, you may have hit the nail on the head there.

Recently in a Sydney suburb, rioting youths clashed with police for over a week. Clashes between beach gangs in Sydney have also occurred in the past, and this may be another manifestation with a new edge of racism. However, there are reports now that such riots are possible in Melbourne due to "simmering tensions" in the community. Given that the media did beat up the scheduled protest in Cronulla as being a possible "race riot," it may inspire copy cat attacks down south.

Middle-Eastern..ers have borne the brunt of racism since 9/11, though from what I gather in the US it's desis have been frequently targeted.

Gizzard, yes I know that, I was referring to Rage's comment which pointed to Romper Stomper as a reflection of Australian society.

well, i've had three kiwis tell me that oz is racist (out of four i've known with any level of familiarity). seems like a common perception by kiwis.

By 1830, there were 72 left. They had been used for sex, slave labor, were tortured, mutilated, etc. They were hunted and their skins sold for govt. bounty. When the males were killed, the females were turned loose with the heads of their hubbies around their necks. Males were also castrated and children usually clubbed to death.

When the last Tasmanian was killed in 1869, he grave was opened by a European, and a tobacco pouch was made from his skin as a souvenir.

Pardon my language...but WHAT THE FUCK?! The more I see of humanity, the less I want to be human.

And being communal is as wrong as being racist.

fine lines. violence is wrong no matter what. but people like to hang with 'their own kind.' sometimes they want their nation to share common values, and yes, gods. there is not fundamentally wrong with that in my opinion, though i disagree with that attitude mostly because i'm a blasphemous fuck and diversity gives me greater leverage to play havoc.

partition was a disaster in implementation, but do you think india would be an amicable nation if 35% of its population was muslim??? 50% in the northern half of the country???

razib, it's all about experience i guess. i've never had problems, having spent my early years in tasmania in an all-white school and neighborhood, with three or four kids from other ethnic minorities (greek and italian, plus one aboriginal). i never experienced racism until i went to high school in melbourne where there is a much higher immigrant population. i'm sure people growing up in melbourne would tell you something different depending on their background and circumstances. from what I know from other desis, i would still say australia is largely non racist. you provided an interesting link on race relations in oz, and i would agree that this undercurrent has hardened into something more sinister under the Howard government.

in this vein, i've had the perception that the UK is/has been much more racist than Oz, from the perceptions of desis who'd lived there and come here.

[sarcasm] I've got it - we could have desis in Australia all wear T-shirts that say: We're not Lebanese! That would solve everything! [/sarcasm]

*Incidentally, the aboriginals (who I met *selling 'native' souvenirs) look like South *Asians; I wondered if there was an ancient link.
*
*well, there is an ancient link between all *humans :) but yes, there is a minimal link, *especially in southern india. it seems that the *abos of oz swept out of africa via the indian *ocean route, and some of descendents of this *migration left their genetic imprint in *southern india. though the physical similarity *is greater than any genetic one (i.e., last *common ancestor was probably 40,000 years ago :)

Yeah, we basically learnt in sociology in high school in mumbai when we were studying Indian tribal groups that all the racial groups are present in India - negroid, sino-tibetan and australoid. Probably had to do with Australia being joined to the land mass that was Gondwanaland before it split up and drifted to the Southern hemisphere... hence you have the animals evolving differently and all that.

Probably had to do with Australia being joined to the land mass that was Gondwanaland before it split up and drifted to the Southern hemisphere...

Australia's split 45 million years ago happened long before homo sapiens existed.

Yeah, we basically learnt in sociology in high school in mumbai when we were studying Indian tribal groups that all the racial groups are present in India - negroid, sino-tibetan and australoid.

you learned wrong. those terms don't mean much, and they don't even accurately describe what they mean to describe. to be short about, brown people are not an admixture of various groups as much as an ancient lineage of human beings which a shading and grading of various characteristics throughout the subcontinent. yes, there is something exogenous ancestry, but probably not much more than 10% of the ancestors within the last 10,000 years were born outside of brownwanaland.

manish, i have heard the gondwanaland explanation from several people! pretty hilarious, huh?

Nazism was much more than a 'White Sumpremist' movement as it is portrayed today by the capitalist media. Most of the 'White Racists' today, that the media gladly portrays as neo-Nazis have no clue as to the occult significance of Nazism, or the fact that Hitler was an Orientalist. Yeah ofcourse, they didn't like the jews, and Himler had a Genetic Fetish due to his early career as a paultry farmer, however upon close examiniation the assertion that 6 million jews perished in the Holocaust has proven to be as big and empty lie as 'Bid Laden was responsible for 9/11' (ever heard of the The Leuchter Reports?). Winners controls history, losers suffer condemnation. Thats the rule of war. I mean these Aussies and other 'white supremists' more often than not believes that 'Aryan' means Nordic! So....

Great comment thread all, the situation here has indeed been a long simmering one, however I blame the Govt. and the PM for allowing a culture of permissivness regarding this kind of behaviour (like all right wingers he thinks allegations of racism come with politically correct motivations so he allows the language of racism to be used as a rejection of PC) even today the PM has disavowed the idea of racism as an accelerator for this violence. He is of course nuts.

A simple word from him in that direction would go a long way, but he won't of course given his political history of ambivalence toward asian migration to Australia and the fact that this racist mob were mostly blonde beach types from the whitest suburb in Sydney.

Many folks of my political persuasion have watched in dismay over the past decade as the seeds of this were planted, first with the PM's pussyfooting around with the nationalistic anti migration One Nation crowd and now with anti-terror laws targeted specifically at muslims.

This has also been amplified by the usual tabloid press (mostly Murdoch owned) and shock jocks of the nastiest persuasion.

Anyway I do go on........I'm sure that by now we all know how this story goes, it's a scene played out for far too many years and in far too many countries to ever go away.

I'm quite disgusted by this country today.

Interesting comments flygirl..

*It only took 54 comments for the Holocaust denier to come out of the woodwork. That's a first for SM. Nice rajawati. And by nice, I mean the exact opposite.

Most of the 'White Racists' today, that the media gladly portrays as neo-Nazis have no clue as to the occult significance of Nazism, or the fact that Hitler was an Orientalist. Yeah ofcourse, they didn't like the jews, and Himler had a Genetic Fetish due to his early career as a paultry farmer, however upon close examiniation the assertion that 6 million jews perished in the Holocaust has proven to be as big and empty lie as 'Bid Laden was responsible for 9/11'

just how far is your head mired up your ass?

Joining the debate a little late due to the transatlantic time difference.....

My own thoughts:

1. Riots by the Aussies are possibly partly opportunistic in nature -- racist thugs who'd just been looking for an excuse to "vent" against suitable targets.

2. Racism in Australia (which, frankly, I hadn't been aware of, apart from the antagonism towards Aboriginals -- there's a lot of Aussie ex-pats here in London and they usually been above-average friendly towards me, disproportionately compared to the local Brits) towards those perceived as being from a Middle Eastern background has been exacerbated further by the fact that the country's been explicitly named as a target by Al-Qaeda. Plus the bombs in Bali etc.

3. The apparent discrepancy between the behaviour of many Muslims in other Western countries (including here in the UK) compared with the US may not only be due to the factors mentioned by Razib earlier (fractured community, significantly higher level of education and income amongst American Muslims), but perhaps also because Muslims in the US are much more vastly outnumbered compared to their counterparts in other countries, especially in Europe. Maybe this acts as some kind of psychological "check" against the potential of riotous or seditionary behaviour on the part of disgruntled American Muslims, along with indirectly acting as a subtle incentive for them to integrate quietly. I'm just guessing here.

the assertion that 6 million jews perished in the Holocaust has proven to be as big and empty lie as 'Bid Laden was responsible for 9/11'

The freaks come out at night.

I suspect that poster "Rajawati" is either someone deliberately yanking everyone's chain as a subversive "joke", or has RSS-leanings.....

just how far is your head mired up your ass?

A N N A girl!
oops..I mean
A T T A girl!

I ass-ume that was a rhetoric :)
BUTT from what I can surmise,sadly not as deep as we would have wanted it to be.

By the way, Wiki says the official figure is somewhere between 9 to 11 million.

"I think this is a pretty inflammatory thing to say without any basis of knowledge, as the speaker herself admitted."

I didn't mean for it to inflame, but if the foo shits...

You are right, I should do some more research, but I believe that the majority of Australian Lebanese moved there post-1960s, and the majority of American Lebanese moved here during the Ottoman era and are Christian. (Danny Thomas) My conclusion that Aussie Lebs are Shia is deductive. Does anyone have hard facts? I'd like to see them.

I'm not defending alcohol-fanned hooliganism, which is what this is. That said, it seems, from what I've read, that a minority of Australian Lebanese enjoy baiting the majority, like Jahjah. And I do venture that the Lebanese Shia are radicalized and take certain aggressive characteristics with them.

I lived in Sydney for two years - in Bondi Beach and in Surry Hills. I frequently heard mutterings about "wogs" and "Lebs". The gang-rape incidents didn't help race relations for sure. There was much muttering too, about traditional ways of living being threatened by the changing demographics of the western suburbs and townships (Liverpool, Blacktown, Paramatta etc) - not just the large Lebanese presence but also Asian immigrants like the Vietnamese. I was quite nervous after 9/11, worrying that someday, I would be in a bar surrounded by yobs, someone would hear my name, and turn on me. Nothing happened but it was a reflection of how I felt the simmering tensions were capable of quickly rising to the surface.

And still, I must confess, I'm shocked. Sydney was a beautiful, friendly city and this has defiled its memory for me.

Nice to see the anti- holocaust denier support. I recall my Russian-Jewish grandmother, after years of requests, finally permitted by the Soviet Union to make a phone call to her remaining family in Poland. This was sometime in the late 1960's and I was around ten.

The call was monitored of course, and my grandmother spoke yiddish, but it was clear that she was running down a list of names, and that the answer to almost all was "no." The call was cut off in mid-stream (even though it implicated the Nazis more than the Soviets).

Sheesh. I regret the focus of Holocaust museums on the Jewish holocaust. We've had ten or twelve in the 20th century with a couple ongoing. Let's acknowledge them all.

Why always this focus on us Jews? What, Rajawati, did we ever do to you?

Whoops, got my grandmas confused. My Polish-Jewish grandmother, in this case.

but perhaps also because Muslims in the US are much more vastly outnumbered compared to their counterparts in other countries, especially in Europe. Maybe this acts as some kind of psychological "check" against the potential of riotous or seditionary behaviour on the part of disgruntled American Muslims, along with indirectly acting as a subtle incentive for them to integrate quietly.

All I can say is, you're kidding right???? Please tell me you're kidding. Muslims dont riot in the US because they arent in the majority!?!?!?!?! I thought I had heard all the excuses, but that was a new one. And I guess that the france riots were an attempt by islamofacists to take over france, and the 9/11 memorial in PA is actually a memorial to the hijackers.

Why is it that we always are very quick to dump (justly too, I ight add) on the *blond white* racists, but never stop to lament the sad retarded reclusiveness of the Muslim communities everywhere? Do we honestly think all this is going to get any better without Muslims starting to integrate better?

just how far is your head mired up your ass?

I'm sure its far enough to prevent said person from seeing mere objective proof -- like pictures of prison camps, dead bodies heaped sky high; testimony from thousands who fled Europe in an exodus and those who survived; testimony from Poles, Gypsies, and others who were slaughtered; remanants of the kill houses in prison camps...(list goes on).

*Sigh*

Would the local reaction have been the same were it a community of any other skin color? Say it weren't the Lebs but were migrant "Italians" or "Japanese" or "Canadians" who had settled down in Australia. Now a bunch of these migrant youths went out and committed the same hideous act as the Lebanese youth had done and then some more (Like the assault on the lifeguards). Would the local surfer population have reacted in the same way as they did in this case?

Something to think about. Perhaps this act easily become interpreted as a racial crime cause of two skin colors in the picture. Perhaps the local population would have reacted the same had it been anyone else.

(an no I'm not an ozzie or any way related to it)

Jeremy

Dont worry about it - these anti-semites get everywhere on the internet - even cool places like this - dont let it make you feel any less at home here.

Why is it that we always are very quick to dump (justly too, I ight add) on the *blond white* racists, but never stop to lament the sad retarded reclusiveness of the Muslim communities everywhere?

here at the mutiny, we are staunchly against all stupidity, no matter the ethnicity or creed of the perpetrator, TRUST me. :)

i hear you. but it's not as simple as saying that they're too reclusive-- you or i might say "reclusive", others would contend "excluded".

Do we honestly think all this is going to get any better without Muslims starting to integrate better?

i think this is an important thought-- and one which we can all consider. it's not like i saw any other brown parents (besides my daddy) at our monthly speech and debate tournaments, much to the bitter disappointment of other brown competitors. they would furiously cut me off, when i had the nerve to rant about how "my dad won't leave me alone!" with a heated, "at least YOUR dad is HERE."

same with PTA. my ex-bf's soccer team. fill in your own examples. fine, maybe it's not the "retarded reclusive" degree that we see in certain communities, but we ain't innocent, either. honor killings don't just happen in muslim families. i can't see a family that HAD integrated murdering a wayward daughter, can you?

MRT,

I was referring to those Muslims settled in the US who may have anti-Western/anti-US tendencies like those living elsewhere in the West (including here in the UK).

I was not referring to "all" or even "most" American Muslims.

You also need to take into consideration my comment (and Razib's) about the comparatively higher level of income and education of US Muslims.

I'm sure your own suggestions as to why Muslims in the States are more integrated and law-abiding than in other Western countries would be welcomed.

By the way, you missed my point about Muslims being outnumbered. Muslims are not the "majority" in any Western country, including the UK. However, when you consider that (unless I'm mistaken) they constitute 10% of the French population and, here in the UK, are approximately 1.5 million in a total British population of 60 million, then it's a considerably different situation compared to the US where there are estimated to be between 1.5 - 3 million Muslims in a total population of nearly 300 million.

Both the visibility and ratio are very different indeed.

anyway, racism sucks. but there aren't any saints either.

So true in the context of racism anywhere in the world.

Immigration, especially when it is happens fast and furiously, on a large scale and in a short time as many countries are experiencing today, is prone to bring about backlashes-whether exprerssed or not - from the population that is on the "receiving" end of it.

The trick is to contain the virulet expressions of this, emphasize the positives of the immigration to both parties, and then have an environment that acclimatizes the immigrants and immigrees to each other. A fracture in this delicate exercise can bring about the kind of behavior this town saw recently.

Its also common sense that the people that are immigrating don't try to change the subtext of the life they *chose* to move to. Besides being numerically handicapped, and thereby making such a plan of action somewhat of a dangerous pursuit, its also bad manners for a guest (many do get social benefits afterall to get them started) to tell the host that their rooms are small , for example.

If there have been numerous incidents where the "Lebs" have had issues with the general Aussie culture, then why did they go there in the first place? Perhaps because Australia was an easier place to migrate to for a variety of reasons such as greater availability of visas, and a faster track to gain the material trappings of modern life.

And then once "in" (or "out" as it may be viewed), perhaps it is considered easier to impose their traditional/idealist view on the prevalant culture?

If so, then obviously, this sort of attitude to immigration is flawed in both purpose and approach, and as long as this sort of migrancy continues, it will create the fissures that lead to the incidents we see today.

I have seen that the general vein of an anrgument made in favor of immigration, tries hard to gloss over or ignore the existence of some of these issues in a straight forward and constructive way - because that may make the person voicing these opinions seem old fashioned and even xenophobic. However, in any new wave of migration, it must be remembered that the receivers of the new population may have already been immigrants themselves (South Asians, Lebanese) but may feel that they are now "local" and therefore view the next approaching wave with some manner of caution. Therefore, saying there is a problem with Lebanese immigrants may be too generic , as opposed to saying Lebanese immigrants of a particular origin in Lebanon, a socio economic context, and a window of their immigration, are more alike than Lebanese immigrants of a different time/emo space.

The other problem that I see with the general response to immigration, is that somehow the immigrants must be welcomed with open arms, as if immigration is a right. It is a first step towards being citizens in a new land with its own culture that they can help positively influence. Coming in is not an invitation to stay and dissonate. If that contract is unrecognized, bad things happen.

Interesting thread, and I've been typing fast and without much editing, so I assume that this appears like a random flood of thoughts, but I hope the intent of it shows through as well.

Hey folks - forget Australia. There's a lot of bad shit going down in the US right now. Check out these action alerts about really really bad legislation, HR 4437, which is being railroaded through Congress this week. I heard that someone is introducing an amendment to kill native-born citizenship to this bill, which already strips a number of rights from documented and undocumented immigrants, and even people who work with them.

Please get involved, and call your representatives today. Hopefully, someone can write a longer piece about how important it is that folks get involved on this one. If this thing passes, it's not going to be a temporary setback for immigrant rights - it's going to be a nightmare.

Since when did this forum turn into appologists for racist thugs? Does the differnce in ethnic/religious background justify the kind of garbage being spewed on here. The kind of broad statements about basis of tensions seem to be trying to justify the actions of a lot or racist/stupid/drunken louts. Check out the link:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/bali-tampa-911-a-potpourri-of-causes/2005/12/12/1134236003147.html

Give the posturing a rest vandesi - this forum isn't about apologia.

Standard Sepia Mutiny thread:

1. This bad thing happened.
2. What? Terrible that this bad thing happened.
3. Various theories about why said bad thing happened.
4. Arguing back and forth about why said bad thing happened.
5. Trolls.
6. Someone gets mad that people are trying to understand what happened.

(I've done the same thing vandesi - after the 7/7 bombings there were commenters saying that racism was the cause, while others were saying, no, it's indoctrination. And, as I recall, I got irritated that people were trying to understand why 7/7 happened, but it wasn't apologia. It was a different - people had their theories why 7/7 happened. Come now. This is one of the better forums for discussion on the net. And, no, abhi didn't pay me to say that).

native-born citizenship to this bill

The only thing people are talking about doing is eliminating automatic conferance of citizenship on children of illegal immigrants. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Thousands of white youths attacked people they believed were of Arab descent at a Sydney beach. Later, Arabs retaliated in the suburbs.

On reading this in the New York Times, I literally pissed my pants.
I mean thousands of white youth! This doesnt sound like the Nazis to me. Sounds more like average White Australians gone insane.

Meanwhile, back in France, things have "calmed" down ... I wonder if this is going to be the norm for countries where the "disenfranchised minorities" (sic) express their opinions :

As many as 60 cars still burn nightly in France

PARIS, Dec 8 (AFP) - Between 40 and 60 cars are still being burned nightly in France more than three weeks after a wave of suburban violence subsided, a senior interior ministry official said Thursday.

As many as 60 cars still burn nightly in France

... a text message of unknown origin but wide impact... was a blunt call to arms, saying in part: "This Sunday every f---ing Aussie in the Shire get down to north Cronulla to help support Leb and wog bashing day..." [Link]

well, i've had three kiwis tell me that oz is racist (out of four i've known with any level of familiarity). seems like a common perception by kiwis.

Most Canadians will also tell you that America is racist, sexist, fundamentalist, illiterate etc.

I guess its a common reaction to being next to a larger culturally dominant country.

My bad - that was me, but I mistyped. I meant to say:

"This Sunday every f---ing Aussie in the Shire get down to north Cronulla to help support Leg and bob washing day..."

You'd be surprised how dirty your legs and bobs get down under ...

Federal Labor MP Harry Quick blames racism

It really concerns me that Australians - if you scratch them you discover a racist and this is one of the sad things about Australia, despite us espousing multiculturalism, deep down we have this fear of people who are different from us.

contradicting Prime Minister Howard's view that there is no underlying racism in Australia

I'm with Al Mujahid on this - I'm simply amazed at the scale of the violence.

Lookit, young people get into fights. Turf, alcohol, racism ... all a potent mix.

But we're talking about thousands of Australians, possibly 5,000 or more. That's not a minor thing, no matter how resistant to assimilation any group is. I can think of very few first world racial situations recently that involved that many people. As I recall (although I could be wrong) violence in france involved very small groups of roving individuals, more like 30 at a time, maybe fewer.

And what does this say about the police? Once you have more than 50 people assembled, the police should be able to spot them and move in. You really don't want to let these groups get that large, they become much harder to deal with.

BTW, I'm waiting for the law and order Aussie premier to use the same language about the white rioters as the French minister did about the Arab ones - will the PM call them "scum"? If not, will the people who defended that label in France use it themselves here?

People. I am appalled at the Australia backlash going on in blogospeheres everywhere. Honestly! I lived in Sydney as a desi immigrant with my desi immigrant family AND extended family for nearly 20 years and never encountered a bout of violent racism. The world media usually doesnt take notice of Australia which is why most of you dont know much about us (a real relief to be honest!).

When these riots flared up, alongside other issues, the media decided it was just what they needed to further emphasise just how racist a country Australia is. I am sorry, but if you havent learnt by now that all you hear in the media isnt correct you never will.

Yes this atrocity has occurred and will continue occurring until a breaking point is reached whereby discussion can begin to tackle the issues at their core. But please, dont uneccessarily burn my country when a whole heap of you guys are from countries where occurrences like this have also been an issue! Try and judge fairly and try not to generalise! A majority of desi's and other races here, despite all that has occurred, will tell you that Aus is a great place to live and that 5000 ignorant uni students do not speak for the 22 million that did not participate in this ruthless mess.

I'm not saying that AU is deeply racist, but I will say that it's not easy to mobilize 5,000 people for anything that isn't sport related. This is an unusually large race riot for a first world country, and that's very significant. 50 people are disgruntled individuals, 5,000 ... and you start to wonder what that says about both society and the state's ability to maintain order.

MJ: The PM has a long history of failure with regards to race issues. He has consistently failed to contradict or condemn outright racial vilification since he came to office and has promoted a culture of fear and suspicion. In his book, multiculturalism is a dirty word. He refuses to call Australia multicultural as he refuses to acknowledge that this was racially motivated. The NSW Premier took a stronger stance.

divya, welcome to the fray :-)

Ennis,

5000 is a fraction of the population of three universities that begun this whole mess. 5000 in comparison to 22 million is what I am asking you to consider. Out of those 5000, more than half were under 25.

As for society and maintaining order- its a bit hard when violence erupts unexpectedly. Order is being maintained, believe me, police taskforces are everywhere and are doing their very best to prevent the violence from recurring.

... its a bit hard when violence erupts unexpectedly.

But it wasn't unexpected. The text message organizing the riot seems to have been reported in the SMH a day before it happened.

Pardon my outrage:

but MD give your head a shake

Are you serious? You don't find this starnge? If it had been random attacks against desi's, do you think this thread would be wringing its hand trying to rationalize (and perhaps even justify) the actions of some louts? I mean look at statements like these:

"I'm not defending alcohol-fanned hooliganism, which is what this is. That said, it seems, from what I've read, that a minority of Australian Lebanese enjoy baiting the majority, like Jahjah. And I do venture that the Lebanese Shia are radicalized and take certain aggressive characteristics with them."

Does anyone really think that people who have tendencies towards racism need any real reason to go on violent rampages? It's rumors of arab kids getting into fights with life guards today. Gang rapes from a couple of years back, or their beliefs that they don't need permission from thugs to get to the beach tomorrow. Of all the people on the net, shouldn't we be the first to recognize inflamatory rhetoric.

It's not that one or two people wrote crazy posts (Hollocaust deniers here? your search engine led you to the wrong kind of Arians moron) or that some people wanted to share their experiences of Australia as being mostly tolerant. But that any number of people kept hinting that these kids deserved it (and thankfully any number of mutieers called them on their inflamatory statements).

I'm just curious as to the rational behind this? Do mutineers wish to draw clear distinctions between arab and desi populations (as someone ironcially suggested the I'm not a Leb t-shirts)? Or perhpas we would like to hold on to a notion of Australia as a mostly tolerant society that will accept us for ourselves and not see us as a wog, curry, and commit random acts of violence against us?

Divya:

How easily have you been able to mobilize 5,000 uni students for anything without sport/music/women in bikinis involved? It's really not that easy to do. Furthermore, once violence began, the police had reasons to prevent large gatherings from occurring again. Why wasn't this just a one day event? Lastly, I'd love to see the polls on how Aussies are reacting. Even coverage in the SMH indicates that there is a fair amount of sympathy for the nativist message of the gundas.

Manish,

Police were on standby in the event that anything occurred, however, one text message would not warrant an entire taskforce by the beach, in this case though, it was a completely unexpected number of people, beyond what the police or anyone else could even begin to imagine. Would you have expected 5000 neo-nazi uni students to turn up after an sms?

Manish, it was the SMH :-)

It was reported in local Sydney city and suburban papers. Local shock jock Alan Jones has been fanning the flames for a at least a week on talkback radio (can't find link, SMH has taken it down). From the article you linked it seems to have been viewed as a largely surfie turf issue. No one expected such numbers or for things to escalate to such a degree.

And our glorious PM yet again fails to read the mood of the situation and respond adequately.

Appeals for violence were brewing on the radio, and seem to be popular after the fact:

The riot was three days away and Sydney's top-rating breakfast host had heaps of anonymous emails to whip his 2GB listeners on.

He was dead keen for a demo at the beach: "A rally, a street march, call it what you will. A community show of force."

He assured his audience he "understood" why that famous text message went out and he read it right through again on air: "Come to Cronulla this weekend to take revenge. This Sunday every Aussie in the shire get down to North Cronulla to support the leb and wog bashing day …"

Daily he cautioned his listeners not to take the law into their own hands, but he warmed to those who had exactly that on their minds. On Thursday Charlie rang to suggest all junior footballers in the shire gather on the beach to support the lifesavers. "Good stuff, good stuff," said Jones.

"I tell you who we want to encourage, Charlie, all the Pacific Island people because, you want to know something, they don't take any nonsense. They are proud to be here - all those Samoans and Fijians. They love being here. And they say 'Uh huh, uh huh. You step out of line, look out.' And of course, cowards always run, don't they."

When John called on Tuesday to recommend vigilante action - "If the police can't do the job, the next tier is us" - Jones did not dissent. "Yeah. Good on you John." And when he offered a maxim his father had picked up in the war - "Shoot one, the rest will run" - Jones roared with laughter. "No, you don't play Queensberry's rules. Good on you, John."

Pity poor Berta - "not of a Middle Eastern family" - who reported hearing "really derogatory remarks" aimed at Middle Eastern people on Cronulla beach. Jones cut her off: "Let's not get too carried away, Berta. We don't have Anglo-Saxon kids out there raping women in western Sydney."

Yesterday 2GB broadcasters claimed two thirds of calls to the station supported "what happened" on Sunday. But Alan Jones is not around to deal with the aftermath. He's having a well-earned holiday. [Link]

These were repeated appeals for violence on Sydney's top rated morning show program, and afterwards 2/3rds of callers approved of the violence. Sounds like more than just a few drunken malcontents.

flygirl, jinx!

Divya:

Would you have expected 5000 neo-nazi uni students to turn up after an sms?

I'm writing too much here, but I just found this strange

A BARE-CHESTED youth in Quiksilver boardshorts tore the headscarf off the girl’s head as she slithered down the Cronulla dune seeking safety on the beach from a thousand-strong baying mob.

The writer seems to have a sympathetic to the victims and yet the word choice is strange? Slithered?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/thugs-ruled-the-streets-and-the-mob-sang-waltzing-matilda/2005/12/11/1134235951620.html

Ennis,

Let me tell you how: at the recent Voluntary Student Union protests, our rather small university of 10 000 students managed to churn up 2000 protestors. Compare this with other universities with three times the population of ours and there you have it. Yes it was pre meditated, and FYI, police were on alert after the riot, and were at the scene each time. And yes, there is widerspread support for the
"gundas" as you put it, however, there is not support for the violence, but that does not mean all those people will take to the streets. You seem to believe that the lebanese gangs are completely innocent. think again. Look up the Macquarie Fields rape case. Both sides have caused havoc equally as bad as one another. thats why its best not to take sides in matters like this.

I would hardly call those comments an attempt to apologise for or rationalise the situation. IT is not a question of drawming the lines between ethnic groups at all. Most desis and other migrants don't draw lines between our distinct groups. However, the background of the situation is entirely relevant as to why this *specific* group was targeted, and this is acknowledged by members of the relevant communities (see here, and here, also The Age and more from here). And here I'll take out the tired old line, old but true: it doesn't excuse the appalling violence, but it is part of the whole story. We are all aware of the racist undercurrent here. It's just never been this violent or to such an extent.

JINX Ennis!

Alan Jones has long been known to be on the lunatic fringe.

Ennis,

2GB listeners are mostly old timers from Alan Jones's time. You must look at the actual people who participated in these protests, youth. Students with ignorant opinions. I cant recall there being many 2GB supporters out there smashing cars

How many uni students are there in this neck of the woods? Let's say that there were ... 50,000, of whom 25,000 were male. If, as divya said, these were 5,000 neo-nazi students, then you're saying that 20% of the male university population is neo-nazi. That's hardly a fringe element.

Ennis,

many, many of them were female. And FYI- you would be looking at the uni students of over 3 universities with an average student population of 90000 altogether.

and they arent all part of the neo-nazi movement. Many just accompanied their boyfriends as this article suggests:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17546783-2,00.html

Aside from the play on numbers, I just want to say that this isnt about me proving australia doesnt harbour racial tendencies but certainly nowhere near as what the world media is suggesting.

I dont know about you, but I must get back to work now,

Cheers,

Divya

I have to agree with Ennis. It is with more than a small amount of relish that I speculate if these riots are not the biggest group on group violence outside of Rwanda.
Ironic that the few racist thugs are actually playing catch up to the Rwandan militas...

So since the Holocaust has been brought up, note that the murders are rightly condemned, regardless of the motivations. i.e. it is immaterial what Adolf said in Mein Kampf, or what the Nazis claimed as the Jewish problem. And so it should - sociopolitical issues can not be used to justify it.

But isn't what is going on here? Claiming that the muslims, shi'a, lebanese, whatever bring it on themselves?

Why is it that we always are very quick to dump (justly too, I ight add) on the *blond white* racists, but never stop to lament the sad retarded reclusiveness of the Muslim communities everywhere? Do we honestly think all this is going to get any better without Muslims starting to integrate better?

On a different note...

The only thing people are talking about doing is eliminating automatic conferance of citizenship on children of illegal immigrants. I don't see anything wrong with that.

"Oh! Do you come from a land down under? (oh yeah yeah)
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover."

(I suppose they left out the verse about xenophobia?) It gives the impression of a country full of frat guys.

Divya? That link you gave says something different from what you say it does. You said:

many, many of them were female...and they arent all part of the neo-nazi movement. Many just accompanied their boyfriends as this article suggests:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17546783-2,00.html

However, the article describes not the mass of demonstrators, but the dozen or so who were identified with existing neo-nazi groups. A spokesman of one of these groups said that:

Patriotic Youth League spokesman Luke Connors confirmed that his group attended the riot and had handed out anti-migration literature.

"There was only a few people there, mostly girls with their boyfriends, handing out a few leaflets with 'Aussies fighting back' on them," he said.

Very different claims.

This coverage argues that the "lebs" are hardly religious, but rather are fairly modern but ganglike, same as the Ozzies:

http://smh.com.au/news/paul-sheehan/nasty-reality-surfs-in-as-ugly-tribes-collide/2005/12/11/1134235944844.html?page=2

What has happened on consecutive weekends has been displays of two unpalatable subcultures, the yobbo beach tribes, and the Lebanese gangsta tribes. The reactions to the Cronulla brawl will be predictable. The disgusting behaviour of the Aussie yobs, behaving even worse than the original provocateurs last week, will prompt a great deal of ululating about Australian's undertow of racism. This will be countered by a demand for recognition that violent crime in Sydney is disproportionately dominated by Lebanese, Aborigines and Pacific Islanders and Australians have had a gutful of the pandering to these groups.

Both sides will be right. You only have to look at the events at Coogee RSL club in 2002 to know that Australian beach culture has its ugly underbelly. And it would be folly to airbrush away the reality that what started the Cronulla tensions was yet another provocation by the aggressive, repugnant Lebanese gangsta culture - itself an alien subculture within the Lebanese community - which has given Sydney dozens of shootings and murders, a spate of gang rapes, hundreds of sexual assaults, and thousands of deliberate racist provocations at Darling Harbour, the eastern and southern beaches and some of the big clubs in western Sydney, along with Canterbury Bulldogs rugby league matches.

At its worst, this culture had overtones of civil war, as the Kanaan gang sprayed the Lakemba police station with gunfire. ...The cops hate and fear the swarming packs of Lebanese who respond when some of their numbers are confronted, mobilising quickly via mobile phones and showing open contempt for Australian law. [Link]

‘We are all in this together’

- a harmonious gathering of Sydneysiders this Sunday
Sydney is home to people of a diverse mix of cultures such as Indigenous, Irish, Chinese, French, Turkish, Sri Lankan, Sierra Leone, Sudanese and also home to many religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism.

The recent events in some suburbs in Sydney have painted an image of our city as a one breeding a culture of hatred and violence. We all recognise that racism, prejudice and discrimination arise from a lack of understanding of each other.

A public gathering entitled ‘We are all in this together’, has been organised for 4pm on Sunday the 18th December at Belmore park, located 30 seconds walk from Central Station in the city. The purpose of this gathering is simply to promote cultural, religious, racial, ethnic harmony of all Australians.

Leaders from Australia’s sporting, community, arts, educational, religious and cultural domains will also be invited to attend, and to speak on promoting a culture of community harmony.

Sydneysiders who have witnessed the violence of the past week and feel that they ‘want to do something’ to promote a culture of harmony and understanding in society are encouraged to attend this gathering. This is not a political event, a reactive rally, nor a protest.

It is a peaceful gathering where all Sydneysiders from all walks of life, young and old, can come in and share the spirit of harmony and understanding – the true spirit of Australia.

The organisers of the event are group of young Australians who believe that the seeds of understanding and seeds of social harmony lie deeper than the seeds of prejudice and discrimination.

Together, we can show that Sydney embraces diversity.

Michael Mcglynn, Matt Noffs, Kolitha Wickramage, Mahesh Radhakrishnan, Rishi Shankar.

i'm not familiar with australia, but it seems like there are 5,000 or so goondas of the surfer variety who hang out at the beach and really like busting heads. And then another bunch of goondas whose parents are from Lebanon who also bust a lot of heads. And the two are going at it. couple that with still-existing racism. how many of us expect, really, to find Aus is free from racism? given that, i don't think its time to run for the hills. you know what, even in india you have chauvanist and nativist sentiment about migrants from one state to another. granted, 5,000 people doing it is a bit eye-opening.

if you have a group of marginalized poor whites fighting a group of marginalized colors, both of whom are proven to be violent, whose fault is it? society's? or the goondas who like to fight? just bc there are apparently 5,000 of them might just mean, there's about 5,000 surfer dudes idiots in that area.

Ennis, if you read my post (at 8.14pm, I think) and followed the links you would find those articles you've just linked, so jinx to you again mate.

Raj, that's a very selective verse from a rather yob song.

I'm a little confused as to why the term uni students is being bandied around here - is there some article I've missed? There are more than six universities in Sydney alone, apart from the state of NSW as a whole and so this hardly constitutes a large % of the student population.

flygirl,

don't bother. Apparently living in Aus/Sydney for 20+ years does not mean we'd know anything about actually living here now would we?

I've been trying to hold my tongue (moderately, compared to my normal chatty self), but the anti-Muslim comments are ridiculous. Honestly, I find all this talk about this huge, homogenous non-integrating Muslim mass disingenuous and Islamophobic. It's comparable, in my mind, as blaming Black people in America for being poor, disenfranchised, and segregated. And further, just because a group of idiots decide to gang rape women does not give 5000 neo-nazi f--kheads the right to beat, bludgeon, or derogate the ethnic community with which those rapists identify, and vice-versa.

No, of course it doesn't give them the right to do that. But your analogy doesn't work for me. I read about these riots with horror but also a very personal sense of recognition based on two instances in which I was targeted and harassed (and, I think, would have been assaulted, had passersby not stopped and physically intervened) for my "inappropriate dress" by young Arab Muslim guys. I wasn't in Australia; I was in Paris. My rage at being verbally assaulted and terrorized because my appearance didn't conform to their cultural standards of "appropriate" (although I was in Paris, (Paris!, where women dress in far more revealing outfits than my skirt and t-shirt or jeans and tank top!), was immense.

So while I completely condemn the rioting and racist acts of a mob, I also think this incident points to a very real issue that every woman among us should think long and hard about. Assimilation is not a cool word anymore. But I'll be damned if I want any country in which women enjoy freedom of mobility, to allow or even tolerate "cultural difference" when that cultural difference threatens to limit my rights and even endanger my life. And tolerance, when it includes cultures with very different views about female behavior, does threaten to do all those things to me and every other woman around me.

1) Yes, racist mobs suck! No one is safe from THEM, either.
2) Of course, most Muslim men would no doubt cut off their hands before they'd deliberately scare a woman!
3) Yes, many men who aren't Muslim harass, abuse, and rape women anyway!

4) But values do differ from culture to culture. Islamic countries, particularly those in the Middle East, have very different ideas about what is acceptable female behavior. Immigrants from those countries bring those values with them. And the article referenced above about the gang rape suggest that not all immigrants are making sure their children understand that those values do not apply in the country to which they have immigrated. And there, to me, surfaces the most important debate about assimilation vs. cultural diversity. A line must be drawn.

I am not alone in having been targeted for verbal abuse by Arab Muslim men who feel comfortable imposing their values on me. So some of the events which the media claims led up to this explosion of violence make me think. And make me feel uneasy. I think (hope!) all of us here vigorously condemn racism and mob violence. But moving on, I also think there are pressing issues buried within this conflagration that NEED TO BE ADDRESSED. Hence I am both upset and alarmed when I see the possibility of this conversation getting shut down due to other people's fears that taking a more subtle view of the incident might win them the name "Islamophobe."

Raju, you've...well, hit the nail on the head again.

This is how the situation is playing out in Sydney. This is how things are in those beachside suburbs.

I've watched the electorate here change from an open, relaxed society into a fearful, parochial populace with creeping xenophobia. Muslims continue to be demonised, they have suffered the most since 9/11, Bali and 7/7. This, you willl acknowledge, has happened everywhere. But this is still something totally out of the blue here. So try and get an idea of how things are here, and how this arose before calling it.

Andrew Priest in The Australian talks about the policing issues and where they went wrong. Andrew West tries to play the "cultural clash" card, and so far is the only commentator to try it. I never thought I'd link this, but Tim Blair lists some good sources of information and analysis on his blog. Other useful links: Antifa Group Fight dem Back watches race relations in Aust/NZ, Crikey carries alternative commentary on Australian politics.

There *is* a undercurrent of racism (as with anywhere from the US to the UK) here that needs to be dealt with - not by allowing a bunch ignoramuses shoot their mouths of (cf. Pauline Hanson 1996, Bronwyn Bishop 1998, 2002, 2005, John Brogden 2005) and calling it free speech, but by actually engaging in real debate which has been suppressed here. This is partly due to the current climate, where anything approaching dissent is given little, if any, coverage. Couple that with the really pathetic level of politcal discourse around at the moment and you've got a heady mix.

That may be the one positive thing to come out of this; that at last we will put the ghost to rest and really look at way of really re-engaging people with the idea of multiculturalism (which has since 1996 been put into the unmentionable drawer) and making a real attempt to educate people about racism (and John Howard will be voted out of office! look, a flying pig!). For this we need, alas, excellent and visionary leadership (Peter Costello...step up..?)

[Now if you will excuse me, I will wander back to life and try and work out at what point I became a flag-waving Aussie patriot. *shudders*]

But I'll be damned if I want any country in which women enjoy freedom of mobility, to allow or even tolerate "cultural difference" when that cultural difference threatens to limit my rights and even endanger my life. And tolerance, when it includes cultures with very different views about female behavior, does threaten to do all those things to me and every other woman around me.

Please explain where I say that "cultural difference" are a justification for violence against women. I believe my statement was that, "just because a group of idiots decide to gang rape women does not give 5000 neo-nazi f--kheads the right to beat, bludgeon, or derogate the ethnic community with which those rapists identify, and vice-versa." (emphasis mine). I'm not an apologist for the actions of a bunch of gang rapists - I am simply taking issue with the idea that it is ok to blame this on some crazy Muslim way of life (that of course every Muslim in a non-Muslim country must prescribe to).

4) But values do differ from culture to culture. Islamic countries, particularly those in the Middle East, have very different ideas about what is acceptable female behavior. Immigrants from those countries bring those values with them. And the article referenced above about the gang rape suggest that not all immigrants are making sure their children understand that those values do not apply in the country to which they have immigrated. And there, to me, surfaces the most important debate about assimilation vs. cultural diversity. A line must be drawn.

From comments by aussies here and the media coverage it's becoming pretty obvious that this is really more aimed against the lebanese community there rather than non-whites as a whole. Obviously that doesn't make it any more acceptable, but it does put the rioting into better context. There are some wider hate groups involved, but the intensity here seems to be fuelled by antagonism between two specific 'subcultures' in that one area.

Cronulla is atypical:

Cronulla is an aberration in modern day Australia, where a quarter of the 20 million population were born elsewhere. In the suburb, more than nine out of 10 of its residents are from Anglo-Saxon stock

Things can't end up well when that group, which seems to be particularly xenophobic, is brought into close contact with an immigrant group having trouble assimilating:

Macquarie University demographer Jim Forrest has pointed out an aberration in Australia's immigration patterns that goes some way to explain some deeply entrenched anti-social behaviour among youths of Lebanese descent.

He notes that what have been the great levellers in the migrant experience - getting a command of English and a good education - are rare in a large body of the Middle Eastern migrants that have settled around Lakemba.

Unemployment in these enclaves is twice the national average, crime rates are high, and social commentators have made much of a generation that seems beyond the control of its parents.

So I guess it's important that we put this into better context. Australia's really taking a beating now, and i'm not sure it's entirely deserved. That said, there're definitely some race issues to address there, what happened is still hard to believe.

I dont really care if Muslims brought it up on themselves or the lame excuses/perspective (as usual) that our resident conservative mutineers are offerring for the MOB OF 5000 PEOPLE CHASING DOWN PEOPLE WHO LOOK LIKE ARABS.

No one looks more Arab in the West than the Desis. My blue eyed Syrian friend certainly doesnt look very Arab though most of my desi friends look more Arab than him to the man on the street.
If in a first world country like Australia, mobs of upwards of thousands of people can chase people who look like Arabs on the beach, viciously attack people who look like Arabs on the train (picture of person being attacked on the train from New York Times) it should be a cause of concern to all people who look like Arabs.

I am waiting for Michelle Malkin, O Reilly and our resident conservative mutineeers to name this die Kristallnacht with the same urgency and paranoia they dubbed the French riots as the European intifada.

Divya,
Did you miss the fact that most of these attackers were UNIVERSITY students ?
If I were you, I would worry more about my safety then wasting my time adding 'perspective' on here.

I was not referring to Vinod_at_large as our resident conservative scholar.
Hes one of my favorite conservatives.

vandesi

Since apparently this needs to be spelled out: there is no excuse for a group of thugs beating people up and I condemn it wholeheartedly. If you look at my first two comments you'll see I wrote that "I literally feel ill", so, apparently I can feel outrage too. Wrong of me to write you were posturing and I apologize for it.

But on any thread here, someone seems like they are offering excuses to someone else. 7/7 happens: it's a backlash to Iraq or racism or radical islamism or whatever your theory is. So, depending on your point of view, it comes across as apologia. I've seen it time and time again. And people do have one point: it does seem that some people have one standard if someone is majority and white, and another standard if someone is poor and brown.

I state again, that the police should have cracked down hard on all of this: rowdy or harrassing behavior on beaches, and why did they let alcohol be served when it was known that something was going to go down? Some of it was racist behavior, and some of it was undoubtedly plain old drink-fuelled thuggism.

I don't think it is any less offensive to bring up the events leading up to this outburst than it is to talk about 9/11 or the Iraq war or Bali. There have been tensions on this beach: to state that is not to condone it. If we don't talk honestly about what happens, how will we ever move forward?

Again, since some people need this sort of thing: the holocaust denier's deluded, thugs who beat up people should be locked up whatever their motivation, and Aussie women or women anywhere shouldn't feel like they will be harrassed simply because they follow a different cultural tradition. How hard is that? And that goes for having your headscarf being torn off by an angry racist mob (poor girl, she must have been terrified) or women wearing bikinis being harrassed for wearing bikinis. And note: I am not equating a racist mob with small groups harrassing women on a beach, okay?

Note to police: don't serve alcohol to big, angry mobs. Just a helpful hint.

MD, I beg to differ. The "roots" of this violence implies a causal story. The backdrop to this violence involves Lebanese gangs who were active in the area, and white gangs who weren't happy about it.

Imagine some Italian-American gangs in Boston engage in some violence against Irish American men and women. Then, one day, there's a fight and two Irish American guys get beat up by some Italian Americans they had a confrontation with. Next 5,000 Irish Americans decend on the North End, beating people up.

Would you really find a causal link between the background and consequence? Why would anybody blame the entire North End for the actions of a handful of gangsters, unless they were racist? Why would 5,000 people mobilize in a first world country where there are police and courts to take care of minor things like 2 groups of young men getting into a scuffle, unless they have prior animus?

Looking for the roots of the conflict is perilously close to blaming the victim. After 9/11 I had to tell friends outside the country repeatedly that no matter what the US had done wrong in its foreign policy, this was in no way a root cause of 9/11, A-Q were a bunch of murdering bastards who would have attacked anyway and they shouldn't engage in blaming the victims.

Many lynchings in the US were "motivated" by supposed attacks and threats, but this was often post-hoc.

I spoke to an Australian friend who said this:

I think the "terrorised Sydney" line is an after the event fabrication - I recall an academic article that deconstructed the media coverage and showed how the linkage between the rapes came much later.

So in Sydney there is a disaffected constituency `that is ripe for provocateurs to stir up antiMuslim hysteria.

We want to avoid buying into post-hoc justifications used to blame the victim.

Flygirl asks:

I'm a little confused as to why the term uni students is being bandied around here - is there some article I've missed? There are more than six universities in Sydney alone, apart from the state of NSW as a whole and so this hardly constitutes a large % of the student population. [Link]

Why don't you ask Divya? She said:

5000 is a fraction of the population of three universities that begun this whole mess. [Link]

I was just following her lead, even though she refuses to explain the gap between her statements and the articles she quotes to justify them. What's stranger still is that after introducing the argument that these were uni students, she claims that this shows our ignorance:

don't bother. Apparently living in Aus/Sydney for 20+ years does not mean we'd know anything about actually living here now would we? [Link]

Go figure.

Ennis, you misunderstand me.

I loathe root cause excuses, as I've stated before and which is why I brought up the case of 7/7. Notice I use the term excuse, not explanation. There were plenty of people at those SM threads who said that the larger racist and anti-Muslim society were the 'cause' of 7/7 and I took that explanation as offering an excuse. I got offended, but later, when I calmed down, I saw that some of the comments were not about an excuse, but trying to understand what motivated these young men, even if we utterly reject that motivation. A forensic psychologist studies murderers to understand why they murder, but we don't assume they are seeking to justify the action, and we study both what they think the motivation is, and what we think the real reasons are (someone hearing voices that tell them to kill versus realizing the person is mentally ill).

What if a group of white surfers from some rival beach came and stirred things up, and the second set of white surfers decided to show them down by meeting them with a mob? By bringing up the first group, am I excusing their behavior? (And apparently, such things have happened at this beach in the past). No. I'm trying to understand what happened. There are many layers to dissect here.

*And on that note, I had a colleague tell me this anecdote: a scientist gave a talk. An audience member said, "well, what should we (government) do about it?" To which the scientist said, "it's not for me to tell you what policies to follow. I can only tell you what the data show." Boos from one set of the audience, cheers from another (the scientist was a weather scientist).

How hard is that? And that goes for having your headscarf being torn off by an angry racist mob (poor girl, she must have been terrified) or women wearing bikinis being harrassed for wearing bikinis

I find this excuse for thuggery being peddled (not by MD) by majority rights apologists as especially amusing.
This racist thuggery had nothing to do with saving the honor of white damsels in distress.
This riot was about the Lebanese altercation with the lifeguards who didnt want swarthy males playing soccer on an 'Aussie' beach.

Actually, you're right Al Mujahid: some majority rights apologists are using that as some sort of excuse, and rereading Ennis' comments I see that is what he meant (and what vendasi is getting at).

Oh, and I want to add one last thing: mob violence has it's own dynamics. Racism exists. But that doesn't mean that mob violence is only related to the racism. Not all racists form violent mobs. So, why in this instance, did the mob form?

Problems highlighted by this incident:

1. Racism.
2. Purported unease with immigration, or perceptions of a 'changing world'.
3. Perceptions of persecution, or unfairness, whether justified or not, i.e. vigilantism (some commenters on other blogs state that people on that beach were 'fed-up' with being harrassed. Again, I am not offering an apologia. I am offering the perception of some of those in the mob, based on accounts of what they said. Again, I am not excusing their behavior).
4. Mob behavior with inadequate policing.

What others factors do people think contributed?

In response to MD, I'm actually wondering what role mobilizers played in this. I have a hunch not all 5000 people were sitting around waiting for the day to come when they could beat the crap out of others (although maybe there were). And we've heard about the infamous text message/hate radio, but who was the leadership? What role did they play?

And does this remind anyone of the Minutemen at all? (violent vigilantism)

All I'll #5, the ever popular Groupthink :)

One distinction I want to make is about the actions of the few vs. the actions of the many, another is about the actions of organizations vs. the actions of informal groups.

When we're looking at the behavior of a few individuals belonging to a structured organization - let's say the members of A-Q who were involved in 9/11 - I don't think that their actions tell you much about the society that they're from.

If you're looking at informal behavior by a large group of people that this is more related to the society.

That is, it's easier to read the behavior of an Australian mob as being related to group characteristics than it is to read the behavior of a handful of gangsters of Lebanese origin as being related to group characteristics.

As for 5,000 people being nothing, remember that in 2001, Al-Qaeda was of a similar size:

Despite Europe and the USA's recent anti-terrorist successes, Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network remains resilient, with a membership of 3,000-5,000 men worldwide. [Link]

Many people were quick to read A-Q's behavior as revealing something deep about hatred in Arab society broadly, but many of the same people are unwilling to read the behavior of 5,000 Australians as related to Australia at all.

Personally, I think that the search for root causes is futile in either case, but that group characteristics may have played a slightly larger role w/ Australia. Even so, group characteristics wont explain much of the variance on a cross-national level and therefore provide little leverage.

MD - the mob formed around a nucleus of a peaceful protest against the earlier violence. That's how people had originally assembled.

Islamic leaders have described the riots “un-Australian”…… I’d go a bit further and call it a strong indicator that not much has changed since the Aborignes were slaughtered!

With all the focus on Islam, lets not forget that many of the Lebanese in Australia are Christians. It is the governments treatment and pinpointing of Islam that has cause Islam to be in the spotlight. However, this riot is merely about racism.... whites against non-white!

Australian racism has deep roots. Look up "blackbirding". Or Australian colonial policy in Papua New guniea. Or Australian mismanagement(and theft) of Nauru's mineral wealth.

More recently, look up Pauline Hanson. Or the Tampa incident. John Howard won an election by demonising (and lying) about refugee claimants treatment of their children. It was an election campaign reminiscent segregation era (pre-aparthied) South Africa.

Australian immigration policy is also white tilted, and there are commentators in Canada (Herb Grubel) who have applauded AU's immigration policy becuase it ensures a higher proportion if immigrants are British (through work-study programs) in comparison to Canadian immigration policy.

The question is, why is Australia so racist compared to Canada (which also has a racist past -- see Komagata Maru)? How did it turn into the 'evil' dominion? What went wrong?

(Razib is, I think, wrong that the Leb issue in Australian is a Muslim issue. Like everywhere else, Arab emigrants in Australian are disproportionately Christian. Note, however, that Arab emigrants to the USA and Canada have done quite well -- there's something unique about Australian racism that prevented that success down under).

I'm not sure that is entirely true, or the whole story Ennis. It wasn't simply a spontaneous reaction or counter protest - people had specifically texted each other to show up I believe.

Ennis, I am totally confused as to what you are saying. Looking for why something happened is futile? Than why bother to look at or understand anything? Look at this thread again and tell me people aren't bringing out their standard hobby horses for an incident that has a specific genesis. Racism provides the grounds for a riot like this, but to blossom into a riot you need other factors. I mean, this is a whole are of study, you know?

Yankeedesi wrote:

I have to agree with Ennis. It is with more than a small amount of relish that I speculate if these riots are not the biggest group on group violence outside of Rwanda.
Ironic that the few racist thugs are actually playing catch up to the Rwandan militas...

We desi's don't have to go all the way to Rawada to find comprable situations. Mumbai 92/93. Shiv Sena protecting us from the muslim masses. These are of course exagerated examples, but they do speak to the power of this kind of "enobling" rhetoric.

MD wrote:

Al Mujahid: some majority rights apologists are using that as some sort of excuse, and rereading Ennis' comments I see that is what he meant (and what vendasi is getting at).

You've kind of led me to the question I've been trying to ask, Do you think there is an undercurrent of anti-Islamist ... prejudice.. on this thread.

You've kind of led me to the question I've been trying to ask, Do you think there is an undercurrent of anti-Islamist ... prejudice.. on this thread.

Yes!

Yes, vendasi, by hobby horses that is what I meant, although I hate it when the charge of racism gets thrown around. I think it is too easily used, so that if you bring up anything outside of the 'accepted' view on a topic a person is labeled sort of deviant, if you know what I mean. There may be some predjudice, but it works both ways, both to condemn and to excuse. I don't think it is unique to one group of people or one country or one side of the political spectrum.

On other threads I've seen the opposite: I've seen actions excused because people feel sympathy for a minority group. I don't care for either.

there's been a nasty comment and i think its out of line; you might not agree with Divya or anyone else, but you cross the line when you make things personal. the result is we have fewer voices willing to share their perspective. and thats a shame, and Sepia Mutiny is much the ill for it. otherwise its an echo-chamber

You've kind of led me to the question I've been trying to ask, Do you think there is an undercurrent of anti-Islamist ... prejudice.. on this thread.

No, for that I go to LGF (Little Green Footballs)

maximum respect to flygirl for her analysis and for pointing us to australian coverage. i learned a lot from reading those articles.

peace

You've kind of led me to the question I've been trying to ask, Do you think there is an undercurrent of anti-Islamist ... prejudice.. on this thread.

No, for that I go to LGF (Little Green Footballs)

LOL. That was hilarious, Amfd.

"maximum respect to flygirl for her analysis and for pointing us to australian coverage. i learned a lot from reading those articles.

peace"

yes i agree!

Hmm..I don't think I placed some of my earlier comments in the correct context. Bringing to light previous gang rapes and general youth anarchy (on both sides: Macquarie Fields is not a Lebanese dominated suburb) was an attempt to illustrate some of the simmering tensions in Sydney at the time, rather than as a pointer to the cause of this particular protest even occurring or descending into a riot. Or, heaven forbid, that Middle Eastern descended Australians in any way *deserved* what happened.

Some of the rather defensive responses from us Aussies are due to some of the extreme notions of Australian society presented here. So you've raised our hackles somewhat by displaying a very particular ignorance of how things are here :-) I only wished to suggest that some of these notions of Australia - as some sort of racist paradise; that immigrant communitites are ghettoised and live in constant fear of racial retribution and daily discrimination is pretty far off the mark. They're quite ludicrous, and everyday realities of existence here are much more diverse than such impressions. So I state this for the record, not as some new immigrant, newly converted. I'm hardly going to defend any iota of racism in any way shape or form. But I felt that people needed an idea of what is happening on the ground here. In doing so we couldn't address the core issue that for the love of god, a race riot happened in Sydney. Sydney!

Clearly there's a difference in watching this unfold overseas to watching it unfold over here. You can't imagine what its like watching this unfold over here. It's utterly surreal. I can't imagine this is happening in a city two hours drive away. Of course we will ask why and how. How the f*** did this happen? When did this happen? That such a thing even happened has us waving our arms around in stunned disbelief, blabbing about how unbelievable this is.

Phillip Gomes puts it best in his comment.

Extremely sorry for the commotion I may have caused. I am just a passer by in this site, and decided to come and see the replies that may have ensured following my post.
Anyhow, I'd just like to make it clear that, I am NOT anti-seminte and I acknowledge that millions of jews lost their lives as a result of WWII, nevertheless as an amateur historian I still believe that the figure of 6 million is exaggerated. I grew up in an international school, have Jewish friends and never really thought of my self as a Racist (Racist Indian living in a foreign land?). I've never wished to impose my opinions on anyone, although I see I don't need to be telling you that.. In my post I actually resented neo-nazism and also I am not an RSS enthusiast, as I think th BJP is rather stupid, although admittedly I may have a slight militaristic leaning. Perhaps my head really is lost up in my arse, however if you're wondering about the Bin-laden comment, thats just because I'm a bit of a conspiracy bluff, although that doesn't mean I 'believe' there is a 'Jewish Conspiracy' out there, as the ancient Japanese saying goes 'if you learn how to read, but you believe every thing you read, than it is better not to learn'.
Well, lastly I just hope my single appearance would not put people off their well intelligent discussions, and the e-mail I put was rubbish as well, as I wasn't quite expecting e-mails of praises to be sent after a comment like such as that one. Nevertheless as a man, once I have taken an action I cannot regret and fret for doing it.

Once again, sorry and take care.

Ikram, the immigration policy is not white tilted (not since about the late 70s in any case). Hansonism is an issue we have not shaken off and will not be able to shake off because we still haven't dealt with it properly. We're dealing with those repercussions now. This is entirely due to the current PM, whose unparallelled use of wedge politics has calcified latent attitudes and increased paranoia. That in part answers the "what went wrong?" question. Pauline Hanson fell from grace because John Howard managed to grab her vote base. There really has been an extraordinary shift in discourse and attitudes since he came into power. It's no exaggeration, or we wouldn't be asking how and why things have changed so much since the Hawke/Keating years.

As for the state of the Lebanese in particular here, I don't have an answer to that. The youth in these gangs are primarily Muslim. However, I don't make a link between Islam and these youth for the obvious reason that their gangsta culture has *nothing* to do with Islam. I think it's primarily social, but how that arose - well, you'll have to ask community leaders. Some of the community responses can be found here at the SMH.

Meanwhile, over in Cronulla, some disparate groups try to restore order through more communication.

If

Okay...one more and I'll stop multiple posting :-)

Al Mujaheed, no, a neo nazi could not care less whether we're middle-eastern looking or desi, being The One Brown(ish) Menace. (I'd still point out that generally amongst "average" Australians, a distinction is made between Arabs and desis).

It's galling that now that the race issue is out, the racial aspect is being talked down and attempts are being made to sweep it under the carpet. Not a single minister apart from the PM has bothered to comment. I've seen more articles on Lebanese community members (and other Muslims) trying to deal with their issues, but we're still not dealing with the core question of Australian racism.

Michelle Grattan, long time political observer and commentator, does a nice analysis here, and another commentator tackles the issue of multiculturalism in The Australian. It will be interesting to see how things pan out, the current situation is tense, but under control. Rumours about circulating text messages are that tension will spill out on Sunday.

Thanks Raju and siddharta.

Thanks for a most interesting discussion, Mutineers.

An article on the BBC page adds another wrinkle to this: one of the witnesses who was not directly (in his words) a rioter but a passive participant is not even White (his picture is on the page linked below). So far it seems like everyone has been projecting this as "White" vs "Lebanese" thing. I wonder if there is more to this than that simplistic view.

Long-term tensions behind Sydney riots

still point out that generally amongst "average" Australians, a distinction is made between Arabs and desis

I dont believe an average australian can tell the difference between a desi and an arab (just by looking at them)
Most of the racist shit is random anyway, so an anti arab 'average' australian will attack the 'arab looking person' and I am pretty sure that desis look like arabs to an average australian.

Here\'s a transcript of a talk given by a retired Australian police officer about Middle Eastern gang crime in Australia, with specific references to Lebanese gangs:

Some excerpts: (This talk was given before the French & Australian riots)

When the Middle Eastern crime groups emerged in the mid-to-late 1990s no alarms were set off. The Crime Intelligence unit was asleep. I know personally that operational police in south-west Sydney compiled enormous amounts of good intelligence on the formation of Lebanese groups such as the Telopea Street Boys and others in the Campsie, Lakemba, Fairfield and Punchbowl areas. The inactivity could not have been because the intelligence reports weren’t interesting, because I have read many of them and from a policing perspective they were damning. Many of the offenders that you now see in major criminal trials or serving lengthy sentences in prison were identified back then.

But even more frustrating for operational police were the activities of this ethnic crime group, activities that set it apart from almost all others bar the Cabramatta 5T. The Lebanese groups were ruthless, extremely violent, and they intimidated not only innocent witnesses, but even the police that attempted to arrest them. As these crime groups encountered less resistance in terms of police operations and enforcement, their power grew not only within their own communities, but also all around Sydney — except in Cabramatta, where their fear of the South-East Asian crime groups limited their forays. But the rest of Sydney became easy pickings.

...

AN EXAMPLE of the confrontations police nearly always experienced in Muslim-dominated areas when confronting even the most minor of crimes is an incident that occurred in 2001 in Auburn. Two uniformed officers stopped a motor vehicle containing three well known male offenders of Middle Eastern origin, on credible information via the police radio that indicated that the occupants of the vehicle had been involved in a series of break-and-enters. What occurred during the next few hours can only be described as frightening.

When searching the vehicle and finding stolen property from the break-and-enter, the police were physically threatened by the three occupants of the car, including references to tracking down where the officers lived, killing them and “fucking your girlfriends”. The two officers were intimidated to the point of retreating to their police car and calling for urgent assistance. When police back-up arrived, the three occupants called their associates via their mobile phones, which incidentally is the Middle Eastern radio network used to communicate amongst gangs. Within minutes as many as twenty associates arrived as well as another forty or so from the street where they had been stopped. As further police cars arrived, the Middle Eastern males became even more aggressive, throwing punches at police, pushing police over onto the ground, threatening them with violence and damaging police vehicles.

When the duty officer arrived, he immediately ordered all police back into their vehicles and they retreated from the scene. The stolen property was not recovered. No offender was arrested for assaulting police or damaging police vehicles.

But the humiliation did not end there. The group of Middle Eastern males then drove to the police station, where they intimidated the station staff, damaged property and virtually held a suburban police station hostage. The police were powerless. The duty officer ordered police not to confront the offenders but to call for back-up from nearby stations. Eventually the offenders left of their own volition. No action was taken against them.

In the minds of the local population, the police were cowards and the message was, Lebs rule the streets. For a number of days, nothing was done to rectify this total breakdown of law and order. To the senior police in the area, it was more important to give the impression that local ethnic relations were never better. It was also important to Peter Ryan that no bad news stories appeared that may have given the impression that crime in any area was out of control. Had these hoodlums been arrested they would have filed IA complaints immediately via their Legal Aid lawyers and community leaders. To senior police, this was a cause for concern at the next Op Crime Review.

...

It probably took twenty years for the Chinese to become a dominant force in crime in this city. But Middle Eastern crime has taken less than ten years. So pervasive is their influence on organised crime that rival ethnic groups, with the exception of the Asian gangs, have been squeezed out or made extinct. The only other crime group to have survived intact are the bikies, although the bikies these days have legitimised many of their operations and now make as much money from legal means as they do illegally. In many ways they have adopted US Mafia methods of legitimate businesses shrouding their illegal operations.

The most influential of the Middle Eastern crime groups are the Muslim males of Telopea Street, Bankstown, known as the Telopea Street Boys. They and their associates have been involved in numerous murders over the past five years, many of them unprovoked fatal attacks on young Australian men for no other reason than that they are “Skips”, as they call Australians. They have been involved in all manner of crime on a scale we have never seen before. Ram-raids on expensive stores in the city are epidemic. The theft of expensive motor vehicles known as car-jacking is increasing at an alarming rate. This crime involves gangs finding a luxury motor vehicle parked outside a restaurant or hotel and watching until the occupants return to drive home. The car is followed, the victims assaulted at gunpoint, and the vehicle stolen. The vehicles are always around or above the $100,000 mark and are believed to be taken to warehouses before being shipped interstate or to the Middle East.

...

What sets the Middle Eastern gangs apart from all other gangs is their propensity to use violence at any time and for any reason. I thought I would never see the level and type of violence that I saw with the South-East Asian gangs in Cabramatta, particularly the 5T, the Four Aces and Madonna’s Mob, which were a breakaway from the old 5T.But the violence, although horrific, was almost always local, that is within the Cabramatta area and almost always against fellow Asians. As a result of that locally based violent crime it was relatively easy to identify the culprits and break them up once we were given the resources after the police revolt of 1999 - 2000.

The Middle Eastern cycle of violence is not local. It can occur on the central coast, around Cronulla, Bondi, Darling Harbour, Five Dock, Redfern, Paddington, anywhere in Sydney. Unlike their Vietnamese counterparts, they roam the city and are not confined to either Cabramatta or Chinatown. And even more alarming is that the violence is directed mainly against young Australian men and women. There is a clear and definite link between violent attacks on our young men and women being racial as well as criminal. Quite often when taking statements from young men attacked by groups of Lebanese males around Darling Harbour, a common theme has been the racially motivated violence against the victims simply because they are Australian.

MANY OF YOU would have heard of the horrific problems in France with the outbreak of unprecedented crimes amongst an estimated five million Muslim immigrants. Middle Eastern males now make up 45,000 of the 90,000 inmates in French prisons. There are no-go areas in Paris for police and citizens alike. The rule of law has broken down so badly that when police went to one of these areas recently to round up three Islamic terrorists, they went in armoured vehicles, with heavy weaponry and over 1000 armed officers, just to arrest a few suspects. Why did it need such numbers? Because the threat of terrorist reprisal was minimal compared to the anticipated revolt by thousands of Middle Eastern and North African residents who have no respect for the rule of law in France and consider intrusions by police and authority a declaration of war.

The problems in Paris in Muslim communities are being replicated here in Sydney at an alarming rate. Paris has seen an explosion of rapes committed by Middle Eastern males on French women in the past fifteen years. The rapes are almost identical to those in Sydney. They are not only committed for sexual gratification but also with deep racial undertones along with threats of violence and retribution. What is more alarming is the identical reaction by some sections of the media and criminologists in France of downplaying the significance of race as an issue and even ganging up on those people who try to draw attention to the widening gulf between Middle Eastern youth and the rest of French society.

....

There is also the serious possibility that some of these Middle Eastern youth that are engaged in organised crime and have no regard for our values and way of life may go a step further and engage in terrorist acts against Australia. The ingredients are there already. It is but a small step from urban terrorism to religious and political terrorism, as we have seen with groups such as the IRA, where organised crime often became interwoven with terrorism.

I do not want to paint a picture of gloom, but as a policeman I have seen the destruction that gangs can wreak on innocent citizens who only want to live their lives in peace. I just hope we can trust the people in government and the police to ensure that we don’t lose the values and the rights we have received from past generations.

Tim Priest, a retired detective, gave this talk on
November 12 to a Quadrant dinner in Sydney.

Here\'s the working link:

http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/article_view.php?article_id=581

Quadrant (in the comment above) at one point apparently received 40% of its income from the CIA.

Flygirl -- My comments about the "evil dominion" of Australia was deliberately inflammatory. You're better than me for not rising to the bait.

I've only been following the nativist thread in Australian politics since the Tampa incident. Compared to the UK, Canada, NZ, and even South Africa, I'd say Australian is now the most racist of the old 'white' dominions. What I'd like to figure out is whether a similar political style (nativist with coded racism) could arise in Canada. Is it really John Howard who is to blame, is does 'Hansonism' have deeper roots down under?

is aus really all that bad? it could be some are reacting to having a pretty small population and being in asia, when the other economies are doing well

Manish: It's long been known that Quadrant is a conservative magazine with very specific readership and agenda, but I had no idea that it was funded by the CIA. This is one reason why I've tended to provide links to broadsheets as the coverage and analysis will be fairer and more balanced than tabloids such as the Daily Telegraph and Herald-Sun. Another source, though it might require subscription, is "The Bulletin. However, it is a weekly magazine so won't cover the riots just yet.

Al Mujahid: You're welcome to believe what you like. As I said before, a neo-nazi won't, but an average Aussie will. Australians are not the same as Americans in this respect (from what I gather of Americans): they've had a greater exposure to Asians of all persuasions and do make the distinction between Arabs and Desis. It will sound cute, but having three Desi cricket teams travel regularly here (for many decades) could be one reason. Desis will often be lumped with each other but this has also changed. Australians are better with the identification of various ethnicities.

Ikram, I'd be happy to talk about the Tampa affair with you, perhaps in another forum, it would just take up too much space. There has been a rise in xenophobia in Australia since Tampa, but not to the extent you would imagine. Australian racism and race relations can be extremely schozophrenic in its manifestation.

As for Hansonism, yes, there has always been an element of it in Australia, both in the cities and in regional/rural Australia. There are a number of factors invovled in the latter, though: the slow death of rural Australia through high unemployment, loss of land/farms etc. as well as latent racism. I would argue, however, that this particular sort of racism has been encouraged by the current government.

Of course I mean "schizophrenic,", not "schozophrenic."

Flygirl: I agree but I don’t think the government has encouraged this particular sort of racism so much as having stood back doing nothing to have given people the leeway to speak their minds without being branded as racist which is usually Beazley's easiest way of attacking the liberal government. I think Hansonism would have emerged and spread regardless of whether Howard or Beazley/Latham were elected to power. What I do agree with however (being no supporter of the Howard government whatsoever!), is that nine years of a conservative governments policies have had such an impact on household income and political unrest amongst the masses that it has been almost catalytic in leading towards the riots on Sunday. I think what happened was inevitable; however, economics coupled with a volatile political climate worldwide has further inculcated fear and uncertainty. Middle Eastern communities worldwide have felt persecuted and insecure after 9/11...heck even the Gulf War. How can we not expect this group of people to further cling to their ways when the world in general has clearly branded them as outsiders? It all brings me to think of Samuel Huntingtons 'The Clash of Civilizations' where he describes people reverting back to their blood roots when forced to decide between which 'tribe' they belonged to. This is not an isolated incident having occurred in Australia alone. In my previous posts I have seemed almost contradictory in trying to say what I've felt (apologies Ennis et al). In no way do I want to be seen as supporting or justifying 5000 people hunting down those that bore an Arabic resemblance. What I have always meant to say is that a culmination of factors have led to this tragic outburst of public hatred that will only continue to grow between these communities unless and until the root causes are addressed. As I mentioned to flygirl, I can only speak from a socio-economic perspective, being an economist, and not so much of the anthropological or political impacts etc. What I have observed amongst Middle Eastern communities having lived/worked/studied amongst them are the following shifts:

1. Public attitudes toward the community, particularly by the wider Caucasian Australian population have shifted from being open and accepting and even curious to hateful, pushy and unwelcome. Howard, Hanson, Ruddock (minister for immigration) have certainly sown the seeds of doubt and open unfriendliness. Howard and Ruddock are important political figures who are held in respect by the Australian population as Christian folk in a position of power to keep a stronghold of Christian traditions and the interests which they depend upon. Thus, slowly, the move away from acceptance, tolerance and empathy began. This widely held view has had severe economic repercussions for this community who have found themselves having to band together to progress academically, socially or even financially, only to be viewed as being secular and disinterested in 'assimilating' with the wider Australian population. This has led to them feeling isolated as a community and feeling threatened as accusations of terrorism ran rife throughout Australian and international communities.

2. Public attitudes seep into all tiers of a country, particularly those that are vital for economic progress. The stigma of being ‘troublemakers’ coupled with falling self esteem and banding together as a community, have made it much more difficult for members from this background to rise up from existing attitudes from family and friends that they could not succeed. Whilst many, many have and have done so quite easily, there is a large lower-middle class who have struggled academically and thus financially to progress and have sought comfort from these ‘gangs’ or members of their community who have faced the same struggle to overcome prejudice from their own community as well as the wider community at large. Thus many are dependent on social welfare payments (not that members of these neo-nazi groups aren’t), and government hand-outs in order to survive. Welfare payments, while substantial, are never enough to survive in the long term. This has led to cyclical unemployment which in true chain-reaction form, have been passed along from one generation to the next.

3. Therefore, the above two factors: a shift in public attitudes due to poor leadership and this having led to slow economic progress is a deadly concoction as it is, however, add to that a global shift in attitudes and an uncertain political climate worldwide, and you have a certain recipe for disaster in the form of a societal breakdown which is what we witnessed on Sunday.

The only solution to all of this, as flygirl has stated to me, is better leadership. Leadership that is not afraid to grasp the reigns of change and to bring with it the ability to change community attitudes and foster economic progress without holding back and denying responsibility for racist and xenophobic acts from any community at any time.

Sorry about the essay :)

Take Care all,

Divya

Added: Wednesday, 14 December, 2005, 20:56 GMT

As a ex australian i like to comment

Sydney on the surface seems a friendly bright place but behind those smiles are a very intolerant heart . From 2000 to 2004 i lived in redfern sydney and the rascism i saw against aborogines shocked me to the core
If u listen to the radio or read the newspapers there they seem to be extremely biased and the top radio stars in sydney are the most rascist reactionary shock jocks I have encountered in the world. As a society in sydney we need to speak out against this to make out future safer and better for our children.

By the way i now live in buenos aires argentina which has over 12 million people of every conceivable race and i find that peope here have a very good attitude towards each other and they have accepted me as their own within a very short period something that i never achieved in 40 years in australia

pericles

pericles james

to dear all pretentious wankers (americans)

why dont u all go back to the cesspool of ignorance u live in and leave the dissection of world events to ppl who actually know what the fk theyre talking about....

to make an assessment of whether australia has an underlying racist problem on the basis of a FOX news item is complete bullshite..

indians (and other non anglo races) are very well respected and held in high esteem here and australia is a very accepting and tolerant country with a huge migrant population....in fact i would say its a benefit being an indian in the australian workforce or community...

for americans (and others) to judge my country on the basis of one incident is screwed up considering their own countries track record on racism..

my opinion...if u dont know what ur talking about....shut the hell up

Pericles,

Sorry but I dont think four years in Sydney near Redfern has suddenly provided you with the right to speak on behalf of 22 million Australians. I lived there for 18 years as an Indian migrant, studied and worked there for a great number of years, lived in suburbs as economically diverse as Penrith and Maroubra. I dislike the fact that people feel it is their right to call Australians racist based on Redfern. I am well aware of the issues there and also the background, but unforunately you, nor the majority of people that walk past Eveleigh st. during peak hour are aware of the underlying issues of the Aboriginal people themselves, nor are you willing to learn and contribute to their betterment (you'd rather stand back and judge or...move to Argentina). When you speak of Redfern, you not only patronise the Aboriginal sectors there that are financially independent (bet your didnt know they existed in and around that area), you also insult the many support groups that provide food, clothing and counselling services to the community (I know because I am a part of one of those groups). When you say that their smiles hide their true 'racist inhibitions' you really do strike me as naive. I never been smiled at like that! When people have those intentions, rarely do they smile when they see you and I've witnessed that side of honesty too. So please, dont feel it is your right to speak of the intentions or feelings of millions of people, perhaps you are the one that needs to be less judgemental and more open minded.

In this thread, people talk about getting ready to bash some heads on the Cronulla beach.

i think we should get on to a new topic that pretty much the whole world knows the answer to..

ARE AMERICANS THE DUMBEST RACE ON EARTH?

yes

divya,

Thanks for bringing it up. You are quite correct that it would be overly simplistic to imply that the current regime is solely responsible for this situation. We agree that it is the lack of leadership in dealing with issues such as Hansonism that has contributed to the ossification and spread of these attitudes.

The attitudes espoused by Hansonism have always been latent in the electorate, and in particular segments of the electorate. However, the Howard government's *particular* response to this and many other issues is enormously significant: throughout 9 years, he refuses on every count, to speak out strongly against racism, narrow attitudes and has actively, if not obviously, encouraged a snide, creeping xenophobia and, at times, hysteria and paranoia. This was coupled with social and economic insecurity that's led to rather bizarre state of a fearful, suspicious society with record household debt (not to mention world wide political climate), all the while telling itself what a great, militaristic, successful nation it is, hey we have no problems. The cited reason for this softly, softly approach to racism seemed to be that he doesn't want to alienate and suppress these views. Well and good but they can be dealt without alienating these attitudes and pushing them underground. Failing to do so grants them unwarranted legitimacy. My attitude and response does, however, tie in with my (rather cynical) view that this is can be a malleable electorate on some issues and impossible to predict on others. As you know, the every day experience of living here is mostly so far from these attitudes one maybe be forgiven for thinking that perhaps a fair amount of basic ignorance can be removed and that multiculturalism can and will be properly embraced.

Some of the factors that led to the formation of Lebanese gangs would have led to formation of other ethnically-based gangs to be formed, and are also true for the communities of Cronulla, Maroubra and other beachside suburbs. They were primarily poor, whitebread suburbs that have a long history of gang related violence and isolation. While I appreciate the particular social climate of the two main groups came from, I want to focus on the fact that regardless of perceived provocation, 5000 Aussies gathered for an "Aussie Pride" day, chased anyone of middle-eastern experience and bashed them. They turned up to this meeting with "Lebs and wogs go home," and other racist epithets painted on their bodieswhile sober. The subsequent riot was alcohol fuelled but the core issue here is a virulent and sinister form of racism emerged for the first time in 140 years with an extraordinary number of participants. The Lebanese community is dealing with its problems but the other side of this issue of racism is being swept under the carpet. This is a golden opportunity for the likes of the Patriotic Youth League and other neo-nazi groups to make a palpable bid for the mainstream. Meanwhile, as Manish links above, there's growing threat of another incident.

While I now expect that any thing is possible, I wonder if the particular demography of Sydney was a major player. This blogger lived in Sydney for 2 years and describes what he saw as stratification and ghettoisation of ethnic groups in Sydney. I don't agree with everything he says, but he does give an interesting picture. This degree of ghettoisation occurs elsewhere in Australia but not to anywhere near the same extent. Barney Zwartzsuggests that the situation in Melbourne is different on a number of levels. I would agree with his statement that there is quite a bit of exchange between Christian and Muslim schools. I'd be happy for you to enlighten me on that aspect as a prejudiced Melbournian.

melbourneMALU: to dear all pretentious wankers (americans)

ah, at moments like this, i'm so proud to be a malayalee. such maturity and eloquence...truly, it brings a tear to my eye.

pericles,
your comments are interesting, I've never heard that response from a long term resident of Oz and I've never heard anyone praise Argentinian race relations over Australia. Each to his own. My impression was very different as probably as enlightened as some of the ideas about Australia on this thread.

divya, you're sounding like...a nationalist ;-) Next you'll be wandering about draped in an Aussie flag - something I am tempted to do myself.

Flygirl: The mere vastness of Sydney is one reason that it has always been more evident here of inter-racial differences. We have the worlds most magnificent harbour and are continually voted the worlds most liveable city. Unfortunately, 70% of those that live in those privileged areas are Caucasian Australians who have wanted it to remain that way.

Maroubra, when I used to live there, wasn’t as big of a deal as it is today. Today, Cronulla and Maroubra are considered to be affluent areas. Western Sydney is said to be where the lower socio-economic class reside, a majority of them being immigrants. Sydney is also the city that receives the highest number of migrants simply because when they think of Australia, they think Sydney, not Melbourne simply due to the media attention Sydney has received recently from the olympics etc.

The population issue is another factor. Sydney is a million people stronger populous wise, that’s a lot more with a lot more issues to contend with. Sydney has always come with a prestigious price tag which is why class conflict is such an issue here today. Unlike Melbourne where the CDB is central with suburbs built around the City area, Sydney city has very few surrounding suburbs and is a line of suburbs heading west ward. In Melbourne you could live at two opposite ends of the city but the distance is the same. In Sydney, if you don’t live ‘near the city’ and people believe they are ‘near’ the city when living 45 minutes away, you are immediately prejudiced as being part of a lower socio economic class. Thus in Sydney, you are quite right in saying, demographics plays a big part of wealth and status. Considering the beaches are near the north shore area heading away from the west, living near the beach is also considered to be a status symbol, an indictor of personal wealth and position. With household incomes decreasing as a result of increasing interest rates, the accessibility to live in these so called ‘affluent areas’ has become a much harder goal to reach. As a result, you have people travelling long distances to areas in and around the city resulting in an intermingling of people from various parts of the city. Whilst this has not been a problem for most people and areas, other areas have had issues of territorialism, hence the rioting in those areas. I hope this brings some clarity to the issue

flygirl: thanks for the warning!

*runs screaming in the opposite direction*

divya,

Ta. You're right, I forgot to mention the whole size issue. Sydney is *huge* economically, population wise and in sheer size. It has a bigger international reputation and so migrants flock to it preferentially as a result. We're just...smaller and more distributed.

In my personal experience with my ex australian girl friend and her white family and friends it was pretty clear that Australia is a far more racist place than other Anglo countries.
Maybe the desi immigrants down under quite like the desi immigrants to the US are just oblivious to the subtle racism in that society though I wont exactly call it subtle.
Of course I realize the silliness of extrapolating anything from personal experience but to an outsider the Aussie society does come out as pretty racist.

Yes, Al Mujahid, it is more subtle, and it's schizophrenic. I don't think desis here are that oblivious to it, in fact from throwaway lines in conversations with them here, they're very aware of it. I just don't see it as hugely different to that of the UK or any related nation. Maybe you should visit us and see for yourself. :-)

you should visit us and see for yourself. :-)

I actually have and lived there for two months at a time too (twice).
Maybe its not racism but that white australians are less PC than americans.
For example, some of the things that the otherwise liberal and educated australians would say about the lebs or the natives, you would never hear that in the US from similar minded people.

are less PC than americans.

it seems a common impression that excluding canadians americans are particularly PC in regards to race. then again, race has always been an issue in america, while it has been less important in places like Oz.

more PC or more ignorant?

Al Mujahid,

The PC issue may be it. Sometimes the Aussies try painfully hard to be sensitive (and so end up being patronising and almost offensive), other are just blunt. Bluntness does not imply racism, it's just, well, an Aussie characteristic. After all, the use of terms "wog," "curry" and "leb" have for the most part had the sting taken out of them (well, depending on who's using them and in one context) and co-opted by the relevant groups. There's a more relaxed attitude generally. They won't hesitate to poke fun at you, just don't take it (or yourself) too seriously.

more PC or more ignorant?

the two are not contradictory.

left their genetic imprint in southern india.

Bangladeshi, puhlease! You should know better than using the reductionist 'south indian' as the markersfor an ethnic group.

i'm american. please :)

Larry Fishburne had a taste of racism in Australia while filming the Matrix movies. Some feathers in Australia were ruffled by his comments...

Matrix actor felt racist 'vibe'

May 5 2003

Matrix star Laurence Fishburne said he felt racism while living in Australia, describing the "vibe" similar to America in the 1950s.

The African-American actor and Oscar nominee said he loved Australia and considered himself a Sydneysider after spending long periods in the city shooting The Matrix sci-fi film in 1997-98 and the two Matrix sequels in 2001-02.

But during his first stay in Sydney Fishburne felt "a little bit isolated".

"There were some experiences that I had and more so than experiences there's a vibe, there's a vibration, there's a feeling," Fishburne told a group of international journalists during a press day in Los Angeles to promote the first of the sequels, The Matrix: Reloaded.

Asked if he felt racism in Sydney, the actor replied: "Yeah".

The actor was not verbally attacked but said he and three African-American members of his staff - a make-up artist, security person and assistant - who accompanied him to Australia for the original Matrix shoot had the same experience.

"There's a vibe. There's no malice," he said.

"The only way for you to really get (understand) this is you need to go to a country where there is nothing but black people and you need to be there for a month-and-a-half or two months and you need to be in a room one day when you are the only white person in a room and then you'll get it.

"But you won't get it by me telling you 'Oh, this happened or that happened' because nothing awful happened and nobody called me a bad name or any of that shit.

"What I'm talking about is something that cannot be described, it can only be experienced."

White Americans also felt the vibe in Sydney, he said.

"There was only about 20 per cent of the (Sydney) population knew who I was when I was there in 1997-98 so most people who encountered me thought I was Maori, thought I was Aboriginal mixed and there was a woman who was in the accounting department, a white woman from the south of our country (the US), who said 'Is it me or does this country feel like our country in the 50s?'," he said.

Fishburne said his reply to the woman was: "Yeah, you are right, it does feel like America in the 50s".

The Olympics, however, brought a positive change to the city, the actor said, so when he arrived in Sydney in 2001 to shoot the sequels the situation improved.

Fishburne also said because the first Matrix film was such a huge box office success more Australians recognised him.

"I loved Bondi, I love Sydney. I feel like I'm a Sydneysider because I lived there for a long time," said Fishburne, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his 1993 performance as Ike Turner in What's Love Got to Do With It.

"So, like I said, at the beginning my first experience was that it was kind of isolated but then after the Olympics, a lot of people of colour arrived in Sydney and decided 'This is nice, I'm going to stay here'.

"So instead of seeing the same five black faces in Sydney every day, I'd see two new black faces a week and that was nice."

Jada Pinkett Smith, who stars alongside Fishburne in the Matrix sequels, said she also suffered culture shock during her eight month shoot in Australia, but did not come across racism.

"You know, me being a black American, our culture here versus in Sydney, Australia, is totally different. It's night and day," Pinkett Smith, the wife of Hollywood actor and rapper Will Smith, told the same group of journalists.

The actress said Smith and their kids accompanied her to Sydney and they were impressed with how "family-orientated" Australia was.

"Being in Australia your kids aren't like a nuisance, you know what I'm saying?" Pinkett Smith said.

"Where here in the States it's kind of like 'We don't want kids here'.

"I took my kids everywhere in Australia ... it's just a very family-orientated environment and that made it less stressful for me because people really did welcome my children with open arms."

- AAP

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/04/1051987597602.html

Australians are laid-back and always have been. Like Flygirl said, terms like wog or curry that may seem offensive overseas are no big deal here and are almost always said in good humour.

Razib: I didnt mean in a contradictory sense. Often I find Americans (I lived with a bunch of them in college) are PC because of ignorance...in other words, they mean well and do their best but end up being patronising more than anything else by lumping cultures together (mixing up indians and pakistanis being the one I found most prevalent). There seemed to be a general lack of awareness in terms of political awareness of countries outside the US...wonder why that is?

Aboriginal-American, right :)

Vikram:

"woooooh the vibe man" Maybe its the ghosts of our oppressive ancestors squinting quizzically at Fishburne? I understand you are trying to make a point but seriously, couldnt you do better than that? What next? Pamela Anderson complaining about how she was sleaze stared at Bondi??

Divya, I mean this in the kindest possible way, but you're not helping your cause.

what cause? isn't she just posting like 99% of the rest of SM does? (barring the other 1% whose words are honey from the gods)

Aussie Race Schizophrenia:

My favorite race relations experience came on a Melbourne tram one day.

It was a few months after Tampa and Sept. 11. A woman was telling her friend about her recent return from overseas, very loudly so that the whole carriage could hear:

"Oh my god, I was sooo worried, you know on the plane coming back, I was looking at every Arab, there was one woman there, you know, thinking oh my god does she have a bomb? Well, we just went to the detention centre [in Mary]...yeah, we just wanted them to feel, you know, make them feel welcome. Oh, you should have seen them, they were *so* happy...."

I swear she said it in the same breath.

Communis: I've made all the points I need to

that article was just too funny, stop taking it all so seriously:)

Raju - thank you :)

flygirl - hahaha, bet we could write a book about all the kind of nonsense we've heard on public transport

Ummm ... Divya? Which country are you currently residing in?

Australia?

I think "The Vibe" phrase is always going to raise a laugh from most Australians, it's a line from the 1997 movie The Castle. It was used to describe how a court case related to the general "vibe" of the Australian constitution. Yep. It has a vibe...

A "small minority" once again seems to be causing this...

Now churches are targeted Nick Leys and Dan Box 15dec05

FOUR churches in Sydney's southwest have been attacked in 24 hours as the city's riots spread from race to religion.

A community hall linked to a Uniting church was burned to the ground early yesterday, carol-singers were spat on and church buildings peppered with gunfire.

In response, members of the Arab Christian and Arab Muslim communities have called for a curfew for all Lebanese youths over the weekend.

Police believe the attack on the hall, in the suburb of Auburn, was intended to destroy the Uniting church next door, while nearby StThomas's Anglican Church, which has a primarily Chinese congregation, had all its front windows smashed. Three of the attacks were on churches within minutes of each other. The night before, Molotov cocktails were used in an attack on an Anglican church in Macquarie Fields in the city's far southwest.

Arab Christians have suggested the attacks on churches may have been meant as a violent attempt to "shame" the city's Lebanese Christian community into supporting Lebanese Muslims in the race-hate war, which began as a battle against young white males over use of suburban beaches.

Community leaders said Lebanese youths should not venture out after 9pm on Friday and Saturday, and should stay home all day on Sunday.

"Those who violate the curfew will be doing so in defiance of their faith, of the law and their community leaders. We are all united in opposing violence," Lebanese Muslim Association leader Ahmad Kamaledine said.

Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen welcomed the call for a curfew. "We must remember that it is first of all in the home that we learn to respect and care for others," he said.

"So I trust that all parents will join these community leaders in encouraging their own young people to exhibit mature and thoughtful respect for other people at all times."

Despite the call for a curfew, the state Government, police, community and religious leaders were bracing for a violent clash between opposing ethnic groups over the weekend.

The church attacks prompted NSW Premier Morris Iemma to yesterday assign extra police to monitor places of worship.

Mr Iemma said police would pay special attention to churches, schools and church halls. "We have to be on guard for this, and these hooligans and criminals will not destroy the fabric of our society," he said.

A heavy police presence was again ordered last night as the suburb of Cronulla - the scene of race-related violence on Sunday - began a second night of lock-down and police roadblocks.

During a tour of the command post set up in the Sydney Police Centre to co-ordinate the crisis, Deputy Commissioner Andrew Scipione told Mr Iemma the situation was being treated as if it were a terror attack.

"We are running the same command and control centre as we would for a terrorist situation," Mr Scipione said.

Elsewhere in Sydney, two men were attacked in separate incidents by men wielding bats and golf clubs and asking their victims if they were Australian.

Steve Stanton, a spokesman for the Maronite Catholic Church in Australia, said he thought the shooting outside a carol service in South Auburn on Monday night was the responsibility of a "very small minority" of fanatics within the wider Muslim community.

"There is also a view that it will have been done with a view to shaming the Lebanese for not standing united," he said.

Amjad Mehboob, head of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said he believed the violence had been committed by an extremist fringe of the Muslim community. "I wish we knew who they were. I wish we could engage with them so we can find out what their beliefs are, so we can deal with them," he said.

"This is something that started out as a minor scuffle between some youths and a couple of life-savers that has suddenly become an issue of racism and religion. Buildings can be rebuilt, but the damage this is doing to our community is extremely deep."

Reverend Glenys Biddle, of the Uniting church in Auburn, said the destroyed hall had been a important part of the local Tongan community. "For them, they have lost not only a physical building but a sense of fellowship," she said. "A lot of memories have also been lost for Anglos, Tongans and people of all sorts of cultures."

Shafiq Khan, the principal of the al-Faisal College next door, said Christians and Muslims had always worked amicably, and the fire - coupled with the fear it may promote - was a loss for both religions. "This is a crime against peace, the community and the country; a crime against harmony and against our children, who used the hall," he said.

Television and sporting celebrities and leaders from Sutherland Shire and the Islamic community will hold a meeting this morning, brokered by local MP Bruce Baird, to try to settle their differences.

Additional reporting: John Stapleton, Jonathan Porter

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17572776%255E601,00.html

Divya,
Were you born in Australia or did you immigrate there ?

Pericles, why can you not set foot in Redfern after sunset and feel safe? Because it is infested with Abos. All the bleeding hearts who feel bad for the Aboriginal community need only be thrashed by some Abo youth, to come to their senses. There's a reason for people being wary of Aboriginals. Its easy for an outsider to go on and on about how they get a bad deal, but the whole issue is that Abos bring it upon themselves.

The classic example of an ignorant response to Aussie White supremacists has been, "get the Abos to rise up and kick the White Man out". So that's not racist now, is it?

And then what? Who's going to sell the Abo his liquor? Who's going to build the Abo his house? Who's going to hand the Abo his social security cheques?
-----------
The Sydney Lebanese community is brimming with criminals and mischief-mongers. While we're all outraged at the "race-based" bashings of "people of Middle Eastern" appearance, they had it coming for a long, long time [heard it before, haven't you?]. That said, there are exceptions to the case - one of the four major banks has a Lebanese Muslim CEO, University of Wollongong has some great Lebanese professors - but these are exceptions to the case. Most of them are content stealing/beating/raping, and hanging out with their "bro's".

Everybody is inherently racist and xenophobic, as much as you might claim not to be. Some hate Whites, some hate Blacks, and some hate their own people. Point is, letting your bigotry manifest itself into a violent form of physical attack means its time to pay the shrink a visit, instead of clubbing someone to a pulp.

What is shocking to me is that all this happened in the relatively affluent suburbs of Cronulla and Brighton Le Sands - living by the seaside costs money. And in all my living years, I've never seen a Leb visit the beach to tan or surf, so it could only be to create trouble, or molest some White chicks.

Flygirl, I don't know what you're on about - I've lived around Sydney for 4+ years (Crow's Nest, Hurstville, Drummoyne, and Wollstonecraft) until I moved to Perth. As far as race-recognition is concerned, I have people ask me my nationality all the time. So unless you live up to the curry stereotype and speak with a thick desi accent, I don't see how an Aussie would be going, "lets spare Flygirl the thrashing, she's a samosa, not a falafel". Anyway, its gone beyond Sydney. My boss was showing me text messages, asking the Caucasian public to thrash any non-white they might spot on the Perth beaches. Brace yourselves for the ride, my colored friends.

I guess these riots show the grimmer side of racial multiplicity, something that shows like Fat Pizza fail to capture, and why wouldn-t they - they're comedies.

Sydney is NOT LA, Mumbai, or wherever you might be. Sydney is Sydney, unique, and special. Please don't judge Australia without even having set foot on our shores. And if you do, meet us at Cronulla so we can bash the living daylights out of you. J/K.

One final thing - for every desi who migrates here, and then disses the country and its laws - GO BACK.

You know i kinda agree with melbourneMALU, Americans aren't really the wisest when it comes to knowing what happens on this planet. Here I was thinking that atleast the brown people would be different, but you guys are not!

You guys are such a perfect example of how the rest of the world perceive Americans to be like.

Oh sorry......

not on all your topics, just this one.

You guys are such a perfect example of how the rest of the world perceive Americans to be like.

mmmmmm, i love the smell of sweeping generalizations in the morning. just blissful.

very, very interesting thread y'all.

divya - your bringing up of the geographic aspect was fascinating. the point about sydney being elongated, westward away from the water, versus melbourne being relatively compact and "rounded" - that is very significant. often, the role of urban geography in shaping social outcomes is insufficiently understood. it's also true that any city has its own layout and physical characteristics, and it's a challenge for leaders (political leaders, civic leaders, business leaders, both citywide and within each area) to integrate an understanding of these dynamics into their decisions. more often than not, they don't, or they do so in contradictory and improvised ways. the whole discipline of urban planning (though "planning" is too restrictive and loaded a word to describe the breadth of the field today) is about this. if you have further suggestions of readings that would help understand sydney and melbourne (and other australian cities for that matter), please do share.

what this underscores in my mind is how much what we're talking about here is problems of cities, rather than of countries. when i read the stories of cronulla and maroubra -- in the australian broadsheets that flygirl linked to -- it didn't "describe australia" to me as much as it reminded me of white nativist neighborhoods undergoing certain economic and social pressures in major cities in other countries. the vibe -- pardon me, atmosphere -- those articles described was reminiscent of, say, howard beach and bensonhurst in new york, neighborhoods where notorious racist murders of darker "outsiders" have occurred. i am sure that londoners here were reminded of certain areas in their city too.

where i'm going with this is to say that all these comparisons people are bandying about as to which country is more racist than the other, or whether one country (in this case australia) is or is not racist, not only are ridiculous in themselves but also miss the point. the point is that what's happening in sydney right now is a sign of tensions and change in global cities in general. the events outside paris last month are another sign. and there are lots more signs, not all of them negative of course. it's the ugly ones that get reported.

having said that, in each country the political situation is going to have an impact on city life. so flygirl's core point, basically that the chickens of nine years of john howard are coming home to roost, is very important. you don't need to be in australia to get a sense of this guy and the shameless way he has played the race/immigration card over and over in shoring up his power base. just as certain reactionary national and state-level politicans in the u.s. have done, or in the u.k. or france for that matter. it's not exactly an exotic strategy, from a political science standpoint; it's quite common. but howard seems a particularly egregious case. and i do wonder about its success. not about whether australians are in some way predisposed to that argument, but rather why it is that it has succeeded so well in the political arena and for so long. specifically, what the hell has the opposition done about it? have they rolled over and been complacent "triangulators" like the democrats in this country? if so, that would certainly go a long way to alienate people of color and make them feel like the system doesn't give a damn about them, so why not give it the finger and start to act in self-isolating or socially damaging ways. (not justifying anything here, people. analyzing.)

flygirl, divya, i'd love to hear about the political debate about "multiculturalism" in australia over the past 9 years, and in particular how the opposition has forged its positions in response to the howard/hanson approach.

and another thing: when flygirl writes,

[Howard] encouraged a snide, creeping xenophobia and, at times, hysteria and paranoia. This was coupled with social and economic insecurity that's led to rather bizarre state of a fearful, suspicious society with record household debt (not to mention world wide political climate), all the while telling itself what a great, militaristic, successful nation it is, hey we have no problems.

she could just as well have been describing the united states today. it certainly helps explain the kinship that bush and howard feel for each other, and the australian government's gung-ho support for bush's, shall we say, dubious international ventures.

and the combination of this sort of ideology with the economic stresses that both divya and flygirl have described, resulting in certain impacts on urban life, also feels familiar. certainly the increasingly self-reliant stance (in both positive and perverted ways) of ethnic communities disenchanted with the myth of the melting pot; and the nativist and violent reaction of white working-class and lower-middle class young males facing reduced job prospects and increasing costs of living in the neighborhoods they've called their home, and responding by drinking heavily, wrapping themselves in the flag, and causing trouble. we get that here too, in our own ways.

all this reinforces for me the idea that a big, multicultural, sprawling, economically unequal though culturally vibrant, city in australia and same in the u.s. might have more in common than not.

thanks divya, for your analysis -- though i have to call out your equation of laurence fishburne feeling uncomfortable with pamela anderson having her tits stared at. anti-black racism is a specific curse of our societies, and i think you're not understanding it for what it is. nevertheless i want to thank you for your other points.

and flygirl, you're the bomb. i think i'm in love!

peace

You guys are such a perfect example of how the rest of the world perceive Americans to be like.

Pot meet kettle.....

just a note on Redfern,

If you went to Pine Ridge South Dakota, I'd imagine it was a lot like Redfern (not having been to Redfern obviously)

reservations for indegenous people seem almost set up so that people lose hope and drink. truly, it is not anything that can be blamed on the people there. Pine Ridge is a place of startling hope and dismal hopelessness, and no one should pass judgement on the place or its people if they haven't seen things first hand. I imagine Redfern is similiar

G'Day,

FACTS ABOUT AUSTRALIA:

all australians hav white skin, freckles, red or blonde hair.... start each sentence with "g'day mate"...and finish with "no worries mate"...
......all men call their girlfriends/wifes "sheila".... and are all misogynistic and homophobic....in fact homosexuality is illegal here, and if u are homosexual u will be fed to crocodiles..
..and its also illegal to wear anything other than khaki shorts and shirt and its also against our religion (the state religion being buddhism & alcoholism) to be sober and communicate a sentence without a swear word in it shit and we address our prime minister as "johnno mate"
oh yeah and we ride kangaroos to work- the beer factory...and we have no other commercial industries other that beer making....everyone works in a Fosters factory...and we wrestle crocodiles for kicks no worries mate fair dinkum....

my point is that u ppl really dont know anything about australia or its ppl..... ...ur trying to summarise the psyche of the australian population by stereotypes that just arnt a true representation of the population

this is MY COUNTRY ur talking about....my parents came here in the 70's from kerala and i was born here and have never experienced any of the sort of behaviour described in some on the above posts...i have family and friends in Sydney, and if they didnt turn on the news, they wouldnt have even known of the events on the wkend.. its true that we dont place much importance on political correctness and making sure we use the correct terminology when describing a race, but thats just the way we are...

hope I didnt offend anyone in my previous post but I feel as passionately about Australia as u my for the US or india...just take my word for it...we, including my anglo/italian/greek/arab/maltese/indian/chinese/viet/etc etc buddies are far from xenophobes or racists....as a whole

A N N A....just love the sarcasm...or maybe im being sarcastic

melbournemalu, got a chip on your shoulder or what? there's actually an interesting conversation going on here and some very strong contributions from australians, which are making the rest of us think. perhaps you've been reading a thread on some other site. this is the last place you'd find primitive opinions like the ones you're lampooning. you're turning into rather a lamentable caricature yourself, one that has nothing to do with australia.

peace

this is MY COUNTRY ur talking about....

yes, it is your Australia which we are discussing. now which cursed place are YOU going on about? what's hilarious to me is how the only crude stereotypes here are the ones you brought. i'm the first person to say that there is racism in America. there's racism and shit everywhere. them's the breaks, frothy. the rest of us are having a constructive and necessary dialogue in this space about that, care to join us?

siddhartha, I'm flattered beyond words *blushes, doesn't know where to look* I'm also relieved to see I haven't been entirely incoherent...

>flygirl, divya, i'd love to hear about the political debate about "multiculturalism" in australia over the past 9 years, and in particular how the opposition has forged its positions in response to the howard/hanson approach.

Multiculturalism debate? What multiculturalism debate?! It's been all but stifled! As I said before , for John Howard, "multicultutralism" is a dirty, dirty word. We are not multicultural, no. We are all Australian and we live together in harmony with a common dream: ANZACS, meat pies, blue white and read flag. We are not accepting, but we are tolerant. I haven't time right to link you to more relevant info, but some recent analysis in the broadsheets is indicative of the conservative view of multiculturalism here. Janet Albrechtsen flames it in her article here (I am *seriously* going to call her out on that one), Peter Ryan says we should all apologise to Geoffrey Blainey, as he predicted that this would happen. Marilyn Lake counters this in her article, as does Mike Steketee. What is most telling, though, is Howard's refusal to call this a race riot and his insistence that it is a law and order issue. Apart from Labor MP Harry Baird (see above) and Shadow Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, no minister of any political persuasion has spoken out about it.

Sorry, the link to Janet Albrechtsen's article is here. Under Hawke/Keating (and possibly Fraser) leadership, however,multiculturalism was a cornerstone of the concept of Australian. Hansonism was a reaction to the Hawke and particularly Keating years, where big picture politics, which included multiculturalism, recognition of native title, past atrocities to Aboriginals, republicanism and a drive to change the flag in addition to radical economic policies were perceived as arrogant and self serving, far removed from "ordinary" Australians.

Ikram, I seem to be having this debate anyway.

i think the point melbournemalu (amongst all the sarcasm and exaggerating) is that what we think we know about oz may not be true and until we live there we wont know what the vibe of the country is. but i can understand australians on this forum getting on the defensive, there are not exactly nice things that are being said about australia

'....there are not exactly nice things that are being said about australia.'

Welcome to being an American for a day :)

*Joke, joke, joke! A little levity folks, after all, we can discuss these things without insulting each other, can't we?

**Yeah, I hate it when someone tries to moralize on a thread, too. Flame away!

***I'd still love to visit Australia, some day, dear aussie friends! My favorite old-timey, tried to pass as white Anglo-Indian actress, Merle Oberon (c'mon, she was fabulous in the divorce of Lady X even if she was creepily invested in her fake history for far too long), used to claim she was Tasmanian. Just FYI....

Alot of this debate has prompted me to investigate further into these notions of identity etc. So if you're Australian, I'm keen to hear your thoughts: your experiences and how it shapes your view of Australia, whether you feel Australian or not and why. What is your concept of a real Australian? Click on my name to email me.

Anyway, for the other Mutineers : I just stumbled upon a potentially useful resource for Australiana: Imagining Australia is a blog with politcal commentary, attitudes and current affairs, "Ideas for our Future." Hope it helps.

Flygirl,

Multiculturalism debate? What multiculturalism debate?! It's been all but stifled! As I said before , for John Howard, "multicultutralism" is a dirty, dirty word. We are not multicultural, no. We are all Australian and we live together in harmony with a common dream: ANZACS, meat pies, blue white and read flag. We are not accepting, but we are tolerant.

This sounds a lot like the situation in France.....Where, coicidentally, there have recently been some race-related riots too.....

Jai Singh:

So we *can* blame JH! After the Constitutional Convention and referendum for a Republic (1998), most debate about identity diminished. As siddhata says, it's a sign of the times.

Cow tse tung: no, your drunken racist bogan will not distinguish between a samosa and a felafel. I get asked where I come from, or whether I was I born here, over time it's reduced and people began to ask where my parents came from. It's..not really out of the ordinary. It'll take a few generations for that to go, we're barely two generations out of the White Australia Policy. I don't follow your line of thinking: people asking your nationality is not equivalent to race recognition. Yes, the issue has spread way beyond Sydney to Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne. Currently trouble is expected all along the Central Coast. We were just considering how likely it was to actually occur elsewhere and why/why not.

melbourneMALU: LOL @ "johnno mate," has anyone actually called him that? You forgot "strewth" and that we only got electricity in the 60s.

Canadian migrant, Professor Andrew Fraser, who taught at prestigious Sydney uni, Macquarie, came up with this gem of a line in July of this year: "Look at the annual HSC results - the consequence of which is that Oz is creating a new heavily Asian managerial-professional, ruling class that will feel no hesitation … in promoting the narrow interests of their co-ethnics at the expense of white Australians."

Also, "an expanding black population is a sure-fire recipe for increases in crime, violence and a wide range of other social problems".

Melbourne Malu, good to see some patriotism.

Anyway, heard something about Mullalloo beach today - colored folk must avoid it over the weekend. Sad to hear the plague's spreading, Flygirl.

cow (tse tung): *trepidation*
Then again, that laid back ockerism sometimes just can't discriminate between dumb and illegal.

Fight dem back does a good coverage of the Andrew "Drew" Fraser issue. It's pretty stock standard stuff that emerges every now and then. He pedalled all sorts of crap and touted the supposed racial (and therefore pseudo-genetic) basis for apparent sub-saharan stupidity. He was practically hounded out of office, though. D*** straight.

Ugh, I mean the laid back ockerism referred to this.

jai singh (comment #207) makes a good point. in flygirl's account, which seems to be confirmed by the australian news and opinion pieces we're seeing, the australian approach to managing plural origins in the evolving conception of nationhood is one based on assimilation. which is true as well of the french approach. the french approach has had its successes, but has now seemingly run out of ways to frame nationhood that everyone can accept. it sounds a lot like a similar process is underway in australia: a generally accepted concept of nationhood that worked well, for a long time, and delivered benefits for new arrivals as well as the long-established (with the glaring exception of the aboriginals), but that now has run out of steam.

apprehending this fact, different people are asking different questions. some are asking, why can't some groups no longer accept the model? what is leading them to opt out of the model (in self isolating or socially harmful ways)? and, what right to they have to do so, and mess it all up for the rest of us?

while others are asking, why can't the model be made more flexible, to account not only for demographic change but for the changes in culture (including global culture) that it reflects and transmits?

in france, those are the questions that are floating out there, more or less bluntly stated. sounds like the same is true of australia.

and in france, the last people to ask questions are the politicians. the whole political class in france -- from right to left -- didn't know what to make of the riots last month (except the racist far right which said "i told you so"). from what we're learning here, sounds like the same is true in australia.

peace

siddharta: It's interesting that you point out that assimilation as the way of managing plurality. I got the impression fromconservative commentators that they beleived that assimilation and integration were effectively discarded as policy when non-white migration began in Australia. They suggest that it's this lack of assimiliation that's led to isolation, disenchantment (on boths sides), violence etc and the "imposition" of cultures and traditions incompatible with Australian/Western ones. Then again, they are conservative commentators. Female genital mutilation is incompatible with "civilised society," but I don't see the hijjab and burka as being a huge cultural imposition and they tend to imply. Anyway, these seem to be the most often quoted issues..

flygirl,

that makes sense. under an assimilation model, you're going to get four different kinds of argument:

- conservative [and i use these tags loosely, for convenience]: new arrivals must adapt in order to assimilate

- liberal: the system needs to reach out and find ways (economic, political, cultural) to help new arrivals assimilate

- reactionary: there are certain groups of people who are inherently incapable of assimilating

- multicultural: before demanding that new arrivals assimilate, we should change what we mean by assimilation into something less rigid and more allowing of differences in the way people live day to day.

of course there's the rub: assimilation is more a normative than a positive concept; in the hijab debate, for instance, some might say that a girl who goes to public school wearing a hijab is unassimilated, because of her dress; others might say she's assimilated, because she's going to public schools with everyone else. so two people arguing about assimilation might have rather different concepts in mind, which makes public policy difficult to construct. in fact perhaps the single best merit of what i've called the "multiculturalist" argument is that it exposes the limits of the term.

in france (and although i don't know australia i do know a lot about france, so i'm comfortable making these statements), all four of those arguments are floating around; they map respectively onto the gaullists (chirac's crew), the social-democrats (socialist party), the national front, and a cluster of minor parties and civic associations. the non-gaullist right basically has the same view as the gaullist right but without a lesser degree of bombast about The Republic. that leaves only the communists and far left, and they are in a quandary: they see discontent in economic terms and are uncomfortable with framing it in cultural terms.

bottom line: basically the whole political class is still wedded, in one way or another, to the assimilation model. and the multiculturalist model is not fully articulated; rather, it expresses itself issue-by-issue through groups dedicated to each issue (racism, immigration, religious plurality, whatever). it's the usual splintering into identity politics.

so there's no fresh model out there for people to engage with, either in support or in disagreement.

if you look at the response of the french political parties, across the spectrum, to the recent wave of violence, it's amazing how helpless they all seem, how little imagination they show in framing the problem. sounds like the parties in australia aren't going to do much better.

peace

Flygirl:

Why is FGM necessarily "incompatible with 'civilised society'" when labiaplasty is legal? There are forms of FGM less severe than what some western women do to themselves via labiaplasty. Is the difference one of consent? After all, sadly, many women consent to FGM out of peer pressure. Or is it simply that plastic surgeons plastic a form of FGM on white women that we tolerate b/c it's not tied to Islam.

I'm not trying to defend FGM, I just think that we ignore its varied forms and focus just one the one type practiced by some immigrants.

The incident that sparked the event was just a minor scuffle:

The riots' powder keg, he and others said, was an incident the previous Sunday in which Lebanese youths beat up two lifeguards. It has been described in the press as a "bashing." But Mr. Mejia, who said he had witnessed it, said it lasted only 30 seconds and only a few punches were thrown.

A lifeguard on duty agreed Thursday that it had been a minor incident. Only one of the lifeguards was hurt, and that was just a small cut under one eye, he said. [Link]

Sexual harassment goes on by both sides:

Ms. Georges said that she, too, had been harassed by young Lebanese men, who she said sometimes make suggestive and derogatory comments.

But Australian men are not immune from charges of treating women like sex objects.

"When Australian men do it to Australian women, it's O.K.," said Mr. Mejia. "When we do it, it's sleazy." [Link]

Some non-lebanese were scared:

"If I had been here last week, they would have jumped me," he said, because of his dark complexion. His mother is Colombian.[Link]

Xplicit,

I won't answer that here because it's very OT :-)

siddhartha:

>the multiculturalist model is not fully articulated; ...so there's no fresh model out there for people to engage with, either in support or in disagreement.

Absolutely! Exactly what's happening right now. How, how do we buck the trend...

Ennis; one report on the lead up to events. Rather rich feminist sentiments coming from yobbos?...

but also, the NY Times article you linked Ennis had a comment from the Sudanese/Spanish (I believe) woman who said she did not take Australia as a racist country. so its a mixed bag regarding the ideas put out on SM and the sentiments in the article.

on that day i'd probably be nervous of getting beat up, but i don't think i'd worry in aus in general

(btw, I've given up the name Raju for anyone who cares. Sahej means something like "calm" in gurumuhki)

Siddhartha: cheers for the vote of confidence, yeah the Fishburne thing was a joke I was referring to from a movie like flygirl pointed out. In Aus, when people say anything with 'the vibe' in it, its just a running joke from that movie, apologies to people who thought I was being offensive and to Mr. Fishburne.

Siddhartha, I've actually done some research on the demographics of Sydney and class conflict etc. will be happy to pass it on to you/flygirl when I am able to compile it all in a coherent fashion.

Flygirl/Siddhartha:

>the multiculturalist model is not fully articulated; ...so there's no fresh model out there for people to engage with, either in support or in disagreement

What about a Gross National Happiness Indicator?:). Jokes aside, yes, you're both quite right, multicultural seems to be a dirty word here, it seems to carry with it connotations of invasion and job-stealing. There needs to be a greater promotion of the advantages of multiculturalism as a WHOLE instead of a focus on individual cultures as and when the situation calls for it. I have noticed that people here feel disconnected when, in an aim to promote the views of one particular nation/culture/religion, you overlook others. For example, in Sydney, since 9/11, there has been a strong focus on bringing an understanding of Islam to the wider Australian public. As a result, many Islamic youth groups were formed to educate people of the peaceful nature of Islam but failed as they refused to accept the views of non-Muslims(I dont want to discredit these organisations by mentioning their names). On the other hand, at the same time, organisations such as Affinity ( www.affinity.org.au )have emerged and have achieved enormous success in forming a cultural connection with the wider Australian community. Affinity is one of the few examples of such groups that are very much active in the process of forming ties with other religious organisations to promote the similarities between these belief systems. For example, I was invited to attend an Affinity barbeque, being Hindu, they were very kind in cooking a vegetarian meal for me as well as ommitting beef from their meals!

Similarly, a bridge of understanding is much needed today between Caucasian Australians and the Middle Eastern youths. Organisations as proactive as Affinity but with a greater cultural focus would do wonders to prevent any future riots and to create the much needed community cohesion that is very much lacking in Australia and other parts of the world today.

On a side note, thanks ANNA for keeping this riveting info session going and the other SM peeps. I've gained a lot from it as I'm sure the other *serious posters* have too.

Siddhartha:

an article similar to what I was talking about earlier with regards to the geography/demographics of Sydney:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/a-tale-of-two-sydneys-affluent-versus-aspiring/2005/12/16/1134703611525.html

Flygirl - the NYT quotes a lifeguard on duty, the Australian article you linked to quotes nobody, their account of the lifeguard beatings sounds like second-hand news (although the primary source portions of the article are fascinating).

Ennis: interesting point. In any case, the reports here about that particular incident are highly variable. None have suggested so far that it might have been relatively minor. Who expects a Murdoch rag to be thorough? ;-)

Major police alerts this weekend, all over Oz but particularly NSW. We're all observing closely. Hope the folks organising the Harmony in the Park day in Sydney get a good turnout. Reconciliation marches, four years ago, drew 250,000.

I'd also like to shoutout to ANNA: thanks for facilitating this discussion. It's been awesome. Keep challenging, Mutineers.

"My Japanese ex-girlfriend now lives in Australia. She reports that she can't go out on Pearl Harbor day - December 7, even though, as I recall, Australia was not attacked on that day. "

"What's with Australia?"

Firstly I have lived in Australia 23 years and never heard of Pearl Harbour Day, though I do know about the event.

I do believe there is some racism (if that is the right word) towards Japanese in Australia but this only comes from the older generations. There is a reason for this which comes from how the Australian prisoners of war were treated by the Japanese during WW2. How the Aussie POWs were treated is shocking beyond belief, and almost turned an entire generation against the Japanese. I have lived for many years nextdoor to an Australian WW2 vet who fought against the Japanese. In every way he was a great man but he could never forgive the Japanese for what they did to his mates all those years ago.

On the other hand I think the younger generations have no malice towards the Japanese, in fact I think that in general they like the Japanese and are very interested in their culture.

Think it was a GOOD idea getting the Auburn Turks reved Up, i think the mistake was made by the media saying all muslims intead of using the word lebenese, Know that there on there feet again, will affect a lot will be double the strenghth and morale, Turks are born to be soldiers its compulsary. anyways just stombelled across this enjoy;
The Notorious Auburn Boys oldest Turkish/Lebenese Gang.

i think the media should fix this, seen as dough they made the mess.
thanx steve.