- everything is fine*
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- We have no choice but to build something
The last few months have made a few things pretty clear to me and to a lot of other people too I imagine. None of this is new really but it’s never been as stark, at least in my own head.
The government will never stop it. There is no limit to what they will licence. Israel could drive every Palestinian into the desert and Penny Wong would recite “Israel has the right to defend itself” by rote.
Nor will the vast majority of Australian media outlets. We have hit the limit of what Western ‘liberal democracies’ deem acceptable speech and action, and of who gets to be human and who doesn’t.
Any serious effort to oppose Zionism will be met with repression by almost every major institutional organ. People who express solidarity with Palestinians will continue to be blackballed, fired, censored, threatened and smeared as antisemitic. Stochastic violence against such people will be downplayed and the blame for it turned back on them.
This will happen again and again if we let it. This isn’t the first genocide the West has participated in or signed off on but there are a lot of Western-aligned politicians around the world itching to do one of their own who are watching Israel’s war on Gaza and taking notes. As global heating drives people around the world from their homes, Western countries will use the same playbook they are using in Palestine to deny these people food, water, shelter and a chance of survival.
As much as I would like to rip apart an Israeli warplane with my bare hands I’m only one person and you are too. There are an enormous number of people in the world who want liberation for Gaza and for everyone more broadly but the people and institutions that profit off the status quo have set up a very good system to confound and dissipate popular sentiment. You can have your march in the city with your clever signs but please let us know about it at least seven days in advance and if you try to disrupt the flow of capital in any real way the mounted police will stampede you good luck with it though 🙂
All of which brings us to the question: what are we going to do?
For a long time there’s been vague chat among journalists and writers about building a news outlet or service that isn’t part of the Surry Hills media industrial complex. It’s never really led anywhere because no one has the time or energy and building a sustainable business model is hard unless you have arms-dealer money.
But the last few months have put a fire in people’s bellies that could actually lead to something real. Personally I would love to see something based in western and southwest Sydney that nurtures local journalism and doesn’t treat everything west of Leichhardt as outrage bait for racists. Part of why Australian journalism is in the state it’s in is because nearly every senior writer lives and works within five kilometres of the CBD and went to one of about a dozen private schools.
Something like this won’t fix everything by itself but there are millions of people in Australia for whom the media is just another way this country shuts them out. Gaza is the latest example but it happens every day. Something that presents a point of difference and a challenge to the closed shop that is Australia’s media elite has a lot of potential I think. I’m not an organiser but some very smart and capable people are already building lines of solidarity between different groups that will hopefully coalesce into something bigger. That work needs a platform to help it grow and Lord knows none of the big established outlets are going to provide one.
Besides writing about Gaza and other things I can’t publish elsewhere I want to use this space to build on that idea and hopefully see if it leads to something bigger. If that’s something you might want to be involved in let me know.
I don’t know if this will pan out eventually but feeling hopeless isn’t good enough. We have no choice but to build something. If any good at all can come from this we have to make it ourselves.
Introducing Columnist Brain
This is an idea I’ve had for a really long time but I’ve always been either too disorganised or too chicken to pursue it.
Australian op ed columnists are, as a group, off on another planet. We know this in our bones but there’s new proof of it every day. Writing a column week in week out for years truly does something to the human brain that results in people presenting the most bonkers ideas with complete seriousness. This unique blend of confidence, entitlement, ignorance and derangement has been coined elsewhere as columnist brain. The below is a classic example that only gets better with age.
Columnist Brain is going to be a regular segment. Each week I’m going to collect the best examples of columnist brain in Australian media and give them the credit they’re due. At the end of the year we can vote on which was the best/worst example and maybe buy the winner a reverse lobotomy. It’s physically impossible for one person to keep up with every last example of op ed columnists saying stupid things so feel free to send in any that I miss.
Kicking off the new year is this doozy:
Penny Wong’s public statements since October 7 should be studied as Platonic examples of political nothingspeak. Trying to say “it’s sad that people are dying” while twisting yourself into a pretzel to avoid mentioning who’s killing them or why makes you a master diplomat and statesperson in the eyes of the modern Serious Political Thinker. She’s the foreign minister of a US ally that could genuinely sway American support for Israel through a show of solidarity with Palestinians but she can’t because the Daily Telegraph would get mad 😥
Anyway, the big issue isn’t that Wong is going to Israel for photo ops with Israeli ministers who call Palestinians animals. It’s that the trip will “require management of internal divisions within Labor on Israel-Palestine while political adversaries stand ready to pounce on any perceived slip-ups”. Hope your tacit endorsement of genocide doesn’t cause you any political inconvenience back home kween 🫡
The piece also says that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is becoming “pointedly blunt” and “frank” in his criticisms of Israel. That’s this guy for those playing at home:
Actual events that affect human beings in tangible ways are not the real issue remember, it’s how those events might affect the political prospects and career trajectories of people like Penny Wong. That’s politics baby and if you think that’s morally upside down then you just don’t get the big picture I’m sorry to say.
I know it seems like I’m picking on Matthew Knott because this is the second time in two issues I’ve singled out his writing but it really is very bad, truly. Congratulations Matthew I’m sure we’ll be seeing you here again before too long.
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