A prayer for Van Badham

The last five months has been very difficult for a certain kind of person in Australian public life. As Palestinians in Australia and their supporters receive death threats, have their businesses burnt down, find homemade bombs mounted on their cars, face coordinated harassment campaigns, are vilified in the media and criminalised by politicians, a much more serious problem is facing the nation’s left-of-centre opinion columnists, think-tank directors, senior union officials, nonprofit directors, high-profile creatives and vaguely prominent media personalities — how to say as little as possible about Gaza without pissing anyone off.

On the one hand, these people have spent their professional lives cultivating images of themselves as stern and relentless fighters for truth, justice and freedom for all. On the other, the institutions on which they rely — for a paycheck, for career advancement, for a whiff of prominence in Australia’s puddle-deep media, political and creative scenes — are either supporters of Israel’s ongoing genocidal project in Gaza or have been co-opted into staying silent.

It’s a tightrope that’s proving harder and harder to walk. Over the weekend, Guardian political columnist, author and playwright Van Badham became the latest person to fall off it. On Saturday, comedian Aamer Rahman criticised Badham’s silence on Gaza since October, calling her “a shill for the ALP and the Democrats in the midst of a genocide”.

(I promise this newsletter isn’t just a chronicle of beefs between Australians on Twitter even if it does sometimes feel that way.)

I don’t want to focus too much on Badham specifically, other than as a case study of the eternal dilemma facing Australia’s professional progressives — those who work for most trade unions, liberal news publications, left-leaning nonprofits, and a whole range of places that outwardly express a commitment to social, economic, environmental and/or racial justice.

Sooner or later, many people who work in these sectors are faced with a choice: to hold onto their principles and keep toiling away in poorly-paid obscurity, or to ditch them and begin the climb towards becoming a well-paid functionary of a mainstream “progressive” movement that has spent the last 35 years doing more to prevent the establishment of a fairer and more decent society than bring one about.

Unsurprisingly, plenty of people choose the second option. In many ways it’s the smart choice. The jobs pool is shallow and there’s only so far you can go before institutional pressure brings itself to bear. If you have dreams of one day owning a house, or at least paying off your student debt, you’ll need a decent-paying job of some seniority.

For others, the attraction lies more in becoming one of the approved dimbulbs in what passes for Australia’s firmament. It’s not fame by any stretch — I doubt most people know who Badham is, for example — but if your ambition and your self-image outweigh your talent, it opens doors for you that would otherwise remain closed.