Pogrom talk

Moreover, the ethnic self-defense of the native born is natural and normal; it should not be pathologised by what that newspaper recklessly calls “the multiculturalism industry” (whatever that is). The problem, we must conclude, is the supposed inability of Lebanese-Australian youths to assimilate. After all, as Devine pointed out in one of her most impressively orientalist statements, these lads are “descended from the lawless hill tribes of Northern Lebanon”! (Or does she mean Borneo? Her sentiment is straight from the “boys own adventure” genre of the early 20th century contempt for non-Europeans.)

What can we learn from the Cronulla pogrom, the revenge attacks the next day, and the polarised media debate? Refreshingly, even the rightwing media elite of this country, in tune to the labour market requirements of our globalised economy, has finally committed itself publicly to multiculturalism and non-discriminatory immigration. It does not endorse the sentiments of Macquarie University academic, Andrew Fraser, who in the pages of The Australian (September 21, subsequently posted on this website on September 28) wrote that “white Australians now face a life-or-death struggle to preserve their homeland” against “the Third World colonisation of Australia”.

I don’t know if Fraser exulted at the pogrom, although it was, in terms of his version of “Australian-ness”, an authentic if vulgar expression of locals “re-attached to the history and destiny of its own people” (his words). The mandate for such an interpretation of the pogrom is the widespread incidence of Australian flags wrapped like superman capes around the pogromists. Their self-understanding needs to be taken more seriously if we are to appreciate the inner nature of national identity: they were not simply guarding their beach against unwelcome intruders. They were defending the nation against its colonisation by foreigners (“Lebs” and “Wogs”): hence the rhetoric of “ethnic cleansing” rather than simple gang rivalry.

The infamous text message says it all: “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 ...”

These symbolic acts and statements reveal a truth that dare not speak its name in the current debate: that an ethnic hierarchy of belonging persists in this country long after the demise of the White Australia policy. It is articulated in the division between “Aussies” (or “Skips”) and “Lebs” and “Wogs” (I omit for the moment, the Asian dimension of the issue). I recall this vocabulary growing up in Brisbane in the 1970s and 1980s. Friends whose parents had emigrated from Greece long before we were born referred to themselves as “Greek” (never “Greek-Australians” or “Australians”). Those of Anglo-descent were “Australians”. Paul Sheehan uses the same language in his article on the background to the pogrom in the Sydney Morning Herald on December 17.

That division has endured, but we should not be surprised. As Anthony Smith (London School of Economics) observes in his book, The Ethnic Origin of Nations (1986), even nation-states based on territoriality (like most states in Western Europe and the Americas, as well as Australia and New Zealand) rather than ethnicity (like most central and Eastern European nations) contain an ethnic core because no nation can exist without historical myths. Mythic memory comprises stories of what “we” did and suffered, and it is borne by ethnic groups, not abstractions like “society”.

Despite the acknowledgement of Indigenous peoples as the “first Australians”, the majority of non-Indigenous Australians has come to understand that authentic “Australian-ness” inheres in those descended from Anglo-Celtic settlers and those who have shed blood defending the country. They are the first people to whom the word “Australian” referred, and they have died in their tens of thousands in its name. The incessant invocation of Australian military history and the reiteration of the sacred lexicon of sacrifice in our public life are designed to reaffirm that core Australian ethnic memory and definition. The cultural dominance of the core ethnicity is what makes a nation a nation.

But why are Australians of Muslim Lebanese descent the despised “other”, and why now? The reasons are complex, certainly more complex than pointing to the lawless hill tribes of northern Lebanon. Part of the answer lies in the local reaction to the geopolitical situation since the 9-11 and Bali attacks. In their wake, a blatant exercise of cultural exclusion has gone on against Australian Muslims and Arabs by the media commentariat.

Here is Piers Akerman in The Daily Telegraph on September 13, 2001: “How, for example, do Muslim residents in Australia differ in their views from those of the Taliban or others capable of ordering these atrocities?” This statement not only links all Australian Muslims in Australia, it also de-nationalises them: these people are not Australians, they are only “residents in Australia”. This kind of statement used to be made of Jews. Akerman should know better; his father fled pogroms in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, he told me when we spoke about his article on the phone.

He also mentioned how awful it was that these Lebanese youths “out west” leered at “our girls”. Once again, some historical background is a useful antidote to this kind of primal reaction to ethnic diversity. Anxiety about “racial defilement” was a staple of German rightwing rhetoric, as it was in the American South under Jim Crow. As is so often the case, the female body - covering it and uncovering it, having access it - is a bone of contention in ill-tempered arguments about national identity.

Given the likes of Akerman, it is not surprising that many Muslim Lebanese Australians feel alienated from mainstream culture. Not a week passes when some talk-back jock calls for them to profess their loyalty to the country. In some cases, plainly, the message has been internalised: we Lebanese Muslim youths are indeed foreigners here.

I don’t pretend to have the answers to the challenges of reconciling multiculturalism with national identity. But if we are to begin to generate some, we need to resist the temptation to indulge in group-think clichés about “racist White Australians” and “lawless Arabs”. Instead, we need to reflect on the dilemmas of fashioning a civic culture, indeed “a nation”, with very different people from all over the world.

Given the persistence of an ethnic hierarchy, it is not as simple as asking everyone to play by the rules. After all, even if you do, as Christian Lebanese have in reaching the top of sport, business, politics, and science (names mentioned are Steve Bracks, Nick Shehadie, Marie Bashir), you are deemed a “good Australian” - for a “Leb” (see Gerard Henderson, Sydney Morning Herald, December 13).