The burning of the books, along with the rounding up of all intellectuals and historians, are two of the prerequisites for any takeover of a liberal political economy by a tyrant.
As any good despot knows, you can’t have the people informed about the context if you want to have them rounded up.
Australian writers’ festivals have been torturing themselves over the Levantine War for several years now and, frankly, have reached a point of farce as cancel culture clashes with…err, you know…books.
Three members of the Adelaide Festival board have resigned after the event descended into controversy following the exclusion of a pro-Palestinian author, prompting more than 70 speakers to boycott the literary gathering.
Donny Walford, Nicholas Linke and Daniela Ritorto were removed from the Adelaide Festival website’s list of board directors following a crisis meeting at the weekend called to resolve the growing crisis at the prestigious arts and culture event which runs the Adelaide Writers’ Week.
…Dozens of speakers have withdrawn in protest after the festival decided to rescind an invitation extended to Randa Abdel-Fattah, the author of more than a dozen books, saying it would “not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi”.
…Kathy Lette, Zadie Smith, Helen Garner, Hannah Kent, Trent Dalton, Jane Caro and Peter Greste are among those who’ve cancelled their appearances. Lucy Turnbull, a longtime supporter of the arts, posted on X: “You don’t build or rebuild social cohesion by silencing people. Extremism might have more space to thrive within communities who feel silenced and voiceless.”
I don’t agree with Lucy Turnbull on much, but she’s right on this. Burning books or authors usually leads to burning people.
Here is another example of the alarming direction the Australian political economy has taken in the wake of the Bondi attacks.
We are not setting up for a robust debate. We are swinging towards a multicultural tyranny in which all resistance to mass immigration is futile, and all discussion of it is banned by progressives and conservatives in some unholy alliance of hatred of hatred.
Or maybe not? Steven Lowy has a bright idea.
In a crucial intervention, Mr Lowy said on Sunday the question of immigration policy needed to be covered by the royal commission into the Bondi terror attack, and warned policing and new laws would act only as a foundation to defeating anti-Jewish hate, with cultural change needed.
Exactly right. But what exactly does Ms Lowy mean? Does he mean let’s examine the mass-immigration economic model, which creates enormous class division, most notably for a de-housed, de-waged, de-serviced youth as their living standards fall inexorably? Charging them with anger and making them ripe for protest movements from anywhere because they feel “silenced and helpless”?
Or does he mean burn the books and select only those migrants deemed acceptable?
“We’ve become tolerant for people in this country that are taking advantage of the democracy and the freedoms we all have … they’re being abused at the moment and hopefully the royal commission and Jillian (Segal)’s report will get to the heart of that,” Mr Lowy said.
…But as Coalition concerns harden that Labor’s hate speech laws could be too broad and the anti-Israel Greens push for influence over the bill, Mr Lowy said the reforms due to be unveiled within days needed to secure the broad support of parliament and that action must be taken to stop the abuse of free speech.
…The former chairman of the Art Gallery of NSW applauded the bravery of the Adelaide Festival Writers Week board in standing up to pressure from the nation’s arts establishment and disinviting anti-Israel activist Randa Abdel-Fattah.
…“I’m not going to prejudge this, because I don’t want to prejudge anything in the royal commission,” he said. “But it feels like that there is a question over our immigration policy and how that has contributed to where we are today, and also the tools that the government has available to itself to deal with that, with regards to things like visas, and the granting of visas, the removal of visas.”
I’ll leave you to decide what Mr Lowy wants.
I will only note, again, that at its base, the mass-immigration economic model is a class war, not a culture war, and if debate is constrained to the latter, then we will inevitably lose the ability to debate and change the former.
Then every new global conflict that arises and affects a local community (or fifth column) will arrive on our shores as surely as the next war is coming.
