The Stupid Continues

Even After His Political Death, The Culture Wars Rage On

Oh what joy. The anti-radicalisation kit handed out by the Federal Government to help teachers spot radicalising kids is a travesty.

News of the booklet, launched last week by the counter-terrorism minister, Michael Keenan, was first published in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph under the headline, “Schoolyard Terror Blitz”.

But Bouma said the information in the kit was not intended for public consumption. “People should have been trained in how to use it and how not to abuse it … to simply throw it out there was not the intention,” he said.
Other experts in radicalisation told Guardian Australia on Monday that teachers should not to “jump to conclusions” about students who show symptoms described in the kit, warning Australia risked its own Ahmed Mohamed incident. Ahmed, 14, was arrested in Texas last week after a clock he assembled was mistaken by a teacher for a homemade bomb.
Grossman, who also said she was unaware the booklet was being produced and distributed to schools, questioned the use of the case study relating to “Karen”.
“For me, that is not an example that I think is particularly helpful,” she said. “I think we want to be very careful not to conflate political activism automatically with violent extremism.

“There is a difference between people who get involved in what you would call incidental violence as a result of a political protest. To me, that’s not what we mean when we talk about facing and tackling the very serious issues around violent extremism.
“It’s going to draw attention away from some of the really valuable things that are included in the awareness kit that should be up for discussion and debate.”

The case study of 'Karen' is particularly worrisome because it links 'alternative music' to radical eco politics. You sort of wonder if by radicalism, they really meant the kinds of people who chain themselves to trees to stop logging and CSG mining. If so, this is nothing but the same old culture wars being raged by the Liberal and National Party, that places the alternative and counter-culture groups as the 'other' and sets about trying to disenfranchise them out of their own country. 

Which is to say, the execrable Tony Abbott's leadership was pretty off-the-mark in so many ways it wasn't funny. It's barely been a fortnight since he was ousted so it is hard to sheet this home to Malcolm Turnbull, but the fact that this kind of idiocy is being carried out by the government shows that you only have to scratch the surface these LNP types to find seething hateful culture warriors, carrying on like they are the sole inheritors of civilisation. They're wowsers - every bit as backward and stupid as the Mothers of Prevention in the USA. 

Deservedly, there is a piece of satire going the rounds:

The Stupid Never Stops. 

History's Big Losers

"Legitimate Grievances"? Ha. Get In Line.

Any time I see some idiot wrapping themselves in a flag or burning one on the streets, I'm overcome with the sort of grief at the number of stupid people on the planet for whom a bit of graphic design means so much in their identity politics. Really, a bit of flag both with some patterns and colours is not some kind of magic talisman that empowers you with greater moral authority or privileged position in the world. Nor is burning the other guy's flag going to do anything but symbolic damage - yet the important thing about symbolic damage is that it makes you feel good and the our guy feel offended, and that's the idiotic be-all and end-all.

Let me be blunt. If you identify with any group, you have to accept that identity is a construct and has no real bearing in reality; and that your commitment to such abstractions is fundamentally stupid as abstractions go. If you're a sporting fan and you're a die hard fan of a team, that's one thing. Everybody accepts sports is not an issue to kill and die over. Nationalism and religion on the other hand have no greater actuality than identifying with a sports team but asks you to commit murder on its behalf. It feels stupid having to point out the distinction but yes, it's true. Your patriotism or religious fervour is no better than my fandom of the New York Yankees as abstractions go. It may be much worse if it asks you to go do violent shit on their imaginary behest. I might hate the Red Sox, but I don't hate them enough to to kill or hurt them or their fans. However, if you wave enough flags or bibles or Korans, you're liable to eventually kill somebody at their behest - and that's a problem.

This is one of the reasons why identity politics is at its heart, Stupid with a capital 'S'.

Which brings me to this article about how Muslims in Australia feel.

In a scathing assessment of Australia's efforts to create a harmonious society, he said constant persecution, hypocritical Australian laws, vitriolic media and repeated invasions in the Middle East were pushing young Muslims "to the margins of society" and driving them to radicalisation.

"Denying the root causes is like applying a Band-Aid to an open wound before cleaning and disinfecting it," he told an anti-radicalisation forum at the University of Western Sydney on Wednesday night. 

Mr Trad, a controversial figure who described himself as a "roving imam", said he could understand why young Australians were driven to join Islamic State but he tried to convince them it was not the solution. 

His comments were reflected in a recent study that found one in five Australian Muslims think terrorists have legitimate grievances. 

The nation-wide survey of 800 Muslims, conducted last year by the University of Queensland, found that counter-terrorism policy in Australia was breeding anger, backlash, distrust and a siege mentality. 

Mr Trad listed the Iraq invasions, the war in Afghanistan and the torture of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay as grievances for young Muslims. 

He cited the case of Northern Territory unionist Matthew Gardiner, who recently returned to the Northern Territory after reportedly fighting with the Kurdish forces against IS , as an example of hypocrisy in Australia.

Yes, good grief and grievances. How do you account for this stupidity? Identity politics. It's one of those illusory abstractions that allow Australian muslim youths to identify with Iraq or Afghanistan or those tortured in Guantanamo Bay. In this case the illusory abstraction emanates from one of the great religions on the planet and so they feel solidarity with the Iraqis and Afghans and those tortured in Guantanamo Bay (not that you see this crowd rally around the detestable David Hicks, but hey, what's a little chauvinism on their part?).

They live in Australia and benefit from living in Australia materially, but no, identity politics puts them in the corner where the Iraqis and Afghanis and G'itmo Detainees are their spiritual brethren. I'm sorry, but it should make you bloody wonder in cognitive dissonance rather than feel like you have "legitimate grievances".

*Ugh*.

That's the essential problem with identity politics: it always seems to gravitate around the dirty sinkhole of bad ideas that is argued from grievances. That somehow you are being hard done by because somebody with the same faith is being actually physically hard done by in Iraq, Afghanistan or Guantanamo Bay, and you - in the comforts of living in Australia - make the conscious choice that you will align yourself with that idea against the people and things around you. I understand alienation - I've felt it all my bloody life. Living in Australia and not being 'anglo' is truly a Gorillas In The Mist experience. But if you live amongst the metaphorical gorillas, you should show understanding and empathy for the gorillas. Not, go around siding with spiritual brethren over an idea as feeble and idiotic as religion. Because that way lies the truly stupid phenomenon to grace this planet ISIL and you dying in a suicide bombing attack for them.

I write this with a fairly clear head about identity politics and the pitfalls of stupidity in which it can fall. It won't make me popular with the religious or flag-wearing or flag-burning, but it's still manifestly true all the same. From where I see it, those people are far better off taking a real appraisal of their lives and stopped identifying with stupid abstractions. It would do them a lot of good.
I'm sorry to shit upon your identity politics, but if your identity politics is about identifying with Iraqis and Afghanis and Git'mo Detainees, it's a shitty, shitty thing that is stunting your intellectual growth. There's just no two ways about it. You can grow up just a little bit by disowning that stuff.

Being Charlie Hebdo Part 2

The Aftermath of Crazy Is More Craziness

Pleiades sent me an article by Guy Rundle where he argues that the western ideology is so bereft and bankrupt of ideas, when it argues in principle, it ends up arguing something incoherent. Instead of heading for a transformative idea, our commentators and politicians alike sink back to old Left-Right partisanship, seeking opportunistic angles to score points within our own polity.

It's content behind a pay wall so I can't link to it, but here's something worth bringing up.

The Right is falling apart as a political formation so fast you’d need stop-action photography to catch the process. Bruce Petty was quite correct, in his cartoon this week, to draw the Right sloping to the drawing board to sketch out a new plan for surveillance and control. But he was wrong I think, to draw it as a great beast. It’s more a Caspar Milquetoast/Monty Burns figure, barely able to hold up the pencil. The failure of Iraq, free-wheeling capitalism, the collapsed legitimacy of Western Right governments, and increasing wars between its liberal and conservative factions sees it without a program, coherent worldview, common sense, or much cheer as far as I can see. 

The Hebdo massacre brought all these contradictions to the fore. Hebdo’s nihilism is actually culturally corrosive, as conservatives charge such obscene desacrilising with being. Conservatives know that a viable culture is a closed system to a degree, and unless it has pinion points -- usually religious -- which are not themselves, by matter of custom, subject to a general back-and-forth, then it is quickly in trouble. This week, sundry idiots have been suggesting that "free speech is part of our cultural tradition".
What nonsense. 

Until the 1960s, hundreds of books, films and plays were banned, even in the US, as way of maintaining the limits of what was publicly talked of, in terms of sex, religion and the like. That maintained a Christian division between profane body and sacred soul. Once abolished, Christian Western culture collapsed. A transitional period lasted into the 1990s. Remember the furore over Madonna’s hokey video "Papa Don’t Preach?". Remember when the porn industry was some marginal thing, and not another career option?

Yes, does anybody remember the furore over things like 'Piss Christ?'

How about the PMRC/Mothers of Prevention episode when a bunch of conservative mothers formed a committee to censor rock music in the 1980s? And Frank Zappa had to testify to Congress?

As Frank would say, "I mean seriously, folks! This is altogether a ridiculous state of affairs!"
It's all well and good that the Conservatives like David Cameron and Tony Abbott are thundering that  Freedom of Expression is our way of life but you sort of wonder if this is because it's just bloody expedient. As somebody who was on the side that supported 'Piss Christ and liked listening to Frank Zappa and certainly never yielded from the position of letting gangsta rappers kill as many cops in their songs, I find it tremendously strange that the very same conservatives now want to stand up for Freedom of Expression. Yay for Free Speech, it's finally self-evident even to the dumbest Conservatives.

You know what? I somehow doubt Cory Bernardi is stocking up on Gangsta Rap music on his iTunes. Anyway, Rundle goes on to have a hack at the Left too:

But much of what remains of the organised Left has revealed its own exhaustion and bankruptcy too. Though Left figures were not the first to repeat the "this has nothing to do with Islam" meme -- Merkel and Cameron joining Hollande in repeating that mantra -- many were quick to adopt it, and to focus on a revival of Islamophobia due to such an event. 

The event itself was barely glanced at, not even in an analytic way. The only response to the ludicrous pseudo-politics of declaring for free speech when no one had declared against it, was to reconstitute Western Arab-originated/descended Muslims as a whole, a subject of history, and then become their representative against oppression. The old, old accordian, got out for one last wheezing squeezeplay. But the wave of attacks against Muslims failed to eventuate. Maps of such events showed about 20 such, not good, but no Muslim-pogrom. 

It was cautioned that the attacks would create a surge of support for the French anti-immigration party Front National. But there was no sign of that (though it may come), giving a strong suspicion that the FN had reached near-saturation level. Charlie Hebdo’s nihilistic style was taken as racism, its physical depiction of Arabs vastly exaggerated. Some jokes against the Right, using their language, were taken as witless Bill-Leakesque curmudgeonliness (the eternal fate of the satirist - if Swift’s ‘Modest Proposal’ were published today it would have a beyondblue tagline, a body image trigger warning at the top, and a "Visit Ireland" google ad pop up). This shoehorned French political style into Anglosphere political divisions, where such a robust space for pre-identity politics Leftism has largely ceased to exist. Implicit was a causal model, which constructed Charlie Hebdo as having a FOX News-ish right-wing, pseudo-populist style, which it was using to rag on racial-religious minorities only -- this effectively accusing it of a certain naivete as regards race and oppression, with lethal results. As Daily Kos’ selection of some of Hebdo’s anti-imperialist cartoons showed, that wasn’t the case at all. 

But the causal/determinative model dies hard. And one popular article tweeted around was one about the "anomie of the banlieues". Ah, the anomie (i.e. lack of meaning) of the banlieues (the featureless, high-rise housing around Paris and other cities) -- Shift-F1 on the keyboard of a certain type of feature writer.

There's been a growing opinion that maybe Charlie Hebdo with its crude, rude and pointed satire in some way had it coming, and that no, some of want to say 'Je ne suis pas Charlie' because some ideological sticking point makes it "none-of-my-concern". Which is probably more honest but also goes to show why the identity politics being exercised is (as Helen Razer would have it...) Stupid.

The added absurdity of arguing that Islamism is not to blame in the face of people who yelled "Allahu Akbar" after they shot 12 people is, you know, pretty Islamophilic - as in, an unnecessary love of things Islamic, - to excuse that crime on some level.

Nobody in their right mind is pinning the blame on all the Muslims the world over for what happened. Yet the guys who did it are saying they did it for Allah. So somewhere in the discussion of ideas, we have to tackle Islamism and ask it some probing questions. To date, the argument the Left-side commentators is mounting as whole is a kind of "it was just provocation by the magazine when they insulted their faith". In other words, simultaneously abandoning Freedom of Expression and condoning violent action. If we accept that, we're essentially accepting the brothers arguing "look what you made me do."
I don't think we're ready to dumb ourselves down to that level for the sake of political correctness. At least, I'm sorry, I'm not going there. And why is the Left suddenly acting Stupid?

None of this is going to play out properly without a major argument with Islamism. In Northern Iraq, it's being contested with lethal force. They are winning in parts because they have a lot of conviction in their bullshit. If we are to contest our ideas against them, we'd better get our shit straight. If it is going to be Freedom of Expression and that's where we plant a flag, it's a good start. Somehow I share Guy Rundle's doubts that what we have is just massive cognitive dissonance and a bare cupboard for transformative ideas.

Being Charlie Hebdo

Islamophobia Isn't Like Homophobia

In the years since I wrote this entry here 8years ago, the world has become just that little bit more volatile. Back then Islamophobia was a new word. Now it has gained currency - much in the way that a general acceptance of such things as Anti-Terror laws have become acceptable. I guess etymologically speaking Islamophobia would mean a fear of Islam. It doesn't mean hatred of Islam, but if we are to believe Yoda, fear leads to anger and anger leads to hate so we're two steps away from hating on Islam if we admit we're phobic, under that schema.

Based on the recent events in Paris where 12 journalists and cartoonists were shot to death by terrorists, it seems to be a legitimate fear to possess.

8 years ago, I joked that the term likens Islam to spiders, heights and homosexuals. I kind of stand by that. I'm not a big fan of the way the term is bandied about in shows like Q&A as if the term actually has some definitional - and therefore epistemological - truth to it. I wince every time I hear some talking head on the TV mentioning it, whereas the term Homophobia never struck me as odd in the same way. It really is a little like Muslims want to get a pass on the same identity-politic basis as LGBT people - even though their own religion wants to stone LGBT people. I smell hypocrisy there.

I guess whoever coined the term did so in the hope that if you could identify the phobia, you can smoke out the prejudices; which is exactly what the term homophobia has done for the gay community. If anything the construction of the term homophobia is even more precarious than Islamophobia because what we really mean by a homophobe is not somebody who fears homosexuality, but somebody who has gone straight on to hating on homosexuals. Even allowing for the more precarious construction, the term homophobia has allowed the world to move in to a direction where there is genuine emancipation of the LGBT community so in some sense there is hope yet for the term Islamophobia.

Be that as it may, the problem of all this is that terms like 'Islamophobia' force you into accepting a version of their identity politics, even if you don't accept identity politics at all. Identity politics is a pretty crappy tool. You can only claim so much ground arguing on behalf of the specific conditions of your birth. You can argue a position right up to equality, but arguing for exceptions is going to get you in trouble. Identity politics is at its core, pretty dumb. Ultimately it's the business of showing your scars and saying "somebody pay up or else back off".

I'm sorry, I'm done buying bullshit. I don't want more identity politics - my own included - when there already is enough in the world. I want more honest appraisals of what real equality means and how it gets achieved. And I dothink it gets achieved through such things as Freedom of Expression (heck, as much as it gets held back by religious dogma, but that's a separate topic). So if anybody calls you an Islamophobe, your answer should be "I'm not stupid enough to buy into your identity politics". If they shoot you for that answer, I guess that would be the point. They want the conversation to go to the Sword or the Koran.

All the same, the claim is that mocking the Prophet is simply not acceptable. That it's somehow reasonable for fatwahs to be put upon Salman Rushdie or that it is somehow understandable that people get so angered they go and shoot a bunch of cartoonists.

The law applies to us equally. There's no scope for identity politics based exceptions. That's how "equal in the eyes the law" works. So if somebody goes around shooting people, regardless of the perceived provocation, they have go before the law. And if they argue in court that cartoons were enough provocation to commit acts of murder, then they may find society and its values are dead set against you. And this would have nothing to do with their religion being belittled or persecuted. This is basic law-&-order kind of stuff. There isn't going to be some exception in French Law or European Law that is going to make this kind of thing okay.

If holding to equality makes somebody an Islamophobe, then maybe the fears are well-founded.

Takes Two To Terrorise

This business of shooting the editorial staff at Charlie Hebdo could have been carried out by once person. In which case we might have involved the lone-nut theory; yes, the same one I invoked with the Martin Place Siege. The, "that's not an act of terror because it's just one person." argument. I've been wondering a little about that call but I'm a little less certain of it now. I am now thinking that maybe we have a fear of the possibility that terror acts carried out by one suggests each and every individual is potentially a terror threat. And if that were true we would opt to abandon trust and liberty and give into our darkest xenophobic needs.

If anybody on their own is a terror cell then we have to start building a category outside of the individual and say "all muslims are potentially terrorists". It flies in the face of our own tolerance to say such things. So we opt with saying the lone gunman is a nutter. It may not even be true, when properly diagnosed.

Two brothers on the run with guns however constitutes a legitimate terror cell. This seems to be our acceptance of things base on events at the Boston Marathon as well as this week's Charlie Hebdo massacre. I guess it takes two people to have a conversation, which could then be characterised as a conspiracy. A lone person talking to himself is by most social counts, more crazy than conspiratorial.

'We' Do Terrible Things - But Do We Deserve What We Get?

One of the discussions I had this week in the aftermath involved talking about what the Colonial powers of the 19th century - that is Western Europe and Russia and the USA - still do today in the middle east. For a start the USA supports Israel and Israel isn't exactly a joy for the Arab world. Then there are the puppet regimes with dictators that dominated the second half of the Twentieth century. Name like Hussein, Gaddafi, Mubarak, Assad, tell us exactly how problematised the Arab world has been for a overlong time. Those countries have fallen into various states civil distress and in all these cases they offer up terrible choices.

We found out that much as we dislike Saddam Hussein, his government was stable enough to keep the waring factions from erupting into violence. We found out in Egypt that the alternative to a military government was the Muslim Brotherhood who essentially ruled in a way that made things worse, and whose democratic credentials quickly paled. Libya is oner-reported but it doesn't seem like things are getting better there, and Syria is in a terrible civil war where the enemy of our enemy ashore Assad, is ISIL. Even without the issue of religion - ignoring it outright, even - the Arab world is filled with difficult political issues.

The argument offered to me this week was that 'we' in the West are dropping bombs and insulting their prophet. That we should be more understanding when they rise up and exact their vengeance. As if Charlie Hebdo and its irreverent cartoons were just too much to bear; that this magazine constituted just provocation.

I have no problem with the notion that their grievances are legitimate. I have immense difficulty accepting that the terror act in paris this week is a legitimate act of war or defiance. At some point we are responsible or our own actions. These guys knew what they were doing. It doesn't matter that bombs are falling Syria or drone strikes are happening in North Pakistan or that Iraq and Afghanistan are in strife, if you live in Paris (or Boston or Sydney).
Yes, it's political. But it's shitty politics.

There Is A Problem With Islamism

This is hard to write because I have Muslim friends, but you're allowed to disagree with friends. My own reading of the Koran is mostly idle interest and morbid curiosity. There are parts of history where Islam found tremendous high points worthy of admiration and awe. Even so I'm really troubled by the way it keeps expressing itself in the contemporary world with violent bursts.

Bill Maher was seen in an interview talking about the problem of Islam as a religion and in it he has an interesting point. This is a religion where they behead people in Mecca for falling-out of religion. It's violently hostile to secular thinking. As Maher notes, it's amazing the world doesn't look at this a bit closer and harder. It would be like crucifying people in the Vatican forecourt for lapsing as Catholics.

Islam is ideologically opposed to our tolerance, even of Islam itself. Even though we talk about moderate muslims who are not violent benighted majority the 1billion-plus believers on the planet, at its very core is this beheadings at Mecca. There are crazy off-shoots of all the religions. Christianity alone has things like the Ku-Klux Klan and the Westboro Baptists Church but they are fringe. There are militant Buddhists in Burma rounding up and persecuting Muslims in Myanmar - but that is fringe stuff too; in the main Buddhism at its core is temples and tourism and selling trinkets. Hinduism, and Confucianism, alike have their odd violent fringes but it's not central to the practice.

Looking into Islamism at its core is like staring in to 8th century Dark Ages thinking in the desert of Arabia. it's unflinchingly uncompromising and brutal. It's so extreme one can think we're lucky they didn't enshrine cannibalism. There isn't a heart that says "turn the other cheek". It's "mock our prophet and we come shooting."

If we are indeed small-'l' liberals, it is worth considering how tolerant one must be to tolerate that which would kill you for your tolerance. Because that's a principle at stake. Our credo for tolerance says we believe in Freedom of Expression and standing by the cartoonists who lampoon Islam. They believe it's their duty to retaliate against the words (and especially images) with violence. It keeps coming around to the same collision point. If we're strictly talking the ideas, then Islam has a problem.
Yes, we're phobic for a reason.

View From The Couch - 06/Oct/2014

They Gave Up On The 40 Job Applications Thing

I have to tell you I am feeling great relief that the Federal Government has backed off its crazy idea of making unemployed youths send 40 job applications a month. Eric Abetz originally made it out that it was no big deal without considering the impact of 30million half-hearted job applications a month might actually be a great hindrance to the productivity of businesses in Australia.

In backing down, Tony Abbott made it out like, this is the nature of consultations. I have to tell you Mr. Abbott, if it's genuine consultation, it would have taken place before you came to announcing the eminently stupid idea. The fact the stupid idea got aired as policy without the consultation beforehand   tells a sorry story of how this government is run.

Now that I think of it, this stuff came out of consultation with a body he appointed to give recommendations. So somebody is definitely giving crap advice to the government and the government is so crap it just goes with it until it hits a wall of common sense popular opinion.

Anti-Terror Laws

It's mostly flying under the radar because we've been so freaked out by this business of Islamist terror cells allegedly planning behaedings in Australia, but really these laws are so Orwellian it's not funny. They can jail journalists for reporting on special intelligence operations.

They're obviously written so they can grab hold of the future version of Wikileaks and jail the future version of Julian Assange. The only problem is that it steps all over freedom of expression and the role of the media as the 'fourth estate'. I have said it before and it bears repeating that it is the antithesis of liberalism to try to gag the press, and it is anti-intellectual to justify this gagging of the media is somehow for our own good. It's alarming that the man pushing this is Attorney General George Brandis, who earlier this year was banging on about people's right to be a bigot.

What we can learn from the Brandis scorecard is that it's okay to be a bigot, because that's freedom of expression; except if you are Islamic in which case you deserve all the surveillance coming to you. I'm just not interested in the doublethink and hypocrisy that this demands of me.

This is an eminently bad government that's never going to find its way.

It's War At Home

Sheikh-ing All Over

Okay, bad gag. But you know what I mean. Today's big news is that upward of 800 Federal and State police were involved in multiple busts of alleged terror cells sympathetic to the ISIS/ISIL//Caliphate. Thwarted by the AFP was a plot to randomly snatch somebody in Martin Place and behead them as a demonstration. The mind boggles, but there you have it. The imagery is almost something out of a comic book tending to gore rather than strictures from scripture. Basically some people out there were being wire-tapped and they plotted to do something savage and stupid, so the AFP got them.

This would be the moment we're supposed to praise the terror laws, including the APEC laws which had (and continue to have ) no sunset clause. I know, we forgot all about them - even I forgot about them until I started moving back here to Blogger - but these same snooping spook laws would have been the ones deployed to nab these ISIS/ISIL/Caliphate sympathisers.

Thanks to the efforts of the AFP, nobody random got beheaded in Martin Place. It's so good to be alert but not alarmed!

Multiculturalism Is Not The Problem

You're going to read it in the papers soon where people are going to take this little conspiracy of crazies as a sign that multiculturalism "failed" in Australia. They're winding up to throw their best junk ball pitch right now as I type this. You know those opportunistic xenophobes are out there.

There's really a simple explanation for this phenomenon of angry radicalisation of these muslim youths: it's cultural alienation. It's really hard growing upon anglo Australia and all the heroes of masculinity are blonde sporting gods or whatever. It's hard growing upon the west when all the movies and TV shows portray your cultural heritage as the potential enemy. A kid from a muslim family will inevitably live in a kind of cultural shadow. Not much gets done to bring them in from the cultural alienation, which explains why a distant call-to-arms may appeal so strongly to these youths.

Australian multi-culturalism is a bit of a fudge. The big demand put on immigrants is that they give up on their cultural heritage and go naked, and instead don the shallow cultural, icons of a largely artificial nation. It's a difficult call. in some ways the cultural distance and chasm is unimaginably large, and unfathomably deep. I don't condone people who run to radicalism as a desperate ploy to shore up self esteem but it's not like I'm without empathy for their plight. They don't need our sympathy - yet they do need us to understand them a lot more.

It's tough to navigate this stuff in Australia and establish a sense of identity. It's hard to feel like you belong in a place that denies you your history or metaphysics. People may say they need to get over it, but it's not easy getting over your family heritage.

Worse still are the people who go around pointing to this sort of thing as a reason way multiculturalism "fails". They say the failure to assimilate is the ultimate failure - but it is often spoken by people who have never experienced any alienation in their lives. Rich white people who went to distinguished private schools, selling down the prospect of people finding a place in Australia because they don't abandon everything that came with them in their cultural suitcase, are not helping.

At best, multi-culturalism in Australia sets up a halfway house safe zone where people can feel a certain amount of legitimacy in holding on to the things that are important from their origins. If the rich white people didn't bleat so loudly about the alleged failure of multiculturalism in Australia, maybe the children of these immigrants wouldn't feel the need to radicalise in the shadows.