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Berlin's synagogue after Krsitallnacht, 1938, when Nazis attacked Jews.

An ill wind of change in Australia

By Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun

HERE are some things I never thought I’d see in this country I love.

I never thought I’d see people picketing shops because their owners were Jews.

But in Melbourne last Friday, 19 protesters were arrested as they tried to stop people from shopping at the Max Brenner chocolate and coffee store in Melbourne’s QV.

In Sydney last month, Leftist and Muslim protesters did the same to a Max Brenner shop in Sydney, claiming the Jewish-owned franchise company supported the Israeli Army.

I’ve seen pictures of Jewish shops being attacked before, of course, but they were in black and white, in another country at another ghastly time.

But this is Australia. Today.

Here’s another thing I never thought I’d see in this country I’ve loved for its fair go.

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I never thought I’d see academics sign a petition demanding someone be stopped from simply arguing.

But in Western Australia last week, that’s just what was done by 50 academics, from professors to a PhD candidate specialising in the representation of the Salvation Army in Finnish cinema, who demanded the University of Notre Dame stop warming sceptic Christopher Monckton from speaking there.

I’ve seen pictures of people being silenced for heresy before, of course, but they were in history books, drawn from inquisitions centuries ago, in another continent.

But this is Australia. Today.

Oh, and I never thought I’d see people getting doctorates in Australia on how Finnish films depicted the Salvation Army. But they do in the University of Western Australia, and, to be honest, that’s a first anywhere.

Here’s another thing I never thought I’d see in this country, which I’ve loved for those great home-making suburbs that artists once mocked for being boring.

I never thought I’d see parents killed after telling off naughty teenagers, or great masses of people brawling in our streets.

Yet this week, a Melbourne mum, with her 11-year-old daughter beside her, was stabbed to death after confronting youths who’d egged her house. Yet this week, 300 youths fought each other and police in a Melbourne suburb.

Oh, I’d heard of such stuff about the meanest streets of the United States, years ago.

But this is Australia. Today.

Here’s another thing I thought I’d never see in Australia, a land I’ve long loved for its peaceful ways.

I never thought I’d see clan members shoot at each other in road chases or kneecap each other, while their more glamorous members smiled for snaps in the society pages.

I never thought I’d see a man with a criminal record and links to the underworld given the honour of having his whitewashed memoirs published by a university.

Yet that’s what I have seen in Melbourne just last week, and in Sydney’s western suburbs for years. That what I have seen with Melbourne University Publishing, the preferred publisher of Mick Gatto.

Sure, I saw such things in Hollywood movies about wild Chicago, and heard of them in the bloodier parts of the Middle East.

But this is Australia. Today.

Here’s another thing I thought I’d never see in Australia, a land I’d long loved for is sturdy good sense.

I never thought I’d see a government-funded arts festival treat a terrorist supporter as a hero and a former prime minister as a terrorist.

Yet at the Sydney Writers Festival last month, the audience cheered al-Qaida trained David Hicks and heckled John Howard.

I’d heard of such insanities in Latin-American tyrannies, many years ago.

But this is Australia. Today.

Here’s yet another thing I never thought I’d see in Australia, where we have long loved to smell the air of careless freedom.

I never thought I’d see academics and activists agitate against democracy, while respectable journalists look away, too polite to protest.

Yet this week, 1000 Muslims met at a hall in Sydney last weekend, to hear a speaker tell them to reject democracy. Yet I’ve heard a former Greens candidate, Professor Clive Hamilton, suggest a “suspension of the democratic processes”, in case global warming got too bad.

I’ve read another professor, this time Emeritus Professor David Shearman, of Doctors for the Environment Australia, propose the world be run by “an authoritarian government” of environmental “guardians”. And last week I watched in amazement as Greens leader Bob Brown suggested we give up our sovereignty to a “global people’s assembly”.

I’d heard of such things in pre-Nazi Germany or the more oppressive Muslim theocracies, or read them in the pages of the wildest-eyed dreamers of a century ago.

But this is Australia. Today.

And one last thing I thought – hoped – we would not see in this country, which I’ve loved for insisting that we see each other as individuals, not marked off by birthplace, ancestry, wealth and, in particular, the absurdly trivial distinctions of “race”.

But stop. On legal advice, I must not comment one word further on this issue.

And of all the things I thought I’d never see in Australia, today, it would be this: that even I have been made too scared to speak.

In other places, maybe. In desperate times, long regretted.

But this is Australia. Today.

July 6, 2011 | 6 Comments »

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6 Comments / 6 Comments

  2. Bryan #5: There are as many differing opinions and thoughts in Christendom as there are in Judaism. Not all Christians believe they will be taken out in a Pre-Trib Rapture like Pop Tarts, even though there are whole sets of fiction books that say so. They are fiction…fables…ear-tickling nonsense. Any one observing Jewish history should know that Jews are the canary in the mines and there is no magical escape in advance of Tribulation.

  3. THE LEFT, NAZIS OF TODAY

    Hope y’all don’t mind my commenting; Irlandische Schagitz. But in my wild mis-spent youth I did a BA and MA in history under one of the finest men I’ve ever known, Samuel A Portnoy; unfortunately now deceased. His sons reside in Isreal. Did my work in German history, specialty the early Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism. We have long mischaracterized Nazism as being “conservative” or part of the political “right;” utterly untrue!

    The National SOCIALIST German Workers’Party was of the LEFT; populist, hated capitalism and the free market, advocated a planned economy and extensive social welfare, AND hated Jews. Since some of the REAL German right (mostly monarchists) were mildly anti-Semetic by tradition, the Nazis got lumped in. But free market advocates of capitalism were regarded as “liberals” and despised by communists and nazis alike.

    Today’s American, European, and Asian left are the inheritors of most of the Nazi socialist ideology, up to now minus the Jew hatred. But today’s fashionable leftist hates Israel, the only genuine civilized democracy in the entire middle east. Loving Palistinian terrorists is “in,” so hating Isreal (and Jews) is also very much “au courant” with the left. In this they are returning to their fascist roots. Thus it should come as no surprise that the socialist left are demonstrating against Jewish owned businesses, just doing what comes naturally. What utterly amazes ME though is how on earth any Jew anywhere can be a leftist or support Marxist Obama! Maybe my Jewish friends are wising up. A recent poll by Dick Morris shows support for Obama among Ameican Jews diminishing significantly. http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/

    Three cheers for Bibi Netanyhu when he showed up our idiot leftist temporary president in Washington last month! Jews are WELCOME in the Republican Party and the Tea Party movemnent. The days of restricted hotels and “gentlemens agreements” are long over! And don’t worry about the Christian fundamentalists. They’re waiting for the “second coming” when y’all will convert. As Norman Podhoretz says “I’ll accept the support NOW and worry about the latter when and if it ever arrives.”

  4. When I lived in Australia, 44 years ago, the country seemed very much like the U. S. of America. From Mr. Bolt’s comments, it appears to be much the same. Like the US, Australia has diverse ethnic groups living in various places; and I imagine some neighborhoods have changed. As a whole, the country seems to have lots of Arabs and radicals making noises and causing trouble, and university professors who would probably be more at home on the moon than on planet earth; the same is true in the U. S. The countryside was beautiful back then, and Sydnesiders had tidy little front yards with beautiful gardens. Maybe one has to travel a few miles to see the same kind of front yards, but I imagine the Snowy Mountains are as beautiful as ever. Times change, everywhere; but some things don’t change all that much.

    The greatest concern I had about the place, was seeing in the paper several months ago about how gangs had taken over the beaches (When I lived there, the greatest threat was the sharks), and how the Lebanese were rampaging through neighborhoods I used to know. In all fairness, the city in the US that I grew up in used to be over 90% white and is now mostly black. Drug dealing and murders were going on in my formerly quiet high school, already in the 1980s; and several formerly thriving shopping centers had become empty fields and boarded-up buildings. On top of that, the factory that had employed several of my family members had been abandoned, and the brewery my step-father used to work at closed down. As I said, times change; and I expect them to change even more.

    China, meanwhile, is booming: Where there were rice fields 20 years ago, there are now high-rise cities the size of Chicago.

  5. That pretty well covers the Universities and cities, however, I have read that in the working class neighborhoods and their beaches, the Aussies hate Muslims much more than they hate Jews especially after Aussie girls are gang raped by Muslims. Burkas are also in the news again. Times are tense.