Confronting Racism - The Uniqueness And Unity Of Suffering

The Report of the Special Envoy for Antisemitism is deeply troubling. It views history and the present from narrow points of view. An example this narrow focusing occurs in the first two sentences which claim that Jews have been in Australia since the First Fleet, and that Jews have been ‘part of Australian society from its earliest days’.

If we consider Australia’s First Nations peoples part of Australian society now, and acknowledge that their part of Australia’s multi-cultural society pre-dated the arrival of the First Fleet by many millennia, it is hard to see how you could think it true that Jews have been part of Australian society from its earliest days.

Unless when you think of something you would call ‘society’ you see in your mind only the colonial system and its modern expression.

Likewise, throughout the document there are references to the persecution of the Jews as if when we focus on antisemitism we must see it as one of a kind, which is to be thought of in isolation from other forms of racism or intolerance. But without denying the scourge of antisemitism in Western societies, culminating in the holocaust, we need to be careful of looking at the history of antisemitism from a narrow perspective which sees it as special and unique, a shame from which we must draw lessons as to how we go forward; lessons that we would not draw, for example, from the fact that early Europeans came closer to exterminating the whole population of Tasmanian Aboriginals than any other genocide in recorded history.

We need to see all racism, and not forget any genocide

My Aboriginal and Asian friends tell me that every day they are subject to racist abuse as they walk down the street or do their shopping.

Likewise in thinking about recent despicable attacks on synagogues and related violence I cannot help but recall recent examples of extreme violence directed at Muslim communities including the slaughter of worshippers in Christchurch New Zealand. Or the persecution of the Rohingya by the Buddhist majority in Myanmar. Or, the Srebrenica massacre of 30 years ago. And taking a wider and longer view, the rape and butchery of up to a million Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994, around half their population at that time. And let’s not forget the inter-ethnic violence between Hindus and Muslims in what was to become India, that ended with a two state solution there. Nor that Indigenous Australians continue to be detained and die in custody at rates that can only be explained by racism.

In the annals of atrocities inflicted by one religious, racial or ethnic group on another, how do we rank them from horrible to horrendous?

The length of time the persecution persisted? The number killed? The proportion of the population exterminated? The savagery of their deaths? Or, in the case of the holocaust, the cold efficient bureaucracy – so much like us – that did the deed?

The humanity of all must be recognised to prevent the persecution of any

Racism and even racist violence is pervasive. It arises whenever one group denies the humanity of another, as the Nazi’s denied the humanity of the Jews to be sure, but also people with a disability, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals, and indeed anyone they saw as a threat to the purity of the ‘Aryan race’.

The Nazis thought their ‘race’ special, and others inferior. That is the root cause of their evil deeds. Neo-Nazis are as likely to be Islamophobic as antisemitic, and generally to be racist, misogynist, homophobic, anti-trans and prejudiced against people with a disability as well.

But their white supremacism is just at the very extreme end of a growing movement that is infecting Western democracies which sees extending parity of esteem to all people as ‘woke’, led by the US President’s attack on diversity, equity and inclusion and his general hostility to most other peoples and nations.

All groups have been perpetrators of evil deeds, and all victims.

It is only our individual moral compass that prevents you and I joining the persecutors, and luck if we have avoided being victims.

So surely the solution to the problem of antisemitism as a variety of racism needs to see the whole problem, not to single out Jews or any other group, ethnic, racial, or religious, as the exemplary victim. Indeed, that perpetuates the whole idea that some groups are special, when we need to say no-one, no religion, no race, no ethnicity and no nation is special.

The US is not special, Europe is not special, Australia is not special, and Israel is not special, and in particular not more special than the Palestinian state which is yet to be. And neither are Europeans special, or Americans, or Arabs or Aboriginals, or Christians, or Muslims, or Buddhists, or Jews. Indeed, you are not special, and neither am I.

So yes we should not tolerate antisemitism because we should not tolerate any racism. And we should be clear that a tide of denying the humanity of others is rising from the White House to the Opera House, with increased antisemitism as just one of its many forms. But our revulsion at this resurgence should not lead us to consider antisemitism in isolation from other racial or religious discrimination, or treat it as special, lest our single focus on protecting Jews from antisemitism unwittingly discounts the humanity of others.

And we should call out genocide wherever we see it, regardless of who is the perpetrator and who is the victim.

Michael Rowan
Philosopher

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