John Safran - Depends What You Mean by Extremist: Going Rogue with Australian Deplorables

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First published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2017

Text copyright John Safran 2017

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

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Cover photograph by Noah Erlich

penguin.com.au

978-1-760-14242-1

A photo rolls into my Facebook feed. A skinhead with a swastika inked on his noggin and a cool-as-fuck black dude are staring each other down. The photo was snapped at the first rally of Reclaim Australia, a group fighting back against Islam and multiculturalism.

The black dude is part of No Room for Racism. These guys sprung up in response to Reclaim Australia. And No Room for Racism has turned this photo into an advertisement, to encourage its supporters to rock up to the next Reclaim Australia versus No Room for Racism showdown.

Its mid-2015 and this is all happening in Melbourne. Thrilled that theres something as exciting as skinheads roaming around my home town Ive been into racists since high school I scribble down the date of the upcoming rally.

A woman, blond and white, climbs onto the back of a ute outside Parliament House in Melbourne. She is the first Reclaim Australia speaker to address the rally.

First Id like to pay respect to the Wurundjeri people, the traditional owners of the land, she says.

Strange way to start your rally against multiculturalism, I think to myself. I pull out my phone and report this to my Facebook followers. (More about that later.)

A couple of hundred people have turned up to support Reclaim Australia, which is in fact a loose collective of different groups. The supporters are protected by a double line of police, who are holding back over a thousand folks from No Room for Racism. stand with muslims against racism reads one of their huge banners.

Back here, with the guys against multiculturalism, Pastor Daniel Nalliah from Catch The Fire Ministries climbs onto the ute and begins the chant: Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!

Pastor Daniel looks nothing like the skinhead in the photo. In fact he is a Sri Lankan immigrant. He warns that back where he used to live, Muslims caused grief, and theyre going to do the same here. Theyre moving in and not assimilating.

What a tangle! If assimilating is about leaving your ethnic grievances behind when you immigrate, maybe hes the one not assimilating.

Next onto the ute is another immigrant a young man of Cook Islands heritage who starts belting out Amazing Grace like hes auditioning for The Voice. Many in the crowd sing and sway along. About half of these Reclaim Australia people are from Pastor Daniels Catch The Fire Ministries, and most of them are Asian, Indian or African.

I upload a collage of this very multicultural anti-multicultural rally to my Facebook page. Immediately, progressives start psychoanalysing: These brown people are victims of racist Australia! They want to be accepted by the dominant white-supremacy culture, so they debase themselves this way!

Thats not where my mind goes, though, because I grew up among the devout. In my experience, Australian intellectuals you know, the folks on Q&A who tell you whats going on just dont get religion. How scripture and faith can channel a persons life. Ill have to find out more, but maybe religion trumps skin colour for these guys at the rally.

Finally a white man climbs onto the ute. He even wears an akubra. This is more like a classic Aussie, to be expected at a rally against multiculturalism. He grabs the microphone and starts talking about how much he loves his Thai wife. The crowd seems to be taking all this in its stride.

But Catch The Fire Ministries is not the only gang here supporting Reclaim Australia. In search of the racists I was promised in that photo of the skinhead, I drift from the ute deeper into the crowd, where big red flags cast shadows. This is the territory of the far-right United Patriots Front. Here are white Australians who look like bikies.

Turn on the gas! a leather-clad man shouts at Jewish John Safran.

Is that a joke? I ask.

No, no, he mumbles, immediately backing down.

Ive met Holocaust deniers before, but this is the first Holocaust-joke denier Ive come across.

An emo-Nazi, lanky, dressed in black with a Korean-boy-band haircut, just stares and stares at me.

You Jewish parasite, he hisses eventually. Write about me and see what happens! He informs me Ive only had a book published because of the Jewish puppetmasters who control everything. Fuck off, youre not wanted here! he wraps up, motioning me over to those on the other side of the police line. He tells me hell come after me if I write anything funny about him. Think Ill still leave in the Korean-boy-band haircut bit.

Someone who seems to be a United Patriots Front leader tries to settle the angry young man down. He doesnt want his group to be seen as neo-Nazis. Earlier, a tubby man with a swastika tattooed on his head (a different skinhead to the one in the photo) was chased off. Now this UPF leader climbs onto the ute and stands next to Pastor Daniel. He tells us his name is Blair Cottrell and gives a rousing speech about the dangers of Islam, punching his Popeye arms into the air. He says hes fed up with multiculturalism too. I look around to see if anyone else thinks its odd hes sharing a ute with a Sri Lankan immigrant. Seems not.

Afterwards, like my friends in the theatre, Blair hangs around fishing for positive feedback on his performance.

When I pull my phone from my pocket Im surprised to see my sarcastic Facebook posts have gone viral. A small group of young activists a couple of Muslims, a couple of Asian Australians are furious. I am a white man taking up space in this discussion that belongs to people of colour.