Melbourne protest rally might be turning point for civility in social media

In the middle of this month a protest rally on account of new laws the Labor government wanted to enact regarding Covid and the health response caused hundreds of people to flock to the streets. Visible among them was a cart with a gallows and three nooses. Missiles were hurled, resulting in injuries. The language on some of the placards was intemperate.

On social media prominent left-wing commentators themselves protested the rally but ignored how they, themselves, often use intemperate language in order to achieve their rhetorical goals. Flaming and ridicule are part of the arsenal of such individuals – who often hide behind anonymity online – and this had caused the prime minister to vociferate publicly against the tenor of debate. Earlier in the month he’d even voiced ideas about making the big tech companies more accountable for what was published on their platforms.

Australia had already moved in this direction, the High Court finding that media companies are responsible for the comments people leave on their Facebook pages. Morrison (the PM) was saying what many – people like me, who sit in the centre – think: that online conversations need to be more responsive to the real world and that the freewheeling tone of social media is becoming more and more toxic.

On TV, the leader of the Opposition criticised the PM for criticising state governments that had chosen to restrict people’s freedom. Morrison utterly condemned calls for violence, he said, but understood that many people are frustrated. Australians have done their bit and governments, he averred, needed to do the same.

This was seen by many as condoning extremism. The first journalist I heard voicing an opinion about Morrison’s words (it happened to be the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Andrew Probyn) expressed a degree of puzzlement. I think this is understandable. We’re puzzled, all of us, but we encourage the type of extreme expressions embodied in the gallows and the nooses. We’re part of the problem, and perhaps this current debate will serve as a turning point. Along with whatever measures the federal government attempts to introduce – though it’s arguable whether they’ll have time to do so before the next federal election – this conversation can be our saving grace.

Hindu nationalist violence in Sydney

This post is similar in scope to one I put up five weeks ago about the farmers’ protests in India. Not all news is local. In the post you’re reading, however, there’s a strong local angle.

I began to look at this series of events on the same day that the Quad – a meeting of the leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the US – started to operate publicly. News of Hindu nationalist violence in Sydney appeared in my socials.

The Sikh community had been in the news. Not long before it announced a new private school would open in the city’s northwest.  This Sydney Morning Herald story contained details of the institution – designed to foster tomorrow’s Sikh leaders – in Rouse Hill. The story said:

It will teach students from kindergarten to year 12, and will have boarding facilities, sporting fields, a pre-school and a Sikh temple. It will cost an estimated $200 million, funded by members of the Sikh community.

Punjabi farmers had been visible in the public sphere in India because they’d been protesting a new agricultural regime. The government had used measures to silence criticism of its new laws, sometimes, as a deterrent, going so far as to put protesters in jail if they had a high profile. 

In Sydney, Greens Senator David Shoebridge was remarking in Parliament on the activities of far-right Hindu extremists.  

Shoebridge was referring to an incident in which a group of four young Sikh men were attacked after leaving a restaurant at night on February 28. Their car was surrounded by approximately a dozen assailants — whom the victims identified as Indians — and smashed with baseball bats, hammers, and even an axe. One victim identified at least one of the attackers as a participant in the allegedly RSS-BJP sponsored car rally from two weeks earlier.

It wasn’t an isolated incident, as another story reported.  

Amar Singh, President of Turbans 4 Australia, a Sikh charity organisation, says the Sikh community have never had “issues” with their Hindu compatriots in Australia. But when the Indian government, led by Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), began stigmatising protesting Indian farmers as part of Sikh separatist plot, relations between the two religious groups made a dramatic turn for the worse.

Last month Singh answered a call from an unlisted number on his cell phone - which would turn out to be a threat against his life. 

“Modi is our god,” said the Indian accented caller. “If you don’t shut up, we will teach you a lesson. We will tie you up and burn you to death.”

The Guardian has got onto the story, publishing this on Friday.  I suspect that Prime Minister Morrison will not remonstrate with Narendra Modi on account of the Sydney violence. It’ll be far down on his list of priorities. But just as Scott Morrison is criticising the CCP on account of its anti-democratic policies being exercised in Hong Kong, the Australian PM should talk to Modi about groups that, in India, benefit from government support.