Violence in the name of ‘love’
TONY Abbott may never again be prime minister, but he does still have a great talent for flushing out the hate-preaching hypocrites of the Left.
On Monday, a Tasmanian magistrate sentenced an anarchist to at least two months’ jail for headbutting the former prime minister and giving him a swollen lip. The anarchist, calling himself Astro Labe, had spotted Abbott in the street and offered to shake his hand. When the courteous Abbott responded, Labe hit him, saying “you f---ing deserved it” and later calling him an “evil c---”.
It will surprise no one in these debased days that the Twitter sewer exploded in applause for Labe, calling him a “national hero”. There are ratbags everywhere – cretins to the Left of us, barbarians to the Right – but those on the Left are too often cheered by people who should know a lot better. That includes academics. For instance, Hannah McCann, a gender studies lecturer at Melbourne University teaching “aesthetic labour” and “queer theory”, tweeted a link to a report on Labe’s sentencing and complained: “When justice is unjust.”
McCann has in her work called for a “shared resistance” to violence against “gender nonconforming people”, yet moans when violence against the gender-conforming Abbott is punished.
As with so many of the tribal Left, what counts is not the principle but the side. Violence is not so bad, after all, if it’s your tribe doing the punching.
That’s also clear from the tweet of another academic, Joanna Mendelssohn, honorary associate professor of art and design at the University of NSW.
Mendelssohn has in the past called for us to confront the violence that is the “consequences of hate”.
Yet when the hater who hit Abbott was jailed, Mendelssohn protested: “That’s outrageous. (Labe) just acted out the hopes and dreams of the majority of the country.” When challenged on her hypocrisy – opposing domestic violence but cheering violence against Abbott – Mendelssohn dug in deeper, tweeting: “Domestic violence can lead to death. A symbolic protest against a well-known pugilist does not.”
There is nothing “symbolic” in violence that leaves the victim with a fat lip. Would Mendelssohn say a woman with a black eye had suffered just a “symbolic” attack?
Yes, these are just two academics from among thousands, but they represent a wider culture in an academia that increasingly promotes a dangerous new tribalism.
Monash University has released a new commercial that seems to celebrate violence as a political tool – against conservatives and the Right, that is.
It opens with a shot of an Antifa activist punching farRight activist Richard Spencer in the head, and then shows one Left-wing cause after another – polar bears, refugees, Aboriginal activists decrying “genocide” and protesters mocking US President Donald Trump.
It ends with an angry woman tearing down some poster put up by old white males, with Monash then appealing to potential students: “We’re telling you: if you don’t like it, change it.” What, by punching? Tearing down stuff?
I doubt students with a taste for bullying in a “good” cause need that encouragement. Last year, some at Sydney University attacked conservative supporters of traditional marriage, kicking them, pushing them, dousing them with glitter and smearing them with food.
Leftists at Melbourne University even attacked a woman, former Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella, forcing her to break off a lecture she was giving.
How often do we now see Leftists punching in the name of love?
Take the violent demonstrations against Cory Bernardi, Pauline Hanson, Geert Wilders and the Australian Christian Lobby, or the protesters trying to shut down meetings of companies or politicians who back the Adani coal project.
How well I know this, having had to beat off two Antifa protesters who physically attacked me as I was about to launch a book on Trump.
Think I’m too one-sided? Then ask the police: where are they most likely to get hurt? At a protest of Greens supporters or one of Liberal supporters?
Indeed, the last time I saw an Australian prime minister in actual fear of violence was when Julia Gillard was rushed out by police from a demonstration in Canberra and flung into a car, losing her shoe in the panic.
And what was she fleeing? Furious Aboriginal radicals who, ironically, had been directed to the event by a Gillard staffer who’d actually suggested they confront Abbott at that same venue. Ah, that Abbott again. He really does out the hypocrites, doesn’t he?