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mid the tensions swirling around Australia’s socalled “Deplorables”, as they oppose the mainstream and each other yet bizarrely make the occasional and most unlikely alliances, John Safran – self-described “Jew Detective’’ – stumbles across some absolute pearls.
Consider, for example, the case of Robert “Musa’’ Cerantonio, whose name might strike a chord as one of a group branded by the media as “the tinnie terrorists’’ and alleged by federal police to have planned to sail from Cape York to join an ISIS sympathiser organisation, Abu Sayyaf, in the southern Philippines.
Cerantonio is introduced early in Safran’s book, in which the satirist/ gonzo journalist explores not only the complex, conflicting and often downright confusing ideologies of a range of groups and individuals who see conspiracies everywhere, but also the roles of humour and satire in observing the rise in hate, racism, paranoia and extremism.
Safran enjoys putting himself in harm’s way. He is, as you’ve guessed by the major hint in the first paragraph, a Jew, yet in researching this book spent considerable time pursuing and hanging out with neo- nazis. Of course he is the target of abuse and threats. A Jew hanging around people with such beliefs?
It can only lead to trouble, which he will no doubt explain in detail when he appears at the Byron Writers Festival in August.
But his tenacity, humour and genuine desire to understand – despite the satirical bent he uses in reporting what he finds – also often makes him “tolerated’’ among other ranks of the extreme elements, including those whose American equivalents were described by Hillary Clinton as “Deplorables”.
Indeed the bulk of this book rolls through the year or two that saw the rise of Donald Trump in the US on the back of all the disaffected groups that decided they’d had enough of the so-called elite, and the reemergence of that section of Australian society that has felt ignored and badly done by for the past couple of decades and fell in behind Pauline Hanson again at the last federal election.
Safran introduces Cerantonio to his readers by announcing that by the end of the book the Muslim convert will be in a jail cell awaiting trial.
But back in 2015, Cerantonio – at the time a 29-year-old preacher – tweeted Safran to announce: “It may come as a surprise but I am a big fan of your shows and just recently rewatched Race Relations.’’
Safran’s TV career was launched in Race Around The World on ABCTV in 1997, followed by John Safran’s Music Jamboree (SBS), John Safran vs. God (SBS), John Safran’s Race Relations (ABC) and Speaking In Tongues (SBS). All of this makes him mainstream himself, even though he likes the role of outside observer.
His book Murder In Mississippi earned him the 2014 Ned Kelly Award for True Crime.
At the time of the tweet, Cerantonio was living at his mum’s place in the working class Melbourne suburb of West Footscray.
Safran wanted to learn about the Koran, so he drove across the West Gate Bridge to meet Cerantonio, who proves to be an amusing host, producing a drink from his mum’s fridge.
“It’s raspberry cordial,’’ Cerantonio announces. Raspberry Cordial just happened to be the