Please don’t fence us in
We don’t want fences and guards to protect us from antisemitic attacks, writes Dane Giraud. Nor do we want restrictions on speech, which some people will use to limit what we can talk about.
Iwas travelling home from Auckland when I caught the story that swastikas had been painted on the gates and pavement outside my synagogue. Wellington’s Temple Sinai is a soulful Reform temple at which two of my three children were bar mitzvahed, with one to follow.
After the shock and anger settle, your mind eventually gets around to nutting out what’s to be done. Without a profile of the offenders, it’s all but impossible to settle on anything.
If he/she/they were kids, flirting with their shadow and following an impulse to pull the most reactionary stunt they can dream up, there will be a degree of relief in that. This impulse is eternal, as sure as our status as an easy target, but thankfully it mostly passes with youth.
If the perpetrators are older or more marginalised, their fevered worldview now baked-in and the vandalism intended as a precursor to a dreadful main event, the discussion must focus on security. This isn’t an easy conversation.
Elements in the community have recoiled from the thought of imposing fences, or the unwelcoming scrutiny of hired security guards at a place of worship. But we are now in a post-Christchurch world. There’s no doubt many minds would have changed.
I then see myself touring schools and watching jaws drop as I tell an assembly of kids that their favourite rapper, Drake, is Jewish. Happy Gilmore is too. I’d have a squad with me that reflect the diversity in my community. I know from my own schooling that these unexpected visits from various community members always stayed with me.
But, interestingly, speech restrictions never even flash through my mind. This is because, when it comes to a brass-tacks discussion on safety in the short and long term, they don’t offer any sort of solution.
Putting aside that proposed new laws would not have prevented this specific incident at all, they also have absolutely no chance of culling the number of racists. In fact, if you accept that antisemitism is a conspiracy theory – as a cursory study of the standard tropes quickly reveals – speech laws seen to be protecting a conniving group would affirm the conspiratorial thinker’s demented worldview. They may even prove a provocation.
The NZ Human Rights Commission champed at the bit to reintroduce proposed restrictions (previously slapped down) in the immediate aftermath of the Christchurch tragedy. In an interview with Kim Hill, Chief Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt faltered terribly when trying to explain how restrictions on speech would have prevented the atrocity inflicted upon our Muslim community, and ended up giving no good explanation as to their utility at all.
So why is the thought of speech restrictions so popular with this certain set? The academics? The media class?
There is something speech restrictions can do; in fact, it’s the only thing they can do. They can help you win political arguments by limiting the parameters of discussion. That’s assuming the argument is able to take place at all.
Speech restrictions aren’t a solution to racism. What they are is an expression of reactionary tribal politics, and a solution to dissenting thought.
Feel used? You should. We – that’s all minorities – are tools being cynically appropriated to create a less tolerant and permissive country. They may just get what they want, but don’t think for a moment any of us will be safer. When it comes to the task of truly protecting our communities, we’re on our own.
Expect a few shiny new impenetrable fences around some deeply felt political positions, however.
We – that’s all minorities – are tools being cynically appropriated to create a less tolerant and permissive country.