“Perhaps it is the innate human condition: that we have negative preconceptions about those people or those beliefs that we don’t understand, or about which we have some festering fear,” writes HUGH SELBY.

To the question: “How many words do the Eskimos have to describe snow?” Google AI says the answer is not, as popularly asserted, 100. Depending upon which dialect, the numbers range across the 40s and early 50s.

How about: “How many words do Australian surfers have to describe waves?” According, again, to Google AI, the answer is: “Australian surfers use over 100 specialised words and phrases to describe waves, ranging from their physical shape and size to the specific conditions of the water. This terminology allows them to communicate precise details about surfable conditions at a glance”.

So, there’s the evidence that rebuts those who criticise Aussie speak as unsophisticated, 

Now take the word “prejudice”. What does it mean? It depends on the context. It may denote a pre-conception or a disadvantage or a biased influence or causing harm.

That’s a wide range, perhaps too wide. Do we Aussies need to invent some more words so that “prejudice” is more narrowly defined, with new words taking up the remaining meanings?

All for one, and one for all

The problem of too wide a meaning is starkly illustrated by an article in The Australian newspaper this week, penned by Brendan O’Neill. The headline is: “Society punishes one form of Jew hate but applauds another”. 

I recommend reading his article, though not for what Mr O’Neill intended.

He thinks that “speech-punishing laws” reflect hypocrisy and futility. He draws attention to what he advances as “double standards”, claiming that spitting out “Jew” leads to criminal sanctions, but spewing forth “Zionist” gets a round of applause at “every Guardianista soiree in the land”.

He goes on to assert that, “these two camps, both the vulgar Jew-baiters and the myopic Zio-bashers, are two cheeks of the same arse”.

Having read his article consider whether the following has some credibility: 

1. Mr O’Neill has some preconceptions about the reasons for which people of good will may not be happy with what Netanyahu has been doing in Gaza since the Hamas murders and kidnappings in Israel. His article makes no mention, not even an oblique one, to Netanyahu’s genocidal response.
2. His failure to acknowledge Netanyahu’s mass murders puts all those Jewish people (and there are many) who oppose Netanyahu’s conduct in a disadvantageous position because he labels them, by default, as anti-Zionist.
3. What’s more, his joining of “Jew baiting” with anti-Netanyahu sentiment is a form of propaganda spin intended to be a biasing influence founded on a false claim. One can strongly support the existence of the state of Israel (a core Zionist belief) while condemning its current political leadership. Mr O’Neill can’t see that, can’t comprehend it. For him: “For more than two years, Australia, like the rest of the West, has been convulsed by orgies of public loathing for ‘Zionists’.
4. The result is that Mr O’Neill’s hyperbole harms those interests he claims to support. One might even cheekily suggest that his antagonism to those Jewish people who are opposed to Netanyahu’s genocide is “hate writing directed at those Jewish people”.

Hate speech has a future 

Prejudices as pre-conceptions don’t exist in a vacuum. They are created and nurtured in an environment. Australia has had prejudices of wide acceptance: putting down the indigenous, Catholics, wogs, slant eyes, poofs etcetera. 

A reason for optimism is that so many of those deep-seated prejudices have been cast aside by most of us.

A reason for despair is that new prejudices replace them. Perhaps that is the innate human condition: that we have negative preconceptions about those people or those beliefs that we don’t understand, or about which we have some festering fear.

How do we react to preconceptions intended to influence us to disadvantage and even harm another because of that other’s membership of some group?

Let’s take the speaker at the recent Sydney March who, it is claimed, said: “Jews are the greatest enemy to this nation”. He has a ludicrous, evidence-lacking, pre-conception about Jewish culture, history, beliefs. So much so that one must ask: “Where did he get his error-ridden preconception about Jewish people from, and when?”

I hope that question is answered. Those promoting our multicultural community need to know.

His Sydney March comments, uttered by someone without authority, seemingly had little effect on the listeners. That’s very different to the same message being conveyed by a European fascist or nazi “leader” in the 1930s and 1940s. Many hundreds of years of cross-generational “prejudice” made it easy to kill the Jewish enemy. 

We also need to know how, when and why the Bondi shooters came to hold the beliefs that led them to think it was a good act to murder their fellow citizens on a beach. Did they acquire those beliefs on their own? Were they guided? If so, by whom?

All of which may show that the conduct we should seek to actively discourage as “hate speech” is false claims uttered by people of influence and power who intend that it bias the audience into causing disadvantage and harm to another group of Aussies. 

Should some pollies be warned?

Hugh Selby is a CityNews columnist, usually focused on legal affairs.