Watching the dystopian-named ‘eSafety’ Commissioner in action is like watching the illegitimate lovechild of a deer caught in the headlights and an uncommonly self-righteous Hannibal Lecter looking for their next victim. By this I mean, there is something deeply unsettling about a bureaucrat on a mission to seek out potential feelings of grievance and harm as a form of employment.
Yet we must always remember that the proliferation of made-up sounding Commissioners are hand-picked by governments on both sides of the political fence. It is my opinion that it is their job to promote and legitimise the ideological obsessions of the government under the guise of ‘advice’.
This raises the question: why doesn’t the Labor government and Liberal opposition want Australians to see footage of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel being stabbed at the Assyrian Orthodox Church in Wakeley?
Labor wants us to believe that censorship is all about protecting Australians by not allowing us to see or say things that might fuel ‘division’ and ‘social unrest’. But if that was true, then the Liberals would not be wholeheartedly going along with it. Censorship should play right into the Liberals’ claims about Labor pandering to ‘the multicultural vote’.
And if it is about protecting us from ‘harm’ we might be ‘exposed to’ by seeing violence, then why is footage of the horrific multiple-fatality stabbings at Bondi not being similarly censored?
What is so deeply threatening about footage of a teenager with a knife?
Simple. This is not about the stabbing at all.
It is my opinion that the eSafety Commissioner role exists to stop the spread of anything that might challenge government control over the narrative of the times. And the narrative of our times is that we should be soft, helpless beings who always trust and rely on the government rather than ourselves. Most politicians are in furious agreement about this because it is how they manage to grasp ever-increasing power.
What happened immediately after Bishop Emmanuel was stabbed, and what did not happen at Bondi, exposes this decades-long propaganda for the danger that it is.
As soon as Bishop Emmanuel’s congregation realised what was happening, they reacted exactly as brave, decent human beings should. Several men rushed towards the alleged attacker, overpowering him before he could injure anybody else, and restraining him. Their first concern was not for themselves, but for the welfare of an elderly gentleman and the families around them.
In Bondi, there was no collective attempt to overpower the lone attacker, just a lot of milling about, scarpering, and hiding until police arrived. The exceptions were men from France and Pakistan (one of whom, a security guard, lost his life trying to save others – may he rest in peace and be remembered as heroic). Unsurprisingly, both are countries where the notion of ‘masculinity’ is less of a hissing epithet than it has become in Australia.
Is this why one set of footage must be censored while the other can be viewed freely? Australian governments – left, right, or centre – are terrified of citizens, especially men, who have not been fully ‘pacified’.
What the footage from Western Sydney shows is that not everyone has acquiesced to the demand that they must quietly fold their hands and let the state take care of everything. Chances are that those who stood up in the real world did not grow up drinking the Australian Kool-Aid of passivity and learned helplessness at the altar of big government.
Above all, governments are determined that we must never be exposed to any material that makes us think we can and should be something more than helpless victims. Anything that sends a message that people should not sit back and rely on the government for everything must be relentlessly hounded into oblivion.
This is why I believe both Labor and Liberal have decided that we must not see what happened at the Assyrian Orthodox Church. But it is too late. The censorship drama only draws further attention to the men’s swift actions and the glaring lack of public praise for those.
There is no denying that the men of Bishop Emmanuel’s congregation paint pacified, feminised, state-subjugated Australians in a poor light. And that is the most frightening thing in the world for both Labor and Liberal as they collectively strive to erode liberal democracy.
Lillian Andrews writes about politics, society, feminism and anything else that interests her. You can find her on the site formerly known as Twitter @SaysAwfulThings.
