Peter Hartcher wrote an excellent piece on the weekend:
“The practitioners of the politics of resentment recognise one another,” writes [Francis] Fukuyama in his new book on identity politics, helpfully titled Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, to be published in Australia by Profile Books.
“You didn’t have this white identity politics till the last couple of years in the US,” Fukuyama says, or at least not in a mainstream political party. “It’s Trump – he’s basically a racist and he’s encouraged others so it’s not surprising they’ve come out of the woodwork.”
But just because the right’s deployment of identity politics is ugly and intolerant doesn’t exonerate the left. Indeed, Fukuyama says that the rise of the angry Trump-led right is partly a reaction against the excesses of the left.
The movements that emerged in the 1960s championing the rights of America’s minorities came first: “After the 60s, inequality was interpreted in terms of these specific groups,” and the response to those groups was seen as the neglect of the majority. “That accounts for the level of defections of the old working class because they felt the old parties had deserted them.”
…And what about Australia? To date, the major parties are flirting with identity politics. But only flirting. A minority of conservative Liberals led by Tony Abbott are calling for dramatic cuts to the immigration intake and a toughening of citizenship criteria, for example. Some in Labor are starting to use the language asserting transcendent rights for minorities.
…”It’s probably the fact that economic conditions are holding these things back” – Australia has suffered neither a savage recession nor the shocking inequality of the US – “and that Australia has better managed immigration.”
By stopping the boats, says Fukuyama. Those two points are fair. But I would like to propose some other reasons for the success of Australian multiculturalism.
The first is size. Australia is not just small, it is tiny. That makes any contest of ideas or identity more easy to control. The economy is small as well so that inhibits the formation of niche markets by sheer lack of critical mass. For instance, anybody that thinks that Domainfax or News isn’t engaged in massive and very successful social engineering in support certain business outcomes simply isn’t paying attention.
The second factor is more vague but, in my view, is the most important. It is that the underlying Australian identity is vacuous. I don’t mean that as criticism. It’s simply an observation. The rigid class structures of Britain and the self-conscious humanist idealism of America are missing Downunder. Here we are defined by a few very simple and materialistic principles:
- the pre-eminence of sport;
- mateship;
- and, crucially, outsiderness.
Australian artists from Patrick White to Sydney Nolan struggled to define this lack of definition throughout the twentieth century. It is maddeningly simple yet capable of great sophistication of spirit because it is only defined by what it is not, not what it is. Some have posed that it is an alienation from the land as we cling to the coastline of a hostile continent. The position of a liberal Anglopsheric nation flung far across the planet from its home cultures is fingered by others. Penal colony roots and the celebration of the larrikan are a part of it.
That opens the way for all migrants to join. Because the act of immigration is an intrinsic act of alienation, it positions new arrivals as Aussies the moment they step off the plane. The key to becoming an Australian is not the act of letting go of another culture it is the act of holding onto it from afar. That’s the paradox of who we are. To be disenfranchised, to be marginalised, to hate oneself yet disarm that hatred with laughter, that’s Australiana.
So, for me, that’s the number one reason why multiculturalism works better here than just about anywhere. It is also why toxic identity politics has struggled to take hold here. What’s the point of it in an environment of egalitarian disadvantage?
That is not to say the rise of multiculturalism can be taken for granted. Australian multiculturalism is a strangely downcast beacon of global humanism worthy of our protection. The mass immigration economic model of today is a threat precisely because it is a material failure. It has lowered wages. It has pushed house prices to stupid heights. It has crush-loaded cities. Even the marvelously empty Australian identity will react angrily to these things eventually.
That time has come.
