Our political dialogue has become too vicious, too absolute, and just too much

2 months ago 5

Opinion

December 16, 2025 — 3.30pm

Finally it has happened: our words have started turning into bullets. The sentences carelessly flung around by the holders of megaphones, convinced of their righteousness, disdainful of the history of the 20th century, have started animating angry, deluded, racist gunmen. And here in Australia of all places. What have we done?

The ways in which we now talk to each other, especially the historical ignorance that increasingly colours our arguments, must bear part of the blame. Our political dialogue has become too vicious, too absolute, and just too much. And it has infected large amounts of our formerly non-political lives.

Jodie Gien visits the memorial at Bondi Pavilion, two days after the mass shooting at Bondi Beach.

Over recent years, for example, it has become common to attend artistic events and festivals only to be forced to endure lengthy and sometimes completely inappropriate political statements from people who are often supremely unqualified to interpret complex events for us. We have also had to put up with the centres of our cities being stopped by increasingly extreme and performative rallies. The protests, the salutes, the endless hollow pledges of solidarity, the empty, inaccurate slogans about imperialism, the references to rivers and seas, the pre-emptive assurances that people’s positions are neither pro-Hamas nor antisemitic – all have become something to be endured. Politeness alone prevents us from walking out of theatres and halls, and frustration keeps us from journeying into our CBDs on weekends.

Clearly, the vast majority of those claiming to not be antisemitic are not antisemitic. Many, after all, are Jews, with families that suffered in the Holocaust. I know many such people. And the Palestinian cause to me seems just – their repression shocking. The concern I have is that the unrestrained vehemence and totality of the denunciations being made of Israel are highlighting our fading understanding of the wider lessons of the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century: the Nazi murder of some 6 million Jews along with other minorities.

While Jews are not the only victims of attempts at genocide – not even in the last century (Armenians, Cambodians, Ukrainians and others have also suffered), their fate illustrates just how easy it is for humanity to slip again and again into a mode of mass murder. Throughout history people have found ever-new reasons to be antisemitic. Every generation seems to have its excuse, and ours now seems to have one too. Hitler was (we thought) the last in a long line. This repeated susceptibility of humanity to antisemitism (and racism of all sorts) suggests supreme caution needs to be shown when Jews are the targets of political attacks. This is a simple lesson of history which we have forgotten. Israel is not above criticism, but the critics have to realise they are treading on blood-soaked ground.

A toy kangaroo stands out among floral tributes at the Bondi Pavilion at Bondi Beach on Tuesday.

It seems extraordinary to me that this historical duty of care has faded away only 80 years after the liberation of the last Nazi concentration camp. But then again it shouldn’t surprise us, because historical amnesia is a feature of our times and may be one of the world’s greatest current problems. Stalin’s Soviet Union starved millions of Ukrainians to death in a politically induced famine in the early 1930s and now his admiring successor Vladimir Putin is trying to crush Ukraine again. Is three generations the limit of our memory about the horrors that the very deepest historical enmities make possible? Are we doomed to repeat murderous human behaviour over and over again? When will we ever learn to pull back?

If anything reminds us that history in fact does repeat, it’s the return of antisemitism so vicious it leads to the mass shooting of people in broad daylight. Let’s remember that several times in recent months Nazis have openly appeared on our streets, parading in black uniforms in front of parliament houses in Sydney and Melbourne, leading racially themed rallies, giving salutes, denouncing Indian Australians, beating up Indigenous Australians and vowing revenge.

These events are wake-up calls. Loud ones. And it’s time to heed them.

Our world is changing in ways we can’t ignore any longer. The peaceful world Australia and similar countries have enjoyed for the past few generations is in danger of giving way to a new age of savagery. A fortnight ago, Vladimir Putin told the nations of Europe he is prepared to fight if they are. Last week, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said war may be upon us in less than five years.

This new age of savagery must now change the way we think. We have to start remembering the darkness humanity is capable of and stop being so blasé about the potentially murderous consequences of the things we say. We are entering an era when we need to start thinking historically again.

Dennis Glover is a speechwriter and author of Repeat: A Warning from History.

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