Steph Paton: Lidia Thorpe called out a vile colonial mindset

Even as dissent is brutally crushed and land is seized, still the oppressors demand civility in how they are treated; as if the roar of falling bombs and debate chamber applause are somehow interchangeable in their consequences.

A particularly fiery contemporary example can be found in the recent viral New Yorker magazine interview by Isaac Chotiner of novelist Howard Jacobson (below).

The discussion focuses on the horrors of the genocide in Palestine. Jacobson, however, does not recognise it as such. In fact, across the jaw-dropping interview it’s difficult to find a sympathetic tone from him for anyone or anything other than himself.

Rather than reckoning with the realities of living under occupation in Gaza, Jacobson instead outlines his belief that media coverage of Israel’s atrocities are a modern form of antisemitic blood libel – a foul conspiracy stemming from the Middle Ages that claims Jewish people used the blood of Christians in their religious practices.

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For Jacobson, the focus on the spiralling civilian body count at the hands of troops under Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is simply another attempt to stir up that ancient prejudicial belief in Jewish blood lust.

When challenged on this, Jacobson blurts out thatsays there has been too much media attention on Israel’s violence: “This was every single night. I’m telling you I saw a dead baby every single night.”

At no point does he appear to reflect on the terrifying fact that, for there to be dead babies on the news every night, Israeli soldiers must be killing babies every day.

Jacobson, it seems, would rather that his feelings be prioritised over the truth: that reporting on Israel’s horrific behaviour must be minimised for his own comfort. Genocide apologists demand we soften our language, even as they sabre rattle themselves.

It’s for this reason that I applaud Australian senator Lidia Thorpe (pictured) for her protest against King Charles yesterday; not simply for challenging the cosy, harmless image that the royal family has steadfastly built for itself, but also that in her challenge she did not sheath her words instead speaking directly to the generational pain that Charles’s family has caused: “You are not our king, you are not sovereign … you have committed genocide against our people.”

And for this, Thorpe has been accused of disrespect. But where is the lie?

Britain’s colonisation of Australia was brutal. Over 140 years, white settlers conducted at least 270 frontier massacres of the indigenous population, all part of a state-sanctioned campaign to clear the land. Poisoned flour was given to First Peoples. Children were stolen and forced into assimilation camps. Cultures eradicated; mass killings justified.

It was the British Crown that granted the “authority” to establish colonies during this time. It was also the Crown’s desire to alleviate overcrowding in British prisons and to expand its territory that led to the founding of a penal colony in 1788.

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By what definition could Britain’s colonisation of Australia not be considered genocidal? By what justification should the royals not be challenged on their historic complicity that benefits them still to this day?

Thorpe’s protest comes at a time when the world is reckoning with the consequences of colonialism and white settler movements, and this latest intervention has highlighted once again how the language of colonial powers has barely changed in the past century.

Always, there is an “inferior culture” that must be civilised. Always, there is the dehumanisation of indigenous populations to justify their murder and expulsion. And always, there is a warped justification.

When James Cook claimed a large part of Australia for the British Crown, he did so while invoking the policy of terra nullius; a Latin phrase that translates to “nobody’s land” or “land of no-one”.

Whether Palestinian or Aboriginal – to the white settler, they are only obstacles

As in Israel, where the phrase “A land without a people for a people without a land” is regularly cited, colonial settlers simply pretend the land they wish to inhabit is empty – contrary to the lives before them.

It stems from the racist belief that only white people can use the land appropriately, therefore any prior claims to it are irrelevant. Whether Palestinian or Aboriginal – to the white settler, they are only obstacles.

Perhaps it is the inability to see Palestinians as fellow human beings that has so stymied the ability of Israel’s defenders to look past their own victim complex, as the inability to see Australian First Peoples as human led to the Crown’s prioritisation of asserting its sovereignty over respecting the rights of those already on the land.

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The fact of the matter is that the British royal family are a striking symbol of colonial practices; a bloody history they have not reckoned with and likely never will. And while they paint themselves as gentle relics of the past, the monarchy still changes laws to suit itself today and preens over the spoils of the fallen British Empire.

For all his tributes to the “traditional owners of the lands” who have “loved and cared for this continent for 65,000 years”, Charles never acknowledged while speaking in Canberra that it was his family’s imperial expansion that forcibly took the land from its keepers.

“Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us! Our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people,” says Thorpe. If the land was empty as Cook claimed, how can there be so much taken from so many?

Only the coloniser benefits from hiding the reality of colonialism. Let the king be challenged wherever he goes. Let every violent white settler be called what they are.

And let it never be forgotten that these lands, taken with such violence, were never empty.