For those of you who don’t already know, thousands of young Anglo-Celtic kids in Cronulla, in Sydney’s southern beaches, spent their Sunday getting pissed, wrapping themselves in the old Aussie flag and beating up Lebanese people for kicks.
It’s not Sydney’s first clash between the “Aussies” and the “Lebs”. I’m surprised it didn’t happen around the gang rape a few years ago, when the rapists allegedly used ‘Aussie’ as an insult to their victims. Perhaps, it didn’t happen then because we weren’t entirely in a culture of fear, uncertainty and doubt; a culture of terror and suspicion of your neighbour, as we are now. Perhaps we were capable then of separating a few revolting, digusting rapists from an entire culture. Now apparently, a couple of idiot guys who wanted to play soccer and lost their tempers require retaliation on the scale of this travesty of Australian mateship. Have we lost our minds?
hawk_eye posted a Bill Bragg song, The Few, which is very poignant right now:
At night the Baby Brotherhood and the Inter City Crew
Fill their pockets up with calling cards
And paint their faces red white and blue
Then they go out seeking different coloured faces
And anyone else that they can scare
And they salute the foes their fathers fought
By raising their right hands in the air
Oh look how my country’s patriots are hunting down below
What do they know of England who only England know?
I’m ashamed that it’s happened at all. A sad, sad day.
EDIT: as usual, the_christian has encapsulated some of why this is such a tragedy, some of what we thought we had growing up in Sydney, in the years of hope… go, read…