Raising my pen as a sword!

Today one of my own is being besieged! I am a writer. I am a woman. I am an Australian. This makes me me and it also makes me part of a small but powerful group. Women in this country who pick up their pens to change the world are a small force and when they have a bee in their pretty little bonnets well…..stand back and take cover….because they become a swarm!

Yesterday (in case you missed the public holiday, dawn services and two-up games) was ANZAC DAY. This is a national day of remembrance for our fallen soldiers. A day to sadly reflect upon WAR and the sacrifices and suffering that come from it. During these uncertain, worrying, tense times, days like ANZAC DAY summon up, not just remembrance, but important reflections of what we can learn from past conflict so that those who died did not do so in vain. The men and women of all colours and creeds who fought in wars past, did so to strive for PEACE, love and tolerance – you know…..the greater good. FREEDOM.

Yesterday, a young woman I have great respect for, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, made a comment on her Public Facebook Page. It read ‘LEST WE FORGET (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine).’ And the National Offence Brigade went freaking ballistic! The hate cannons and buckshot of outrage blew, they sharpened their bayonets and ran screaming for Yassmin’s blood. She quickly retracted the comment and left it as LEST WE FORGET and apologised to anyone she might have offended.  Never mind that other social commentators were busy writing articles in the mainstream media questioning the continued relevance of days such as ANZAC DAY. It was pointed out that the Indigenous Australians got one sorry day while we’re raking up a hundred to say thank-you for past military services. There are also many men and women who fought for our country who don’t march on ANZAC DAY. We are allowed to have this dialogue in this country, thank goodness because you know FREE SPEECH. I understand and respect those who honour the day and I understand and respect those who don’t for reasons of their own.

Now – I’ve only been called UN-AUSTRALIAN a couple of times in my life and each time it has weirdly enough been when I have been calling out racism. I once called Australia Day, Invasion Day (while not very original….it’s still kinda apt, eh?), and I got some poisonous spears and burning torches flung my way. So if every-time I stand up against racism I get given the red unaustalian card, does that mean, ipso facto, that to be a true-blue Aussie, I must be a teeny bit or a whole lot RACIST? Well, fuck that. I don’t roll that way.

I met Yassmin at a writers festival recently and fell in love with her energy, her passion and her infectious laughter. She is a woman who speaks out with heart and refreshing sincerity. The outpouring of HATE….(if I could think of a stronger word I would use it….maybe VILE-BILE would work)….toward Yassmin in the last twenty-four hours, has thrown and winded me. It’s really really sick! And it has nothing to do with deep national offence and the defense of ANZAC DAY or national pride; it has everything to do with RACISM and hate. It seems to me that those who sit at home, swilling beers and eating snags on ANZAC DAY, (most of whom wouldn’t lift an actual finger for their country and certainly haven’t fought any war outside of ones on social media of their own making) act like sharks who’ve come across an accidental school of tuna and work themselves into a frenzy. Opportunistic outragers!

A Muslim WOMAN pointing out that there are not only other victims of war outside of our diggers but that it IS STILL GOING ON RIGHT NOW! Holy fucking hell…..it becomes a battle-field and the drums start beating and the blood-lust bubbles. Seems also to me, that the army of ‘OUTRAGED and OFFENDED’ weaponed-up on social media, sit around just WAITING for something to be outraged and offended by (on behalf of someone else….always) and if that offense has been bristled by a MUSLIM WOMAN then they are become so hungrily frenzied that they are mouth-frothing on the verge of apoplexy. Someone call them a doctor! STAT!

It takes a lot to offend me… offence is a flimsy cloak to hide beneath and I don’t have much call for it. I’ve been eaten by a flesh-eating spider, I’ve given birth five times, I’ve been sexually assaulted, I’ve suffered profound loss but being OFFENDED has never caused me much concern because you CHOOSE to be offended. I choose not to be and I’ve been called a lot of things in my time. Not one toss was given.

My fellow AUSTRALIAN WOMEN WRITERS stand with me (mostly I hope) when I say that words are weapons and should sometimes only be wielded by those who know what they are doing. Social media is a platform where people say their bit. Freedom of speech. Debate is great. ANZAC DAY…still relevant? Worth a healthy discussion. But to use someone’s words against them with such vitriol, hatred and small-minded bitterness just because everyone else is throwing stones and flinging flint onto the burning mound is school-yard bullying and to my mind not only UNAUSTRALIAN but INHUMAN! Dick-heads should sometimes just zip it!

I showed my children what Yassmin wrote and then what the OFFENDED masses wrote and they were horrified. At 12 and 13 they could clearly see who was in the wrong…who was hateful. Yassmin didn’t incite that hate. She opened a window and inadvertently let the haters lean out and spew forth their hate. Yuk!

As a woman, a writer, an Australian, an atheist, a human being, a mother, sister, wife, pacifist, respecter of values and person with a deep regard and gratitude for fallen soldiers AND concern for those suffering because of war on Manus Island, Nauru, in Syria and in Palestine…..I stand with Yassmin!!!!!

TRUMP’S WITCH HUNT

     The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, looked at the appalling events of the witch hysteria in Salem but it was actually analogous to the times in which he wrote it. The Crucible was shining a light on the Red Scare, the communist hysteria that was being promoted by Senator Joe McCarthy and the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover.

     My newly released novel (also based on historical events during the witch-hunting craze), HEXENHAUS, is similarly drawing a sharp parallel between the Early European witch burnings and the situation we find ourselves in today with government-endorsed racism and Islamaphobia sweeping across the globe. The Trump rhetoric that encourages a fear of ‘the other’ is encouraging another wave of hysteria. Policies that exclude minorities or persecute refugees are burning torches of hate stirring up the bonfire of fear and we are all poorer for it.

     This is history repeating itself. Wave after wave, the fear sweeps people up in hysteria, causing them to indulge in crazy behaviour that simply feeds the powerful and enslaves the common man and woman. The Inquisition, the burning of 100,000 witches across the globe for crimes, tried in courts of law, such as ‘riding to a coven on a flying black dog’ was a brutal reaction to an epidemic of fear. Eminent, intelligent, university-trained judges convicted people of such crimes because they had become so blinded by fear and hysteria that the ludicrous became real to them.

     We can look at this and say ‘how ridiculous that superstition ran riot’ but it happened again in Nazi Germany, it happened during the McCarthy-driven terror of ‘the reds’, the communists who were going to destroy the world as we know it. It is happening again in the Western world and like the frog in the boiling water, it is creeping up so insidiously that many don’t see it for what it is and can’t comprehend that they are being played by those in power.

     Fear, such as that seen in the witch hunts, the Jewish Holocaust, the Red Scare and the current Islamaphobia, sets off a chain of nasty behaviour, crushes civil liberties underfoot and limits everyone’s freedom. Lives of innocent people get turned upside down. False accusations. Blacklists. Political repression. Torture. Murder.

     Mark my words. There certainly is climate change going on. The climate of fear is hotting up.

     The anti-witch, anti-Semitic, anti-Islamic fervour shrinks us as human beings.

My book Hexenhaus tells the story of three young women caught up in the hysteria of their times. They are persecuted for outlandish and dangerously absurd accusations of witchcraft. While researching those dark burning times, it seemed incredible to me that such a horror could be perpetrated again and yet it goes on and on, only the words change.      Witch. Jew. Muslim. Refugee. Mexican. Feminist.

Fear-mongers are hungry beasts and in their greed for power they destroy us all and rob us of the many freedoms those before us fought so bitterly for, throughout history.

My book Hexenhaus shows how it happens. Please world, don’t let it happen again!