Tuesday, August 15, 2006
DIE, OLD MEN!
Antony Loewenstein reviews, after a fashion, Mark Steyn’s recent CIS-sponsored Sydney speech:
Over 500 people packed a large hall in the city centre. The crowd largely consisted of old, white males (including historical revisionist Keith Windshuttle, the Australian’s Paul Kelly and monarchist tragic David Flint.)
Loewenstein’s heroes—John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, and Robert Fisk—might flinch at that “old white males” line.
It was also appropriate that former politician and bigot Pauline Hanson came to hear about the Muslim “threat”.
Here’s Pauline with Antony’s mentor. You just never know where she’ll turn up!
Steyn’s speech was peppered with jibes at Islam, Muslims and the West itself, but strangely devoid of any sense that he had actually spent time with any Muslims to form his prejudiced views.
I suspect Steyn has spent rather more time among Muslims than has Antony.
The Q&A session consisted primarily of old men railing against Islam, the West, immigrants, multiculturalism and the “elites.” One question, from Sydney lawyer, commentator and Muslim Irfan Yusuf, asked Steyn how much he actually knew about Islam and whether he’d simply updated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, such was his belief in a Muslim conspiracy to take over the West and destroy it from within.
Ant doesn’t mention egomaniac Irfan’s subsequent announcement that he wished Steyn would drop dead. Seems Loewenstein shares Irfan’s wish:
Steyn and his fellow travellers speak eloquently about Western civilisation on the verge of collapse, but the kind of world they imagine is not one that I either recognise or want. Thankfully, his “vision” is likely to die with the Bush administration. Likewise the elderly types at last night’s event probably still fondly remember the White Australia policy. They’ll be dead soon enough.
Charming. In comments, Ant’s readers rail against Steyn’s “dernagement” and complain about his appointment to the ABC board; they’re a little confused.
(Via J.F. Beck, who has further views.)
UPDATE. Greg Lindsay:
Just so people will know who was at the Steyn function, I just did a count on the registration list (I am the Executive Director of the CIS). Of the 530 registered, about a third were female; students registered about 10%; and the under 40 population of the audience was about a third also. This was a public function and anybody who registered got a seat until we ran out of them, which we did. We figure that the way bookings were running the Tuesday before the function when we were sold out, almost a week before the event, we could have doubled the audience.
Yes, there were some pretty incoherent questions, but we did not have any control over that. We let people say what they wanted to. Lowenstein’s characterisation of the function could be added to the list of things incoherent. Still, people got to hear Mark Steyn and the other speakers and make up their own minds.
UPDATE II. Antony offers an example of his preferred reading matter.
UPDATE III. Reader Tony, who attended the event, isn’t sure Loewenstein was in the same room:
If he was, he is a remarkably inaccurate recorder of what was said. He paraphrases Mr Yusuf’s question of Mr Yusuf is a way that is rather kind. The only question that I can recall him asking was whether Steyn was simply updating the protocols of the order of Zion, which surely was rhetorical. The rest of his time was spent telling his life story and asking how you were going to deport third generation unassimilated Muslims - a policy proposed by a questioner, not Steyn.
He also subsequently denied that he said that he wished Steyn to drop dead, before conceding he had and then saying that he wasn’t serious.
UPDATE IV. Renate assures Tony that Loewenstein was there and in style:
It looked like he was wearing some sort of tracksuit cargo pants, purple sneakers, a man-bag and a khaki locomotive driver’s hat (worn for the duration).
UPDATE V. The Ant Hat revealed:
UPDATE VI. In a rewritten version of his post published in Crikey—Antony pretends he’s a moderate when in public—our brave locomotive fetishist tells an outright lie:
Around 500 largely old, white males (including historical revisionist Keith Windschuttle, The Australian’s Paul Kelly and monarchist tragic David Flint) packed a hall in Sydney’s CBD.
Wrong, and Antony knows it. About a third of the audience were female, and a third under 40. If Loewenstein can’t get this right, why should anyone trust him on more complex issues?