This post is part of a series marking Anzac month. For other posts, look under 'News' at the top of our website home page.
‘LEST. WE. FORGET. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine …)’ (Yassmin Abdel-Magied on Twitter, Anzac Day 2017)
This article is a cut and paste (with tweaks and updates here and there) of posts in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2022 on our sister website, Honest History. (There is much more detail and many more sources in the original articles.) We don't try to answer the 'have things improved?' question. We'll leave that to readers.
Eight years ago, on Anzac Day 2017, a young Muslim Sudanese-Australian woman, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, took a new approach to the old words ‘Lest We Forget’. She Tweeted this: 'LEST. WE. FORGET. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine …)’. She was widely criticised over subsequent days, weeks and months. The next day, 26 April, there was already a coalition of the outraged on News Limited under the headline, 'ABC activist’s vile anti-Diggers remark slammed as "deeply reprehensible"'. Weighing in were Pauline Hanson, Barnaby Joyce, Peter Dutton, other politicians from both sides, and some Muslims. The Daily Telegraph editorial referred to a 'hateful slur'. NSW Acting Veterans' Affairs Minister, Troy Grant, was one of the milder commenters:
On April 25 we expect all Australians to stop and give thanks for the dedication of those before us who fought for the freedoms our country holds dear, and to those who continue in this tradition of service and sacrifice. Anzac Day is sacred, should be kept above politics and certainly not hijacked for grandstanding (DC emphasis added).
Abdel-Magied quickly deleted the Tweet as Andrew Bolt, Graham Richardson and Gerard Henderson and fans joined the chorus. 'If you were an Australian Patriot’, said someone called Tom, ‘then you would understand what Yassmin said was directly insulting to many Australian Patriots, those killed defending Australia. But you are a Lefty globalist, aren’t you? so you wouldn’t really understand, would you!’
Battle was joined. Defending Abdel-Magied in Guardian Australia on 27 April, the present author wrote:
When you think about it, though, what better day than 25 April to raise important issues such as the fate of refugees in hell-holes? We are told that the men of Anzac a century ago – and servicemen and women since – were fighting to defend our values. So why not bring out some values along with the medals, some things we care deeply about? Abdel-Magied could have added: “Lest We Forget: domestic violence, child sexual abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, poverty, Indigenous disadvantage, frontier wars.”
The backlash probably would have been just as strong had Abdel-Magied focused on these issues, because she would still have been seen as “hijacking” a “sacred” occasion. Many Australians’ need for regular sentimental remembrance would still have trumped thinking about important matters in our present and future …
It’s a shame that Abdel-Magied withdrew her remarks and apologised. We need more feisty, outspoken people like her, not fewer. The families of soldiers who died in the first world war received from a grateful King George V a medallion (known as “the King’s Penny” or “the Dead Man’s Penny”) which carried the words “He died for freedom and honour”. In Australia, 100 years on, that freedom should include the freedom to have – and express – awkward views.
We posted our Guardian article on Facebook and within three days we had over 10,000 shares. Bilious and angry responses easily outnumbered polite ones. Few of the rude responders wanted to mix it, though, not taking up our invitations to provide evidence for their assertions about rabid Muslims, the need for deportation of Australian citizens, or the disloyalty of the Guardian and its readers. A lot of people claimed intimate knowledge of Islam and its alleged horrors but did not show a close acquaintance with the arguments in our piece or similar articles by others, let alone with what Abdel-Magied had actually said.
Notable media supporters of Abdel-Magied were Stan Grant ('Lest we forget and selective national memory'), Jacqueline Maley, Guy Rundle ('myth-loving, right-wing cowards'), Masrur-Ul Islam Joarder in HuffPost ('Freedom of speech is a white man’s privilege'), and others. Maley memorably said, ‘As for the legions of Twitter morons who sit in their stained underpants and defend the mighty Anzac spirit from the safety of their anonymous Twitter accounts: a VC for every one of you’.
In mid-May, Ketan Joshi analysed a collection of anti-Abel-Magied comments, noting the predominance of News Corporation publications. On the pro- side - or simply among the horrified - Antoun Issa in Guardian Australia detected an international trend to badmouth those not of Anglo-Celtic appearance, Bernard Keane asked, 'What kind of a shitheap country have we turned into?', Julia Baird said, 'The reaction [to Abdel-Magied] has been lacking in all proportion and reason', and Tim Deane-Freeman in New Matilda saw the case as evidence that ‘Australia is racist. It is a parochial, frightened, reactionary place with an appropriately wretched politics.’
The furore rolled on for weeks. Abdel-Magied eventually left Australia to live overseas, writing as she departed:
Given that I am now the most publicly hated Muslim in Australia, people have been asking me how I am. What do I say? That life has been great and I can’t wait to start my new adventure in London? That I’ve been overwhelmed with messages of support? Or do I tell them that it’s been thoroughly rubbish? That it is humiliating to have almost 90,000 twisted words written about me in the three months since Anzac Day, words that are largely laced with hate.
Yet, hadn't she been pretty much correct in seeing the possibilities of Anzac Day? Surely, after a century or more, we can move beyond remembering dead soldiers and broaden our focus to other matters where we today should have some interest in making things right?
The Anzac season is surely a good time, for example, to remember the Arrernte, Gadigal, Noongar, Wiradjuri, Wurundjeri, and other men, women and children who died defending their Country on their Country?
The men of Anzac, according to legend, were fighting to defend certain values. Surely, honouring all defenders, in uniform and not, of Country, of Australia, is one such value?
Lest We Forget the Australian Wars.
Related articles can be found throughout the Defending Country website.
Picture credit: cover of Stand Up and Speak Out against Racism (2023), children's picture book by Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Aleesha Nandhra (Illustrator).
