by Peter Drew
I met John outside his office in the late afternoon. It would be unfair to say he looked dishevelled, but he didn’t look shevelled either. If you imagine a version of Keith Richards who studied Hegel instead of heroin, you will get John’s general vibe. He was done for the day so we went to get a drink out on Stokes Hill Wharf. I couldn’t tell him what I was going through because I didn’t understand it myself. Besides, we weren’t close in that way. I just wanted to listen to him ramble and maybe I’d find something I could hang on to.
The wharf was beautiful in a very Australian kind of way. At the end of the concrete pier, overlooking Frances Bay, stood a steel shed with a food court inside. Everything looked cheap and diverse, including the crowd. Darwin is probably Australia’s most ethnically diverse city but everyone looks the same in their daggy clothes. There’s no point trying to look sharp when the sky’s filled with fat tropical clouds and you’re sitting in a plastic chair. I ordered a beef massaman curry as John spoke about the legacy of his generation.
‘One thing my generation dropped in your lap is the politics of will,’ he was saying. ‘It’s enticing to believe you can fix everything by sheer willpower. John Lennon said, “War is over, if you want it,” right? And there’s something admirable about that big-heartedness, but it’s also very naive.’
‘Why?’ I said, recognising something of myself in what he was saying.
‘Because it’s all on the surface,’ he replied. ‘Underneath the surface, social mores don’t change that quickly. The way people put their world together changes very slowly. It comes from the way our mums and dads did it, from our friends. It comes from the way we’ve learnt to suffer, the way we talk about that suffering and the way we dream of leaping out of suffering. But in the West we’ve lost our traditions for understanding our shared sense of tragedy. That’s perhaps why we’ve also lost touch with empathy, especially when there’s enmity involved, which is when empathy is needed most.’
‘But empathy is too painful,’ I said, remembering the old woman who burst into tears in front of Ali’s poster. ‘People talk about empathy as if it’s this warm fuzzy feeling, but it actually hurts.’
‘That’s right!’ said John. ‘Empathy does hurt, because it’s a recognition of shared tragedy. When that recognition is conveyed through art it can be very powerful.’
I thought about this. ‘All my poster projects are meant to be about empathy,’ I said, ‘but I think they’re really just an excuse for me to get my anger out.’
‘Well, that’s the problem with young men!’ John laughed without missing a beat. ‘Machiavelli made a good point when he said that what to do with young men is a serious political problem.’ But John could see that I wasn’t joking around.
‘What matters is that you’re trying to understand yourself,’ he said gently. ‘Being clever can actually make that process more difficult because clever people are also better at hiding from themselves. But it’s important to take that journey because the way we compartmentalise reality can be very dangerous. It blinds us to the way the world is interconnected.’
‘That’s why it’s important to not oversimplify?’
‘Exactly,’ said John. ‘That’s why you get these poor kids running off to join ISIS. Many young men go through a nihilistic stage, but usually the culture helps them through it. They learn how to find meaning. But some slip through the cracks. They might shoot up their school or join a religion that promises to make their rage sacred. But for every young man who goes off the deep end there are a thousand more who destroy themselves slowly.’
‘I’m pretty sure I’m not that bad,’ I said with a smile.
John looked right at me, then said what I needed to hear. ‘I think one thing that afflicts young men and women is the disease of absolute certainty. I definitely had a dose of that. Nihilism and idealism are two sides of that coin. But I was a know-all when really I knew next to nothing. When I fell apart emotionally I realised that loving acts are all that matter.’
I was reminded why I liked John. Although I could never keep up with half the things he said, he always managed to leave me with the impression that his own pursuit of understanding was a kind of sacramental rite. He wasn’t the sort of thinker who tries to wrangle the universe into his back pocket and call it knowledge. I felt as if John’s real aim was to feel humbled and renewed before all that cannot be known. But that meant endless striving, endless pursuit. Something about that appealed to me, but I also doubted whether I had that kind of devotion.
We were joined by John’s friend, which took the pressure off me keeping up with John. More food was eaten and drinks drunk before the evening ended at a poetry recital that, as far as I could tell, was chiefly an opportunity for ageing academics to drink and flirt. I made my escape.
When I woke up the next day my head felt calm and clear. The noise had gone. I read the comments on my social media and felt they were from real people. They mattered. This project meant something. I stuck up the rest of the posters, caught my flight back to Adelaide, printed more posters and bounced across to Perth. I was back on the path.
Harjit and Affy holding Monga Khan and Bhagwan Singh. Two Muslims, two Sikhs, four Aussies.
In Perth I hung out with Harjit and his mate Affy. I’d met Harjit the year before while I was in Perth for the RASW project. I got on with the business of sticking up posters but my mind was still searching. Affy showed me a prayer room in the CBD where Muslims go during their working day. Harjit took me out to the Sikh Gurdwara at Bennett Springs, where I sat in on the ceremony. It was beautiful. When you’re in a place like that you can’t help but think about the faith of the people present. I’d been thinking about faith since the project began, though I didn’t want to admit it.
Harjit runs a program called Turbans and Trust in which he gives non-Sikhs an opportunity to wear a turban. I wasn’t going to miss my chance. After I stuck up a couple of posters in the Langar Hall, where worshippers eat after their prayers, Harjit sat me down and started wrapping my head in a bright yellow cloth. It was surprisingly tight. You can see in the photo how it made me feel.
I stuck up 180 posters across Perth. This was the midway point of the project and the media attention was at its peak. The posters had been on the street long enough in Melbourne and Sydney to generate many articles in the mainstream press. All of the attention was positive. That’s when you know the criticism is about to arrive – and it did. On my last day in Perth someone tagged me in a photo that shook my little bubble of equanimity.
Cracked
‘In reality Australia is nothing but a melting pot of various religious and ethnic groups. While they claim to have a successful multiculturalism programme, there remain entire neighbourhoods in Sydney, Melbourne and other cities which are dominated by one particular racial group, is this success? The reason they will never succeed is because they are trying to unite the population under nationalism, pushing the claim that everyone is Australian …’
Attributed to Jake Bilardi, January 2015
The copycat posters featured Jake Bilardi, the Melbourne teen who ran away to join ISIS and died in a suicide bombing in Iraq in 2015. He was just eighteen when he died. I’d been fascinated by Jake Bilardi from the moment his story appeared. Obviously he’d been radicalised, but what ingredients lay waiting in the mind of this Australian teenager that allowed him to become easy prey for ISIS recruiters?
Jake was the youngest of six children. Raised closely by his stay-at-home dad, Jake was a sensitive and volatile kid. In his early teens his parents went through a bitter divorce. Under the heading ‘I don’t feel like this is my home’, Jake wrote in his blog: ‘Since I was about 11 or 12 years old I have felt sometimes like my home wasn’t really my home and that it was all a set-up … I sometimes even start to question who they [his siblings] are and believe that they’re plotting to kill me.’
As a child your confidence in the world is anchored to your parents’ love. Our fundamental sense of trust in
goodness grows from that point of certainty. We tell ourselves, ‘My mum and dad love me and they will never abandon me.’ Without that love, we’re adrift. Well, Jake’s father did leave. And when Jake was just fifteen, his mother died of cancer. With both parents gone, Jake’s family home became derelict. His fellow students at school noticed a change in him. He was quieter. He became the target of intense bullying. Then Jake’s father reconnected with his son. But the moment they met, Jake was wearing a strange smile. He’d already found a new sense of certainty. Still smiling, Jake delivered his message to his atheist father: ‘I’ve converted to Islam.’
What followed is well documented. Jake prayed peacefully at his local mosque, but was radicalised online. He sought out the ISIS recruiters. There was a flimsy plan to commit atrocities in Melbourne, but Jake’s preferred goal was to join his ‘brothers’ in ISIS. He secured a passport and fell into their loving arms. He appears in ISIS propaganda, joyful to be with his new family and ecstatic at the prospect of dying for their cause. Jake’s revenge was complete. He’d replaced his family. His death would prove that his own certainty could replace that which had been torn away from him.
What interests me is this: beneath Jake Bilardi’s half-baked ideology, he was just a boy motivated by an ocean of personal resentment, towards a father who abandoned his dying mother, towards a family that fell to pieces, towards the bullies who teased him and a society that let it all happen. What’s most unsettling about people like Jake Bilardi is their sanity. We search through the symptoms of their mental illness for signs that they’ve completely lost their minds so we can draw a clear distinction between them and us. We recoil from the possibility that there is no line. Above all, we underestimate the destructive power of sheer resentment and the need to replace our sense of certainty when the love we relied upon is torn away.
When Jake Bilardi’s face first appeared on a copy of my poster there were two possible interpretations. Either someone on the far right was mocking my inclusion of a Muslim (Monga Khan) within Australian identity, or someone on the far left was mocking my aspirational use of ‘Aussie’. I really wasn’t sure. Then a second poster appeared, featuring the once beloved entertainer turned reviled paedophile Rolf Harris. I breathed a sigh of relief. Clearly this was the work of leftists. I could handle that. Right-wing detractors were dime a dozen. This was far more interesting.
With renewed energy I pushed forward to Brisbane with 180 ‘Aussie’ posters under my arm. I checked into my favourite hostel. Brisbane isn’t the greatest city for public transport – if I was going to improve on last year’s effort I would need help getting around. Charlotte’s offer stood out – she just seemed keener, yet there was something in her phrasing that conveyed a laconic cynicism I knew I could gel with. She arrived in her beloved red 1990 Nissan Pulsar and we proceeded to cut a savage streak across the northern suburbs of Brisbane, putting up posters long into the night.
After a couple of days I was exhausted. Charlotte was keen to keep going but I needed time to catch my breath, so I took the train out to Toowoomba and Ipswich to cover some old territory. It was great to see that some of my old posters had survived and, like the previous year, I encountered more support than criticism.
On the third day, Charlotte drove me around the southern suburbs. I’d just finished putting up a poster when I received a call from a journalist at The Age. She wanted to chat about the copycat posters. I lied and said they hadn’t bothered me in the slightest.
‘Do you know who stuck them up?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know who put them up but I know what type of person put them up,’ I said. ‘It’s obviously someone afflicted by the undergraduate tendency to see all nationalism as something bad. Apparently we need reminding that Rolf Harris was an Aussie and so was the Bilardi kid.’
‘Do you think they’re missing the point of your posters?’ she asked.
‘I think they’re deliberately missing the point,’ I said. ‘The objective of my posters was to celebrate some Australians who historically had been forgotten and to celebrate the history of diversity in this country. They’re promoting that silly point of view that if something is not 100 per cent good, then you can’t enjoy it. They’re just being puritanical.’
That was the best I could manage on the spot. The story of the copycat posters was covered by BuzzFeed, news.com.au and The Independent in the UK as well as The Age. Some of the online discussion that followed was interesting but it didn’t go very deep. I let it go and focused on my final day’s work in Brisbane. Charlotte was busy that morning so I was on foot in Fortitude Valley. I’d found a great spot on the corner of Wickham and Warner streets and I’d just finished putting up a set of three posters when I heard a voice behind me.
‘What kinda Aussie is that?’
I turned to see a man of about sixty-five, wearing a tweed flat-cap. He was almost as tall as me and looked as though he hadn’t yet decided whether to be mocking or intimidating. Either way, I wasn’t in the mood – so I ignored him and got back to work. He didn’t like that.
‘He don’t look much like an Aussie ta me!’ he said, coming close enough that I could feel his breath against my ear.
‘You right, mate?’ I said. ‘I’m just trying to do my job.’
‘That’s not going to last,’ he said, pointing at my poster. ‘Not around ’ere, it won’t. It won’t last five minutes.’
That pissed me off. I’d just spent seven minutes sticking up three posters that I’d printed myself by hand. It was a great spot and I really didn’t like the idea that this old coot was going to tear them down as soon as I was gone. If it was just one poster, I might have peeled it off and stuck it up elsewhere, but not three. Besides, why should I cede territory to this guy?
‘What’s your problem, mate?’ I said, turning to face him.
‘I don’t ’ave a problem, mate. You’re the one with the problem! You’re the one sticking up pictures of terrorists in ma city, and if you don’t take it down you’re gonna ’ave a bigger problem, meanin’ someone’s gonna fix your face for ya!’ Now he was really smiling.
‘Where are you from?’ I asked.
‘I’m from ’ere!’ he said, gesturing at the ground.
‘Nah, you’ve got an accent,’ I said. ‘Where were you born?’
‘I came ’ere with my pa from Ireland in 1959 and I’ve lived ’ere my whole life. I’m Aussie! That’s not Aussie.’ He pointed again at Monga Khan and laughed.
‘That man lived, worked and died in Australia. If you’re Aussie, then so’s he,’ I told him, but it just made him angrier.
‘We don’t need more terrorists in this ’ere place! Now you take it down!’
I glanced around. He was making a lot of noise but there wasn’t anyone about who looked like they might intervene. It was just me and the old man, and I’d already decided that I wasn’t going to back down. Something in me cracked open. I let it crack open.
‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll take down these posters if you do one thing for me,’ I said, wearing a smile of my own.
‘What’s that?’
I drew in close enough to whisper and look straight into his eyes. ‘All you have to do for me is go to your pa’s grave and dig those stinking green bones out of my Australian soil, you fucking Paddy piece of shit. I want you on your hands and knees, digging that filth out of the ground with your bare hands so you can carry it back to where it belongs, because it doesn’t belong here. It’ll never belong here, so you just go dig your dead dad out of my country …’
I just kept going. Once I’d let the anger take control it poured out in an endless stream of bile. I watched his expression break as each word cut into him, but I didn’t stop. He started to back away, but I didn’t stop. There were tears in his eyes, but I didn’t stop. I let him skulk away.
I was shaking. I picked up my gear and walked off in the opposite direction. As the anger drained from my body, a feeling of disgust rose up from the pit of my stomach. I t
ried not to look at people as I caught the train back towards my hostel. The feeling kept getting worse. I tried to focus on my breathing but it wasn’t helping. As I came down the steps of Roma Street Station, I stepped into the garden bed and vomited behind a palm tree.
When I got back to the hostel Charlotte was calling to help out in the afternoon, so I pushed down my feelings, cooked some more glue and pretended I was still on a righteous mission. We got the work done. I even stuck up my last poster on the front of Pauline Hanson’s electoral office. Social media loved it. I felt pathetic.
I told Julie about my confrontation with the old guy, but no one else. I was too ashamed. It’s become one of those memories that emerges out of nowhere when you’re in the shower.
Recently I was back in Brisbane to stick up posters and I spotted the old guy on the street. It had been two and half years but he was wearing the exact same tweed flat-cap. He was standing there watching people, as old guys sometimes do. I had half a mind to apologise, so I walked up and said, ‘Beautiful day,’ and gave him a friendly nod.
‘Aye, but I’m worried about these trees they’ve put in,’ he said, looking over at a new community garden.
‘What’s the problem?’ I asked.
‘Those trees will bring frogs, and frogs bring snakes,’ he said, and he was smiling just like before.
I stood and listened to his paranoid wisdom but it quickly became clear that he didn’t remember me at all. Maybe our confrontation only lived in my memory? That seemed about right. Maybe I deserved to live with that little piece of unresolved shame. Maybe it’s important to remember how easy it is to let resentment take hold. Maybe I’m not so different to Jake Bilardi, or whoever copied my posters. I know how to twist my personal resentments into a weapon and hide it beneath a righteous cause. It’s easy to cast the other as an enemy and ignore the personal frailty that motivates their fears. I know how powerful that can make you feel, but I don’t like it. I knew I didn’t like that kind of empowerment. But I didn’t know how to stop.