Season 3 - Epsidoe 3 - Media, Social Media and Cancel Culture

Noy Harsel is a writer, a board member, and also works at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilization at Monash University as a senior policy advisor.

Her literary fiction and essays explore mixed race identity, belonging, and contemporary Australia, including her chapter Jewish Enough in Ruptured: Jewish Women in Australia Reflect on Life Post October 7.

She's the creator of the podcasts Why Write? and Like Us on SBS, and a board member of the Wheeler Centre.

She's also a former board member and chair of Writers Victoria.

We started our conversation talking about the research that she's been working on through the department at Monash University entitled Monash Initiative for Rapid Research into Antisemitism.

For the creative sector, one of the things that we've really found is that there was this sort of notion of what, what we've termed ambient antisemitism, which I guess in another way you could sort of look at as a, sort of like a mi- ... sort of looks like for people is like there are these, are you really not getting that grant because you're Jewish even though you've always gotten that grant or you've always gotten that residency, but suddenly this year you're not getting it.

And so it feels some of the stakeholders, the Jewish, uh, s- creatives felt that there was this exclusion happening that was sudden and silent.

Given that Noy and I actually reside in the creative left, I was really, really eager to ask Noy about why the inability of the sector to hold our truths or to understand where we were coming from in terms of our processing of this upsurge in antisemitism was so difficult and so traumatizing.

There was this, this question around this notion about anti-Zionism and this post-colonial discourse being conflated and confused, and this discomfort around meanings and ideas around that that was really difficult for them.

And again, there was this big issue around philanthropy and Jewish philanthropists, and we are s- we've seen that play out a number of times across the sector.

And some of the Jewish philanthropists, for example, there are stories about either they're pulling their funding because they wanna keep the organization safe, or the org- or the organization themselves are saying, "I'm sorry, we just have to let the funding go." And these are heartbreaking stories about, you know, organizations that care deeply or philanthropists that care deeply.

I think what's really interesting, and I don't wanna speak for all Jewish creatives, but myself and my friends in the Jewish creative spa- space, a lot of us didn't go, "I'm Jewish and I'm an artist." It was more like, "I'm an artist and I'm, I'm Jewish.

It's just part of who I am and my, my creative milieu, and that's part of my identity, but it's, it just is, but I am an artist.

I'm a creative, I'm a writer, I'm a musician," whatever it is.

And so your primary network of cohort of people that you lean on and places that you go was this creative space that prides itself on being passionately supportive and passionately open and not binary in the conversations, that they hold and support complicated viewpoints and conversations And then October 7th happened, and there is no c- there's no conversation.

There's no viewpoint other than the so-called correct viewpoint, which is held by a certain group of people, and that group of people didn't include me.

It didn't include my Jewish creative friends.

It didn't include you.

What it included were people who h- held a particular viewpoint of a particular issue, and it didn't take into account the complexity or the diversity within that, and you were either on one side of that line or you were on the other side, and I'm sorry, I don't wanna hear you.

You are either just gonna sign this and be part of this club, or you are out.

We're not having the conversation.

And it was such a shock because I think myself definitely, and a number of my friends and colleagues, we leant towards our creative friends hoping to be heard and held and understood in what was a horrific and complex and difficult time for us all, for everybody in the world.

And rather than any kind of understanding or care or even awareness of the horrors that were being inflicted on women in a peaceful community or anywhere and any of that whatsoever, it was just being shut down and silenced.

And I think that was the, that was the sh- most shocking part of this entire thing, that here we are in a society and a particular sector that prides itself on holding complicated, difficult conversations, and puts itself forward in being able to discuss that, where words matter, where actions are important, and yet here we are with all the words and all the actions closing off to the people who felt like, well, I suppose we felt like we, we needed to be heard, and there was no- there was nothing available for us.

[instrumental music] We also discussed a topic that we ended last episode on, which is the word Zionist and how that word is defined in those left-wing spaces.