Lapkin never responded, not that I imagined he would.
Mon 17 Mar, 15:58
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Dear Ballarat City Council,
I was born in Ballarat 48 years ago. I have been reading with increasing concern about the conduct and apparent mentality of Cr Ted Lapkin. This in particular is disturbing: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-04/ballarat-environmental-breaze-funding-cut-alleged-antisemitism/104973914
BREAZE is a well-established community environmental organisation. Unlike many Zionists who seem to spout islamophobia and racial hatred towards Palestinians with complete impunity, BREAZE are not known for virulent racial bigotry. I would like to know how it came to pass that they lost thousands of dollars of funding because Cr Lapkin happened not to like something they said. Is this not the worst kind of dealing with political viewpoints we don’t like by canceling those who express them? Was the individual concerned convicted in a court other than that of nominally respectable opinion, or of opinion too spineless and servile to stand up to an organisational bully?
I personally haven’t encountered one Ballaratian yet who thinks the canceling of BREAZE funding was sound, wise, judicious, measured, circumspect or in any way fair. To my reading it is a punitive punishment of dissent using the well-worn conspiracist strategy of conflating doubt, criticism or opposition with an attack, and inventing reasons out of thin air why failure to conform ideologically is part of some grand conspiracy to deny the person whose judgement is being doubted their rights. Critics of Zionist crimes against humanity in Gaza are gearing up to perpetrate crimes against humanity Jews by criticising Zionism; the alleged potential crimes against humanity Zionists fear is a greater evil than those they perpetrate in real time, apparently.
The False Dilemma is nothing new; we saw the same logic during the War on Terror 20 years ago: if you say bad things about international aggression and resource imperialism, or simply think for yourself, the terrorists win. As I wrote in my book on the topic, Benjamin Netanyahu in particular is notable for having innovated counterterrorist conspiracism from the older anticommunist variety: ‘If you think for youself, the communists win’ became ‘if you think for yourself, the terrorists win’ (in the communist sphere, perhaps paradoxically, the same logic becomes ‘if you think for yourself, the enemies of communism win’ . . . a reflection of the importance of tough love logic to political hierarchies in general perhaps, regardless of their stripes).
Perhaps Cr Lapkin can explain to the people of Ballarat how canceling BREAZE funding does one thing to address pressing local problems like domestic violence or male suicide constructively. I would like to know in particular personally how his culture war and apparent jihad against ‘wokeness’ is useful or constructive when trying to do something about these very dire issues means men need to be more mindful and in touch with ourselves. When men need to be able to talk about what’s going on with us, instead of acting out and taking out our problems on those nearest and dearest to us, or driving our car into a tree because it’s easier to be dead than to be misunderstood in a ‘tough cunt’ corporatist culture that has no time for PC gone mad.
Jesus wept, seriously. This is even without getting into narratives around domestic terror; surely the legitimately dire issue of domestic violence in Ballarat contra counterterrorist conspiracism and moral panic begs the question as to whether or not domestic violence is domestic terrorism. The etymology of the term itself arguably lends itself to that conclusion, as does academic research:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0309132513512231
Is this antisemitism? Hardly. If what Cr Larkin has said publicly so far is anything to go by, it seems like he has an attitude of militant ignorance towards atrocities on more front than one. Like his fellow totalitarians, Cr Larkin seems intent on bullying and terrorising his opposition into silence.
The script seems about par for the course:
- Catch criticism for perpetrating crimes against humanity
- Accuse the critic of wanting to perpetrate crimes against humanity against you to explain why being criticised and being attacked are the same thing
- Try to psychoanalyse the critic to figure out what subjective malfunction and maladaptive trait makes them want to criticise you for perpetrating crimes against humanity
- Carry on perpetrating crimes against humanity
- If you say bad things about crimes against humanity, you hate Jews
As Umberto Eco pointed out, and in contradistinction to what Arendt seemed to argue, the Nazis didn’t have a monopoly on fascism: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism For his part, Wilhelm Reich argued that the seeds of totalitarianism were latent within all of us, and only needed the right conditions to reemerge. The rise of fascism in the US and its genocidal practise in Gaza would appear to reflect this reality. As does the perverse practise of defending performative conspiracism, systematic extermination and doctrinaire intolerance for doubt and heterodoxy in the name of anti-Semitism.
It should go without saying also that Netayahu is an international criminal wanted by the ICC for war crimes; why Cr Lapkin acts like he’s a moral cut above the rest of us peasants and brutes in defense of an individual who will go down as one of history’s monsters defies explanation. Here in Ballarat we have all the hate, conflict and fear for which totalitarianism is infamous, and nary a Hamas or islamofascist in sight. Maybe two wrongs don’t make a right after all.
In any event. will look very much forward to Cr Laptkin’s response.
Ben Debney
