Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

Twitter is the last place in which objective truths may be debated.

Everyone from the Prime Minister to the head of ASIO is insisting that social media is Dracula, the boogey man and the monster under the bed.

If only Elon Musk would run every tweet past Australia’s eSafety Karen, we would be safe.

But the narcissistic, egotistical billionaire cares more about freedom of speech than about creating the progressive left Nirvana that dominates our political elite’s erotic dreams.

Musk should be jailed, according to Senator Jacqui Lambie.

In the days since Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was stabbed in an alleged Islamic terror attack, we have been told that we must be protected from misinformation, disinformation, news footage, violent images, and divisive content.

It’s a jungle out there.

Rather than answer the question as to how Australia became a place in which a clergyman cannot stand at his pulpit without fearing for his life, our political masters have decided to simply shut down all conversation.

Everything is Relative

Is Islam inherently violent?

Well, no. Not if people aren’t allowed to see the violence, it’s not.

Is multiculturalism failing Australia?

Of course it’s not. Multiculturalism is a great benefit, and we will prove it by only allowing people to see the benefits.

Do police treat Muslims with kid gloves? Are our authorities intimidated by Islam?

No. No. No.

Now please can we talk about something else. And also, happy Ramadan. Peace be upon the Prophet.

You get the idea.

Our political class are now discovering that you cannot build a culture around the value of diversity.

Firstly, because diversity is not a value.

‘We value difference!’ What does that even mean?

Secondly, you build unity around commonality, not around difference.

It doesn’t matter how many times our political class repeat their leftist mantra — “Diversity is our strength” — it still doesn’t make sense.

Diversity in service of a unified goal can be a strength. But in the absence of a unified goal, diversity is just a politically correct way of saying every man does what is right in his own eyes.

“Diversity” is what you’re left with when you abandon truth and declare that everything is relative.

You can’t insist that everything is up in the air and then agree on common ground. So all we have left is difference.

Difference is great when it comes to food, and movie choice, and colour schemes.

But difference is a killer when it comes to things that actually matter, like the meaning and purpose of life.

Muslims believe the purpose of life is to convert the entire world to Islam via submission to Allah and the implementation of Sharia Law.

Allahu Akbar.

The alphabet crowd believe the purpose of life is to express one’s sexuality to its fullest extent in every setting you can imagine.

Boom, boom, boom, let’s go back to my room.

Christians believe the purpose of life is to tell as many people as possible that Jesus is God in human form and that real meaning can only be found in Him.

Hallelujah, praise the Lord.

Atheists believe there is no purpose in life, and we must, therefore, eat and drink and be merry because, well, why the hell not?

Nothing means anything, so f#$k everything.

Diversity is our strength. Wait. What? Once we’ve sampled each other’s food and marvelled at each other’s architecture, we eventually discover that our realities are in conflict.

And so yes, diversity is our strength, right before diversity is a churchman being stabbed or a gay bar being shot up.

This is the end that our political class fears.

But how can we avoid the obvious consequence of diversity when diversity is all we have? There are no truths to which we can appeal since we declared God was dead in the ’60s.

The answer, of course, is to restrict speech to platitudes. We may talk about comparative cuisine, but we may not talk about comparative worldviews.

We may talk about how wonderful it is that we all think differently, but we may not about the differences in our thinking.

Social media is the enemy because, without our eSafety Commissioner curating every tweet, someone may say something resembling an objective truth. And what becomes of diversity then?

Mealy-Mouthed

Have a listen to Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw speaking at the National Press Club:

“Our respected leaders of faith tell us how the interpretation of religion is being purposely distorted on social media.

“Because of this, their communities and religious beliefs are tarnished and blamed for violent acts carried out by those who have been radicalised.”

Is Commissioner Kershaw talking about Anglicans? Perhaps he’s talking about Presbyterians.

I jest. We all know he’s talking about Muslims. But he cannot say that, can he? The first rule of diversity is that we must pretend that every problem applies to everyone because to get into specifics is to risk talking about reality.

That’s why, earlier in this speech, he had this to say about the dangers of encryption on social media platforms:

“Imagine if there was a section of a city where violent extremists could gather with privacy and impunity.

“Imagine if they used this safe space to discuss terrorism and sabotage, and vilify Muslims, Jews, people of colour and the LGBTQIA+ community.

“And imagine if the security service and police were stopped from entering that part of town to investigate and respond.”

In order to imagine Mr Kershaw’s metaphor we must first imagine that we have a problem with violent extremists targeting people of colour (a deliberately vague term) and the LGBTQIA+ community (another deliberately vague term).

Notice that, in Mr Kershaw’s imaginings, no one is targeting Christians or whites. An oversight, I’m sure.

We must also imagine that violent extremists are targeting Muslims… tellingly, that is the first group Mr Kershaw imagines being targeted.

Hmmm.

One more thing:

The term “violent extremist” is also incredibly vague. But by now, you should understand that vagaries are all we have, since the alternative is specificities, and specificities have a nasty habit of leading to conversations about reality.

Remember, the first rule of diversity as a guiding principle is that there is no agreed reality and the absence of an agreed reality is our strength.

But back to Mr Kershaw’s insistence that,

“ … the interpretation of religion is being purposely distorted on social media.

“Because of this, their communities and religious beliefs are tarnished and blamed for violent acts carried out by those who have been radicalised.”

What is the alleged distortion? Which religious beliefs are being tarnished and blamed for violent acts?

The belief that Jews are second-class citizens? The belief that infidels must pay a special tax in order for Islam to accommodate them? The belief that Christians are blasphemers?

Do tell.

Sorry. My bad. I’m getting into specifics again.

And the entire point of ‘Diversity is Our Strength’ is that we don’t talk about specifics, because specifics will lead to disagreements and, without any plumbline of truth to which we can appeal in order to resolve disagreements, disagreements can end only in violence.

So the problem is social media and the devil is Elon Musk.

If only Twitter didn’t allow people to debate reality, we could all go back to imagining that it is possible to live life with feet firmly planted in mid-air.

Sure, there’s the occasional slaughter of citizens here and there, but that’s easily solved by preventing people from seeing it.

Light up the Opera House sails. Hold a candlelight vigil and repeat after me, “Diversity is our strength.”

The only people we have to fear are those who dare to whisper that it is not.

___

Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report.

Subscribe to his Substack here for daily witty commentary.

Image courtesy of Tracy Le Blanc.