So there we all were, the cream of the Australian blogging community, sitting around Tim Blair’s table on Saturday night, fair groaning from the tremendous amount of delicious, succulent turkey which a certain talented woman of a certain ethnic origin (as the SMH would describe her) had cooked and which had gone down our throats without so much as touching the sides, and idly wondering whether to drive past Philip Adams’ house and hurl the Toxic Turkey of Bio-Doom onto his porch, when the conversation turned to the next day’s race riot.

If the authorities were taken by surprise by what happened at Cronulla beach on Sunday, and subsequently at Maroubra, then perhaps they ought to pay a bit more attention, as pretty much all of us were discussing the ramifications of a full-on surfie-vs-Leb confrontation a good 12 hours before anything actually happened.

The most knowledgeable among us said “It’s apparently all on for young and old. The old surfies who saw off the westies in ‘69 reckon they’ll come out of retirement for this one. They’ll probably head down there in the morning, catch a couple of waves, sink a couple of tinnies, smoke a joint or two, then they’ll be ready to fight”.

It would be fair to say, I think, that none of us realised the scale of what was about to happen. Now, as Richard Nixon might say, let me be perfectly clear. The mob has no place in politics. Ask Napoleon. Ask any Roman Emperor. Hell, ask Grok, chief of the Black Wolf tribe! They’ll all tell you that anyone who thinks they can somehow aim the mob at a target, unleash it, and then put it back in the cage after getting the result they were after is a bloody idiot.

The mob is the mob, there’s no “our” mob or “their” mob, it’s a single destructive, mindless, useless force and the cops are perfectly within their rights to baton them into submission and hurl them into the back of the paddy wagon with the rest of the local Brains Trust who thought it’d be patriotic to kick a passing girl in the head because she was different.

Now having said that, I would also be very strongly in favour of the selfsame police grabbing any “youth of a certain ethnic origin” who had just called a white Australia girl wearing a bikini a whore and a slut, or who had just bashed a guy trying to protect his girlfirend from being menaced by thugs saying they would rape her; dousing the little bastard with capsicum spray, and hauling him off for a guest appearence before the local beak alongside his equally brainless pals who’ve been doing pretty much whatever they feel like for a long time now.

It’s called equality, and it’s what Anglo-saxon nations are supposed to be about. Last time I checked, Australia was still an Anglo country. In the absence of equality, with police apprently being told to stand by and allow “youths of a certain ethnic origin” to behave like chimps, well did anyone seriously expect working class Aussie kids to just bend over and take that up the arse indefinitely?

I note there’s not quite as much of an impassioned demand for us to understand the “root causes of Australian rage”, or sad reflections on how desperate the Skippys must be to do such things over on the Left right now. Not eactly taking their own advice, but of course only an idiot would expect consistency from the sort of people who see nothing wrong with George Galloway and David Duke both going to Damascus to sing from the same hymn book.

Long story short - this aint over. The mob needs to be put back in its box, and the only way to do that effectively is to ensure than ALL anti-social behaviour is treated with equal firmness. But thanks to a misinterpretation of what multiculturalism is, and the stacking of Labour Party branches in Sydney by members of the Lebanese community, pressure on the police is likely to be much more aimed at locking up evil whitey for racist behaviour, than policing everyone equally.

Which means the sense of grievance will fester, guaranteeing that what began this weekend will grow into a long hot summer. Fasten your seatbelts, this looks like being a bumpy ride.

UPDATE:

We’re saved! Darp has the answer!

What we’re seeing in Cronulla is basically a turf war fought out between large groups of angry young men. On one side you have the predominantly Anglo Shire locals who believe that Cronulla is THEIR beach and carry an inherent hostility to outsiders. On the other side you have a first and second generation Lebanese migrant community who, in the wake of September 11, are basically feeling hostility from everywhere. Granted, a small section of this community by virtue of some unacceptable behavior certainly do not help the situation.

[ … ]

The challenge now from an anti-racist perspective is to bring about a productive dialogue between the affected groups.

[Smacks forehead with open palm] Of course! Why didn’t I see it! It’s all so blindingly obvious to me now. All we have to do is bring about a productive dialogue between the affected groups.

You go first Darp…

For a real Sydneysider view of what’s happening, add Adrian the Cabbie to your favourites. He blogs from his taxi using a mobile phone, and gets a ground-level view you just won’t find in the dead tree media.

Shortly after midnight I accepted a radio booking from Prince of Wales Hospital Emergency section.

On arrival I was greeted by a middle aged couple. The fella helped the woman into the front seat. She moved gingerly and had a bandaged forehead. ‘Maroubra Road’, he ordered. ‘Ah, the riot street’, I said, then made the connection. Looking across at the woman I said, ‘You weren’t injured there were you ?’. She slowly nodded her head and her partner told me the story.

As the gang marauded up their street, she had attempted to save her car by driving off. Instead she was attacked with a baseball bat. Yet as bad as it sounds, it would appear they went easy on her. Aside from a large head gash, X-rays and scans had given her the all-clear to go home.

On stopping at their destination I told her, ‘‘Mate’, you’re really lucky. Why…I mean, what did they say to you, anything ?’. She slowly looked across at me and with a pained expression replied, ‘It’s our country too’.

Ah yes, of course this was also inevitable. For the benefit of our American cousins, the RSL is the Returned Services League, the local equivalent of the Veterans of Foriegn Wars.

In Brighton-le-Sands, a group of people were reported to have taken down the Australian flag at the Brighton RSL Club and burnt it in the street.

Classy. Now try that in Texas.