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Significant anniversaries tend to be observed in multiples of five, which made 2015’s ten years since the Cronulla Riot the occasion for hand-wring and self-laceration — not to mention requiring every talking head capable of uttering the phrase “wonderful multiculturalism” to go before the cameras and lament the dinky-di Australian racism which manifested itself in an eruption of flag-draped yobbism. One doesn’t like to spoil another’s fun, so Quadrant Online let last year’s guilt-ridden sook-a-thon pass without comment.
This year, though, another side to the riot from someone who saw firsthand why tempers flared. It’s not the authorised version you might hear from Race Commissioner Tim Mouthfulofvowels, but today – exactly eleven years since that clash by the seawall – a Quadrant reader who lived in Cronulla at the time recalls how it became increasingly difficult to be tolerant of the intolerant. She writes:
What was it like living in Cronulla leading up to and after the Cronulla riots?
A trip to the local park was certainly very interesting. Our local reserve was Shelly Park, where Cronulla’s accommodating and welcoming nature was always on display. Large Middle Eastern families picnicking — the delicious smell of Middle Eastern meats on the barbecue remains with me even now, long after I moved house. Groups of men sitting around their hookahs and shooting the breeze, their children and grandchildren romping on the swings, slides and jungle gym.
A girlfriend and I decided to take our sons to play in Shelly Park one weekend. Our boys, both 10-year-olds at the time, headed over to the play equipment, only to immediately return upset that they had been told by the Middle Eastern kids on the play equipment to “f**k off, this is our park”.
What did we do? We did what the locals had done for years. We accepted the bullying, packed up our kids and left.
Another day we wanted to swim in the ocean pool at Shelly Park, only to be greeted by a row of Middle Eastern men linked arm-in-arm across the full width of the pool and blocking all comers from entering the water. When we asked if we could get through so we could swim we were told, “No, our women are swimming”.
What did we do? We did what the locals had done for years. We accepted the bullying of these arrogant men, just as we had accepted the bullying of their children. Like father, like son. Should we have summoned the police? Would they have done anything if we had called them?
Why, out of all the many families of so many different ethnicities that flocked to Cronulla on weekends, was there only one group that showed no respect, no flexibility, which staked sole claim to what had been, up until then, available to all?
On the day of the riots I was having breakfast with friends in Cronulla mall. There were a lot of people congregating, utes cruising the streets with large Australian flags flapping out the back. Drivers of the said utes appeared to be the type that wouldn’t be able to complete a sentence without using “youse”. They weren’t locals. All the locals I know decided to head back to the safety of their homes. Not long after, the sounds of helicopters hovering above our suburb filled the air.
And, of course, after that afternoon of pushing and shoving, there came the reprisals, as convoys of Middle Eastern men and youths poured out of the Western suburbs to teach the rest of Sydney a lesson. We still hear a lot about the riot itself, much less about the far more appalling attcks on innocent citizens that followed.
I even experienced a backlash at work. My crime? Being a resident of Cronulla. The social justice warrior set — those apologists for arrogance — took it upon themselves to judge me because I was a resident of Cronulla and, therefore, must be one of the “youse” mob.
On last year’s 10th anniversary of the riots, Race Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane said 57% of Muslims had experienced racism. I’d like to survey those living in Cronulla before and after the riots to see what percentage were subject to, as was I, blatant and exclusionary racism at the hands of those we welcomed without judgment to our beautiful suburb.
In retrospect, at this distance of years, perhaps we should have been just a bit more judgmental.
I remember the ME revenge hoodlums were provided with Police escorts while they marched along streets smashing car windscreens,no action from the coppers.
Tim Soutphommasane and his many allies deliberately conflate culture with racism.
Not only is done deliberately to inflame divisions within the population, but it is deliberately intellectually dishonest. The MSM are not just complicit in this dishonesty, they are the leading edge of the pack.
Commented before – if you fearfully let the leftoids set the language, you’ve already lost.
Tim S reckons it’s racist to not pronounce his name correctly. I have as much chance of pronouncing it correctly as a 70 year old Japanese man who has never learned English has of pronouncing otorhinolaryngologist correctly, and as much interest in so doing. My tongue and brain are firmly fixed in their ways, as are those of the Japanese man.
It is also a cultural thing – why should people in TS’s adoptive country have to learn new pronunciations on top of accepting him? If I wanted to learn new words, foreign names would be at the bottom of my list. Heck, I have enough trouble with pronounce and pronunciation!
Many Poles also have (to us) unpronouncible names. But in many cases they change them to something their host population finds easier.
Tim SoupNazi wouldn’t know which way is up!! There just has to be a fightback against the bullying, aggression, finger-wagging and name-calling of the Left. There are some Sydney commercial radio hosts who get all this and their audience is far bigger than the ABC, Guardian and Fairfax combined. Time for us and them to start shouting ‘discrimination’ loudly from the rooftops.
Couldn’t agree more Jody. The silent majority have been too polite and silent for too long. There’s only ever been one way to deal with bullying and intimidation – confront fearlessly. This is never easy, on the world scene, in the workplace, in the school ground or at home. Unfortunately, it could get ugly and collateral damage may occur. The alternative is much worse.
Cronulla Mum, thanks. Some of the items like your tales snuck into the news at the time hidden in inside pages among ads. There was enough to know more going on, and for a longer time than the attention span of the front page headline writers. Someone should record oral histories from your community and neighbors before the details like these get forgotten. Talk to your local studies librarian.
It is the likes of Tim Soutphommasane, Gillian Triggs and their ilk who do everything in their power to prevent the smooth, subtle melding of all the different cultures present in this country into the ever evolving Aussie culture which was so brilliantly displayed to the whole world during the 2000 Sydney Olympics. There was not a single recorded manifestation of the “institutionalised racism” the barmy SJWs constantly harp on about. The fact is that what racism does occurs in Australia, it is almost exclusively against white caucasians by non-white, non-caucasian people.
In 2007 I attended a high school class reunion at which was a classmate who lived in the Shire. One of his friends had two daughters who used to go swimming regularly at Cronulla. He told us that in the time leading up to the incident in 2005 there were occasions when the girls had finished their swim and were lying on the sand on their towels young men of ME appearance used to run over the top of them, kicking sand in their face and calling them sluts. This was just one of many of the untold stories and realities that led up to Australians of non ME appearance having had a gutful.
I remember reading an article at the time which described ME men regularly leering perving and making sexual suggestions to women on the beach. It was so bad that a lifeguard remonstrated with them over this and was severely beaten up for his troubles. That is what brought on the riot. Later a large convoy formed in SW Sydney where these scum came from and thet proceeded to the Cronulla area and smashed large numbers of car windows. The article said the police were aware of the forming of the convoy but chose not to do anything about it. Unfortunately I cannot remember the publication I read the article in.
But Race Discrimination Commissioner Dr Tim Soutphommasane said statements like that missed the point.
He was right on the money there.
It was Middle Eastern (Lebanese?) jingoistic nationalism directed against white Anglo Australians. And it was stamped on by ordinary young white Anglo Australian surfers, both male and female, who had had a gutful of it. They were the real heroes of Cronulla.
Dr Tim Sinecuresarenotallthesame should investigate a bit more deeply before mouthing off. That is his job, and he is clearly not doing it.
His job as highly overpaid Race Discrimination Commissioner is not to find some formulation and rationale for why any event like Cronulla is automatically the fault and the responsibility of the white Anglo mainstream, and why it cannot possibly be sheeted home to any other ethnic group or to any imams of any world-conquering religion. Moreover, if he is going to take that brainless jingoism-racism-nationalism line, he has to explain why those same ‘jingistic-nationalist-racists’ did not take out their ‘jingoistic-nationalist-racism’ on any other ethnic minority, but confined themselves to men of ME appearance, who happened to have staked a good old-fashioned territorial claim to Cronulla Beach. Chinese, Vietnamese, Africans, anybody, could have been additional targets, but were definitely not.
Any overpaid politician or Race Discrimination Commissioner who bases a case for a political direction on a falsification of history is trying to entice us onto a very slippery slope indeed.
Sinecuresarenotallthesame? Excellent!
I wonder how the historians are recording ‘The Cronulla Riot ‘? My bet is it will overwhelmingly go down as an example of Australian racism and shame. However there is no doubt that the whole community – the whole of Australia, who live separately from the MSM, whistled quietly to themselves and felt some sort of pride in the Aussie kids who had dared to poke the bully … who had protected their girls … who had said this far but no father. Sure there was too much alcohol and too many flags … but the Leftist MSM exaggerated that … and we all knew that there was good cause behind this punch up … same as there would have been if any group had come to threaten the beach culture and the freedom of these the children of God and this their paradise. We used to have punch ups with the Collingwood boys in the park behind Q Club on a monthly basis back in the sixties. Regardless of who won and who got drunk – and which brave policeman saved which kids from which gang. there were no guns … and the mussie ‘kids’ got a big fright … and perhaps … just perhaps it was worth it … just to see how the snake strikes when you stir it up a bit. I know its a terrible thing in me, but there’s still a part of me which is grateful that these kids got so pissed off with the outrageous behaviour of these mussie misogynists – that they stood up.
Bullies and intimidators need standing up to. We’ve become a nation of weak, lily-livered, PC morons. We have to fight back, let bullies see what happens when the snake is poked as Patrick so eloquently said.
It was known what was coming days before the event, my aged mother-in-law (one of my favourite people in the world) who resides in that area was advised by certain local boys known for taking the law less-than-to-heart to “take a break tomorrow love, stay home”. She did just that.
They had been pushed to far and the blame lays solely at the feet of the race commissioner-police-politicians who’s job it is to cut this off ahead of it happening.
Had the Cronulla mum been able to ring the police and they responded appropriately on both occasions, had the police been able to responded to reports of sexual misconduct by certain members of our community (without PC loonies screaming racist to virtue signal) then the civilities would have remained. Apply law as she is carved, blind to race colour or creed, consistently, constantly and this rubbish all goes away.
Could not agree more. The law in this country has to be colour blind, religion and culture indifferent and should be seen to be applied with utter disregard to any political consideration.
A practical use of multiculturalism would be to turn to the Spanish, Sicilians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians etc and follow *their* customs for keeping a country free of Islamic threats.
“While Geert Wilders was being prosecuted in the Netherlands for talking about ‘fewer Moroccans’ during an election campaign, a state-funded watchdog group says that threatening homosexuals with burning, decapitation and slaughter is just fine, so long as it is Muslims who are making those threats, as the Quran tells them that such behavior is mandated…”
“So, while Geert Wilders was prosecuted in the Netherlands for talking about ‘fewer Moroccans’ during an election campaign, a state-funded watchdog group says that threatening homosexuals with burning, decapitation and slaughter is just fine, so long as it is Muslims who are making those threats, as the Quran tells them that such behavior is mandated. This might be one of the most astounding examples of voluntary submission to sharia law in the West thus far.”
No ‘might’ about it. It is.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9525/europe-illegal-criticize-islam