I’m not an anti-ABC Aussie, but sometimes I suspect they are trying to convert me.

One program I gave up on long ago is Monday night’s QandA. I wouldn’t have known about last night’s program except The Age’s Neil McMahon was praising it, and there was this one segment from the program that kept appearing and reappearing on my twitter feed all day, like a fly buzzing around the dining table in summer.

An audience member by the name of Murray (not this Murray!) asked the question,

“When trying to bring about significant change, when is aggression and violence a better option than assertiveness, strong arguments and modelling the behaviour you expect of others?”

Among the 5 female panellists, there was no-one suggesting that we turn the other cheek or love our enemies. There wasn’t any air of justice either, just simple revenge-seeking, fear-mongering and hate.

Mona Eltahawy said,

“I have an answer for this that a lot of people do not like. I want patriarchy to fear feminism. And there is a chapter in my book on violence. There is a chapter in my book about white women who voted for Trump and white women who accept crumbs from patriarchy because they allow their whiteness to trump their gender. I’m fully aware of this. But at the end of the day, even those white women have to recognise that nothing protects them from patriarchy.

Nothing. For me, as a feminist the most important thing is to destroy patriarchy. And all of this talk about how, if you talk about violence, you’re just becoming like the men. So, your question is a really important one but I’m going to answer it with another question. How long must we wait for men and boys to stop murdering us, to stop beating us and to stop raping us? How many rapists must we kill? Not the state, because I disagree with the death penalty and I want to get rid of incarceration and I’m with you on the police. So I want women themselves… As a woman I’m asking, how many rapists must we kill until men stop raping us?”

Fran Kelly then asked Murray what he thought of the answer. Murray (who sounds way too sensible for this program) suggested,

“if you think about bullying, bullying begets bullies, so, violence begets violence is what I’m seeing.”

Jess Hill then joined the growing chorus,

“Well, you know, it’s interesting. I think if anyone is shocked by what Mona is suggesting, you just have to look back to history and a certain faction of the suffragettes in the earlier 20th century. They used violence. They thought what they were fighting was a civil war between the sexes. They smashed windows. One suffragette actually went up to a young Winston Churchill in 1909 and whipped him with a horse whip at a railway station”. 

Reminiscent of the knitting ladies watching the guillotine in Paris during the French Revolution,  not one of the 5 women on the panel came out in opposition, instead, there was broad support for the use of mob like violence. Apparently, it is okay to assault people if you don’t like their moral or political views. In fact, it is even okay to murder them. Yep, their words are astonishing and incredibly reckless, but that’s the game of social politics today.

For a few moments, I did wonder, perhaps one or more of the panellists have experienced personal violence against them or against their family at some point. If that is the case, one can understand and even sympathise with some of the anger. I even understand the notion of self defence. But these were not just angry words, this speech was advocating violence.

In all the spittle that was landing on the studio floor last night, none of it bared any semblance of originality of thought or constructive commentary. It just sounded like the kind of neo-Trotskyism that has captivated so many parts of the Western world at this time. It has very little to do with justice and righteousness, and a lot to do self-aggrandisement.  It is a brand of social speech that’s turned into a competition to out shock your opponents. Over the last 2 years ‘cancel culture’ has become a thing: if you disagree with someone you destroy their reputation. These women have decided that cancel culture doesn’t go far enough. In the fine tradition of both the extreme left and right groups, to achieve goals we need to commit acts of violence. It’s pretty daft and it’s also dangerous.

Imagine if a male panellist advocated for violence on the program last night? It doesn’t require much imagination to know what the reaction would be if a conservative had even vaguely implied the possibility of non-State-sanctioned violence. After all, QandA’s history is littered with reasonable men and women supported ideas that even 10 years ago were considered commonsense, but today it’s considered heresy, and so they have been on the receiving end of grotesques verbal reprisals.

To justify the use of violence and murder, Mona Eltahawy claimed that,

“It’s throughout history, no-one has ever gotten their right or their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of their oppressor.”

No one? It didn’t take me long to think of someone. As I cringed through the 5 minutes clip from QandA, I remembered another video I watched, only a couple of weeks ago. It featured a young man speaking in a courtroom and addressing the woman who had murdered his older brother. Brandt Jean looked at Amber Guyger and told her that he loved her. He spoke of a God who forgives. He then asked the Judge if he could approach Guyger and give her a hug.

Which message is better? Which message is more likely to bring about a beneficial and positive outcome? What message gives hope to both the oppressed and the oppressor? The answer is pretty obvious.

The one to whom Brandt Jean pointed Amber Guyger, was the man called Christ. The records show that he was brutalised and murdered by the cancel culture crowd of first-century Judea. The astonishing thing is,  he had the position and power to avoid that outcome but he chose to undergo this ignominious suffering for the sake of those who hated him. It is, what the Bible calls, propitiation (Romans 3:25). For God so loved those who did not love him nor treat him as we ought. Perhaps next time on QandA we can have panellists sharing and advocating that kind of good news message.