Attack of the angry Australians

Anyone who hasn't read about the race riots in Australia's Sydney suburbs...well, should. For a little insight into the psychology behind the race riots, read this forum. Eye-opening stuff.

In America, even the riots we've had, while sparked by racial tensions, featured mostly localized black-on-black violence; you pretty much never see carloads of black people driving into white neighborhoods and attacking everything in sight, or vice versa. American white people may fear black people, but then again, so do black people themselves. We don't exactly have racial harmony, but we don't have racial hatred either.

Australia's situation is much different. The current riots, pitting Lebanese immigrants and Lebanese-Australians against white Australians (or "Aussies"), feature very little intra-racial violence. It's more like North Ireland than South Side Los Angeles. Read this testimonial to see what I mean (warning, it's very hard-hitting).

Anyone who's interacted with a lot of Australians (as I have), and been exposed to their attitudes on race, will know that they tend to be somewhat...unreconstructed. But from reading that forum, as well as other commentary about the state of things in Australia, I gather that this isn't simply a problem of neo-Nazi-style white bigots hating on anyone with a different skin tone. The Lebanese gangs in Australia, violent and clannish, seem to pose a significant social problem that the police, with their trumpeted "softly-softly" approach, have been unwilling to confront. Police sitting piously on their hands while gangs turn formerly quiet, peaceful neighborhoods into places where it's dangerous to walk outside at night only makes it more likely that racist nativist gangs will eventually take matters into their own (misdirected, inappropriate) hands. Allowing gangs to flourish just because they're made up of ethnic minorities isn't conducive to racial harmony - it's conducive to balkanization.

(Note: some may be tempted to look at Australia and say "It's Islam! Muslims against French people in Paris, Muslims against Hindus in India, Muslims against Christians in Indonesia, Muslims against Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims against animists and Christians in Sudan, Muslims against artists in The Netherlands, Muslims against everyone in Britain, and now Muslims against Aussies in Sydney!" I admit that I too was tempted to make this generalization at first blush. But then I thought about the fact that the Lebanese gangs were transmitting their call-to-war text messages in English, and that these messages said nothing about Allah and lots about "Lebs vs. Aussies," and that the only people at a mosque were calling for a halt to the violence, and I thought better of my religion-ist impulse. A more likely explanation for these global upheavals is the surplus of angry young men created by the recent population boom among predominantly Muslim populations...)

BONUS READING GUIDE:
A review of a recent book of "Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy" by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. The book attempts to show that, while the electorate has shifted to the "left," the Republicans have manipulated our system of government to secure illegitimate victories. The review mostly sidesteps the book's points and makes its own, declaring that the problem stems from Democratic weaknesses on national security and other issues. America, you decide...
Heh. I always wanted to end a post with that line.