Writers weak

# 622

Louise Adler makes another attempt at the ‘World’s Greatest Stirrer’ title

Discussing the gradual disintegration of Writers Week at this year’s Adelaide Festival, artistic director, Louise Adler, has said: “I am so sorry this masterclass in poor governance has landed us in this position.” She may be speaking with unusual candour, because it is her own bad governance that created last week’s cultural debacle. Anybody who spends five minutes investigating Dr. Randa Abdel Fattah’s public statements and social media posts, will see that giving this person a platform at the Writers Festival was asking for trouble.

“Trouble”, however, seems to be Louise’s second name. Faced with a choice between a path of diplomacy and one of provocation, she’ll scoot down the latter without a second thought.

Adelaide has given us the Khaled Sabsabi affair all over again, with an uncanny mirroring of events. An outspoken advocate of the Palestinian cause was selected to a prestigious gig, then deselected, then reinstated, while the arts community went into paroxysms over censorship and (government) interference. The selected/deselected figure was portrayed as a victim and a martyr, while public figures fell over themselves to denounce this outrage.

Perhaps the most inexplicable part of the collapse of Writers Week is the way the Festival Board responded to the aggressive approach of its artistic director. Adler has made it clear that her idea of curatorial control brooks no interference from anyone. If she chose to platform a Palestinian activist with a history of making statements many would characterise as hate speech, members of the board had no right to question this decision. We learned this week that last year the board had gone so far as to commission a risk assessment in relation to Abdel-Fattah’s participation.

After Adler allegedly declared: “It’s too late, I’ve already invited her,” businessman, Tony Berg resigned from the board. His colleagues appear to have gone back into their shells, until the massacre in Bondi created a sense of panic.

After Bondi, and the huge public outpouring of sympathy for the victims, ‘trouble’ was looking more like ‘disaster’. The board, faced with the prospect of protests and condemnation for platforming Abdel-Fattah, decided to cancel her invitation, not imagining this would lead to the implosion of Writers Week, as more than 180 participants pulled out in protest at the curtailing of Abdel-Fattah’s right to free speech.

It was startling to learn, later in the week, that the victim, martyr and heroine of this free speech controversy had written a letter last year demanding the deplatforming of Jewish American journalist, Thomas Friedman, and that Adler and two colleagues threatened to resign unless the letter-writer got her way. Were any of the 180 writers and participants who pulled out in support of Abdel-Fattah, aware of this episode?

Friedman was subsequently told his participation wouldn’t work because of “scheduling issues”. For revealing this apparent hypocrisy, Tony Berg became the butt of Adler’s anger. “I consider discussions at the board table to be confidential, she said, “and I’m rather surprised that a former CEO of Macquarie Bank has breached those confidences. It’s indicative of the way the former board operated – a rich case study for future management students.”

In other words: “My response to your question is to insult Tony Berg, because I expected my own actions and statements would remain behind closed doors.” The comment about “management students”, like the crack about “poor governance” in her grandstanding resignation letter, expresses a none-too-subtle desire for a board to be no more than a rubber stamp.

On the 7.30 Report this week, in an interview with Michael Rowland – whose professionalism could find room for a little more mongrel – Adler got on her soapbox and forcefully related her version of events. The one incisive question Rowland asked was: Had Adbel-Fattah “gone too far with some of the comments she has made about Israel and Israelis?”

Specifically, he quoted her statement of March 2024, that “if you’re a Zionist you have no claim or right to cultural safety,” and another line from the start of last year: “May 2025 be the end of Israel.”

Adler replied: “I don’t invite writers to Adelaide Writers Week because of their social media activity. Those two statements have since been deleted – I don’t know when they were deleted. These statements exist but she’s not being asked to come to AWW because of her social media feed, she’s been asked to come and talk about a novel she’s written called Discipline – a novel that’s topical, of this moment, and I thought was worthy of a conversation.”

Once again, to translate: “I don’t give a stuff about what she’s posted on social media, no matter how offensive or inflammatory. She was invited to talk about her new novel.”

If the novel happens to be all about Palestinians needing to stand up and be counted, we’re expected to believe this has no connection to Abdel-Fattah’s social media posts. Those posts are apparently not worth worrying about (Abdel-Fattah has a mere 61,600 followers on Instagram), while a possibly tasteless piece of political satire by Thomas Friedman prompted threats of resignation.

To demonstrate her balanced approach, Adler told us how she’d also platformed Tony Abbott, “for his book that celebrates the colonisation of Australia.” Presumably Tony Abbott wasn’t one of the writers who pulled out in support of Abdel-Fattah, but it’s revealing that rather than inviting an Israeli author, Adler believes the colonisation of Australia is an effective counterweight to what is happening in Gaza. Revealing, but not surprising. More of that later.

By Wednesday, Writers Week 2026 had been cancelled, Adler had resigned as director, a new board had been appointed, and Abdel-Fattah was threatening to sue SA Premier, Peter Malinauskas, for defamation, alleging “he made a public statement that suggested l am an extremist terrorist sympathiser and directly linked me to the Bondi atrocity. This was a vicious personal assault on me, a private citizen, by the highest public official in South Australia. It was defamatory and it terrified me.”

Malinauskas denies these charges, saying he merely expressed a personal view that, in light of the Bondi massacre, it was the wrong choice to platform an outspoken enemy of Israel. His letter, which has now been revealed, stresses that he is expressing an opinion not issuing a directive.

Whether or not this long-shot defamation action ever comes to court, Abdel-Fattah has already announced a public fund-raiser for her legal fees and has raised upwards of $66,000. As a law graduate, Abdel-Fattah would know that defamation is a hard row to hoe in Australia, but if she were happy to spend the money – or other people’s money - such a case would create a huge publicity splash.

What happened on Thursday might encourage such an action, as the new board issued an abject apology to Abdel-Fattah, and told her she would be welcome to speak at the 2027 festival. This is astonishing, considering we have no idea what Abdel-Fattah might do or say over the next twelve months. If she pursues her defamation action we could be treated to the bizarre spectacle of an anointed participant in Writers Week engaged in a court case with the Premier while she says whatever she pleases from the podium.

Malinauskas, who was immediately asked if he would be issuing an apology to Abdel-Fattah, replied: “What for?” In taking this stance, he is one of the first politicians (let’s not mention arts administrators!) in Australia to stand up to the intimidatory tactics of those who loudly defend their own right to free speech while seeking to cancel others. Are we to assume the Premier doesn’t enjoy the same right to express a personal opinion that Abdel-Fattah jealously claims for herself?

The statement issued by the new board was cringeworthy in the extreme. Chair, Judy Potter, said: “We apologise to Dr. Abdel-Fattah unreservedly for the harm the Adelaide Festival Corporation has caused her. Intellectual and artistic freedom is a powerful human right. Our goal is to uphold it, and in this instance Adelaide Festival Corporation fell well short.”

As if this wasn’t humiliating enough, Ms. Potter also extended the apology to Louise Adler, saying: “We acknowledge the principled stand she took in the extremely difficult decision to resign from her role as director… Louise is a revered figure of Australian literature who we hold in the highest regard. Her contributions to, and stewardship of, Adelaide Writers’ Week in the time she has been the Director (2023 – 2025) have been outstanding.”

Hey Judy, this is the person who just tanked your literary festival, which attracted 160,000 visitors last year, generating tens of millions of dollars for the state. Your festival is now faced with defraying expenses already incurred and repairing the damage inflicted on its reputation and credibility.

This is the person who wrote in her resignation letter, subsequently published in The Guardian: “In my view, boards composed of individuals with little experience in the arts, and blind to the moral implications of abandoning the principle of freedom of expression, have been unnerved by the pressure exerted by politicians calculating their electoral prospects and relentless, coordinated letter-writing campaigns.”

She quipped that “South Australia’s tourism slogan could be “Welcome to Moscow on the Torrens”.

Judy, you say you hold this person in the highest regard, but she doesn’t reciprocate those sentiments. You see her as a revered figure, while she sees you as a bunch of mugs. This “outstanding” person has destroyed your festival with her reckless programming, insulted you in public, and acted in the most sanctimonious manner. Indeed, she has implied that the board was influenced by anonymous forces with “fat chequebooks”, and complained it had bowed to “pressure from pro-Israel lobbyists, bureaucrats and opportunistic politicians.”

As for Abdel-Fattah, she has very graciously accepted your grovelling apology, saying “she was still considering the board’s invitation to appear at the 2027 event.” She also suggested she’d be back “in a heartbeat” if her good friend Louise was reinstated as director. Given its predilection for spineless self-abasement, the board might very well go along with this condition. I’m only surprised Abdel-Fattah didn’t demand that Peter Malinauskas step down as Premier before she agreed to appear on next year’s program.

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Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Adelaide fracas was the speed with which writers jumped on the express train out of Writers Week, putting the issue of “freedom of speech” over any possible qualms about the person they were valorising by their actions. Not only did it show how quickly so many supposedly independent thinkers will adopt a herd mentality, it demonstrated that in this ideological climate, any attempt to lower the temperature of debate only risks pushing it to new extremes. It also revealed the huge gulf that exists between what we might call the Australian intelligentsia and the public. I doubt that many average Australians, upon acquainting themselves with Abdel-Fattah’s views, would be so ready to stand with her shoulder-to-shoulder.

It’s been mentioned on many occasions, but the truly unforgivable part of the writer’s behaviour was her willingness to celebrate the events of October 7, going so far as to treat reports of rape, torture and murder as if they were Zionist propaganda. No matter how we might rail against Netanyahu’s barbaric onslaught in Gaza, with its purposeful cruelty and soaring death toll, this does not – and can never – excuse the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7. Barbarism is barbarism, no matter who is the perpetrator, and if principles of human rights have any viability we cannot pretend one appalling act of violence is an outrage, but another is somehow justified by history and circumstance.

What made the horror of October 7 even worse, was that those Israelis who were targeted were among the most liberal-minded and sympathetic to the sufferings of the Palestinians. The hate-fuelled, genocidal extremists were sitting in Netanyahu’s cabinet, not attending a popular music festival.

In a piece published one year into the carnage in Gaza, Abdel-Fattah wrote: “If you ask me about hope, there was a glimmer on October 7. It was palpable, real, and exhilarating.”

Palpable, real, exhilarating? It’s extraordinary that anyone sitting back in their lounge room in Sydney should feel this way about an event in which innocent people were murdered in the most sadistic fashion. It’s also a ridiculous idea. By any pragmatic assessment it should have been obvious that October 7 gave Netanyahu the excuse he needed to try and wipe Gaza off the map. Even in the social media messages Abdel-Fattah quotes in the wake of the attack, we find Palestinians expressing a palpable dread as to what will happen next.

Hamas may have believed they would unite the Arab world behind them with this act of violence, splintering the growing cosiness between the USA and Israel, and Middle Eastern powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The opposite has occurred, with the group having grown increasingly isolated. Its great success has been with ‘progressive’ groups in the west, who have gone over wholeheartedly to the Palestinian cause.

This has a lot to do with Netanyahu’s uncompromising violence, but also with the way Hamas and its allies have framed the debate.

In a memorandum issued after October 7, Hamas called for their actions to be put into a broader context, namely “all cases of the struggle against colonialism.” They also identified Zionism specifically as “a colonialist project”, and Israel as an “illegal entity”.

In this we see the roots of the ideology that equates the establishment of Israel at the end of the Second World War, with the British takeover of Australia in 1788. We also see the reason why they believe the massacre of October 7 should be excused. The reason was that the Jews deserved it, because of the decades of misery they had inflicted on the Palestinians. The attack was frequently described as a “jailbreak” or a “break-out”, as if these murderers were escapees from a prison camp.

For Judith Butler, the influential American professor who gave us “Queer Theory”, October 7 was “an act of armed resistance”. She went on: “It is not a terrorist attack and it’s not an antisemitic attack, it was an attack against Israelis.”

Butler claimed: “the violence done to Palestinians has been happening for decades. This was an uprising that comes from a state of subjugation and against a violent state apparatus… Israelis point to the murder of Israeli Jews as evidence that Palestinian terrorists hate Jews, when in fact it was just that they were fighting a colonial power. If it were a different colonial power, they would also fight them and it wouldn’t be considered antisemitism.”

It’s so simple when you think about it! What appeared to be a brutal massacre was in fact an armed uprising against a colonial power, and therefore perfectly understandable. In other words: They had it coming. Bad luck for the hapless victims who were merely the pawns of history.

Abdel-Fattah is in the habit of quoting Judith Butler approvingly. She struck her own blow against the ideological enemy two years ago when she “publicly shared a link to a private WhatsApp group that included 600 Jewish creatives, leaking their names, photos and personal details in the process, which prompted the Albanese government to introduce new doxxing laws.” Many from this group claim they are still dealing with the consequences.

All of this makes it difficult to believe in the hurt and offence Abdel-Fattah supposedly felt when the board suggested “it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.”

No-one was suggesting Abdel-Fattah had a hand in the terrorist act, but it would be disingenuous to believe that her statements and actions had not been offensive to Jewish people - even those who may be vehemently opposed to Netanyahu’s actions.

Frantz Fanon, today hailed as a patron saint of ‘decolonisation’, provided a useful term that explains the willingness of so many people in the Australian art and literary community to excuse the crimes of Hamas while being driven into a frenzy by the crimes of Netanyahu. In Black Skin, White Masks, he writes: “Good - Evil, Beauty — Ugliness, White — Black: such are the characteristic pairings of the phenomenon that… we shall call ‘Manichaeism delirium.’”

Fanon saw “Manicheanism delerium” as a condition that allowed the white coloniser to view the black subject of colonisation as his diametric opposite. Where the coloniser was civilised and inherently good, the colonised was savage and bad. One was a higher form of humanity, the other barely qualified as human.

This pretty much describes the attitude of the Netanyahu government towards the Palestinians, who have consistently been treated as less than human. Yet it also sums up the attitude of Hamas apologists such as Abdel-Fattah who saw October 7 as “a glimmer of hope” and don’t believe Zionists have any right to cultural safety.

This tendency to divide the world into extremes of black and white leads inevitably to violence and intolerance. It is the very opposite of politics, often described as “the art of compromise”, or in Bismarck’s famous words, “the art of the possible”. When one group denies the basic humanity of its opponent, every violent act becomes justified. Your own violence is dressed up in heroic colours, while your opponent’s is viewed as pure evil.

This is the point we have reached in Australia, with an art community that has given its sympathies to one side of the debate in such militant fashion it is willing to forget about October 7 and treat an outspoken activist as a martyr and a hero.

On the other hand, as we learn from another article in The Australian, when the Iranian-born writer, Shokoofeh Azar declined to join the mass exodus from Writers Week she was bombarded with messages such as “You should be killed like the Israelis”.

In a Manichean view of the world those who do not think the same way as you, can only be your enemies - fellow travellers with your subhuman opponents. Those who try and find the right and wrong on both sides are accused of “both-siderism” – as if there is inherent nobility in being a bigot.

One reason the groundswell of anti-Israel feeling has grown so precipitously is that it is forever being associated with concepts such as colonisation and decolonisation. The Jews, once viewed as refugees from Hitler’s ravages, are now widely seen as colonisers, or “settler-colonisers”, who have displaced the rightful owners of the land.

There is, however, a huge difference between the British colonisation of Australia and the Jewish resettlement after the Second World War. Both may have had a drastic impact on the resident population, but one was a premeditated act of conquest, while the other was viewed as a return to an ancestral homeland. Looking at the rhetoric being thrown about in Australia over the past year or so, that difference is being obliterated.

Instead of “Israelis” or “Jews” the only word being used is “Zionists”, who are portrayed as irredeemable fascists – regardless that there are many shades of Zionism. Indeed, Abdel-Fattah makes the fine distinction that she is not an antisemite but an anti-Zionist. It’s too fine of a distinction for many people.

A former diplomat who knows a lot about this issue, tells me that the extreme view of “Zionism” has become standard fare over the past 20 years, as the possibility of a two-state solution has faded into nothingness. Both sides are now speaking in terms of absolutes: Israel has pursued the total destruction of Gaza, while the Palestinian slogan, “From the river to the sea” calls for nothing less than the expulsion of the Jews and the end of the state of Israel.

In Australia, the Palestine protest marchers have made common ground with Aboriginal activists, as fellow victims of “colonisation”. Here one might look to the Israeli philosopher, Assaf Sharon, who says: “the point of attaching the label ‘colonisation’ is not to analyse but to criminalise. Rather than a critical concept, it is a weapon of criticism. Or rather, of delegitimation.”

All this is accompanied by the inevitable calls for “decolonisation” – a term so vague it can be made to mean anything one chooses. Judith Butler believes it promises “emancipatory joy”, but Sharon terms it “another slogan cosplaying as policy”, and quotes Fanon, who wrote: “Decolonisation is always a violent phenomenon.”

We can see this playing out in the willingness to overlook the violence of October 7, and the threats and insults thrown at those such as Shokoofeh Azar. When I criticised the protests held out front of the NGV in August, I received the same kind of hateful diatribes from anonymous trolls.

Fanon’s words should give pause to all those ‘progressives’ in the arts community who use the word “decolonisation” so reflexively, as if it were, ipso facto, a virtuous activity. Campaigns to “decolonise the museum” have proven to be confusing and culturally destructive, as nobody has any real idea what they entail. In the absence of a clear program, it effectively refers to policies that are advantageous for a certain group of people and exclusionary for others. It has become a way of opportunistically seizing public assets to advance private agendas – as we see with the catastrophic Powerhouse project, which associates itself with this kind of rhetoric. All those who work for public institutions would do well to think twice before embracing this fashionable but dangerous concept, if that’s the right word for something so intellectually blurred.

When Abdel-Fattah says: “the goal is decolonisation and the end of this murderous Zionist colony” (i.e. Israel), we can recognise all the favourite rhetorical devices.

Jewish journalists, Ariela Bard and Julie Szego, have both written articles expressing their horror and frustration that so many female writers who call themselves feminists have been willing to die in a ditch for someone who has questioned the reality of the rapes and murders that took place on October 7. Is the issue of freedom of speech so absolute – so Manichean – that these feminists are prepared to overlook such a grotesque detail?

This raises a further question about the limits of “free speech”. At what point does free speech become unacceptable hate speech? Does the truth play any part in this, or should we be allowed to lie and spread baseless accusations at will? An article by a former editor of mine, Shelley Gare, reminds us of Karl Popper’s dictum from The Open Society and its Enemies, that we should claim, “in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”

Abdel-Fattah has shown by her statements that she has not the slightest degree of tolerance when it comes to the hated “Zionists”. The same might be said about Adler, an artistic director who seems determined to act in defiance of her own Jewish identity. I can understand Jews saying unfair and hateful things about Palestinians and vice-versa, but I’m puzzled by a Jewish person who goes out of her way to say spiteful things about Jewish interests.

This was ostensibly the point made by former editor of The Age, Michael Gawenda, who has written an article describing how his friendship with Adler came to a sudden end when she appeared to abandon any pretence of journalistic objectivity and embrace conspiracy theories about wealthy Jewish powerbrokers.

If we look for a way to make sure Writers Week never repeats this year’s ordeal, the first requirement would be a board of knowledgeable people who can discuss the artistic director’s choices and not be so easily cowed into submission. Too many boards of Australian cultural organisations are packed with stooges who make no useful contribution, either intellectually or financially. The previous festival board, with the exception of Tony Berg, allowed Adler a free hand, and suffered the consequences. The new board has already abased itself. What is needed is an active process of consultation, in which the pros and cons of possible invitees might be discussed. This is not control, it’s a practical way of dealing with disputes before they arise.

Could Writers Week this year have been saved? Rather than cancelling Abdel-Fattah, perhaps the board might have invited her to sit on a forum alongside a writer such as Michael Gawenda and let them discuss their differences with a suitably neutral moderator. Would Adler have agreed to such an impeccable exercise in free speech, or viewed this as intolerable interference with her program? The stance she took on the 7.30 Report, was that Abdel-Fattah was invited as the author of a novel, not as an activist. Some may argue this is about as convincing as Abdel-Fattah’s insistence that being an anti-Zionist who calls for the destruction of Israel is not evidence of antisemitism.

One wonders if all those writers would have pulled out had such a forum been a possibility. It could have aired a lot of festering issues and given opposing groups a platform to address the public. If Abdel-Fattah chooses to grace the 2027 Writers Week with her presence it should be in the context of dialogue and debate, where her views may be challenged and defended. If she believes her position is rock solid, she has nothing to fear. It would simply be a matter of having the courage of her convictions – something that is lacking in all those anonymous haters who like to threaten people online, and those cowardly arts administrators whose backflips are of Olympic proportions.

The Adelaide saga has eaten up the week, getting progressively worse from day to day, which makes the latest art column something of a relief - being devoted to one of Australia’s most dedicated landscape painters. Mary Tonkin: Among the Trees at the S.H. Ervin Gallery is a genuinely uplifting start to a year that’s already looking ominous. The film being reviewed is Kokuho, a three-hour Japanese epic about a Kabuki actor, that broke box office records at home and is being well-received around the world. Even allowing for the miseries of Adelaide Writers Week there are still plenty of reasons to believe that art is a damn good thing.