Lobbyism, media, and misrepresentation

My January newsletter article We don’t mourn fascists has been the subject of renewed media reports and escalated lobbyism, leading to a number of cancellations, removals, and repudiations of my creative practice.

There are four things I’d like to say about this:

1. Read it

Of course I don’t expect everyone to engage with my work or agree with it.

But if you intend to make a public critique of the article, or amplify or reference a critique of it, or challenge me privately about it, or circulate a condemnation within your organisation, you are obligated to read it first.

I’m always grateful for good-faith criticism. However, the article has been condemned by many people who have later admitted not to have read it. This is shameful. This is also how disinformation and misinformation begins.

NB: reading an ‘AI summary’ of the article doesn’t count.

2. The media has an agenda

Right wing reactionary outlets like Sky News and The Australian openly advocate for escalated fascism and applaud colonial violence. Meanwhile, platforms like The Guardian exemplify the kind of left-coded imperialism that my article attempts to address.

Predictably, these media outlets have extracted the lines from my article that can be most easily misrepresented and misconstrued, while carefully avoiding any reference to the article’s actual subjects.

We don’t mourn fascists is about the violence of Chabad, and of Zionist operative Rabbi Eli Schlanger in particular; the reflexive capitulation of liberals to Zionist-led narratives, and the selective application of ‘grief’.

Rather than engage with the subjects of the article, the media persistently highlights a 10-year-old victim of the shooting. This child is not mentioned once in my article, which — again — opposes the mourning of fascists. No child is a fascist. Nor should a single child in Bondi be exceptionalised over the tens of thousands murdered in Palestine. The media’s relentless weaponisation of this child only compounds the tragedy of her killing.

The article was written in close collaboration and consultation with members of my extended community across three continents, including Indigenous people and antizionist Jewish comrades. In particular, the contributions of Amanda Gelender and Dr Mohamed Abdou were essential, and the framework of our analysis was deeply considered.

3. Zionism is a protected form of racism

Chabad is an openly genocidal fascist organisation masked by a thin religious facade. That context is still being carefully erased by Zionist-led media. Liberals, even now, are obediently maintaining this taboo.

If a shooting had occurred at a Nazi picnic or a KKK barbecue, would our analysis of that context be facing the same condemnation? Or could those particular forms of organised racist supremacism be discussed and problematised without full-spectrum colonial state and corporate media intervention? Without liberal handwringing?

4. This is a distraction

Not only has the obsessive media and lobbyism diverted attention from the actual substance of my article. It also distracts us from the genocide. The Zioamerican (and Australian) campaign of mass extermination and colonialism continues daily across Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and neighbouring homelands. This same imperialist violence produced the Australian colony, and continues to be replicated across the Global South.

The genuinely resistant — like the courageous mujahideen in Gaza — are not simply facing the discomfort of a hindered arts career or the disappointment of reduced access to colonial systems of reward. Theirs is an existential struggle against the full unfathomable horror of western imperialism, and they are paying with their blood.

Thanks for reading Matt Chun’s Newsletter.

I’m an independent artist, writer, and picture book creator. To support my practice, visit my online store or consider becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter.

I’m also a founding and current co-editor of revolutionary print periodical The Sunday Paper, an imprint of Slingshot Books.

To share information with me about censorship, ownership, funding, infiltration, or influence, please use my secure submission form. I’m happy to archive receipts from any industry or community. However, I’m more likely to follow up and write about a subject that falls within my areas of experience: primarily visual arts, the Australian/Euro-American publishing industry, and news media in the Australian colony.

AI policy:

I never use AI to generate, edit, or refine any part of my image-making, research, writing, or publishing process. When I make art, I use traditional materials: pencil, watercolour, and ink on paper. If you consume my work you can be sure that the labour, creativity, language, and materiality is my own.