A writing boot camp held by poet Omar Sakr has been cancelled following his anti-genocide posts on social media. Tom Tanuki reports.
SINCE 7 OCTOBER, liberal arts and cultural institutions have been fighting, externally and internally, over whether the attempted genocide of the Palestinian people is to be condoned, condemned or ignored.
The trade of resignations, terminations of employment and open letters continues unabated; organisations continue to cancel events that display even a shred of spine in decrying Israel’s genocide, while others hold fast (or are forced to do so by the collective power of their artists’ principled pro-Palestinian stances).
In this climate, it was reasonable to assume that the State Library Victoria’s cancellation of a free writing boot camp for teenagers hosted by Omar Sakr and several other authors – a day before the program was set to commence, no less – was related to his consistent anti-genocide social media and creative output. Sakr himself wondered about this on Twitter. A vague statement was made about ‘child and cultural safety’, illuminating nothing.
Then we found out that he was right. Leaked all-staff meeting details confirmed that the CEO of the State Library Victoria (SLV), Paul Duldig, confirmed to a small group of around 30 SLV staff in late February that Sakr’s pro-Palestinian tweeting was the “issue”.
I’ve spoken to SLV staff. The initial concern is several shades more ridiculous once you know the details. What I’m told the CEO actually said was that he made the decision to cancel Sakr’s engagement once Twitter flagged one of his tweets as “hate speech”. (A tweet later reinstated, apparently. Although I spoke to Omar and he doesn’t know anything about a briefly-removed “hate speech” tweet.)
Consider, then: the head of a liberal cultural, knowledge and arts institution is now taking cues on what constitutes safe public speech and “child safety” from Elon “Great Replacement” Musk. It would be hilarious if it weren’t also so insulting to the reputation of Sakr and the other writers; it would be merely ridiculous if it weren’t happening underneath the looming shadow of a slaughter.
It’s often said that the issue of Palestinian liberation isn’t a liberal one. It’s liberals themselves who largely make it so. I speak in particular of an upper crust of professional-managerial-class managers, CEOs and professionals, academics and lib politicians and public figures that surround the working arts.
Sometimes these figures profit from an association with Zionism. More often than not, they’re simply hiding behind the easy cowardice that comes with not making comments on an issue that might result in material loss.
On 7 March, an all-staff meeting was held at SLV. Bear in mind that nothing had leaked by this stage about Sakr’s tweets being the source of SLV management concern. An awkward Duldig fronted questions for around 20 minutes, mumbling through responses and generally not confronting the gist of staff concerns. He wouldn’t agree that the writers posed any risk — while insisting there were risks with the program.
Someone raised that “child safety” was often the conservative argument waged to cancel queer events — and these writers, after all, were all queer. He didn’t appear to know about that. Staff were in the dark and Duldig wasn’t helping.
Once the leak did happen, staff at the SLV were ordered to shut up. On 15 March, the day after the leak, all staff were sent an email reminding them of the VPS Code of Conduct about not making public comment. Subsequently, all remaining planned all-staff meetings in March were cancelled. Because of Easter, apparently.
All of the authors whose writing boot camps were cancelled, to be sure, had posted pro-Palestinian sentiment. But to reiterate: the CEO’s original messaging to a small group was that it was Sakr’s “hate speech tweet”, whatever that was, that drove their concern. So the obvious question is: why cancel all of the boot camps, then?
Nobody I spoke to could answer that. The only conclusion I could draw is that leadership must have decided that none of these pesky working artists could be trusted to shut their mouths about Palestine.
Artists under the sway of these bloated institutions – allowed to perform at festivals until suddenly they’re not, or funded by grants until suddenly they’re not – are fighting back. Take no-photo2024, a series of guerrilla large-scale street posters intended to highlight the exclusion of Palestinian photographers from the PHOTO 2024 festival which concludes tomorrow.
Artists didn’t take it lying down. In key corridors and spaces around Melbourne, photos of the horror being experienced in Gaza were shared — only the photos are redacted, just like the festival redacted Palestinian talent. Only the caption describes the pain, death and grief.
(Incidentally, the no-photo2024 posters plastered near famed liberal arts facility Collingwood Yards didn’t even last a day. Protect the Haring piece at all costs, but destroy anti-genocide material just to be safe.)
It's funny to see the response from liberal arts institution overlords when artists are in a position to stand their ground. Foaming Zionists who’ve weaselled their way into the arts crack the shits and resign if they find they can’t get every pesky artist sacked for caring about Arabs; so do CEOs whose “arts” expertise is in rustling up cash from the rich.
It may be, shockingly enough, that a bankable, affluent arts sector and an arts community that has dash and spine cannot be one and the same.
It's no surprise that liberal institutions exemplify this kind of cowardice when their umbrella political leaders exemplify the same values or worse. Former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews may have been a liberal, centre-Left darling during his tenure, but now he’s off on a junket in Israel – like many of his Labor peers before him – helping manufacture consent for genocide. So perhaps we’d all be fools to expect more from SLV leadership.
But we can expect a lot more from working artists and SLV staff. Multiple SLV events have been cancelled due to writers pulling out. And to celebrate World Poetry Day, there's a wall in a communal lunch room where staff are invited to post their favourite poems. So far, about half of them are Omar Sakr’s.
The staff who I spoke to there love their job and believe they do important work. They love the Library and wouldn’t be fighting, issuing open letters and demanding change if they didn’t. “The SLV,” as one of them said to me, “belongs to Victorians”. Not to the board or a spineless leadership group.
Tom Tanuki is a writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist. Tom does weekly videos on YouTube commenting on the Australian political fringe. You can follow Tom on Twitter @tom_tanuki.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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