Hi, Lachlan,
Heartiest congratulations on getting the top gig in your father’s company. Damn those Succession bozos — this was richly deserved. Such sentiments coming from me are probably of no moment to you, but I know you’re an avid reader of my work. Or, at least, you employ someone (hi, Mr Churchill!) to be an avid reader of my work, which in a way is more flattering.
Congratulations, too, on your address last week to your assembled minions at the company’s awards night (I love that News Corp was upset it wasn’t winning any actual journalism awards so you set up your own “Everyone Gets a Prize” awards. But I digress). Your comments about the obscenity of anti-Semitism were important and, of course, very timely. This is certainly no time for equivocation and fence-sitting, as you say. It is indeed the duty of journalists to “address and tackle it”.
There’s anti-Semitism everywhere these days, Lachlan; a millennia-old disease that plagues and scars us still.
It’s particularly bad at the moment in your part-time home of the United States, as I’m sure you know. One particularly high-profile peddler of anti-Semitism is Donald Trump. The former president has for years now peddled anti-Semitic tropes such as that Jewish Americans have dual loyalties, are obsessed with money and place ethnic allegiance above anything else. Trump has also dined with two prominent anti-Semites. And, of course, there was his initial reaction to the Hamas atrocities, declaring Israel’s enemies “very smart”. Such a man is wholly unfit to be president, I’m sure you agree, Lachlan, and I know that your Fox News journalists will address it and tackle it. This is no time for fence-sitting.
Although, of course, regrettably, there is Fox News’ own troubling history of anti-Semitism, and criticism of Fox News for its hosts’ support of the anti-Semitic and Islamophobic “Great Replacement Theory” by the Anti-Defamation League, including by Tucker Carlson, whom you defended before he was let go from the network following that nasty Dominion business. Still, as you now say, there is no room for equivocation.
One of the most coded, and thus most insidious, tropes of anti-Semitism is the assertion that Jews secretly control major institutions such as the financial system or the media, whether it be a prominent individual such as George Soros — frequently a target on Fox News, alas — or via codewords such as “globalists” or “cultural Marxists“. I know such words will not be found in your company’s products anymore. And I’m sure that you upbraided your father Rupert for his reference in 2012 to the “Jewish-owned press” (asking why they were “anti-Israel”).
Sadly, in Australia, sickening anti-Semitism from white supremacist neo-Nazis has been heard for many years now. Fortunately, we know that Sky News would never tolerate such people appearing as guests. And stretching back over our history, we’ve seen anti-Semitic attacks on even the very greatest of us. Look at the campaign waged against Sir John Monash by Charles Bean a century ago — one of the great men of 20th-century arms vilified by bigots. If only the Murdochs had been around then to urge journalists to defend Monash! Such thoughts must been uppermost in your mind as you handed the Sir Keith Murdoch Journalist of the Year award to some lucky scribe.
And, as you note, anti-Semitism is occurring too frequently right across the country, from “Brisbane to Broome, from Launceston to Lakemba…” although I must take issue with your assumption that southern Tasmania is free of it. And I wonder why you stopped at Lakemba rather than travelling to the north of the continent to, say, Longreach, or Lockhart River.
You urge your journalists to “address and tackle all forms of hatred”, not merely anti-Semitism. This, too, is most welcome. We can now be confident that your journalists, editors and cartoonists will condemn racism, the targeting of ethnic communities, sexism, misogyny and transphobia. We can be sure that Fox News in the United States will lead the way in condemning hatred and those who exploit it for political gain, and that its Australian imitator Sky News will never engage in hatemongering or give a platform to those who do. It’s uplifting to know that a company as large and as powerful as yours will throw its weight against those who seek to divide us and set us at each others’ throats.
As I’m sure you are aware, there are too many wealthy and powerful people who see peddling hatred as not merely acceptable but an entire business model to generate money and influence. Such people have been put on notice by you — they will now be called out, “addressed and tackled” by the organs of your company. Change is afoot. A new wind blows, a new day dawns. Well done.
Best wishes,
Bernard
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