The worst terrorist attack in Australian history has triggered no shortage of hot takes. Pro-Israel writers blame critics of Israel. Anti-Israel activists blame Israel for putting a target on Jews’ backs. Lefties blame conservatives for suppressing legitimate criticism of Israel. Conservatives blame the prime minister for allowing anti-Jewish sentiment. Some say we mustn’t scapegoat Muslims or collectively blame pro-Palestinians. Others say the attack proves that Israel is not to blame for antisemitism, “the world’s oldest hatred”.

And everyone agrees on the answer: Say no to hate. Well, that’s nice, innit?

Mourners gather at Bondi Pavilion’s floral memorial at for victims of the massacre on Sunday.Credit: Mark Baker/AP

One of our groups, Jewish Australians, can no longer gather in public without a legitimate fear of violence. In the aftermath of last Sunday, the same is probably true for Palestinian and Muslim Australians, who deserve our sympathy and care. How do we pull back?

Multiculturalism isn’t easy. You can’t sustain a mosaic of different communities in a peaceful equilibrium without tethering them to something universal. For my generation, which grew up in the 1990s and 2000s, that tether was liberalism, meaning respect for free speech, for women, for gay people, for tearing down dogmas, for playing the ball not the person, for judging people by their arguments and behaviour, not by their skin colour or tribe.

But the past decade has seen a shift away from defending universal values towards fetishising group identities. We’ve valorised “difference”, obeyed new language rules, pandered to grievances, and flaunted our virtuousness via ever more outraged social media posts about the controversy du jour.

This allows us to dodge hard questions: how to address the demographic anxiety some Australians feel about high immigration, how to integrate insular migrant communities into the mainstream, how to defuse ancient beefs, how to criticise religious fanaticism without insulting people’s faiths, how to balance free speech against extreme beliefs.

Fleshing out such questions is what allows multiculturalism to survive. But we’ve dropped our bat and walked off the field, preferring to recite........

© The Age