The Nara Peace Park peace bell and surrounds have been heavily vandalised. Photo: Supplied.
There’s presumably a fool with a spray can lurking somewhere in Canberra who thinks plastering the Nara Peace Park with graffiti about Gaza was a brilliant idea.
It wasn’t.
Perhaps they’re congratulating themselves, even now, that nobody will ever guess who was behind the anarchist tags, the declaration that capitalism kills and the prompt to spit on police.
They’re wrong.
Sure, it’s easy to do: all it takes is a spray can and the “bravery” to sneak out at night into a quiet area with no security cameras and wreck the place. It’s probably even easier to convince yourself, with righteous rage, that plastering anarchist symbols over memorials will cause the people to rise up and overthrow the capitalist patriarchy that makes Australia such a dreadfully misguided place to live.
It won’t (and unlike some graffiti, there’s not even a modicum of skill to note in this case).
Or – more likely – this is nothing more than mindless showing off by someone who draws comfort from being an outsider, a brave warrior who decries the state while being quite comfortable accepting its provision of health care, education and social security.
While an earnest examination of Classical-Bakuninist and Anarcho-Syndicalist ideas might prompt fond recollections of Monty Python, very few people are paying much heed otherwise, either in the corridors of power or the pub.
The irony in Canberra is that many, many people agree that the Gaza conflict is horrific on all sides and desperately want a ceasefire to protect ordinary Palestinian and Israeli citizens from the extreme violence.
Free speech matters as a fundamental right in a democratic society, and so does the right to protest, to boycott, to raise your voice against injustice, however you perceive it.
Just do it well. Make your protest moving, or funny, or thought-provoking. Use your brains and your wit, engage many, many others who agree with you and you will have the power to move mountains.
One of the most effective pieces of campaigning for the Voice referendum was, without doubt, the viral video of comedian and rapper Briggs talking to a couple of air-headed friends who were all about “the whole Voice referendum thing”.
“It’s also hard for us, like so hard for us. In ways. Because it’s just a big complicated mess,” they say earnestly, brows furrowed with concern they might patronise an Indigenous person. And also because democracy. Or something.
Briggs’ response is brilliant. “Have you tried Googling it?” he asks. It’s estimated five million people viewed the video.
It’s smart, funny impeccably executed by Briggs, comedians Jenna Owen and Victoria Zerbst and directed by Australian film-maker Nash Edgerton.
There are plenty of ways to protest that make more sense than mindlessly vandalising a space where people come together to work for peace and to stand by victims of violence.
There are heartfelt protests in capital cities. There are petitions, there are conversations with parliamentarians, there are public campaigns.
Every one of them makes more sense than daubing graffiti over a beloved public space created by members of the community.
Scrubbing paint off stone and bronze without damaging it will be costly and time-consuming. Let’s hope ACT Policing pierces the secrecy around the perpetrators fairly soon, just in time to arm them with some scrubbing brushes.
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