Ljubo Milicevic leaves Australia in disgrace

I was watching Ljubo farewell interview in SBS and was finding it mostly entertaining, with his forthright opinions. However, towards the end of the interview, Ljubo pulled out the stunner: “I’m Croatian, I’m not Australian. You guys don’t want me here.”

He justifies this by saying he doesn’t feel any loyalty to the Union Jack as he believes that the flag represents rapists and pillagers; that his backyard has fruit in the trees (like the rest of Australian doesn’t have fruit in their trees); that his father has Croatian music in his CD player and that he was raised as a Croat; that he’s emotional and passionate and relates more with Goran Ivanisevic than Australian sports stars as he finds them dull and boring; that Australians can’t pronounce his name right; and that he is embarrassed about Australia Day, where people use the day as an excuse to get drunk. He also criticises Australia for picking and choosing when migrants are considered to be Australian.

Now, whether you agree or disagree with what he says is kind of irrelevant. In fact, a lot of his supporting statements make a lot of sense to me, but there’s a big leap with agreeing with his supporting statement and then saying, “I’m not Australian.”

You see, the problem with Milicevic is that he has confused negative stereotypes of being Australian. The fact is Australia is a liberal democracy and there’s no precondition in personality or political belief to be Australian.

All you have to be is an Australian citizen to be Australian (to be a good person on the other hand has a lot of conditions, but unfortunately people have a tendency to mix being a good person and Australian up).

About 45 per cent of the population voted yes for the Republic, which shows that a lot of people don’t have loyalty to the Union Jack. However, those people aren’t less Australian than people who voted no. We have a former Prime Minister in Paul Keating who wanted to change the flag to remove the Union Jack. Whether you agree with Keating or not, you can’t say that he isn’t Australian.

There is a lot of Australians who bemoans the fact that sports stars are boring and there are a lot of people who find the frankness of some foreign sports stars to be refreshing as well. I seriously doubt that most people weren’t embarrassed by the Cronulla riots or some of the past treatments of Aborigines as well.

His statements about the Union Jack being a flag of rapist and pillagers are just outright offensive and racist due to its gross generalisation. There isn’t a single country in the world that doesn’t have rapist and pillagers and there is no evidence that the United Kingdom and their respective colonies are pillaging any more than any other country in the world. I’m quite sure most countries’ flag would become symbols of atrocity if we go through past histories, and I’m not too sure why the Union Jack has to be singled out for that.

There are also Australians who don’t support Australia Day and cringe at the excessive alcohol that is drunk on that day. In fact, there are certain groups on the left who believe that Australia Day should be changed to another day in respect for Aborigines as we shouldn’t be celebrating the day England colonised Australia. Other countries with Indigenous cultures don’t do that. Now whether you agree with those views or not, it doesn’t make you any less Australian.

He says that he was raised as a Croat. Well Australia is a multicultural country that doesn’t discourage people from expressing their cultural identity and doesn’t overtly discourage people behaving differently to the mainstream. Therefore, contrary to his statement, that is a very Australian upbringing. I also find it strange that he justifies his status as a Croatian because he listens to Croatian music, has a cellar and has fruit in the trees in his garden. It seems an overly simplistic summary of Croatian culture.

I do agree with him that Australia does have double standards in terms of how they treat migrants. If migrants are successful, they are Australian. If the migrants commit crime or fail, they are ethnic, when, in reality, the success and failure of migrant communities are a reflection of Australian culture just as much as the success and failure of the wider community are reflection of Australian culture. After all, Martin Bryant is just as Australian as Don Bradman. This type of double standards encourages nationalistic thinking that Australia equals good values and foreigner equals bad values. However, having problems and criticising Australian culture doesn’t stop you from being Australian as Australia is a liberal democracy.

I also believe that he is being overly sensitive on Australians being unable to pronounce his name. The Chinese have been in Australia since the gold rush in the 19th century, however I doubt Milicevic will be able to pronounce the names of most traditional Chinese names as he doesn’t know the Chinese language.

If you don’t know the language of a particular country, then it is expected that people will find it difficult to pronounce names of people coming from those countries. It is expected that the European countries have a far more developed language education due to the closed borders with countries that speak a completely different language, and therefore it makes sense that people in Europe are more likely to be able to pronounce his name more accurately than people in Australia. Nevertheless, I’m quite sure if you become friends with people, eventually they will get your name right.

It’s a shame that Ljubo could only make friends within his own ethnic culture as he boast that there are “no Anglos” at his BBQ. It’s a shame that he couldn’t find someone of an Anglo background with similar political and social values that he can relate with, but I’m quite sure his negative assumptions of Anglo culture prevents him from doing that.

I felt sad watching the interview with Ljubo as we see a person rejecting a country where he has lived for most of his life. Australia gave him his education and a football education.

I do believe that Ljubo got it completely wrong in his announcement that he isn’t Australian. I also believe that Ljubo revealed his racism by picking and choosing negative attributes to summarise the entire Australian culture.

However, I don’t completely blame Ljubo because the worst feeling I have watching the video is the realisation that perhaps the nationalists have won; that perhaps the idea that being Australian, you have to have a narrow specific personality and political values is so widespread, that people outside the mainstream such as Ljubo end up agreeing with the nationalists that to be Australian you have to have these certain values.

Therefore, he and other like minded individuals agree with the nationalists that they aren’t Australian and therefore fuel criticism of migration and how they don’t integrate within Australian society.

Hopefully Ljubo’s attitude to what it means to be Australian is not widespread across the community.

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Note: Ljubo Milicevic himself has responded to this article

The pitfalls of respecting cultural differences

Vir – “They are tolerant of differences among other cultures’
Londo - “No, they have no well-defined sense of morality”
From Babylon 5 “Point Of No Return”

In this modern PC world, it seems to be a common for people to talk about respecting cultural differences. The idea that we shouldn’t be telling other cultures how to behave and what to do. To do so, you would be accused of enforcing your own cultural values on another and at worst guilty of cultural imperialism and racism. I guess a lot of this was a reaction against the assimilation policy in the past where people from different culture were told they have to behave like everyone else and have to adopt “Australian values” etc.

Although I don’t agree with assimilation policy and especially the idea that migrants or people in general have to conform (beyond law and basic custom) to society. I also don’t agree with the idea that an individual must respect cultures of another society or your own society.

Firstly, what do I mean about culture?
I define culture as the collective values, beliefs and customs that any particular group shares. However, the one thing often overlook is that culture is something fluidic. Culture always changes. The culture of today’s society is different to the culture hundred years ago which is also different hundred years before that. It changes when society critically evaluate their own values and then abandon values that are no longer relevant and adopt new ideas if it improves society.

If we look at every society, there have generally existed people who are progressive political beliefs who points out in their opinions the problems in society that has to change and the traditionalist who supports the status quo. One of the aspects of the political left and right divide is whether you are a traditionalist or progressive, where the progressive are generally considered to the left and the traditionalist are considered to be to the right (although there are exceptions as well as centrist with a combinations of both views). What happens is that there is always a constant debate about the values of a society between the two sides and eventually if there is a change, one side will convince the majority of the population to reject previously traditional values or adopt new values. Hence, the society ends up creating a new status quo and new tradition.

This nature of culture ends up showing some of the pitfalls of respecting cultural differences.

Firstly, whether a value or belief is part of someone’s culture or not, that doesn’t tell us the quality of the values or beliefs. An idea is either a good idea or a bad idea (or a neutral idea, or shades of gray idea). The value of an idea lives and dies on its own merits and this doesn't change whether that is part of their culture or not. When someone defends a social belief or practice as ‘It is part of our culture/tradition’, then that argument has to be rejected due to shear irrelevance.

To dismiss criticism of society values as examples of racism or cultural imperialism is really a discouragement of critical evaluation of society values which in my opinion, is anti-democratic. After all, the whole idea behind protest which is fundamental to democracy, is expressing our dissatisfaction of the practices or beliefs of our society.

I don't care if something is part of their/our culture. What’s more important is 'Why it is part of their/our culture?', 'Is it beneficial for society to adopt those cultural values?', 'Are the reasons behind these cultural practices still relevant today?'

My second problem with respecting other cultures (or our own culture) is that it makes the assumptions that everyone in their respective cultures agrees with it. Like I mention before, every society has critics of their own cultures. There are always subpopulations that don’t follow traditional values. Of course, by definition they are in the minority but who’s to say that the minority is any less right then the majority. Thousands of years ago, the minority of people probably would have been anti-slavery. However the minority of yesterday became the majority of today. Who knows, the values of the minority of today may eventually become the values of the majority of the future. There’s no reason why the values of the minority is any less representative of the potential future of society then the values of the majority of the population.

So by demanding people to respect the culture of another society, you are essentially expecting people to give passive support to the status quo and traditionalist elements of that society. Now there’s nothing wrong with supporting the status quo and traditional values especially if that’s your opinion on what the world should be. However is it really reasonable to expect everyone to do that?

What if the person is a progressive in their own society? If a person is a critic of their own society and doesn’t really respect traditional elements of their own culture, then why that person should be expected to respect the traditional values of another culture that’s even more different then their own personal values.

Instead of viewing criticism by saying a person is disrespecting their culture; see it as they are supporting the progressive elements of their society.

Thirdly, I see respecting culture as a disempowerment of individuality and personal beliefs. This refers to my opening quote from above. People talk about respecting cultural differences but people then forget the personal opinion of the individual. If a person ‘agrees’ and respect many cultures that has diverse but ultimately contradictory views of the world, what does that say about the person personal values. Does the person have any real personal morals, conviction and beliefs of how the world should be of their own? If I respect for example the anti-gun restriction culture that exist in the United States and then respect the gun control culture in Australia, then I don’t really have any personal values or stance on that issue.

Eventually, everyone has to make a stance on what they believe is right and develop their own opinions on what the world should be. If that conflicts with the cultural practices of another society or their own society, then so be it. A person shouldn’t have to worry about offending people or being called racist for simply expressing an opinion on how the world should be.

Personally I believe that peoples should stop seeing the world as a battle of cultural clashes and more about the battles of individual values. So the health care debate in USA isn’t about European/Canadian culture vs US culture. No it’s about what role the government should play in regulating health. The criticism of the system of government on let say an Asian country; this isn’t about West vs East and enforcing Western values on Asia. It’s the debate about what is the best and most moral form of government for that particular country. If there’s human rights criticism of another country, it’s not about one country enforcing one cultural moral value on another society. It’s the debate about what is right and wrong? (A debate that will never end)

People should be able to get into discussions about these issues without criticism about being branded racist or cultural imperialist etc.

So what about tolerance?

I believe in tolerance. However the way I interpret tolerance is that I may completely disagree with or hate other people’s ways of life but I'm willing to peacefully coexist with you irrespective of our difference of opinion. Similarly to how the political left and right can peacefully coexist in a country despite having pretty differing philosophy on how the world should be.

So people should tolerate the cultures of another society but tolerance does not equal non-critical acceptance of different beliefs and tolerance doesn't mean beliefs are exempt from being criticised, mocked and satire (similarly to how both the left and right are commonly subjected to ridicule from both sides)

Although I may seem critical of the quote from Vir, I do believe both comments have validity. There is a fine balance to be made between tolerance and having own personal principles. On one hand you have the view on how the world should be and it’s important for people to stand by their conviction. On the other hand the person has to realise that there isn’t a single person in the world who will share your opinion about every issue and therefore everyone has to learn to peacefully coexist with people who you disagree with. After all, we just have to look at wars and conflicts being committed due to ‘differences of opinion’.

For that reason, I do believe in a degree of liberalism/freedom that we shouldn’t ban activities just because we don’t personally like them and that we shouldn’t enforce people to accept our personal values. Especially cultural practices and differences that don’t really affect on other people ways of life such as interest, general customs, interest, foods people eat, attitudes people have etc.

However there are limits to tolerance and sometimes society do have to enforce their beliefs on population if there is a clash with a value that is integral to the culture such as moral beliefs and issues involving human rights (example, overriding parents autonomy if they refuse to treat their child with blood transfusion or antibiotics for religious reasons) Although where to draw the line about the limits of tolerance is too much of a complicated issue to discuss in detail here.

I will now address this argument "People within their own culture have the right to criticise their own culture but outsiders can't criticise them"

This seems to be a return of "Separate but equal" segregationist beliefs.

I just ask, are we all human beings or not?

It seems to me that the world is heading to a direction where we start seeing ourselves as human beings first, member of race/nationality/religion second. Therefore all issues are relevant to mankind.

Once we start saying that this value is wrong/immoral and we can't accept this in our own society but its ok for other society to practice this, we start getting into racist and moral double standards territory.

Now I can see pitfalls in an outsider criticising a culture such as a) The outsider's criticism is often misinform as they only have superficial knowledge of other cultures and therefore they have no idea why the culture behave in this way and doesn't see the underlying good reason behind people's behaviour, b) Sometimes certain cultural practices may be really important in one society but less so in other societies due to unique circumstances (location, weather, resources, money, technology) that each society faces, c) People often don’t know the cultural practices of another society and have a tendency to equate negative attributes to a culture of another society they don’t like (eg. Racist comments such as Asian are greedy, Muslims are terrorist etc) and d) People do have the tendency to equate being different as wrong without ever really justifying it

However I personally believe by encouraging dialogue and debate on each other society, people will eventually have a better understanding on why people behave differently. Any arguments will live and die by its merit and misinform criticism and incorrect generalisation will be exposed for what they are.

By having a knee jerk, “This is racist and you can't criticise our culture. End of debate.” The only thing that does is silence the criticism but it won’t address any concerns the person have and you won’t change the opinion of that person as the arguments won’t be address. That will just makes people's ignorance on other cultures worst and will increase misunderstanding.

The assimilation policy was wrong as it was under the belief that the culture of the host country to be superior to other cultures and that there isn’t anything to learn from other society. However I also believe that the political correctness of respecting cultural difference to be equally wrong as it implies that other societies are above criticism. Although I do believe in tolerance, I find the idea that tolerance is not enough and that people have to appreciate and respect the rich cultural diversity and difference to be a very naïve and impossible concept. Society may be able to stop people from killing each other due to cultural differences (although we are not doing a great job at that), but we won’t be able to stop people from having different opinions and from strongly disagreeing with each other and from expressing that disagreement. I don’t see people strongly disagreeing with each other within a peaceful context as a bad thing.

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Epilogue
I'll declare myself as left of centre politically and I consider myself to have progressive political views. However I do believe that this political correctness is the bane of the left and in fact contradictory to progressive and liberal values and I'm frustrated by the hypocrisy that sometimes sprouted by the left. It is of my opinion that respecting culture and progressive politics are incompatible. One of the separating features between someone who is conservatives and someone who is a leftist is how much value do you put in protecting culture and tradition. The hallmarks of progressive politics is that culture isn't there to be romanticised but is there to be analysed and scrutinise and criticised. That tradition and culture isn't its own reward and there must be something good about those values to justify keeping it. More likely then not, they will be supportive of change in society and change in culture if they see problems in society. A conservative is far more likely to believe in the protection of cultural and traditional values and I can actually understand why a conservative would go on about respecting cultures of other societies. 

Now I've seen otherwise progressive people who go on and criticised Australian culture quite savagedly and yet when other societies practice the same cultural practices that they dislike, they end up just dismissing it as differences in culture. I think that type of attitude is hypocritical and is a betrayal of progressive politics. If you are going to be progressive, then be progressive to all cultures and not just your own.

Really, when I see people of ethnic minority group espousing the values of traditional values and maintaining cultural heritage. I don't get teary eye and filled with romanticism about their cultural practice, I just see them as right wing conservatives of their representative community and treat them accordingly (which is with respect but strongly disagree).

I think it's far better for people to just judge individual issues on its own merit and avoid bringing up cultural clashes.