Walter Lippmann – The Jewish architect of Australian Multiculturalism

While the Minister for Immigration in the Whitlam government (1972-1975), Al Grassby, is widely renowned in politically correct Australian circles as the “father of Australian multiculturalism,” the real architect of this poisonously anti-White ideology and policy in Australia was Walter Lippmann, a German-Jewish refugee who settled in Melbourne in 1938. Lippmann was a businessman and a prominent member of Melbourne’s Jewish community who by 1960 had become president of the Australian Jewish Welfare and Relief Society.

In his advocacy of multiculturalism in Australia, Lippmann tore a page out of the writings of the pioneering Jewish-American multiculturalist Horace Kallen. Lippmann deeply resented the assimilated culture of the Australia he entered in 1938, and believed Jewish immigrants had left one type of oppression behind only to be subjected to another: the Australian expectation to assimilate. Kallen had described the corresponding expectation in the early twentieth century United States as “the Americanization hysteria” or the “Americanization psychosis.”[i] The multiculturalism espoused by Walter Lippmann in Australia, a toxic blend of postmodernism and Marxism, implied “a rejection not only of the attempts to promote an amalgam of cultures but also of any assumptions of Anglo-Saxon superiority and the necessary conformity to English-oriented cultural patterns.”

In an article entitled “Australian Jewry – Can It Survive?” published in the Jewish community newspaper The Bridge in January 1973, Lippmann argued that “The positive value of a multicultural society needs promotion in the Australian environment.” His argument was developed against the background of news that Lippmann found deeply disturbing, namely that “for the first time in the history of Australian Jewry, the 1971 Commonwealth Census has disclosed a decline in the number of Jews identifying as such.”[ii] Lippmann identified three major reasons for the decline: the post-WWII migration of Jews had mostly consisted of the middle-aged, the relatively low birth-rate of Australian Jews, and the relatively high rate of marrying out.

Lippmann suggested that two interconnected developments needed to take place to ensure the long-term survival of Australian Jewry. One was the organization of a Jewish community relevant to the Australian political context. The other was recognition by government that Australian society was “suffering from an ambivalence on the vital ‘unity through diversity’ aspect of nation building,” and was “imposing upon immigrants pressures to conform, so that they can establish themselves.” Stratton notes that it was in this context that Lippmann argued for a change in government policy. Lippmann argued that “For a Jewish community to survive in the Australian environment, it is necessary that Jewish separateness be defined for and imbibed by coming generations.” Australian Jews were to have their ethnic and cultural separateness strengthened and normalized through the power of government. Jewish ethnic identity was to be affirmed, and equivalences made between, for example, the Jewish and Greek ethnic Diasporas. For Lippmann, the future of the Australian Jewish community depended upon “a recognition of cultural pluralism in Australia.”[iii]

In reality, as Kevin MacDonald observes, multiculturalism, like neo-Orthodoxy and Zionism, is simply another Jewish response “to the Enlightenment’s corrosive effects on Judaism” which likewise involves the creation of a “defensive structure erected against the destructive influence of European civilization.”[iv] It is an attempt to resolve the “fundamental and irresolvable friction between Judaism and prototypical Western political and social structure.”[v]

Lippmann’s goal was to transform Australia from a racially and culturally assimilated White society into a multi-racial, multicultural society with wide variety of religions, cultures, and linguistic groups spread across the country’s landscape and accorded equal status by government. According to the Jewish Australian academic Andrew Markus, Lippmann’s basic message was: “that you’re not advantaging a specific group until you’re advantaging the whole society. You’re enriching the whole society. You’re freeing up potential, you’re freeing up human potential. Instead of people being locked away, denied opportunities, everyone benefits by opening up opportunities and by welcoming and recognizing diversity.” This vision of a new multicultural paradise where all kinds of racial, ethnic and cultural groups live in peace and harmony was laughably utopian, and heedless of the long catalogue of failed multicultural experiments around the world.

MacDonald notes that the problem with this multicultural scenario from an evolutionary perspective (or even a common sense perspective) is that “no provision is made for the results of competition for resources and reproductive success within the society.”[vi] The inevitable racial, religious and cultural conflict that “cultural pluralism” would inevitably provoke was ostensibly regarded by Lippmann as an acceptable price to pay for guaranteeing Jewish ethnic continuity. Thus, even if the multicultural utopia is never attained and Australia became a nation of warring tribes, the policy will at least have ended the hated “hegemony” of the old White Australia and ensured the survival of Australian Jewry. Lippmann, like Kallen, was a strongly identified Jew and Zionist, and it was hardly surprising that his ideal for Australia was a form of social organization that conforms to Jewish interests and compromises the interests of White Australians; with multiculturalism being, at its core, “a social form that guarantees the continued existence of Judaism as a social category and a cohesive ethnic group while at the same time, given the characteristics of Jews [high IQ, high levels of education etc.], guarantees Jews economic and cultural pre-eminence.”[vii]

Walter Lippmann’s ethno-political activism

Through Lippmann’s membership and connections in the Australian Labor Party, he was appointed chairman of the influential Committee on Community Relations of the Federal Department of Labour and Immigration when it was established in 1974 by the Whitlam government. Lippmann also secured board positions on the Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Council, the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS), the Victorian Ethnic Affairs Commission, and a host of other bodies involved in shaping government policy.

There was considerable disquiet within the Department of Labour and Immigration following his appointment as Chairman of the Committee on Community Relations, with the Department official Andy Watson recalling that “The Department regarded Lippmann as an ‘empire builder’ for the Jewish community’s benefit. The Department was sceptical of Lippmann’s personal ambitions.”[viii] Lopez notes that “Lippmann regarded his appointment in strategic terms as a major breakthrough in advancing his pluralist cause. His appointment gave the proto-multiculturalists their first formal access to the [Immigration] Department’s system of generating policy advice. He intended to use his position of influence to achieve ideological change in settlement and welfare policy.”[ix]

Lippmann used his simultaneous membership in the numerous organizations and committees that made submissions to the Committee on Community Relations to ensure that his own (and the Jewish community’s) views prevailed in the committee’s final report. Essentially Lippmann was using organizational sock-puppets to make submissions to the government committee that he himself chaired. Under this arrangement, the recommendations of the committee inevitably represented the views of Lippmann and the Australian Jewish community. Lopez notes that:

Lippmann was the most skilled of the multiculturalists at using his numerous committee memberships, both government and non-government, to gain tactical advantages in seeking to influence government policy. … Sometimes Lippmann used his position in several committees in a coordinated campaign such as his campaign for a closed seminar to articulate an ideology of multiculturalism. He launched the campaign in ACOSS [the Australian Council of Social Services], using his position as the Chairman of the ACOSS Joint Committee on Migrant Welfare to make a submission to the Immigration Advisory Council. This proposal was presented not as a Lippmann proposal but as an “ACOSS” proposal. He then used his position in the Immigration Advisory Council to argue for the acceptance of the ACOSS proposal. Once the proposal had been formally discussed in the Immigration Advisory Council it was presented to the Minister as an Immigration Advisory Council proposal. When the proposal was defeated due to a combination of ministerial indifference and opposition from senior department officers, Lippmann used his committee memberships to work towards establishing a place for a multiculturalist manifesto within the environs of the Department. When the National Population Inquiry, chaired by Professor Borrie, became a public inquiry he used his position in ACOSS to submit a multiculturalist manifesto as an ACOSS submission. It failed to influence the Borrie Committee so Lippmann tried again, using his position as chairman of the IAC Committee on Community Relations to attempt to insert a statement of multicultural ideology into that Committee’s report. To historians unaware of the maneuvering by a leading multicultural activist, like Lippmann, the documents left in Lippmann’s wake may seem to indicate a consensus among ACOSS and several IAC committees on a particular multicultural idea. What can seem to be a consensus is actually a trail left by a few, or one activist using multiple committee memberships as a vantage point to gain influence. [x]

The multicultural ideology that Lippmann so zealously and cunningly foisted on generally unreceptive White bureaucrats and politicians, and consequently on the Australian nation, amounted to support for everything that the organized Jewish community in Australia wanted—namely, official acceptance of the idea that ethnic groups in Australia should form their own communities, maintain their own distinctive cultural beliefs, languages and customs, and that government and taxpayers should support them in all of this.

Furthermore, rather than expecting migrants to change to fit Australia, Australian society should change to fit the migrant. Markus notes that, for Lippmann, “It was a mistake to base policy on an assumption which could never be realized, the assumption that ethnic identity would be obliterated and replaced by so-called Australian cultural norms.”[xi] Instead, invoking Horace Kallen’s “polycentric” ideal for American ethnic relationships, “Lippmann urged acceptance of multi-dimensional identity, a recognition of the culture of immigrants and Aboriginal peoples, the open embrace of cultural pluralism. … Australian society would benefit and advance on the basis of a ‘cultural mosaic whose strength and beauty lies in its diversity.’”[xii] MacDonald notes that “a consistent theme of the intellectual rationale for this body of ethnic activism emphasized the benefits to be gained by increased levels of intergroup harmony – an aspect of idealism inherent in Horace Kallen’s conceptualization of multiculturalism – without mentioning that some groups, particularly European-derived, non-Jewish groups, would lose economic and political power and decline in cultural influence.”[xiii]

Under Walter Lippmann’s leadership and behind-the-scenes influence, the final report of the Committee on Community Relations in 1975 recommended that Australian government social policy be henceforth formulated on the basis of four key elements.

First, the task for political leaders was to promote understanding and respect for difference and our common humanity. Second, legislation was required to outlaw racial discrimination and uphold and promote rights through the establishment of a human rights commission. … Government services would be culturally sensitive and provided in community languages. Third, schools would teach their students to respect the culture of others, provide knowledge of traditions, history, literature and geography of the countries of the major immigrant groups. … Fourth, the mass media had the responsibility to further the understanding of cultures and provide meaningful communication between the various groups that constituted Australian society.[xiv]

In response to the Committee’s (which were essentially Lippmann’s) recommendations, “multiculturalism” was adopted as official government policy in Australia in the 1970s, and extended under the Fraser [1975-1983] and Hawke governments [1983-1991] in the 1980s. Based on the premise that migrant problems stemmed from the low self-esteem they suffered in a society that was hostile to racial and cultural difference, multiculturalism launched countless government programs catering to ethnic communities, using taxpayer’s money to help them preserve their cultural practices and resist assimilation. The most expensive of these programs was the Australian multicultural broadcasting service SBS.

Historian James Jupp notes that Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke “was strongly in favour of multiculturalism, which was not necessarily true for all his ministers. He was particularly close to the Jewish community and personally intervened to liberalize Soviet policy towards Jewish emigration. … Influential individuals such as Walter Lippmann, James Gobbo and Peter Abeles [who was also Jewish] had direct access to the prime minister.”[xv] Bronwyn Hinz likewise notes that:

The introduction of multicultural principles and rhetoric to the Whitlam government via the prime minister and his staff, and their institutionalization under the Fraser government, were perhaps the most pivotal in the construction of Australia’s multicultural policy framework. In the 1980s, the ECCV [Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria] worked closely with Prime Minister Bob Hawke, a personal friend of ECCV founding Chairperson Walter Lippmann. As the representative of Melbourne’s most ethnically diverse electorate, Hawke was especially cognizant of the value of close connections with the peak council, its activists and member groups, accepting most invitations to their functions, and providing Lippmann and other ECCV activists with direct access to his office. In the first year of the Hawke government, the ECCV’s lobbying culminated in the reduction of citizenship waiting period to two years, the replacement of the term alien with ‘non‐citizen’ in the 1983 Migration Act, and an increase of the refugee intake.[xvi]

Once the Jewish-inspired ideology of multiculturalism had obtained the imprimatur of government, it became a runaway success with Australia’s alienated liberal intelligentsia, who became zealous missionaries of “diversity.” Conservative historian Keith Windschuttle notes that: “Any academic with a project to change the ideas of Australians about an aspect of race or migration found research grants readily available. Book publishers, film makers and various other cultural producers found government departments willing to subsidise them and their output.” By the 1980s, multiculturalism had become “a White collar industry of substance. … Aspiring members of this in-group soon realised that correct views on race and the composition of the migrant intake were essential barriers to entry. To question immigration was to step outside the circle of acceptability.””[xvii]

The ideology of multiculturalism created a great divide between the intellectual class and the majority of the Australian population, and the intellectuals supporting multiculturalism quickly “established a terminology that soon became the only publicly acceptable discourse on the topic. Although they professed their motives were social justice and political progress, the same intellectuals held an overt contempt for the majority of White Australians, who they thought remained mired in materialism and shrouded in xenophobia… ”[xviii] In order to achieve the goals of multiculturalism, its promoters felt compelled to ban and punish speech that was critical of the values or practices of non-White minority groups. The new politically correct speech code was soon enforced by the weight of law with the enactment of racial and religious vilification laws that criminalized dissenting speech. Australia’s liberal intelligentsia urged Australians to define themselves anew by developing close ties with East Asia, opening their doors to migrants from all countries, and creating a multicultural society. Windschuttle notes how:

The sixties generation supported a version of multiculturalism that sought to use immigration to change the host society itself. By advocating the preservation of their cultures intact, radical multiculturalists encouraged immigrants to withhold loyalties and affiliations to the host nation. They also aimed to destabilise Australian traditions, values and institutions by censuring the nation’s original character. Although they advocated the relativist doctrine that all cultures are equal, and none could be judged better than others, only different, their position was always hypocritical. The one culture that was not regarded as equal was that of traditional Australia. In the version of history advanced by the multiculturalists over the last thirty years, Australia is deeply and shamefully tainted by its racism towards non-European immigrants and its indigenous people.[xix]

If races and cultures really were as equal as multiculturalists sanctimoniously claim, then there would be no need to change the White Australian society and culture by introducing other races and cultures. That they routinely degrade White Australia and its traditional culture utterly belies their argument that all races and cultures are equal. Of course, the reality is that it is the very European-derived people (so loathed by the Jewish-dominated intellectual elite) which made Australia and other Western nations so successful in the first place. And it is precisely these people and their culture that the promoters of multiculturalism seek to destroy.

The Benefits of Multiculturalism for Australian Jews

That large-scale non-White immigration and multiculturalism are perceived by Australian Jews as having been of enormous benefit to them is illustrated by an extraordinary speech given by the editor of the Australian Jewish Times, Susan Bures, at the opening of the Sydney Centre for Intercultural Studies at the Sydney Jewish Museum in 1997. Bures rejoiced in the exalted place that Jews were now able to occupy in the new multicultural Australia, noting that:

Being Jewish in Australia today means a group such as this can attract the state’s governor to launch this centre. Being Jewish in Australia today means that the state governor is not just a guest – he’s Jewish too. Being Jewish in Australia today means the state’s premier has sent a representative to honour the occasion. Being Jewish in Australia today means that this function is held in a multi-million-dollar museum founded and funded by a man who came as a penniless refugee some fifty years ago. It means meeting in a museum that attracts thousands of visiting school children whose teachers know that the Jewish experience has lessons for all Australians. Being Jewish in Australia today means that this centre has been formed because a sufficient number of Australian scholars and students are teaching and learning Jewish history, philosophy, language and culture; and it means not all of these scholars and students are Jews. Being Jewish in Australia today means that both state and federal governments have welcomed the service of many Jews like me on its authorities, commissions and boards. To be Jewish in Australia today means we can welcome publicly a representative of the first Jewish state in nearly 2000 years. … In the entire history of the Jewish people outside their ancestral land of Israel, never before have Jews had the freedoms, the protections, the rights and the obligations to participate which they have in Australia.[xx]

In accounting for the unprecedented growth in the wealth, power and influence of Australian Jewry, Bures highlighted the importance of state-sponsored multiculturalism and of legislation outlawing racial discrimination. Andrew Markus proudly observes that “Jews were amongst the leading advocates of the enactment and extension of racial vilification and anti-discrimination legislation by the federal and state parliaments.”[xxi] In truth, the achievement of the twin Jewish goals of ending the White Australia policy and instituting state-sponsored multiculturalism were attained with the passing into law of the Racial Discrimination Bill of 1975 which stated: “It is unlawful for a person to do any act involving a distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin.”[xxii] Journalist Paul Kelly notes that the abolition of the White Australia Policy was “a reform that pretended to be no reform.” According to Kelly: “The reason is manifest: any declaration that White Australia was being abolished would have provoked a public outcry. The issue was never put to the people.” Instead, Kelly points out that “The White Australia policy was dismantled by stealth” through maneuverings that amounted to “a smoke and mirrors exercise.”[xxiii]

In practical effect, the passing of the Racial Discrimination Bill in 1975 was the Australian equivalent of the drastic rewriting of American immigration law in 1965. In both cases, the gates were opened to non-White immigrants from the Third World with racial and cultural backgrounds very different from the majority European-derived population. In her book Ideology and Immigration the Australian sociologist Katharine Betts states that the dismantling of the White Australia policy was the result of an elite conspiracy: “Public resistance,” she notes, “was circumvented by the use of administrative procedures and secrecy rather than open debate.” The final phase of the abolition, which involved the enactment of Racial Discrimination Act by the Whitlam government, was “a political victory” for the cosmopolitan elite, which while failing to convert White Australia’s supporters “by reason and evidence,” left them “unconverted but outmaneuvered.” [xxiv]

In 1976 the relentless Walter Lippmann led a delegation to Canberra which lobbied successfully for the introduction of Australia’s first dedicated refugee policy. Bronwyn Hinz notes that:

Meeting with senators and senior government officials the delegation strongly recommended the federal government increase its humanitarian intake, and that this intake be separate from the regular immigration intake to allow the acceptance of refugees on humanitarian grounds even if they did not meet immigration criteria or if immigration quotas had been met. Within a few months of Lippmann’s lobbying, the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence acknowledged the “complete lack of policy for the acceptance of people into Australia as refugees rather than as migrants”, and using Lippmann’s arguments, recommended as a matter of urgency “a comprehensive set of policy guidelines and the establishment of appropriate machinery” to be applied to refugee situations, including those currently unfolding.[xxv]

The first Indo-Chinese and Vietnamese boat people started to arrive in Australia in 1976, and in the 1980s Chinese immigrants started to arrive in response to the discriminatory policies against the Chinese in Malaysia (i.e., failed multiculturalism). By the 2001 census there were approximately 170,000 Indo-Chinese in Australia, and Asians comprised approximately four per cent of the population. Ten years later the 2011 census has revealed a rapidly expanding Asian population, which, including those born in Australia, now easily surpasses 10 per cent of the Australian population.

The consequences of Multiculturalism for White Australia

As in other Western nations, those migrants from Asia (predominantly China) and their offspring are increasingly out-competing White Australians at gaining admission to the best schools and universities, and consequently in obtaining prestigious high-income jobs. The long-term result of this trend will inevitably be “that the entire White population (not including Jews) is likely to suffer a social status decline as these new immigrants become more numerous.”[xxvi] Like the United States and Canada, Australia is well on the road to “being dominated by an Asian technocratic elite and a Jewish business, professional and media elite.”[xxvii]

Chinese students replacing Whites at Australian universities

This Australian Jewish business, professional and media elite has been enlarged over the past two decades by the thousands of Jews who have fled the post-Apartheid South Africa that so many of them agitated to bring about—including the daughter of ANC activist Joe Slovo. By 2001, South Africans comprised 12.5 per cent of all Jews living in Australia. Suzanne Rutland notes that these South African Jews “arrived with a strong sense of Jewish identification and a very low intermarriage rate” and that “many are still coming, largely because of the high level of crime and a sense of insecurity”[xxviii] (another failure of multiculturalism). This experience has not, unfortunately, prevented many of the new South African Jewish arrivals from becoming actively involved in anti-White activism and agitation in Australia—proving, if anything, that their atavistic hatred of Europeans certainly runs deep.

At the other end of the spectrum from the Jews and Chinese, significant numbers of low-IQ refugees from Africa (mainly Sudanese and Somalis) have arrived in recent years. They are almost totally welfare-dependent and are vastly over-represented, along with Pacific Islander groups, in conviction rates for violent offences. Multicultural activists routinely blame the social pathologies of these groups on White “racism.” Muslim immigration has also expanded in recent years, and Australian security services require ever growing budgets to monitor the activities of would-be terrorists from within this alienated and heavily welfare-dependent group. Gun crime among middle-eastern gangs has become a major problem in parts of Sydney and Melbourne.

As a result of the weakening of Australia’s border protection laws by the current Labor government, Australia also has an increasing problem with illegal immigration by sea. Boatloads of Pakistani, Afghan, Iranian and Sri Lankan “asylum seekers” are taking advantage of what is effectively an open-door refugee policy to gain access to Australia’s generous welfare system. People smuggling from Indonesia (in close collaboration with ethnic communities and refugee advocates in Australia) has become a thriving industry. A recent attempt by the Australian government to deter illegal arrivals by arranging a refugee swap deal with Malaysia was torpedoed in the High Court after a challenge by the Jewish “refugee advocate” David Manne (nephew of Robert; see Part 2). From Walter Lippmann to David Manne, Jews have been, and continue to be, pivotal in driving the social and demographic transformation of the Australian nation.

Go to Part 4.

REFERENCES

Fagenblat, M., Landau, M. & Wolski, N. (2006) ‘Will the Centre Hold?,’ In: New Under the Sun – Jewish Australians on Religion, Politics & Culture, Ed. Michael Fagenblat, Melanie Landau & Nathan Wolski, Black Inc., Melbourne. pp. 3-16.

Hinz, B. (2010) ‘Ethnic associations, networks and the construction of Australian multiculturalism,’ Paper presented at the Canadian Political Science Association Annual Conference, Corcordia University, Montreal, 1‐3 June. http://www.bronwynhinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Hinz-2010-Australian-multiculturalism-paper-for-CPSA-v4.pdf

Jupp, J. (2002) From White Australia to Woomera – The Story of Australian Immigration, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne.

Kallen, H. (1924; reprint 1970) Culture and Democracy in the United States, Arno Press, New York.

Kelly, P. (2001) 100 Years: The Australian Story, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.

Lopez, M. (2000) The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics 1945-1975, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.

MacDonald, K. B. (1998/2001) The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth‑Century Intellectual and Political Movements, Westport, CT: Praeger. Revised Paperback edition, 2001, Bloomington, IN: 1stbooks Library.

Markus, A. (2006) ‘Multiculturalism and the Jews,’ In: New Under the Sun – Jewish Australians on Religion, Politics & Culture, Ed. Michael Fagenblat, Melanie Landau & Nathan Wolski, Black Inc., Melbourne. pp. 93-107.

Rutland, S.D. (2005) The Jews in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne.

Stratton, J. (2000) Coming Out Jewish – Constructing Ambivalent Identities, Routledge, London.

Tavan, G. (2005) The long, slow death of White Australia, Scribe Publications, Melbourne.

Windschuttle K. (2004) The White Australia Policy, MacLeay Press, Sydney.