In March 1868 an Irishman, Henry James O’Farrell, attempted to assassinate Prince Alfred at Clontarf beach during his three month tour of Australia.

The colonial secretary, Henry Parkes, alleged O’Farrell had acted as part of a Fenian conspiracy. There was never the slightest bit of evidence for this but the allegation had the effect of throwing suspicion on the loyalty of every Irish Australian, and by extension, on the loyalty of other Catholics.

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Parkes spared no effort in subsequently whipping up sectarian divisions. He demanded loyalty oaths from members of parliament. They promptly passed the Treason Felony Act, which mandated criminal punishments for all forms of disloyalty.

This included two years gaol for those who “refuse to join in any loyal toast or demonstration in honor of Her Majesty”, such as singing the anthem of Britian and Australia (until 1974), God Save the Queen. The law was so excessive that it did not receive royal assent.

In the interim, it was enforced amid uncertainties about its application (How to tell whether someone refusing to toast was a traitor or a teetotaller?). Several blameless Irishmen were arrested, only to be later released. But sectarian bitterness lingered and the colonial press was constantly alert for the smallest hint of treason.

When in 1870 the Sydney Morning Herald found out that some convent school students in Albury had refused to stand when the anthem was played, they ran it as a story of grave importance. When Catholics and others in Albury took umbrage at the implication of disloyalty, the Herald defended itself:

In the instance in point the social question involved is one of great magnitude, and fairly lends to the inference that a portion of the rising generation of colonists is being educated without being trained in those sentiments of loyalty to the British connection which find their expression in outward acts of respect to the reigning Sovereign.

The colonial Fenian menace was, of course, a chimera. In retrospect the anxieties underpinning it seem ludicrous, and the politics surrounding it laughably crude and opportunistic. By and by, Irish Australians have been assimilated into a once unimaginable “Anglo-Celtic” mainstream.

This pattern repeats itself time and again, as a nation which is deeply unsure about its own identity and its relationships with the world’s great centres of power hunts out the traitors in its midst by prosecuting small deviations on the part of marginal groups.

Earlier this week, a Victorian principal excused a number of Shia Muslim students from singing the national anthem. Not God Save the Queen any more, but that strange, unloved, perenially half-forgotten placeholder of a song, Advance Australia Fair.

As a gesture, it fell somewhere between simple hospitality and one of the fumbles that ordinary people make as they grapple, in good faith, with cultural pluralism. Right now, Shia are in the midst of the Mourning of Muharram, which prohibits them from singing joyful songs, which, depending on who you consult, may or may not include the national anthem.

“I suppose many of us would not consider the national anthem joyous,” Cheryl Irving told Guardian Australia. “The children are young. They were confused. They didn’t want to get in trouble at home or at school.”

A grandmother of another student objected, and the story found its way to Hansonist mini-me Jacqui Lambie, who joined it with her only talent: attracting fleeting publicity. The usual suspects piled on, hinting that this is symptomatic of a broader disloyalty, even hinting that Muslims are a fifth column out to subvert Australian values.

Miranda Devine said of the failure to sing that “To spurn this deeply symbolic public display of patriotism is a statement of disrespect and disloyalty, which implies a rejection of Australian values”, and “if public schools don’t assert Australian values, it is certain that someone else’s values will prevail”, such as the “value system you will find in Saudi Arabia, where women are stoned to death for adultery”.

No matter that the Saudis are Sunni, nor that we are bombing Syria in concert with their air force in an operation that Devine has vociferously supported. Any concessions to religious observances by children is apparently risks plunging Australia into Wahabbism.

In the Age, Kevin Donnelly argued that “Schools holding a weekly assembly, where the flag is raised and students sing Advance Australia Fair, is an essential part of Australian identity and should be compulsory”.

He wrote that Australia’s institutional inheritance is fortunate and unique, one only had to look at “the death and destruction in Syria and Iraq” to realise this. What’s more “to accept otherwise and to argue that all cultures are of equal value and worth leads to cultural relativism and the fragmentation of society”.

To spurn this deeply symbolic public display of patriotism is a statement of disrespect and disloyalty. Miranda Devine

It’s strange and forgetful for two Catholics to argue this way, especially Donnelly, who is employed by the Australian Catholic University. A large part of its purpose is supplying teachers and nurses to institutions that were set up as a sanctuary against this kind of sectarian bias. You would think that he would be more conscious of the divisive consequences of institutionalised religious prejudice.

Moreover, a large part of the death and destruction in Syria and Iraq is a consequence of the destruction of the latter country in the name of the values of freedom and democracy that Donnelly says nurture our unique civilisation. Australia, always waiting for an empire to beckon it, played a role in this.

The deeper problem for both writers comes from the incoherence of the value system they say is being disrespected. Donnelly wrote that “All students should also be taught that Australia is a Western, liberal democracy that, while being secular in nature, owes much to its Judaeo-Christian heritage and traditions”.

Devine held that “We are a secular nation. But the values that made Australia a free, prosperous, fair democracy, that migrants strive to join, come from the Judaeo-Christian foundations which underpin Western civilisation”.

Both try to square the circle in order to punish the transgressors twice. Both try to say that Australia is at once secular and Judaeo-Christian.

The students’ religious observance allegedly offends Australian secularism at the same that it forever estranges them from its underlying Judaeo-Christian essence. Of course, if you’re serious about secularism, you can’t do any special pleading for the values of a particular religious tradition. And if secularism can accommodate the public affirmation of some religious values, why not all of them?

Insofar as the writers offer any concrete attributes of Australian identity, they are the same bromides about rule of law and formal equality that conservatives throughout the west mobilise daily in order to define themselves against what they imagine that Muslims believe.

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There’s nothing about Australian values, on this account, that is distinctive. But that, of course, is because it’s a fix. It’s an attempt to create a particular “us” from the negative outline of a fictitious “them”. We are enjoined to barricade the status quo against an attacker who is made of straw.

If it weren’t for the fact that similar sentiments are voiced both at the highest levels of government - as in Scott Morrison’s attempt yesterday to ingratiate himself with the liberal base - and by racist activists in the streets of provincial cities, we could laugh at this.

As with the phantom Fenians, a false crisis of loyalty is being whipped up by and on behalf of those who would be empowered by policing it. We can reject it by asserting another set of values: perspective, hospitality, and trust.