For Matt Chun, the national ritual is fraudulent and indefensible and he wants visitors to his cafe in the coastal town of Bermagui to know it

When Matt Chun displayed a chalkboard sign labelling Australia Day “national dickhead day” outside his New South Wales coastal cafe a year ago he didn’t anticipate the visceral backlash, including dozens of death threats, his words would incite.

But on the eve of the next Australia Day and amid heightened debate about the national holiday marking European invasion, occupation and settlement, Chun is defiant, resilient – and neither repentant nor regretful.

Every Australia Day in recent years the 36-year-old visual artist has flown the Aboriginal flag and displayed an anti-nationalistic chalkboard sign outside his shop in Bermagui, the small, seemingly bucolic, fishing town on the far-south New South Wales coast.

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In 2015 the sign read “Strictly No Patriotism Beyond This Point”. There was no backlash.

While the chalked signs have sometimes raised eyebrows and provoked local conversations about Australia Day, they have never before elicited a violent response.

Last year, however, a toxic combination of social media and extreme rightwing nationalism exploded in an ongoing frenzy of violent threats and racial abuse when Chun’s message in the doorway of his shop on the afternoon of 25 January – “Yes we’re open on national dickhead day” – was uploaded by the Facebook group Meanwhile in Australia.

Within hours extreme rightwing groups were using social media to urge reprisal against Chun while publicly identifying his phone number, and where he lived and worked. Dozens of individuals made anonymous death threats on his voicemail and promised physical violence in messages on his cafe’s website.

This year, out of concern for the safety of his co-workers at his cafe and gallery, Mister Jones, he will not display a provocative sign. He will, however, fly the Aboriginal flag, as he does every Australia Day, “as a show of solidarity”.

I’ve met Chun and corresponded with him throughout the past year.

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He is a considered and reflective man whose visual art – like his coffee shop – is gaining national attention. While the threats against Chun, who has a six-year-old son in Bermagui, have eased, a year on they’ve still not stopped.

“Yes, [I’ve had] windows broken, beer bottles thrown through the glass, damaging the [cafe] interior, eggs and flour over the shop front, locks drilled out, etc,” Chun says. “Also some mild altercations; I was also pushed around by a couple of local men outside my shop one evening, who wanted to remind me that ‘white people fought for this country’. There have been a few exchanges like that over the past year.

“But really, the relentless online hate and phone messages have been much more wearing, and enduring, than the physical attacks. The last voicemail threat was only a few days ago.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The owner of Mister Jones cafe, Matt Chun, in his studio. Photograph: Supplied by Matt Chun

One threat, delivered to his voicemail last May, typifies those he’s received since last Australia Day: “Cunt … I’ll have you run out of this country you bunch of blood-sucking pigs … we fought for this country. This country’s strong … you cunts just come over here and make it weak. National Dickhead Day! Fuckin’ die fuckers.”

Chun says: “This year I’m not planning an Australia Day message as such. If my business was still a one-man show, I would happily display the same blackboard. But I have staff to take care of, and I don’t want to expose them again to that repulsive element of our community (and country) as this isn’t a fight they necessarily asked for. Just to be clear, though, my staff have been incredibly supportive.”

The last voicemail threat was only a few days ago Matt Chun

He has left Bermagui intermittently during the past year, including stints as an artist-in-residence in western Sydney and Taipei – “an opportunity to explore the political aspects of my art practice and, in the wake of the furore, to undertake written research on nationhood”.

Last May, after being absent from Bermagui for several weeks, he returned, thinking and hoping that, perhaps, the worst was over.

But the attempts to intimidate him continued, through personal confrontations and anonymous voicemails. Now, barely a week passes without a threat and he expects that Australia Day, on Thursday, could reignite the intimidation.

Chun says many of his critics assume he is gay, Indigenous or Muslim (in fact, his heritage is European/Chinese). And while he is demonstrably unrepentant for his actions last year, he says the episode has given him a very brief experience of the same “cultural toxin” that many Australians have battled for generations.

The status quo is a deliberate, annual reassertion of colonialism Matt Chun

“It is interesting how quickly the simple blackboard was conflated to become such a broad repository for a full spectrum of anxieties. I was used as proxy for Aboriginality, Islam and refugees, immigration and, yes, the Anzac myth. From the outset, it appeared that many Australians fail to distinguish between January 26 and Anzac Day. The blackboard was immediately taken as an attack on Anzac, and servicemen generally. The ‘spirit of the Anzac’ has been invoked against me countless times.

“However, my opinion is that the performances of Australia Day and Anzac Day do promote a comparable mythology. Indigenous inhabitants died in their thousands in the legitimate defence of this land against marauding invaders. The Australian War Memorial refuses to recognise these frontier wars. Australia makes no formal acknowledgement, much less a dawn service. In contrast, the Anzacs invaded a sovereign nation, of no threat to Australia or New Zealand, in blind obedience to an imperial power, in a needless war based on European tribalism.

“To say that Australia was ‘born’ or that our ‘identity’ was created in that war is simple political mythology. Australia’s yearly enactment of absurd militaristic posturing reinforces my view on this. The Anzacs themselves were at best naive. At worst, they committed documented atrocities. Our more recent participation in America’s wars show how we can still be defined by what we choose to remember.”

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Asked if he feels his 2016 Australia Day message might have been unduly provocative to proud Australians who are neither racist nor radically patriotic, Chun says: “Of course you’re asking about those ‘reasonable’ and good natured Australians who aren’t necessarily bigoted, or particularly invested in white privilege, but simply have a proud and wholesome love of Australia Day. Well, that’s not a tenable position. Intellectually, there is no such thing as ‘sitting on the fence’. To claim neutrality is to cast a firm vote for the status quo. In this case, the status quo is a deliberate, annual reassertion of colonialism. Australia Day can be enjoyed with vulgar complicity or contrived ignorance, but the ritual is fraudulent and completely indefensible.

“But I should also point out that the phrase ‘National Dickhead Day’ identified no one in particular. The number of people who self-identified was alarming.”

Chun has received support from all over Australia and from within the communities of Bermagui, including from ex-service personnel.

The furore has not adversely impacted his business. Indeed, he says, the open studio and espresso bar has probably become even more popular since last Australia Day.

He has, however, had to “recalibrate my relationship with this small town in particular and this country in general”.

My relationship with my town has changed irreversibly Matt Chun

“The shop front is primarily my open studio and the espresso operation is an appendix to the creative space – customers are invited to enjoy their coffee in the studio and engage with the studio environment. So yes, for many years the simple presence of my shop front in a small, regional town with intractable hard-right affiliations has been an outrageous affront to particular members of my community. In this context, of course, I was aware of the cultural environment that my blackboard was projecting into. But no, I wasn’t expecting the scale of the hatred that followed,” he says.

“I have frequently used my espresso bar as a space for political comment. My criticism of January 26 was not launched online, or in any socially contained forum for dissent. I think this partly explains the scale and ferocity of the response. It was written by a small business owner and displayed in an unexpectedly public space. I think the extreme-right vitriol was partially fuelled by this affront to expectations of a small business. As a well-behaved capitalist, it’s assumed that I must please everyone, and apologise immediately for the slightest offence.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mister Jones cafe in the NSW South Coast town of Bermagui. Photograph: Supplied by Matt Chun

But he has not apologised. Neither does he, a year later, intend to.

Has he considered leaving Bermagui permanently?

“Honestly – of course I have. My relationship with my town has changed irreversibly. But I don’t feel as though I created anything, rather I exposed something that always lay beneath the surface. But the fascism highlighted by my blackboard is nationwide, not specific to one town or even to regional Australia,” he says.

“I live in this town because it is a beautiful piece of coast and there is a strong, tolerant and creative community here as a counterpoint to an ugly and entrenched minority.

“Change is a process, and I think those seeking it need to be stubborn.”