Multicultural Troubles

Multicultural Troubles

Chetna Mahadik is general manager at the Robert Menzies Institute in Melbourne, a fellow stacker and the editor of, and contributor to, a recently published book of essays, Immigration & Multiculturalism: The Past, The Present and The Future. Chetna’s essay, Racism in Australia: Narrative and Reality, tracks her encounters with the country’s sometimes mystifying debates about its national character. As she explains in the piece, Chetna migrated to Australia from India in 2011 with a master’s degree in globalization and media. At the time Melbourne was experiencing a spate of attacks against Indian international students, with student leaders alleging the violence was part of a broader pattern of anti-Indian racism. Chetna decided she’d write about the controversy — but what she found surprised her. We talk about her essay and what she learned about “anti-racism” discourse. We talk about the insights she gained from editing the politically-heterodox essay collection, which explores the evolution of Australian immigration policy from the postwar ethos of “populate or perish” through to the dismantling of the White Australia Policy and the adoption of multiculturalism. We talk about the fraught debate around Muslim immigration to the West, and to Australia after the Bondi Beach massacre, the rise of the populist right and Pauline Hanson’s promotion of “monoculturalism.” A few things of note: On 21 July the Robert Menzies Institute is holding a public conversation on “Conditions for a Successful Immigration Policy” with Coalition Senator Jonno Duniam. You can book tickets here: https://www.robertmenziesinstitute.org.au/event/jonno-duniam-policy-dialogue/ [https://www.robertmenziesinstitute.org.au/event/jonno-duniam-policy-dialogue/] The essay collection, Immigration & Multiculturalism: The Past, The Present and The Future, is available from the publisher here: https://www.connorcourtpublishing.com.au/Immigration-Multiculturalism-The-Past-the-Present-and-the-Future-edited-by-Chetna-Mahadik_p_681.html [https://www.connorcourtpublishing.com.au/Immigration-Multiculturalism-The-Past-the-Present-and-the-Future-edited-by-Chetna-Mahadik_p_681.html] Or on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Immigration-Multiculturalism-Past-Present-Future/dp/1923568760 [https://www.amazon.com.au/Immigration-Multiculturalism-Past-Present-Future/dp/1923568760] Or on Booktopia [https://www.booktopia.com.au/immigration-multiculturalism-chetna-mahadik/book/9781923568761.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqiQ7aqNeSNNxvImjHg08RxIuZn44cHelNu2W5XKzSBwG45B7Rw]. And Chetna’s newsletter, which includes columns first published in the AFR, is here: Szego Unplugged is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit szegounplugged.substack.com/subscribe [https://szegounplugged.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

The rot in Australia's literary scene

David Free is a critic (including for the Nine papers), novelist, and fellow-Stacker. In recent times, David, a non-Jew, has drawn attention for his lucid and brave essays on the anti-Jewish hostility that’s found a place in Australia’s literary scene. If you haven’t subscribed to his newsletter, you really must, and I suggest you start with this [https://davidjamesfree.substack.com/p/why-is-antisemitism-so-hip] post, which we discuss at length here because in it David basically proves that the “woke”/intersectional/identity politics/regressive left brigade has a Jew problem. He rests his case on the 2018 book White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, who he exquisitely calls “the American grievance huckster.” I’m so taken with his theory that I read aloud the incriminating passage in full! We also yak about Clive James, George Orwell and the vicissitudes of this writing life. Listen, as they say, wherever you get your podcasts. Here’s the link to David’s Substack: Szego Unplugged is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit szegounplugged.substack.com/subscribe [https://szegounplugged.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

The Greens and the trans "cult"

Here I talk to Drew Hutton, a man of the moment for all the wrong reasons. Alongside Bob Brown, Hutton co-founded the national Greens in the early 1990s. A week ago the party’s state council in Queensland affirmed an earlier decision to boot him out for refusing to delete “transphobic” comments from others on his Facebook post. He says the party he co-founded has been hijacked by a transgender and queer “cult.” So I welcomed Drew to what’s becoming a very non-exclusive club of people cancelled for questioning trans ideology and its push to erase biological sex across society. We discussed his (kangaroo) trials with the Greens, when he first realised a cult had swallowed his beloved party and why the broader progressive movement is in danger of losing its way. Click here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cW7liXdUi4] to watch the video version of this podcast or listen on Apple or Spotify. Szego Unplugged is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit szegounplugged.substack.com/subscribe [https://szegounplugged.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

The real John Anderson

I’ll explain the “accidental” gag soon — first, the important stuff. In this episode I pick the formidable brain of John Anderson, second-in-charge of Oz from 1999 to 2005 and these days a serious player in the world of long-form podcasting. He was an early adopter of the web-based interview, launching his “Conversations” [https://johnanderson.net.au/podcasts/] series in 2017 to tackle the big geopolitical and philosophical questions with public intellectuals. As he tells me, he needed some convincing years ago to interview a psychologist he’d never heard of called Jordan Peterson. The rest is history. Anderson’s thirst for answers on how we should live led him to help found the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship [https://www.arcforum.com], a global organisation that aims to reaffirm Western values. The Alliance staged its inaugural conference in London in October 2023 with a rock star line-up. Back then, with many of us reeling from the outbreak of pro-Hamas sentiment on our streets and university campuses, the centre-right seemed to have the wind at its back. But things have since soured for the political right in parts of Europe, Canada and Australia: I ask Anderson what went wrong. Is it all Donald Trump’s fault? Before he became a heterodox media star, Anderson, a sixth-generation farmer, held several ministries in the Howard Government and was former leader of the National Party — to overseas readers, that’s a rural-based party that together with the Liberal Party comprises Australia’s conservative Coalition. The Coalition marriage broke down momentarily in the aftermath of the Liberals’ historic drubbing in May’s federal election; Anderson was one of several former leaders enlisted as marriage counsellor. Something obviously worked: the parties stitched things up, for how long only time will tell. Anderson airs his frustration with Labor’s election tactics and with what he (rightly) diagnoses as both parties’ desultory policy prescriptions. He also airs concerns about energy, Australia’s vulnerability in global supply chains, mounting government debt, a more aggressive China and the deteriorating mental health of young people in the digital age. And we moan about Donald Trump, a subject I pursued excessively, I reckon. There are many more conversations I’d like to have with Anderson on topics remote from the daily headlines. And now to my blonde moment, which I’ve left uncut in the interests of transparency, and also because it’s sort of funny. Later in our talk I say that before he entered politics Anderson had a brief stint as a reporter on a rural newspaper. I had written this down in my notes and raised it here, proud I’d done my homework. Turns out I was wrong. Anderson never worked as a rural reporter. He thinks I may have been reading about a different John Anderson, a person who, by coincidence, also moved among the Nationals in Canberra. I reckon Anderson would have been a fantastic rural reporter had he ever tried his hand at it, which, of course, he hadn’t. He’s also gracious when others embarrass themselves. I’d intended to read Anderson’s authorised biography before our conversation but an unexpected study trip to Israel (more on that another time) got in the way. The biography, Faith & Duty: The John Anderson Story by Paul Gallagher, charts a life marked by profound tragedy (I won’t go into details here) and extraordinary resilience. Anderson arrives at his Christian faith, and so much else, with great substance. We need more like him. Szego Unplugged is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit szegounplugged.substack.com/subscribe [https://szegounplugged.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

The secret pain of 'trans widows'

In this podcast I speak with Indian filmmaker Vaishnavi Sundar, currently in Australia for screenings of her groundbreaking feature-length documentary, Behind the Looking Glass, which explores the lives of women whose male partners have “come out” as trans. (For details of screenings scroll to the end of this post.) These women are sometimes known as “trans widows.” Also joining us is Bronwyn Winter, a fellow Substacker [https://bronwyndrw.substack.com], and scholar of politics. I’ll say more about our conversation and Sundar’s taboo-busting film in a moment. But first — the topic of heterosexual men identifying as women is freakishly timely thanks to an incendiary four minute monologue of a fleeting character in this week’s episode of The White Lotus. The monologue has set the anti-woke media ecosystem on fire. I reckon the scene has done more to undermine trans ideology than even Donald Trump’s edict declaring there are only two sexes. For while good progressive folk dismiss Trump’s executive order as cruel and indicative of today’s culture-war obsessed insurgent right, they can’t quite hurl the same accusation at the writers of the hugely popular streaming series, which, for the uninitiated, skewers the global elites through the travails of the guests and staff of a luxury resort chain in Maui, Sicily and in season three, Koh Samui. The monologue in question came from “Frank” (Sam Rockwell) an old friend of main character “Rick” (Walton Goggins). Frank has been living in Thailand for years and the two catch up in a Bangkok bar. Rick asks Frank what he’s been up to, and Frank, a born-again Buddhist, answers .. frankly. He tells of spiralling into alcoholism and of his promiscuity with Asian women and then, without warning, reveals how all this led to a sexual fixation with the idea of being an Asian woman himself. He would invite men to sodomise him and hire an Asian woman to watch. “I'd look in her eyes while some guy was f*****g me and think, I am her, and I'm f*****g me,” he said to Rick’s hilarious astonishment. Those of us who’ve had the misfortune of falling down the trans debate rabbit hole immediately named Frank’s inclination as autogynephilia — “love of oneself as a woman,” in the Greek — but more importantly, so did Dr Ray Blanchard, the American-Canadian sexologist who coined the term in the 1980s to describe non-homosexual males whose desire to transition stemmed partly from sexual arousal at the thought of themselves as female. Reposting The White Lotus scene on X, Blanchard remarked: “Since 2003, political trans activists and their “allies” have done everything they could to prevent the word and the concept of autogynephilia from entering public awareness. And yet, with excruciating slowness but apparent inevitability, it is doing just that.” It is not hard to see why trans activists do everything possible to suppress any mention of the word or concept of autogynephilia. There is a fear that acknowledging some men are motivated to transition for sexual reasons will lead to trans women being demonised as sexual deviants or perverts; indeed, too many feminists deploy vulgar tropes of this sort. But the main imperative, as I’ve written before, is ideological. The “gender identity” movement, to the extent that we can pin down something so fundamentally incoherent, seeks to negate or at least blur the biological reality of sex so as to enable the belief that a male can actually be a woman in some spiritual or pseudo-scientific sense. This belief system is compelled to suppress the stark truth that for many men their feelings of alienation from their sexed bodies are themselves a symptom of their very male predilection for fetish and sexual obsession. (Again, that’s simply an observation on my part and not an accusation or moral judgment.) After all, it would be hard to argue that males who get off on thinking of themselves as women should be entitled to access women’s spaces. So the “gender identity” narrative must remain intact if the recent dismantling of sex-based rights in Australia and across the West is to withstand scrutiny and legal challenge. I wrote about the airing of autogynephilia in recent court cases here [https://szegounplugged.substack.com/p/lets-talk-about-sex-and-fetishes]. (Incidentally the Lesbian Action Group’s bid to exclude trans women — biological males — from their events failed [https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jan/21/victorian-lesbian-action-group-court-ruling-cant-exclude-transgender-bisexual-women-ntwnfb] in the tribunal on the grounds it constituted unlawful discrimination: the Group is raising funds [https://lesbianactiongroup.org.au] for a Federal Court appeal.) Meanwhile the erasure of autogynephilia in popular culture has given birth to a new kind of hero; the uber-masculine man, who after decades in the public eye as a soldier/Olympian/footballer/politician (I’m sure your mind is coughing up names and images so I don’t have to) is reborn as the authentic woman he’s been all along. A woman more womanly than any other — and hence deserving of “Woman of the Year” gongs [https://www.glamour.com/story/caitlyn-jenner-speech] — because she’s had to contend with the greatest tragedy a woman could conceivably face; to have been mistaken as male at birth. The hero worship of trans women leaves no room to acknowledge that their “coming out” often inflicts a serious emotional cost on their female partners. The progressive media will air stories about loving wives supportive of their partner’s transition now happily identifying as one part of a “lesbian” relationship. I’m not delegitimising these stories, but what of the wives unwilling to participate in their husband’s simulation of womanhood? The culture brands her as cruel and bigoted; her trauma invalidated, even when her male partner inflicts what can only be seen as extreme narcissistic abuse. How else to describe the male who decides to come out just as his wife is at her most vulnerable, breastfeeding a newborn? Which is one of the disturbing stories we encounter in Sundar’s latest film. Behind the Looking Glass profiles trans widows from around the world, often with the help of striking animation. The women speak for themselves with courage and candour. This is not the first time Sundar has tackled gender identity ideology — to the usual pushback and cancellation. Through her company, Lime Soda Films, she explored the rise in women and girls seeking transition in her four-part documentary, Dysphoric. In this podcast we discuss the impact of gender identity ideology in India — yes it’s arrived there too, and as always it’s the poorest women and most marginalised communities who pay the highest cost. This should exercise the minds of Australians given that exporting the ideology to the developing world is an explicit goal [https://szegounplugged.substack.com/p/australias-new-cultural-imperialism]of the Albanese Government’s foreign policy. In February 2023 Foreign Minister Penny Wong launched the first dedicated fund to promote international “LGBTQ rights” in the Asia-Pacific, pledging to “listen to the voices, views and priorities of LGBTQIA+ human rights defenders and civil society.” You’ll hear me talking about a screening of Behind the Looking Glass in Sydney: unfortunately that’s already happened. But it screens in Melbourne tomorrow, March 23: Contact: tlc.vicinc.events@gmail.com [tlc.vicinc.events@gmail.com] $10 TLC members / $15 non members. And you can follow the link to watch the film online here: https://x.com/vaishax/status/1837134170969317449?s=46 [https://x.com/vaishax/status/1837134170969317449?s=46] Szego Unplugged is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit szegounplugged.substack.com/subscribe [https://szegounplugged.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]