Port Phillip Buffs Porter

Everyone agrees the Melbourne street artist Mic Porter does not hate Jews. The mayor of Port Phillip, Heather Cunsolo, does not believe it. Nobody claims he does, yet Port Phillip Council is painting over his commissioned mural. See Benita Kolovos’s “Melbourne council to remove mural it says unintentionally offended local Jewish community” in The Guardian.

Mic Porter is a Melbourne street artist. He has been painting faces in this style on the building walls in Melbourne using waste/leftover paint for about 20 years. He does faces, nothing else, no other content.

Why is Porter being censored? Port Phillip Council commissioned Porter’s mural on the Carlisle Street shopfront in Balaclava as part of its “People Of Balaclava”. It is now being buffed (painted over) because of complaints about the length of the noses. The nose length was determined in response to architectural form imposed by the nineteenth-century architects (who were probably anti-semitic) who designed the buildings Porter was painting on.

“I have no words”, says Nick Dyrenfurth, who cites as evidence of the mural’s anti-Semitism that Porter has a video of it backed by American singer, songwriter, and civil rights activist Nina Simone’s ‘Backlash Blues’, a song which she co-wrote with Langston Hughes, the American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and leader of the Harlem Renaissance.

Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler and Zionism Victoria’s executive director, Zeddy Lawrence, supported the claim in a comment to J-Wire.

Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash

Just who do you think I am?

You raise my taxes, freeze my wages

And send my son to Vietnam

You give me second-class houses

And second-class schools

Do you think that all colored folks

Are just second-class fools?

Given this evidence, I am, like Dyrenfurth, lost for words. Donald Trump, accompanied, as always, by a chorus of angels, could not have presented the case more succinctly or definitively.

I tweeted: “Destroying art because someone claims with zero evidence. Does everyone have the right to do this, or do you have to have a special sensitive status? How do you acquire that status?”

A friend replied: “While in principle, I agree, I also feel it is important to listen to minorities when they say something is offensive.  I just wish we were more even handed when listening.”

“Sure, I was hoping someone would bring that up because, of course, city councils didn’t listen when Indigenous Australians complained about statues of Captain Cook, etc. I’m assuming their skin was the wrong colour for city councils to listen to them.”

Indigenous people have been complaining about the statue of Captain Cook to Port Phillip Council for many years. Maybe now, Mayor Cunsolo will listen to them, like she does with other groups, because I’m sure she isn’t a racist.

Paint it black, too.

Sir John Tweed, Captain Cook, 1914