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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 35. No. 12. 7 June 1972

Phantom anarchists

Phantom anarchists

Sir,

It seems some of the university's radicals are as foolish as those they protest against. A person who writes on a wall "Shoot All Racists" is just another sort of bigot who feels the evil of his sentiments is justified by someone else's evil. Such slogans are easy to paint on, and effective in terms of shock value and publicity. But they are useless gestures in that the protest is not superior to what is protested against. A man who is shocked by apartheid because it dehumanises, only contributes to that process when he does something dehumanising. The whole idea of political slogan writing is wasted effort, since its only value is shock tactics, which any myth, Bogeyman or Phantom in the Night, perpetuates.

J.L. Middlemiss