New CIS paper: Identity politics, antisemitism a threat to Australia’s fair-go tolerance

A dramatic rise in antisemitism in Australia is not a temporary outlier, but evidence of a deeper breakdown in social cohesion caused by the rise of identity politics, a new Centre for Independent Studies paper outlines.

In Overcoming Enmity and Restoring Tolerance: Antisemitism’s challenge for the civic compact, author Damien Freeman argues that identity politics has transformed Australia’s political culture by turning disagreement into hatred and opponents into enemies.

The surge in antisemitism is one of the clearest warning signs of this shift, he says, warning that this represents a direct threat to Australia’s long-standing tradition of tolerance and its distinctive commitment to giving everyone a ‘fair go’.

The paper documents a 316% per cent increase in reported antisemitic incidents in the year to September 2024, followed by synagogue arson attacks, organised intimidation, and culminating in the December 2025 Bondi Beach massacre. Freeman concludes that these events reflect not a momentary crisis, but a civic failure years in the making.

A central finding of the research is that identity politics encourages Australians to view society as a struggle between oppressors and oppressed, rather than as a shared civic project.

In this framework, opposition is no longer something to be argued with, but something to be defeated. Disagreement is moralised into enmity, and hostility becomes politically justified.

“Antisemitism flourishes in a culture that teaches people to see enemies rather than opponents,” Freeman argues. “Once politics is framed in terms of group-based enmity, tolerance can no longer do its work.”

“Australia’s civic compact was built to manage disagreement through shared institutions, legal equality, and restraint. It was never designed to survive a political culture that treats entire groups as morally illegitimate.”

The paper argues that antisemitism has intensified because institutions have too often treated it as just another contested political position, rather than naming it clearly as hatred.

In a climate shaped by identity politics, institutional neutrality has frequently become a substitute for moral clarity, allowing hostility to escalate unchecked, Freeman says.

Rather than calling for a new civic settlement, the research urges a reassertion of Australia’s existing civic compact. He argues that restoring social cohesion requires resisting identity-based political frameworks, strengthening civic education, and reaffirming that tolerance applies to disagreement, not to hatred.

Antisemitism, the paper concludes, is not an isolated problem affecting one community alone. It is a signal that the norms underpinning Australia’s tolerant, pluralist society are eroding.

“If identity politics continues to convert opposition into enmity, Australia’s sense of a ‘fair go’ and its capacity to live with difference will continue to weaken, with consequences for the entire civic order,” Freeman says.

The paper forms part of The Centre for Independent Studies’ research program The New Intolerance: antisemitism and religious hatred in a fracturing civic compact.

Damien Freeman is a Fellow of the Robert Menzies Institute at the University of Melbourne. He also is the author of The End of Settlement: Why the 2023 referendum failed.