Go to Part 1.

Corporate livestream

Hmm, so now these ‘two minutes of love’ at work will go on forever or something? After all, there is not enough pro-Ukraine propaganda in the media or on the Internet! – Lyoshka mumbled to himself agitated, staring at the screen of his laptop, from which a senior boss from the headquarters of their company, located somewhere in Oregon, was doing a corporate livestream. There was a picture of the Ukrainian flag in the background,

Dressed in a beige sweater, a man in his sixties with glasses, with the manners of a teacher, taught his class:

• On behalf of the senior leadership of the firm, I assure you that our company and all of us continue to stand on the side of the free people of democratic Ukraine, who are heroically resisting the unprovoked violence of the occupying forces of the criminal Russian regime and its tyrant Vladimir Putin, who are killing women and children. If one of our employees wants to make a donation to the fund for helping Ukrainian refugees or wants to donate to the Ukrainian army, the company will add a further 20% to these donations. Slava Ukraini! We stand for peace in Ukraine!

Lyoshka seethed inside: You stand for peace. … Of course, you stand for peace, fucking asshole! And you probably stood for fucking peace at your previous fucking job at fucking Lockheed Martin, and before that you were ‘lucky’ to work in Iraq for fucking Baker Hughes after 2003…. probably also protesting against war and demanding peace there, innit you fucking cunt?!’ RRRRRRRR!

Having calmed down a little, Lyoshka nevertheless relaxed and concluded – ‘Well, actually, thank God, at least I haven’t been fired (yet?) out of compassion for Ukraine for having the privilege of having a Russian passport. It’s good enough nowadays!’

Chat with mum

The clocks showed 5:30 pm, and most of Lyoha’s colleagues were already packing up their things and quietly heading home. Lyoha had no particular desire to continue working. Urgent correspondence had already been dealt with, client deliverables with today’s deadline have already been sent, and anything else could be picked up later in the evening from home on his phone. At the same time Lyoha also had no desire to immediately rush home. What for?

Let me call my mum, since I have nothing better to do! – Lyoha decided and went to the nearest free meeting room to ring her via FaceTime.

Right from the start of the conflict Lyoha began to call his parents almost every evening, partly out of curiosity, partly out of worry for them. Fortunately, no tragedies happened, although in the very first weeks it was an extremely worrying situation, which had since reached a certain plateau. Sadly for everyone, a temporary plateau, but there we go. Thank God, none of Lyoha’s acquaintances or relatives chose suicide, the apparent wave of which among the Muscovites of the middle, and especially the upper middle class, was reported with pleasure by the nasty Ukrainian media. So far, no one amongst his acquaintances had lost their jobs.

Lyoha went into the empty meeting room of one of his senior bosses, which overlooked the British Museum. Mom’s going to like the view!

He rang her number.

Silence.

Okay, she’s probably busy. I will call her again in 5 minutes. Staying in the meeting room, Lyoha began to scroll through his Instagram feed, an important tool he thought for measuring the moods in society.

Moscow photographers continued to take pictures of the capital’s skyscrapers under construction, and for the umpteenth time, the Moscow City district skyscrapers.

Moscow City

What is going to happen to them now? Are they going to have enough tenants? Could the Ukrainians blow them up? — Lyoha was thinking, looking at the photographs.

Female bloggers, after a short pause in late February and early March, came back to the platform with their usual posts of photos of their nails, hair, shoes, food porn, kittens and dogs, their barely covered bodies, and gatherings with their friends. Judging only by their Instagram posts, either their world had not changed, or they did not want to share the changes with the world. There was somehow a strange feeling of inconsistency — after all, there is actually a war going on (well, the so-called ‘SVO’ Spetsialnaya Voennaya Operatsia or Special Military Operation), but the usual peaceful life is still in place… Although Lyoha saw with his own eyes copies of British Vogue magazines from 1942–43, so it’s hardly something unusual; nonetheless it was still odd. That’s not how he expected a war to look like, but he felt that it’s not for him from the ‘depths’ to judge his countrymen for their desire to continue holding a peaceful and calm consumerist lifestyle.

On the other hand, the clones of these girls and boys from a neighbouring country from the end of February began to post a completely different set of photos and videos. No bullshit ‘SVO’, these guys are having a real war! The male bloggers took up arms, the girls took up the coordination of assistance for the front (some offline, but most online), and all of them together blazed with hatred for the “occupier orcs”. They had unequivocally been calling since that time for the murder and death of all Russians, their children and mothers on all monopoly social network platforms, who were very happy to host such content on their pages. And it was striking that people on both sides of the barricades were practically indistinguishable by the way they looked, their names, last names, language and slang. They lived in similar cities with similar houses, similar apartments and similar stairwells. This is probably how the gaping abysses between the former parts of one people are slowly (slowly though?) emerging?

But that’s all in the homelands. In the rest of the Instagram world, a normal life has continued: same pictures of happy girls in new outfits on the elegant streets of Paris, Rome and London. Same chique houses, lovely retro cars of the mid-20th century, delicious cakes and pastries, stunning interiors of European palaces and churches, brand new shiny skyscrapers in Melbourne, Guangzhou and Vancouver. The same posts about transphobia, homophobia, insufficient feminism and lack of diversity. Everything is exactly as it was before. One wonders – what is running through the minds of Muscovites or Kievans today when they look at these posts?

*   *   *

Finally Lyoha’s mum called him back.

• Lyoha: Priviet, Mom!
• Mum: Priviet, Lyoshenka — an elegant lady of around 50 years of age smiled at the camera (although she was in fact closer to 60). She drank coffee or tea from a miniature cup and smoked a miniature women’s cigarette, sitting on the balcony of a Stalinist house on Rostovskaya Embankment. Oh what a beautiful view! Wish I was there! — she continued.

Rostovskaya Embankment

• Lyoha: Oh, mum, you also have such a great view! I sat here on purpose—I knew that you would like to see a bit of London and the British Museum! And of course you will be here in some time, we’ll all be together with dad as well! And I really want to see you both…
• Mum: Because of this VILE EVIL FUCKING CUNT I have no idea when we can make it, if we even will be able to make it!—mum slipped as always on to the same topic … I curse him every day, so that he finally dies! Every morning I wake up and check the news hoping that this fucking piece of shit is dead! Oh, my god, Lyoshenka, you don’t know how strong, how much I wish that this cunt would die, so everything can become good and normal again!

Actually, it was frowned upon to use obscenities in the Timoshenko family; however, after 24 Feb 22, for the first few days it seemed that almost all Russians (including the most refined ones) were only capable of describing their twisted emotions by cursing. ‘Pizdec’ and ‘Ahuy’ [both meaning ‘fucking hell’, but one word derives from ‘cock’ and the other from ‘cunt’], Pizdec and Ahuy—that’s what most people kept saying to themselves and each other, and as times were quite stressful some morals have gotten lax.

• Lyoha: Mom, how can you not understand that, in fact, the interests of our family, and even our class, are now tied to Him and to Whether we like it or not…
• Mum: I want peace with “no annexations or indemnities,” and for everything to be as it was before!
• Lyoha: Mom, well, as you know that just as back then in 1918 there was no peace, and there were annexations and indemnities. The best we can aim for with such ‘peace’ … could very well be a new Treaty of Versailles.
• Mum: Good enough for me! I don’t want to go back to the Soviet Union! I LIVED THERE! You just can’t imagine how terrible and miserable it was there … — Lyoha’s mum sighed and rolled her eyes.
• Lyoha: Well, after all, it’s not really going to be the new Soviet Union …
• Mum: Haha! Indeed! During these 30 years we have forgotten how to produce almost anything. Today we don’t have a self-sufficient industry and especially mechanical engineering—no planes, no trains … all is now made by Siemens and most of our planes are in lease. Hell, I’m not even sure we know how to produce menstrual pads…
• Lyoha: Life will force us to build autarchy… — Lyoha tried to argue, feeling slightly unsure of his argument….
• Mum: You know, this is worse than the Soviet Union, it’s just bloody SOVOK [derogatory name for the Soviet Union with the undermeaning of something rundown and backwarded]! Savings are frozen, Echo Moskvy [The main (((Russian liberal and pro-western))) media platform since 1991—up until the 2010s a radio station, since then a multimedia platform; somewhat comparable to The Guardian] is closed. Prison sentences of 15 years have now been introduced for “anti-state propaganda,” they are talking about re-introducing death penalty for “treason,” people are imprisoned for anti-war rallies and you no longer can easily exchange foreign currency. At least whoever may be trying to escape from the country, thank God, are still being allowed to leave…

The topics and even the phrases of the conversations have not changed for several weeks, just like a broken record, but this did not bother both interlocutors, each of whom received a certain buzz when having such a dialogue. They probably just wanted to get it out of their system and receive some temporary relief from such a discussion.

• Lyoha: Mom, it’s just a country … during war time. That’s all!
• Mum: Oh, thanks Lyosha! So easy for you to say that! That’s horrible! You can’t imagine what it’s like!

Lyoshka, of course, himself agreed that he did not know “what a nightmare it is,” but on the other hand, he was well aware from phone calls with his parents about what they had been doing for the past few weeks. How and with whom and what restaurants they attended together in Moscow, who they saw and which neighbours they hosted as guests at their dacha in Novaya Riga [a prestigious outer Moscow suburb with a bunch of gated communities]. Which brand of foreign wine and champagne they drank there, what premieres they recently attended in theaters and how they “had been forced to” spend their spring vacation in picturesque Karelia [the northern region of Russia next to Finland] instead of London.

• Lyoha: I can’t imagine that, but still…it’s not the end of the world…yet. Everything seems to be fine so far. Most of the Russian people have it far worse…but hold a political view different from yours—Lyoha said in a defensive tone.
• Mum: Fuck the Russian people, this abominable scum! I don’t give a fuck, seriously! If they got used to living in drab colorless poverty forever, then this is not my problem! I don’t want to live like that!—his mother almost hissed with sincere hatred and contempt. And …YOU TELL ME LYOSHENKA, if you are here for the Russian people, why are you supporting the BOMBING OF KIEV AND KHARKOV, huh? My cousin Lena lives in Kiev, with her Seryozha and Bogdanchik, if you forgot? Didn’t you see him in London in 2018? You seemed to have had a good time with him then? Do you support the shelling of their city, huh? Do you think it would be great if their apartment on Khreschatyk [Kiev’s Champs Elysees or London’s Oxford Street] will end up demolished? That’s all for the ‘Russki Mir’ [Russian World—one of the propaganda terms of the Russian side], RIGHT?
• Lyoha: Mom, you should have seen what Bogdanchik has been writing on social media about Russia and Russians even before these events … Yes, Kiev and Kharkov used to be pro-Russian cities, but now they hate us. And yes, they do it in Russian, I can’t argue with that. And if you care so much about ordinary people, I didn’t hear words of indignation from you during the previous 8 years about the Donbass, when they were bombed. I also never heard any condemnation from Aunty Lena or you as well about Odessa [2nd May 2014, where 50+ pro-Russian Ukrainian citizens were burnt alive by the Ukrainian nationalists].
• Mum: I don’t give a shit about Donbass, Donetsk, Lugansk and Odessa! Have you been there at least once, unlike Kiev? Have I been working these thirty years in order to retire without a penny in a fucking gigantic North Korea because of some fucking Donbass? To hell with Donbass!!
• Lyoha: Mom, I’m afraid that the Ukrainians still won’t appreciate your love for them, and I think that Aunt Lena, Serezha and Bogdanchik curse us all together, and in the case of a defeat we will face a massacre! Have you seen the videos of how our boys are being tortured there?
• Mum: It’s their fucking problem that they ended up there! Why the hell were they on a mission in another country? If the Ukrainians come here, we will meet them with your father with bread and salt!

The conversation, as always, was coming to a dead end. Lyoha was too disgusted to continue the conversation (and let’s be frank, his mother for her own reasons was likely disgusted as well). He wanted to share a story gleaned from the recently read memoirs of Berlin Germans in 1945 about how one Berlin communist and his Jewish wife were excitedly waiting for the arrival of the liberation Red Army, and as a result, his stomach was torn open and she was raped by a whole crowd and killed without any appreciation for their “bread and salt,” but at the last moment Lyoha decided to keep it to himself.

But the conversation had to be continued and steered in a more constructive direction. It was mum. Lovely mum, who, like dad, had provided him with a wonderful life. They had sent Lyoha to England to study (and also later his sister), then helped them both with an apartment. It’s actually hard to find an area of his life where they didn’t help with something… They more than fulfilled a plan for “building communism” in the Timoshenko family [meaning building a good life — it’s a Soviet expression that in most cases is used sarcastically, as it was used by Soviet leaders to make promises that were never delivered]. And although his mother was hissing and now saying nasty things about her own people, to love thy neighbour (everyone understands who’s the neighbor in their own way, and for Lyoha that was the Russian people), Lyoshka was taught by his parents’ example—their own gentle nature and homey warmth.

You have no right to utter a word, or even be offended or annoyed, Lyoha!—Lyoha’s inner voice told him and then added—You must endure!

Tekstilshiki in winter, Moscow, 2000s or 2010s.

Well, deny it or not, you are a comprador bourgeoisie and you know it, Lyoha. It is unpleasant to admit that you belong to this class of parasites, or rather servants of real parasites, but on the flipside, it was quite lucky to have a relatively comfortable life in Russia in that historical period. It would be foolish to refuse it, especially since his parents were not really some kind of bloodsucking monsters. Mum built her career in boutique private banks, dad made it in public relations for multinationals. All their life they have always paid their taxes, never received any bribes and if they paid any, they were for speeding tickets back in the 1990s. They have always done their jobs in accordance with the law. If the law was dodgy at some point, well, it’s not the parents who made them, and they were certainly not the rebels to question or fight against them. Yes, from early childhood, Lyoshka recalls, every morning began with the sounds of Echo Moskvy in the kitchen, but there was never any self-hate at home, no one repented for their own Russianness. The word ‘bydlo’ [White trash] was rarely used at home to describe others and no one at home told Lyoha not to associate with someone because they were of a lower social class.

Lyoshka did not grow up as a typical upper-middle-class liberal with a sense of entitlement. In the 1990s, although his parents voted for Yeltsin, like everyone else at that time, they still despised him and his entire gang. All of the Timoshenko family often stayed at the shabby dacha [Russian summerhouse, and to have one in family ownership at the end of Soviet Era was quite common even among working classes] with his grandparents. They helped grow potatoes, berries and vegetables in the garden, and later in the year to pickle the vegetables for the winter. Then towards the end of the 1990s when most of the economic horrors had passed, trips to the dacha were replaced with trips to Turkey in the summer, and at the same time his grandparents replaced their garden with flowers or lawns. It was much more exciting to go to a large supermarket with choice where everything was cheap, just as it was much more fun to go to an “all inclusive” resort for a couple of weeks than to the native dacha. The whole family really liked it there—these were the first trips abroad for everyone in the family. The Iron Curtain was indeed very real up until 1992.

Dachas

At the very beginning of the 2000s, like everyone else, the entire family was inspired by the handsome and sharp young president, and the careers and lives of both his parents were really boosted then compared to the 1990s. Only by the end of that decade (after Lyoha graduated from secondary school) did his parents move to the prestigious Stalinist housing complex at Rostovskaya Embankment from the drab proletarian (even in the name!) Tekstilshiki (literally Textile Workers’ in Russian) district. When Lyoshka came to visit his parents at their new place, while still living in Moscow, he felt a little bit out of place. He continued to think of himself as a “man of the people,” although, of course, it was quite laughable for him to think so.

Still, none of the Timoshenko family uttered at home very fashionable phrases of that era amongst (((refined Russians))) such as “I need to go on vacation (abroad) where there are no other Russians.” It would even have sounded out of place. Why would you hate yourself for what you are?

His mum continued to complain about her life, and Lyoha remembered a recent similar conversation with a classmate from Moscow State University. He also had a wonderful view from his apartment which Lyoha admired when they had their regular video calls. He was sitting on his balcony in a high-rise apartment in a Stalin’s skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment, which he inherited from his grandfather, a Soviet general, a World War II veteran.

That friend, like Lyoha, or even to a greater extent Lyoha’s parents, belonged to the same stratum—the middle layer of the Moscow upper middle class, although this ‘tovarish’ [literally comrade in Russian] always claimed that he’s also a man of the “people.” In fact, specifically he meant the “Soviet people” (but not Russian!), for he considered himself “red-brown.” He was proud that his brother had even participated in those events [September/October 1993 patriotic uprising against (((the Yeltsin’s regime))) in Moscow that was in the end put down by pro-government tanks].

However, as Marx said that one’s social being determines one’s consciousness, during a recent call with this (((Felix))) (even his name was a bit Soviet!) … this comrade very rudely denounced the war. He called Putin a “Nazi who went completely bonkers,” lamented the loss of his refined lifestyle, and just like Lyoha’s mother, he easily dismissed his remarks about the Ukrainian tortures of the Russian soldiers, arguing that they supposedly knew how they would end up after crossing the other state’s border. And at that point Lyoha, just like now, also felt physically disgusted and angry, but he did not dare to argue. Though he was capable of doing so, at the end of the day, talk is cheap at this stage. What moral right had he to lecture as a person from well-fed and calm London where there is no war (neither real nor economic)? Especially to lecture his close friends or his family. Who knows what Lyoha himself would say, if he were living in Moscow today? Endure!—said an inner voice, To remain silent in front of a friend costs nothing to you. However deep inside Lyoha could not keep himself from chuckling that Felix, a communist-rentier with two apartments on the Garden Ring (a prestigious ring street that goes around central Moscow) and other inherited wealth from his communist-party functionary ancestors, who used to belittle pre-Revolution Russian bourgeoisie and nobleman for being so attached to their wealth and possessions, got extremely worried when his wealth and possessions became at risk, and now he himself may become a victim of a new Russian revolution and the enraged Russian volk.

• Mum: How is Ollie?—she found a compromise and calm topic.
• Lyoha: He’s a sweet and magical gnome as always. Today I’m seeing them all and I bought a bear doll for my beloved nephew. Let me show you!

He smiled with pleasure, going back to the open space in the office for his bag.

Go to Part 3.

Go to Part 1.

SAMMY LEE AND LES GIRLS

Sammy Lee (born Samuel Levi in Canada in 1912) was the other half of the subversive nightclub and sex business that gained prominence at Kings Cross during the early 1960s. Lee came to Australia in 1937 as part of a touring jazz band, and had prior experience with clubs in Canada. He began with The Roosevelt and Sammy Lee’s Theatre Restaurant, both on Oxford Street, where the illegal liquor sales and late bar hours saw him (as well as Saffron) dragged in front of the Liquor Royal Commission in 1954. Lee’s nightclub and restaurant portfolio grew to operate other popular venues during the era, such as the Latin Quarter (a favourite haunt of Sydney gangsters), Club Flamingo and the strip club Pigalle, but undoubtably his most enduring venue was the Carousel Club and its celebrated revue Les Girls, located in the heart of Kings Cross at 32 Darlinghurst Road.

The Carousel Club was originally opened in 1963, jointly by Lee Gordon, Reg Boom and Sammy Lee, Gordon’s last major venture before his death. The venue began exhibiting drag queens under the title Jewel Box Revue, a name Gordon likely took from a Miami-based drag revue that operated in Florida during the 1950s.[1] Gordon had exhibited the French transsexual performer “Coccinelle” at one of his Kings Cross venues in 1959, and sneaking men into the line-up had become an in-joke at strip clubs, but this was the first proper drag queen venue in Australia, specifically dedicated to openly cultivating this form of homosexual gender-bending “art.” Operating in a building owned as you would expect by Saffron, Lee took over sole management of the venue in 1964, remaining until his death in 1975. The drag queen revue changed its name to a performance name which ended up being more identifiable than the name of the club itself. This troupe included the performer “Carlotta” (Richard Byron), who became Australia’s most famous drag performer and transsexual media personality while at the venue, and led the revue for nearly 20 years. Lee brought Les Girls to Melbourne in 1971, premiering at the Ritz Hotel in St Kilda, allegedly the first (official) drag performance to take place in the city, which included a performance of Hava Nagila by drag queen “Cinnamon Brown.”[2]

LEE GORDON TAKES ON WHITE AUSTRALIA

Up until the 1950s, the music industry in Australia was a quaint affair and most historians use the word “parochial” as a description of the scene at the time. Live entertainment and music promotion were still dominated by variety-entertainment companies Tivoli and J.C Williamson, and foreign musicians rarely made it to Australia, as promoters had to contend with the “tyranny of distance” that marked the country for its first 160 years.[3] The sheer remoteness of Australia made bringing out foreign acts an expensive and time-consuming affair, in particular for the most popular performers, who balked at the 22-day boat trip. As such, the country managed to keep the worst excesses of the jazz age and the ensuing eroticism far from its shores. To listen to famous jazz musicians, Australians had to settle for imported gramophone records produced by the Jews at Tin Pan Alley. In the aftermath of a disastrous first Australian tour by a Black jazz troupe in 1928, Australia even established a de-facto color ban on Black jazz performers entering the country.

The tour, promoted as “Sonny Clay’s Colored Idea” by J. C. Williamson,[4] was marred by scandal after members of the band had their Melbourne apartment raided by police, who found five Australian women amongst a group of revellers. The band had successfully toured Sydney (residing in apartments in Kings Cross[5]) but came under intense scrutiny by the Commonwealth Investigation Branch[6] and local police. There was no law against women simply drinking while being in the presence of a man, colored or not, so the women were let off by a judge due to a lack of evidence that anything untoward occurred. O’Connell alleges that two of the women were in fact police informants, working as part of an entrapment plot designed to get the Sonny Clay troupe deported.[7] Nevertheless, the incident was turned into a major miscegenation scandal in the press and the government acted swiftly to deport the band, while introducing new criteria on entrance applications for negro performers. Alongside being “of general good character,” they also had to demonstrate an ability to “raise the local standard”—a control designed to exclude jazz music, which degraded the local character.[8] How exactly these criteria came to be abandoned by 1954 is unclear; in all likelihood, the evolution of jazz music diminished the overtly racial nature of genre, and the criteria had fallen by the wayside. But what is clear is that a Jew saw an opening and soon made it his own. Enter Lee Gordon.

Brought on by the jet age and the ever-increasing dominance of American music, Lee Gordon was the first to demonstrate that the tyranny of distance was broken, and he became the pioneer in bringing leading American performers to Australia. Born Leon Lazar Gevorshner in 1923, Gordon was a former sales merchant and bookings manager at the Tropicana nightclub in Cuba. He moved to Australia in 1953 to pursue concert promotion at the suggestion of friend and fellow concert promoter Arthur Schurgin, who remained Gordon’s business partner and American contact.[9] Once settled, Gordon set up an office at the periphery of Kings Cross (on Bayswater Road), close to the stadium where he would soon be exhibiting the Sydney leg of his tours.

Under the name Big Show tours, these star-studded performances combined multiple artists as a package event, which at the time was more economical than running individual tours for each artist. The list of names Gordon brought to Australia is a who’s-who of the most prominent performers at the time, covering every popular genre, but Jazz and Rock & Roll were the main fare. Gordon didn’t just bring his shows for a whirlwind Sydney/Melbourne trip, he ran lengthy country-wide tours that brought performers to even the smaller cities like Newcastle and Hobart. With his Big Show tours, Gordon had also broken the de-facto ban on bringing Black jazz musicians to Australia that had held since the Sonny Clay incident. His first tour in July 1954, six months after the Saperstein brothers brought the all-Black basketball troupe the Harlem Globetrotters to Australia, featured Black singer Ella Fitzgerald in a racially integrated jazz line-up alongside Jewish artists Buddy Rich and Artie Shaw (Arshawsky), all paid on a percentage basis and not a fixed fee.[10]

Black performers imported by Gordon (as well as Martin and Brodziak) just kept on coming during the 1950s—names like Louis Armstrong, Sammy Davis Jr, Eartha Kitt, Nat King Cole, Winifred Atwell and Harry Belafonte—and it has not subsided ever since. The impact of these racially integrated tours on racial sensibilities, through mass exposure to the racial “other” that had so perturbed earlier generations,[11] cannot be underestimated. With every new successful Black musician brought into the country by Jews, the White Australia Policy was looking more and more out of date. Fitzgerald’s arrival in Australia was even accompanied by teary headlines that she had been racially discriminated against by Pan-Am Airlines. Perhaps, people were starting to think, we Australians were being too harsh in our racial policy and there is no real harm in letting some in; did Australia really need protection from people like Ella Fitzgerald?

Gordon shifted into the nightclub scene in the early 1960s and his spendthrift ways and financial woes eventually led him to collaborate with cash-rich Abe Saffron. In need of a successful tour, Gordon invited Saffron along on a trip to Las Vegas in 1959 to secure another Frank Sinatra tour,[12] where it is likely Saffron made (or strengthened) his connection to the Jewish mob. Among Gordon’s last endeavours was the notorious Sydney tour of Jewish comedian Lenny Bruce (Leonard Schneider) in 1962. Bruce spent much of his fortnight in Sydney lurking around Kings Cross and searching for heroin, but Gordon made the mistake of booking Bruce at a genteel venue, the Aaron’s Exchange Hotel in the city, instead of a seedier Kings Cross location, as would have more suited his “sick comedy” style. Bruce became agitated by hecklers and headlines the next day carried the outrage of the performance:

SICK JOKE MADE AUDIENCE ILL; SICK COMIC’S SEX JOKES, WOMEN DISGUSTED; DISGUSTED BY ‘SICK’ JOKES, 4 WOMEN WALK OUT.[13]

Bruce’s further performances were all cancelled, another disaster for Gordon who had yet again pegged much of his financial stability on a successful tour. Gordon fled to London in 1963 after being arrested for drug possession and he was found dead in a hotel room shortly thereafter. Observing the Lenny Bruce scandal from afar—and brimming with scorn at how he had been treated—were three university students, Messrs. Neville, Walsh and Sharp, the future founders of the far-left OZ magazine which I discussed previously.

BRODZIAK Vs. MILLER

There are any number of events that can be pointed to as the definitive arrival of the sexual revolution in Australia. Some would say the approval of the birth control pill Anovlar in 1961, others the founding of Saffron’s strip clubs. Another contender would surely be the arrival of the Beatles on a wet and windy Sydney morning in July 1964, a catalytic event of the sexual revolution that flared the passions of Australian youth like no other before it. This was the cultural event of the decade, with wall-to-wall media coverage, and people lined up around the country to catch even a glimpse of the Beatles in a passing car or on a hotel balcony in Kings Cross. Sensible society just didn’t know what to make of the young women screaming their heads off in ecstasy at Beatles concerts, something that had not been encountered before in the country on this scale.  Those who attempted to warn Australia about the Beatles, their sexual lyrics, and the impact their style had on the young and on notions of parental authority, were exposed by the massive crowds and media frenzy as out of touch moral busybodies who no longer had a monopoly over moral discourse.

The man responsible for the tour was music promoter Kenneth Leo Brodziak, who had fortuitously (and cheaply) booked an Australian tour of the Beatles with manager Brian Epstein through his London agent (Cyril Berlin), as part of a talent scouting trip in July 1963. This was well before their explosion in popularity in the UK and their subsequent appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in the US. Born in Sydney in 1913 to an established Jewish family, Brodziak, alongside Harry M. Miller, followed in the wake of Lee Gordon’s ground-breaking tours as the next generation of Jewish promoters importing the biggest foreign entertainment acts to Australia.

Brodziak in 1994, showcasing his original Beatles contract (Rennie Ellis—State Library of Victoria)

Brozdiak founded Aztec Productions in 1946 which became a successful theater company, often working with David Martin at the Tivoli. His early productions skirted the line of what was acceptable under obscenity law at the time, often all-male performances which indulged his homosexual tendencies, and his first self-written play, Desire Brings Welcome, was banned in 1937 by the NSW government.[14] Other Aztec theatrical productions such as Rusty Bugles and The Square Ring (first performed in 1948 and 1953 respectively) came under scrutiny for obscenity, and the company held the Australian performance rights to the works of controversial playwright Lillian Hellman. By the late 1950s, Aztec was bringing in musical acts from Britain and America as well, including many Black artists, taking over from Gordon’s headlining tours which had fallen out of success.

At the time, Brodziak’s main commercial rival was the young Harry Maurice Miller, the founder of Pan-Pacific Promotions.[15] Their rivalry during the mid-1960s intensified into a tit-for-tat music promotion battle, each attempting to outdo the other. In 1964, Miller toured a group of Liverpool artists as the “Liverpool Sound” to take the wind out Brodziak’s Beatles tour. Brodziak responded with an exclusive stadium partnership deal that locked out Miller from the biggest Australian concert venues, and Miller countered with a tour of the Rolling Stones, held at a refurbished pavilion in the Sydney Showgrounds.[16]  Miller was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1943 to a Jewish rag-trader who migrated from London in the 1920s.[17] Miller made Sydney, specifically Kings Cross, his base of operations from 1964 and used his prior New Zealand connections to also arrange for many New Zealand tours of his contracted acts.

Brodziak and Miller soon put their differences aside and were collaborating on theater and music promotions. The pair, now in a partnership, were behind the Australian premieres of all the largest obscene and blasphemous theatrical productions and musicals (many written and first directed by Jews) that were coming to Australia at the time. Such is their reputation now as theatrical trailblazers of the cultural and sexual revolution, that even people who have never stepped foot in a theatre in their life would recognise some of the names: Hair, The Boys in the Band, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Godspell, and A Chorus Line.

Their joint production of The Boys in the Band in 1968 precipitated another major obscenity trial in Australia in the lead up to the Portnoy’s Complaint victory. During the Melbourne performance leg, three of the actors were successfully charged with obscenity, much to the outcry of the press. It was a sign of the times that the police could no longer ban a production even with blatant homosexual themes, and had to resort to targeting utterances of the word “f*ck” to record any sort of conviction.[18]

For the first Australian production of Hair in 1969, Miller and Brodziak set up the Minerva Theatre in Kings Cross for a two-year performance stint. The challenge was, how to get the scene of full nudity (which became the first in a theatrical production in the country) past the government censors in the form of Sir Eric Willis. Miller’s solution was to reduce the length of the scene and adjust the lighting of the stage to be as dim as possible[19], and he deliberately invited Willis to the afterparty of the preview, where he was bombarded with people praising him for allowing the performance. In the end, Miller got the result he wanted and Willis backed down:

I told them it was not my kind of show. That it denigrated all of the basic standards of life that we had been reared to believe were correct … the nude scene in my opinion was completely unnecessary … but it was so brief that, you know, I just thought it was harmless.[20]

Both Miller and Brodziak continued their careers into the 1990s, by then eclipsed by the next generation of Jewish promoters in Australia—Michael Gudinski and Michael Coppel. 

DEATH ON THE CROSS

The progression to violence, anarchy and death, unleashed by sexual passions, is the seemingly inevitable result of sexual liberation, one that has played out throughout history. The sexual license of the French Revolution, spurred on by pornographic pamphlets and the Marquis de Sade, gave way to the Terror, Jewish perversion in Weimar Germany stoked the inferno of communist and fascist violence in the 1930s, and the ’68 generation mutated into terrorist groups like the Weather Underground and the Baader-Meinhof Gang. The sexual liberation that Saffron and other Jews had help unleash at Kings Cross was no different. By the latter half of the 1980s, the Cross had devolved into a drug-infested horror show, beset by violence and gang warfare, and the homosexuals that had made the Cross their spiritual home were dying by the dozens of AIDS—a far cry from the once glitzy and glamourous Cross. By 1989, the situation had degenerated to such an extent, that some members of the NSW government even privately invited Abe Saffron, about to be released from prison, to re-take his throne as “King of the Cross” from the Lebanese criminals that had taken over and help the police clean up the mess that it had become.[21] That it was Jews like Saffron who had caused this mess in the first place was apparently not understood.

In Parts I and II of this series, this writer explored the important Jewish role in the downfall of obscenity laws in Australia in 1972, through the vehicle of Portnoy’s Complaint. At the time, Justice Ewen Ross upheld the ban on the book in Victoria, but in his judgement, he couldn’t help but admit that there was a ”new frankness” in the community when it came to matters of sex that made his decision a more controversial one.[22] This essay has outlined strong contenders for the origins of this new frankness amongst Australians—ones that can be strongly attributed to Jews. Centred around Kings Cross, it was the venues of Saffron and Lee, the Jazz and Beat music imported by Gordon and Brodziak, and the performances staged by Miller, that had done more than their fair share in grooming wider Australian culture prior to 1972 for the downfall of obscenity and the arrival of sexual modernity.

The death of Kings Cross finally came in February 2014, when the state government, tired of the amount of money and energy they were forced to invest into the precinct to stop the constant alcohol abuse and deaths from drunken brawls, implemented new “lockout laws” under the Liquor Act. These regulations, which applied selectively to Sydney’s nightlife precincts, barred patrons from entering venues after 1:30 am and from purchasing alcohol after 3 am. Opponents were quick to blame the laws for the shuttered strip clubs and the for-lease signs cropping up all along Darlinghurst Road; however, gentrification had already begun to take hold prior to this. Despite evidence that the laws had successfully reduced alcohol-fuelled deaths, the people of Sydney spent the next six years listening to wailing from progressives about the return of temperance and the death of their icon.

True to form as useless conservatives who fail to conserve anything—let alone even try to uphold basic moral standards, the NSW Liberal government gave in to public pressure and rescinded the laws in 2021. Hopes are high that the Cross can return as Australia’s premier “space for transgression,” but it almost doesn’t matter, Australia doesn’t need places like Kings Cross anymore:

The cruel reality is that Kings Cross has served its purpose. For decades it was the vanguard of modernism, sexual mores, design and nightlife and an escape from a parochial and puritan Australia. But now all that has changed.[23]

In an era where internet pornography is in every household, where “pride week” is celebrated at places of employment, and where drag queens read to children at local libraries,[24] it no longer has any currency in shocking the country and there is little left for Jews to transgress. In a way, every suburb in Australia has now become Kings Cross.

[1] Founded by “Danny Brown” and “Doc Benner.” Their background is unclear, but their slightly ethnic appearance and all too generic stage-like names hint at a Jewish heritage.

[2] H. Jay 1971, ‘BOY THESE LES GIRLS!’. Australian Jewish News, Friday 13 July, p.8.

[3] The phrase was popularised by historian Geoffrey Blainey in his book The Tyranny of Distance (1966), which argued that remoteness had shaped the development of Australia as a country.

[4] Organiser Harry Muller of J.C. Williamsons even had to lie on their visa applications to get the band into the country – D. O’Connell 2021, Harlem Nights: The Secret History of Australia’s Jazz Age, Melbourne University Press, Australia, p.65.

[5] Ibid., p.84.

[6] The Australian equivalent of the American FBI at the time.

[7] O’Connell, Op. Cit., p.184.

[8] Ibid., p.243.

[9] F. Van Straten 2007, ‘Lee Gordon – Hall of Fame’, Live Performance Australia, retrieved from: https://liveperformance.com.au/hof-profile/lee-gordon-1923-1963/.

[10] The Sun-Herald 1954, ‘Sydney Filmgoers to See STARS In The Flesh’, Sunday 11 July, p.44.

[11] The desire to avoid the emergence of a “colored problem” like that in America was a crucial impetus to the creation of the White Australia Policy.

[12] Saffron, Op. Cit., p.104.

[13] D. Kringas 2012, ‘Lenny Bruce’s Visit to Sydney 1961’, Dictionary of Sydney, retrieved from https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/lenny_bruces_visit_to_sydney_1962

[14] Sydney Morning Herald 1937, Ban on Play, Thursday 11 February, p.10.

[15] Co-founded by Dennis Wong of Chequers nightclub.

[16] D. Kimball, ‘Kenn Brodziak’, Milesago: Australasian Music and Popular Culture 1964-1975, retrieved from http://www.milesago.com/industry/brodziak.htm

[17] The name ‘Miller’ is likely an anglicized version of an eastern European Jewish name. Miller himself doesn’t give it away in his autobiography, or perhaps he simply doesn’t know either: H. M. Miller & P. Holder 2018, Harry M Miller- Confessions of a not-so-secret agent, 2^nd edition, Hachette, Australia.

[18] P. Mullins 2019, The Trials of Portnoy, Scribe Publications, Australia, p.124.

[19] Miller & Holder, Op. Cit., p.82.

[20] D. Kimball, ‘Hair’, Milesago: Australasian Music and Popular Culture 1964-1975, retrieved from http://www.milesago.com/Stage/hair.htm

[21] Saffron, Op. Cit., p.242.

[22] Mullins, Op. Cit., p.147.

[23] Nowra, Op. Cit., p.454.

[24] Drag Queen Story Hour is now a thing in Australia as well.

In his 1863 Gettysburg address, Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  In another speech–Lyceum 1838– he emphasized that, given its size and geographical location far from foreign powers, the United States (very much similar to China’s privileged status today) could not be conquered from abroad but only from within.  To preserve national unity and harmony, the sensible choice was to work together towards a common beneficial goal or to die by suicide from rebellious forces within its boundaries.

To paraphrase the biblical verse: “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword”(Matthew 26:52), we could say in a different manner:  the country that willingly betrays its foundational principles in favor of false tenets will in time see the very nature of its society collapse.  In the same context, Polonius, counselor to the king, tells Hamlet in Shakespeare’s drama:  “To thine own self be true.”

That is an accepted axiom of political longevity.  Human communities are subject to varying means of governance as well as the laws of physics (entropy).  We are given birth (Declaration of Independence, 1776; Constitution in 1787), we reach an age of maturity and greatness, and then, in temporal segments since the War in Vietnam, we descend into senescence and eventual extinction as a dominant power.  This is the pattern that major countries throughout history have followed.

According to historians and modern-day pundits (Cal Thomas, Martin Armstrong, John Glover and others), all empires or major political powers are condemned to a pre-ordained death cycle within 250 years of their onset.  There are in the ancient world, notable exceptions: Persia, Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Carthage, et al. that survived longer.

America, in 2026 will be 250 years old (dating from the Declaration of Independence, 1776).  There are many objections by historians to this time line of self-destruction—although Lincoln rightly predicted that our downfall would come from within the country and not from hostile foreign powers.

The Greek, Roman, Persian, and Egyptian empires have long since passed away into historical oblivion.  Modern-day France (born in 1789 with the French Revolution) is a pale relic of the Napoleonic domination of Europe in the early nineteenth century. The prestige and economic prosperity it once enjoyed from its now defunct world-wide empire can no longer justify its aspirations to be a global power.

We are now, some 246 years after our birth as a nation, in a period of senescence.  To the extent that we never sought international dominance, we are poorly situated to maintain our role as the world’s most powerful country in foreign and economic affairs.

Democracy is also a tired and fragile system of government; autocracy and oligarchy are becoming more and more attractive to the modern politician.

Centralized government lets you bypass the will of the people; it permits leaders to resolve complicated issues without having to seek the approval of the common weal.  Dogmatism of this sort promotes single-party rule with its unfortunate consequences, as history has demonstrated time and again.

So the physicists say, our universe is condemned to extinction in the far, far distant future; if this is true and the earth’s immediate existence is compromised by global warming and other man-made abuses, we need to find alternative ways to escape the threat of planetary decline as predicted by scientists.

Our sacrificial attempts to purify the planet are mocked by foreign powers that pollute at will (China and India in particular with almost 2.7 billion inhabitants collectively) in an effort to pursue economic prosperity and political hegemony for their vast populations.

In Africa, animal species are disappearing as poor nations grant poachers free access to their sanctuaries to hunt elephants for their tusks and rhinos for their horns.  Brazil does little to prosecute or deter farmers from destroying trees to create arable land in the Amazon.

We need to view interstellar space as the new frontier—a pathway to the stars or planets such as Mars where human communities can be created as an escape venue from the inevitable dying of our planet.  It might be interesting to speculate about what Planet Earth will become one hundred or more years from now as millions of settlers leave our sphere to resettle on Mars—the new Wild West.

Will wars among the surviving countries on Earth be so devastating that life itself will be compromised?  Will nations, in a desperate effort to preserve their viability, make peace or at least sign a truce, putting aside highly destructive weaponry for the sake of survival?

Unfortunately, we are genetic victims of our origins more than a million years ago.  Waging war to preserve existence and national (or tribal) safety is engrained in our psychological nature.  The military-industrial complex promotes international conflicts to keep its industries profitable.  No era in human history has been without disastrous warfare and conflict.  The future will not be an era of Pax Americana.

The military hierarchy rewards those who have served valiantly in combat.  Without war, the officer corps becomes restless, knowing full well that only on the battle field could their promotions in rank be assured.

Intelligence agencies and law enforcement are being weaponized against dissenters.  Democracy or a representative form of government is now an inconvenience more than a necessity.

Talk shows, movies, and media programs are rife with discussions about how slow and inept true democratic procedures are.  In the eyes of current administrations, getting quick answers to thorny questions is more important than obtaining accurate results without rushing to conclusions.

The sanctuary cities and states (California) that welcome illegal immigrants act in willful contravention of federal laws.  No one in Congress will impose legal sanctions on these “blue” states or cities.

What if America, overwhelmed by millions of unvetted immigrants, abandons its traditions and becomes a compilation of warring tribes and ethnic groups?  As Lincoln predicted, suicide from inside will surely be a reality within a few decades.

America will continue to be a privileged geographical location, a massive presence in the Western world, but how can it once again become a player in the Eastern hemisphere? China is now the dominant force throughout this region. Any attempt to limit its military expansion within its sphere of influence would be met with strong resistance.

We are in a tenuous situation financially.  The dollar is still the world’s reserve currency.  However, according to current trends, China will eventually replace us as the major economic force in the world; as a result, they will demand that a basket of currencies, not the dollar, become the currency of world exchange.  This assault on the American dollar, once it is replaced or no longer enjoys its privileged status, will have a disastrous effect on our economy.  It will shift the equilibrium of political power throughout the world.

More than thirty trillion dollars in debt, the American economy cannot sustain its current rate of spending and the massive acquisition of debt.  In due time, its bonds will be marketed at a discount.  Social programs will not be able to be adequately funded; military expenditures will be reduced, economic incentives will be curtailed, etc.  The long-anticipated recession will occur and Americans of all stripes will struggle to adjust their lifestyles.

An increasing percentage of the national debt will be interest payments to foreign investors, in particular to countries that have regularly acquired our debt: Canada, Great Britain, China, and Japan.

None of the current spending programs will be implemented effectively with a corresponding lack of adequate funding.  The Treasury cannot keep on printing money (“funny money”) in an inflationary period.  But it does.

Sooner or later, the national debt will bring about a collapse of our economic safety net: the belief in the so-called unshakeable strength and durability of the American economy.

The uninhibited allocation of recent funds (the “Inflation Reduction Act”) and student loan forgiveness strain the imagination.  Much of the money set aside for infrastructure initiatives goes to programs that have nothing to do with roads or bridges.

For example, to encourage the purchase of more electric vehicles, the government has proposed offering a generous subsidy to consumers (~$7,500).  It has been reported that car manufacturers will then raise the price of their vehicles in keeping with the amount of the buyer’s subsidy, thus indirectly rewarding manufacturers to produce more electric cars at very high prices, especially compared to comparable gas-powered vehicles.

As stated above, the growth of the Asian population in America, especially Chinese, will provide a fifth column of sorts to undermine  American scientific achievements and eventually its world dominance in computer and technological innovation.

The Chinese are aggressively purchasing vast tracts of land for agricultural products and investing in American corporations that serve an economic or political purpose.  G-5 and Tic-Toc are prime examples of this incursion.  They have also invested in South American countries (Venezuela and others) in an effort to spread their influence throughout the world.  The Chinese have heavily invested in Canada, Africa, and Mexico as well.

While we are obsessed with feminism, critical race theory, and woke-dominated issues, the Chinese are methodically implementing their long-term plan of global domination.  We are not equipped to fight a land war in Asia, and our Navy is inferior to its Chinese counterpart.

We do not have a coherent plan of action if China invades Taiwan or attempts to take over some of the neighboring islands. The power vacuum created by weakness is always exploited in a political and military context.

All in all, there is nothing new in these comments.  President Biden is compromised by his family’s connection with Chinese business interests (via his son Hunter and his brother).  He is not respected in Asia.  If Japan perceives it cannot be protected by American military power, it will seek other means of defense in acquiring atomic weapons and rapidly expanding its military capabilities.  They will be tempted to enter into alliances with other major players in the Far Eastern zone to protect their interests.

If America does not show resolve to intervene on their behalf against Chinese aggression, Japan may demand that American troops be withdrawn from their territory.  South Korea may follow a similar path of autonomy if the United States doesn’t express the will to protect its peninsula from military threats from the Chinese and North Koreans.

A destabilized Far East will not bode well for American influence in the area.  It is foreseeable that major global corporations will side with the Chinese to preserve their massive economic presence on the Chinese mainland.  American stockholders, for the most part, will remain silent and not challenge corporations who portray the Chinese as reasonable and sensible business partners.

If he could survey the current ruptures in the American political scene, Abraham Lincoln would be appalled by the tribalism and identity politics that have severely divided our nation.  The coastal elites and the bureaucrats in the “Washington Swamp” are more and more convinced that the barriers of our Constitutional Republic can be breached with little or no opposition. We are entering by all measures a post-Constitutional phase of our governance.

Unless there is a political renaissance in the Republican Party, the Democrats will continue to exert an inordinate influence in the restructuring of America’s destiny.  The more conservative enclaves in the South and mid-West will be displaced or repressed by regulations and laws that go against their interests.

How long will the “forgotten” millions who supported Trump stay silent?

Revolutions seldom come from frustrated and enraged workers or lower middle-class malcontents, but from those in positions of power who see their influence blocked or bypassed by political entities that work to enhance their own quest for power.

America’s decline, both globally and domestically, will be the subject of major concerns in the decades to come.  Are we now on the cusp of a national and international fall from power as dictated by historical norms or can this trend be offset by a new policy of returning to the democratic principles of the past that were so successful in holding our nation together?

In the long run, what would Abraham Lincoln have said?

Could he have restored unity without a Civil War or military suppression of dissenting voices?