A personal note on identity
A response
I rarely respond to personal attacks. I generally see this as an inefficient use of my time and an unnecessary distraction. However, I want to respond to a line of personal attack that has recently proliferated, especially because it implicates my family.
Since October 2023, a number of my detractors have delighted in ‘exposing’ my supposed ‘real name’.
The Australian, for example, has attempted this line of attack in four seperate articles this month alone. The most recent was in yesterday’s print edition. Presumably this is their attempt to engineer some kind of identity politics ‘gotcha’ — and is somehow intended to discredit my work.
As they clearly do not intend to stop beating this drum, here are the facts:
My great-grandfather, Phillip Jo Chun, arrived on Aboriginal Land from China as a political refugee during the Boxer Uprising. My Grandparents, Malcolm and Joyce Chun, raised five daughters in Liverpool. When our parents divorced, my sister Mell and I both dropped our Dad’s surname and, along with our Mum, reverted to Chun.
This is our family name.
The most obsessive proponent of this bad-faith attack on my identity has been a certain former Schwartz Media writer. Her attempts to misname me and contrive some kind of public scandal have since been parroted (and shamelessly embellished) by a gaggle of Zionists and right-wing ‘journalists’ across pro-Israel media.
It’s worth noting that I’ve been the recipient of anti-Asian racism online for many years. Only recently have my detractors attempted this opposite line of attack.
My cultural background is no secret; I’ve had biographical writing about my antecedents published. However, you’ll never see me foreground or exploit my Asian lineage, as it’s not directly relevant to my anti-imperialist work.
Zionists might also be rattled to learn that my grandmother was Jewish. But I never foreground that aspect of my heritage either. To weaponise it would be disingenuous.
My opposition to imperialism and colonialism is a question of morality, rather than ‘identity and representation’.
Identity politics — with the obvious exceptions of Indigenous and national liberation struggles — is frequently counter-revolutionary.
And it should now be abundantly clear that the ‘model minority’ is a tool of colonialism.
I want to thank all the comrades who have reached out to me directly for a conversation, rather than absorbing the bullshit of my various detractors unchallenged.
Thanks for reading this response. Now I’ll return my focus to the urgent task of collective liberation.
