Is it really any wonder that so many people don’t trust the police? That they see them simply as a state-sanctioned gang in uniform? To suggest therefore that slogans such as Fuck the Police are used because we hate the police is to reverse the order of events that lead us to those statements in the first place.

In calling on the outraged to employ laudable virtues such as empathy, patience, and understanding towards those seeking to harm them, Aly performs an act typical of mainstream liberalism. That is, to obscure systemic injustices and destructive political realities in preference of a terse symbolism that fails to address those material realities. In this case, an orchestrated appeal to an abstract forgiveness that does nothing to alleviate the suffering already felt by those on the receiving end of Australia’s many violent practices.

In the aftermath of the heart-wrenching scenes from the Martin Place siege, a heart-warming initiative took the world by storm. The #Illridewithyou campaign took off when a stranger offered to accompany a Muslim woman in public to comfort and protect her from the inevitable violent backlash that follows such incidents. In a truly human gesture, one young woman reached out to support another, and a movement was born, quickly going viral.

More than a decade has passed since the September 11 attacks occurred and the subsequent War on Terror was launched. In that time, 12 sovereign nations have been subject to military invasion or interference, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and injured and millions displaced, and an unprecedented amount of laws have been proliferated radically expanding state and police powers, including intense surveillance of communities and zones of exception such as Guantanamo Bay.