As of this writing the Premier of New South Wales has ordered deliberate police brutality under a flimsy legal pretext designed for sporting events, and the bulk of the political class have united behind an absurd narrative of provocation that contradicts every account of the protest. It’s appalling, but in a sense it’s just another ramification of the accelerating semantic authoritarianism which has infected our public sphere. Protest slogans, WhatsApp groups, student camps, literary journals, writers’ festivals — they have all been subjected to chillingly relentless, if farcically inept, attempts to make them mean something other than what they obviously do. Writing always matters, but it matters most directly in the face of this kind of thuggish assault on language, our first and last commons. 

We can’t let the bastards have it.

Bugalwan, solidarity,  Overland Eds.