Still in Crisis! The Weaponisation of Humour

In April this year, a flashmob descended on Brisbane’s King George Square. With most dressed in unkempt blonde wigs and many with clothing featuring watermelons, they began to sing and dance to John Farnham’s 1988 hit “Two Strong Hearts” and its popular verse ‘we’ve got two strong hearts, reaching out together like a river to the sea’. Dubbing themselves a ‘Farnsy Flash Mob’, the group had gathered to protest the Queensland Crisafulli Government’s recently enacted hate speech law, which specifically outlaws the phrases—‘globalise the intifada’, and ‘from the river to the sea’—popular international slogans of the Palestine solidarity movement.