“Antisemitism and the Stress Test of Democracy” with Peter Kurti

Description

In this week’s Middle East Forum podcast, guest moderator Michael Rubin speaks with Peter Kurti, director of the Culture, Prosperity, and Civil Society Program at the Center for Independent Studies, about Australia’s reckoning with antisemitism after the Bondi Beach massacre , and what it reveals about the resilience of Western democracy.

Kurti argues that antisemitism functions as a stress test for liberal democratic institutions, exposing moral hesitation, political evasion, and institutional weakness long before broader breakdowns become visible. Australia’s experience, he explains, illustrates how the failure to name ideological threats corrodes public trust and democratic legitimacy.

The conversation examines how political euphemism and “discursive displacement” prevent governments from acting on intelligence, why efforts to trade free speech for social cohesion backfire, and how hate-speech laws can be used to shield failed integration policies from scrutiny. Kurti also addresses immigration vetting, the importation of foreign conflicts, and the erosion of bipartisan support for Israel.

A wide-ranging Q&A explores whether multiculturalism can survive without shared civic values, what Bondi means for the United States, Britain, and Europe, and why democracies that cannot defend moral clarity, free speech, and institutional integrity risk failing not just Jews, but themselves.