Australian political storm: Is wearing a Joy Division t-shirt antisemitic?

A “profound failure of judgement.”

That’s how Australian opposition leader Sussan Ley described the actions of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese when he returned from the United States.

On 23 October, the leader of the centre-left Labor party stepped off the plane in casual attire, wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the name of influential British post-punk band Joy Division and the cover of their seminal 1979 debut studio album ‘Unknown Pleasures’.

It’s an iconic tee, featuring Peter Saville’s image of radio waves from pulsar CP 1919 from The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy. You'll find it sold everywhere from H&M to Hot Topic, and worn by both die-hard Ian Curtis fans and try-hard hipsters wishing to rack up credibility points in a desperate plea to seem edgy despite the fact they’ve only heard ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.

We don’t know where Albanese falls on that spectrum, but it’s a cracking album by a legendary band nonetheless.

Still, the sartorial choice wasn’t to everyone’s liking. Five days after the picture was taken, Ley, leader of the Liberal Party, decided to criticise Albanese’s shirt.

In a speech before parliament, Ley accused Albanese of making a “profound failure of judgment”, described the choice of t-shirt as "an insult to all", and insinuated that the band were antisemitic for being named after “a wing of a Nazi concentration camp where Jewish women were forced into sexual slavery.”

“At a time when Jewish Australians are facing a rise in antisemitism, when families are asking for reassurance and unity, the Prime Minister chose to parade an image derived from hatred and suffering,” she said, adding that the PM should “apologise immediately and explain why he thought this was acceptable.”

Have countless music fans been proudly vaunting an antisemitic reference all these years?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: No, the band Joy Division were not antisemitic. They were named Warsaw before changing their name to Joy Division, which is a reference to the 1953 novella “House Of Dolls” by Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Yehiel De-Nur (also known as Ka-Tsetnik 135633). The book describes “Joy Divisions”, which were groups of women imprisoned in concentration camps during World War II, kept for the sexual pleasure of other inmates. As a spokesperson for the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum told the Guardian: “As far as we know, there is no historical records of any ‘wing’ of a concentration camp where Jewish women were forced into sexual slavery.” The spokesperson emphasised that while brothels and sexual servitude in the camps did exist, most of the women forced to work “were German social misfit prisoners imprisoned in Auschwitz for prostitution.”

Sensitivity towards the Jewish community is important, especially at a time when members of said community are routinely conflated with the atrocities committed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. However, Sussan Ley’s barrel-scraping attempt to score political points problematically undermines the very cause she purports to defend. Indeed, her reactionary and fearmongering tactic reduces the ills of actual antisemitism, and says more about her desperation than anything else. To say nothing of how her comments reveal a certain level of cultural illiteracy, as affirming that a Joy Division t-shirt is an affront is equivalent to blurting out that members of Spandau Ballet were Nazi sympathisers because their name morbidly refers to the final jerking moments of the bodies of prisoners hung in Spandau Prison.

To those with an affinity towards band tees, you’re safe with both bands.

Albanese has not apologised for wearing the t-shirt and Australian Jewish groups have not condemned the PM. His fellow Labor official Pat Gorman has defended him, citing the widespread popularity of the band and the image, telling the Guardian: “It’s a T-shirt of a band he’s a fan of … their music has been around for a few decades... There’s big issues in the world, I don’t think T-shirts of mainstream bands is one of them.”

As for Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie, she added: “There’s a lot to legitimately criticise the prime minister about: trillion-dollar debt, skyrocketing house prices, and job losses in our heavy industrial sector. Wearing a T-shirt isn’t one of them.”

We’d also add that Ley should look into Joy Division – and maybe start with the track ‘She’s Lost Control’. It's a song about the fragility of life as Curtis (himself an epileptic) recounts seeing a colleague suffering a seizure. It features the somewhat appropriate lyrics:

“Confusion in her eyes that says it all,

She’s lost control,

And she’s clinging to the nearest passer-by,

She’s lost control.”