Australian Prime Minister’s Joy Division T-Shirt Sparks Major Political Controversy

The biggest story in Australian politics this week has involved the Prime Minister wearing a Joy Division T-shirt. On Oct. 23, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, of the center-left Labor Party, was filmed and photographed exiting his plane wearing a tee with the cover art from 1979's Unknown Pleasures rather than the customary suit and tie. Five days later, Sussan Ley, leader of the conservative Liberal Party (confusing!) criticized Albanese for wearing the shirt in a speech before parliament. Describing Albanese's sartorial choice as a "profound failure of judgment," Ley attempted to frame Joy Division as antisemitic because the band is named after "a wing of a Nazi concentration camp where Jewish women were forced into sexual slavery."

Some historical context: As The Guardian points out, this is how the Joy Division was portrayed in the 1953 novella House Of Dolls, but it's contested whether Jewish women were among those forced to work in this way. In a separate Guardian report, a spokesperson for the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum says, "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 adds, "I am not an expert on the history of punk music," but emphasizes 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."

Back to Australia's manufactured controversy: The Joy Division tee has dominated headlines this week, as right-wing Sky News made hay with the situation, citing many of Ley's same talking points. There have also been puns. Australian Jewish groups, however, have passed on the chance to condemn Albanese, and the prime minister is not apologizing. His fellow Labor official Pat Gorman cited the widespread popularity of Joy Division — and in particular the Unknown Pleasures shirt, a staple of Hot Topic and similar vendors — 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."

Check out Ley's speech below.