Racism or patriotism?: an eyewitness of the Cronulla demonstration of 11th December 2005 BarclayRyan WestPeter 2017 This article provides an eye-witness account of the Cronulla demonstration of 11th December 2005. It puts various interpretations of the demonstration to the test via the writers’ observations of what happened. They conclude that the ‘beach culture’ the residents were defining was seen by them as an expression of their patriotism rather than of prejudice towards their Lebanese antagonists. Copyright. Monash University and the author/s