The noisy racists of Australia and their cheerleaders in the Australian right-wing Murdoch press need to take the blame for the tragedies that have left hundreds dead in the seas around Australia. The policies they have demanded from successive governments culminated in yesterday’s tragedy that saw some thirty people, including women and children, drowned as they tried to reach Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean.
These racist cheer leaders are Tim Blair and Piers Akerman of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, and Andrew Bolt of Melbourne’s Sun-Herald newspaper. Bolt is still awaiting trial facing charges of racial vilification of Aboriginal people while Akerman famously accused Muslims of starting the February 2009 bushfires in Victoria. Both newspapers are owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Asylum seeking refugees are desperate to come to Australia and Australia’s racists are just as desperate to keep them out by trying to create an impression that public opinion actually supports their demands that boatpeople do not come to Australia. As a result, successive Australian governments, most of which are to some extent or another racist themselves and who have partially conceded to the racists demands in exchange for votes, have created conditions where asylum seeking refugees need to take extreme risks in order to try and touch Australian soil.
Ex-prime minister John Howard, a well known racist from way back, even went to the trouble of excising some of Australia’s island territories in order to deprive asylum seekers of any ability to claim having arrived in Australia. Refugees that reached these islands were transferred to off-shore facilities where they were kept in long drawn-out limbo whilst their claims were processed; a process that often took years for some refugees.
Following the recent tragedy off Christmas Island, Andrew Bolt, Australia’s most notorious racist and Islamophobe, was the first and quickest to jump on the politicisation wagon even before the tragedy had even finished unfolding by declaring in his online hate column that Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her Labor government had ‘blood on their hands’ for not being tough on asylum seekers claiming that by not being tough they are being ‘lured to their deaths’. Bolt later went on to accuse Australian Greens leader, Bob Brown, also of having ‘blood on his hands’.
Senator Brown had written an open letter saying, quite rightly, that it was Bolt that had blood on his hands for having supported the wars that created the refugee crisis in the first place.
The bottom line is this: Bolt and his comrades Tim Blair and Piers Akerman, together with their flock of supporters at their respective blogs, are racists that do not want non-European people, particularly Muslim people, in Australia. Bolt’s politicisation of this tragedy in order to advance his racist aims and his appalling and transparent facade of pretending to actually care about what happened to these people should disgust fair-minded Australians.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
AUSTRALIA’S TOP RACISTS RUSH TO ULTRA-RACIST ANDREW BOLT’S AID PRIOR TO HIS TRIAL FOR RACIAL VILIFICATION.
Two of Australia's foremost pseudo-intellectual racists and right-wing extremists, John Izzard, a frequent writer for the right-wing magazine Quadrant and Quadrant Online, and Keith Windschuttle, the well-known ‘Stolen Generations’ denialist and perverter of Aboriginal history, have both written articles defending Andrew Bolt as he is about to face Federal Court to answer charges of racial vilification.
The charges against Bolt have been made by a group of Aboriginal activists who are suing Bolt over two articles that he wrote for the Herald Sun newspaper that employs him. In the first article written in April 2009 and titled ‘White is the new black’, Bolt accuses Aboriginal people whose appearance happen to be white but who still prefer to identify themselves as indigenous, of being ‘political Aborigines’ and accuses them of identifying as Aboriginals for nefarious purposes.
In the second article titled ‘White fellas in the black’, written in August 2009, Bolt similarly accuses Aboriginal people of identifying themselves as Aboriginal in order to gain pecuniary advantages by way of grants and awards.
The question about who is black and who is white – or who is Aboriginal and who is not – is the centrepiece of the pending legal debate and both Izzard and Windschuttle discuss the background to this argument while carefully avoiding any direct discussion as to how this relates to Bolt’s case through fear of contemptuously pre-empting the courts decision.
There is also a secondary implication related to this case. Bolt argues that any decision restraining him from publicly speaking or writing about how he feels about this subject – or, indeed, any subject – violates his rights to freedom of speech and this aspect of the case is also touched on, albeit lightly, again presumably not to pre-empt any decision by the court, in the Izzard and Windschuttle articles.
If this were an isolated incident of a group of people who simply took umbrage to what someone else had said about them in the course of, say, incidental discussion then the matter would be easily resolved one way or the other by a court or even settled prior to going to court. But, in this case, it is not that simple.
While the question of ethnicity is at the centre of the debate from the legal point of view, and the question of freedom of speech will give cause for further debate depending on the judgement that will eventually be handed down, there are other, in many ways, even more important issues at stake here particularly when they relate to Andrew Bolt and his kind.
Bolt is a high profile journalist and blogger employed by a Rupert Murdoch-owned mainstream newspaper. He is well known for his racism particularly in relation to Aboriginal peoples. He is also a well known Islamophobe and xenophobe, climate change denier and pro-pollutionist.
Apart from the legal specifics relating to the case, there is also the moral question of why Bolt continually sees it necessary to vilify Aborigines and non-European foreigners at every opportunity at his blog. He does this mostly by innuendo, inference and the occasional classic double entendre whereby he writes on a subject seemingly totally unrelated to his usual run-of-the-mill xenophobic or racist rants but which is clearly meant to convey an opinion that is so offensive he could not possibly write it directly without facing further charges of vilification and discrimination. An example of this can be found here.
Bolt usually takes care not to cross the line himself. He does this by cutting and pasting sometimes quite long extracts of other peoples work obtained from all over the blogosphere and, if it’s really offensive, he ensures that the authors are out of legal reach. He then relies on his small but vocal coterie of regular commenters at his blog to endorse and amplify his intended opinion with many of the comments sometimes interpreting that opinion in a manner so crude and offensive that even Bolt or his moderators need occasionally to censor or ’snip’ it.
Bolt’s blog is not just an obscure column tucked away in some online digital recess but, rather, it is an upfront showcase of right-wing bigotry and outright racism. It’s not just Bolt the racist. The racism comes as a complete packing which is his blog; it’s ‘Bolt’s Racist Blog’, almost an entity in itself, which shamefully is paid for and published by Rupert Murdoch, and its influence, unfortunately, is potentially powerful.
It is unfortunate that Bolt’s racist views about Aboriginal people and boatpeople have now fraudulently influenced public opinion to the extent that politicians are now formulating policies relating to these peoples based on the ill-informed views of only a small but vocal rednecked and racist minority group of Australians.
One hopes that the complaints against Bolt are upheld and, while it is unlikely to see an end to the likes of Bolt’s racism, at least it would have demonstrated that Bolt’s racism is not acceptable in a multicultural society such as Australia’s.
This article can also be found at the Telling the History of the Twenty-First Century as it Really Is blog.
The charges against Bolt have been made by a group of Aboriginal activists who are suing Bolt over two articles that he wrote for the Herald Sun newspaper that employs him. In the first article written in April 2009 and titled ‘White is the new black’, Bolt accuses Aboriginal people whose appearance happen to be white but who still prefer to identify themselves as indigenous, of being ‘political Aborigines’ and accuses them of identifying as Aboriginals for nefarious purposes.
In the second article titled ‘White fellas in the black’, written in August 2009, Bolt similarly accuses Aboriginal people of identifying themselves as Aboriginal in order to gain pecuniary advantages by way of grants and awards.
The question about who is black and who is white – or who is Aboriginal and who is not – is the centrepiece of the pending legal debate and both Izzard and Windschuttle discuss the background to this argument while carefully avoiding any direct discussion as to how this relates to Bolt’s case through fear of contemptuously pre-empting the courts decision.
There is also a secondary implication related to this case. Bolt argues that any decision restraining him from publicly speaking or writing about how he feels about this subject – or, indeed, any subject – violates his rights to freedom of speech and this aspect of the case is also touched on, albeit lightly, again presumably not to pre-empt any decision by the court, in the Izzard and Windschuttle articles.
If this were an isolated incident of a group of people who simply took umbrage to what someone else had said about them in the course of, say, incidental discussion then the matter would be easily resolved one way or the other by a court or even settled prior to going to court. But, in this case, it is not that simple.
While the question of ethnicity is at the centre of the debate from the legal point of view, and the question of freedom of speech will give cause for further debate depending on the judgement that will eventually be handed down, there are other, in many ways, even more important issues at stake here particularly when they relate to Andrew Bolt and his kind.
Bolt is a high profile journalist and blogger employed by a Rupert Murdoch-owned mainstream newspaper. He is well known for his racism particularly in relation to Aboriginal peoples. He is also a well known Islamophobe and xenophobe, climate change denier and pro-pollutionist.
Apart from the legal specifics relating to the case, there is also the moral question of why Bolt continually sees it necessary to vilify Aborigines and non-European foreigners at every opportunity at his blog. He does this mostly by innuendo, inference and the occasional classic double entendre whereby he writes on a subject seemingly totally unrelated to his usual run-of-the-mill xenophobic or racist rants but which is clearly meant to convey an opinion that is so offensive he could not possibly write it directly without facing further charges of vilification and discrimination. An example of this can be found here.
Bolt usually takes care not to cross the line himself. He does this by cutting and pasting sometimes quite long extracts of other peoples work obtained from all over the blogosphere and, if it’s really offensive, he ensures that the authors are out of legal reach. He then relies on his small but vocal coterie of regular commenters at his blog to endorse and amplify his intended opinion with many of the comments sometimes interpreting that opinion in a manner so crude and offensive that even Bolt or his moderators need occasionally to censor or ’snip’ it.
Bolt’s blog is not just an obscure column tucked away in some online digital recess but, rather, it is an upfront showcase of right-wing bigotry and outright racism. It’s not just Bolt the racist. The racism comes as a complete packing which is his blog; it’s ‘Bolt’s Racist Blog’, almost an entity in itself, which shamefully is paid for and published by Rupert Murdoch, and its influence, unfortunately, is potentially powerful.
It is unfortunate that Bolt’s racist views about Aboriginal people and boatpeople have now fraudulently influenced public opinion to the extent that politicians are now formulating policies relating to these peoples based on the ill-informed views of only a small but vocal rednecked and racist minority group of Australians.
One hopes that the complaints against Bolt are upheld and, while it is unlikely to see an end to the likes of Bolt’s racism, at least it would have demonstrated that Bolt’s racism is not acceptable in a multicultural society such as Australia’s.
This article can also be found at the Telling the History of the Twenty-First Century as it Really Is blog.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
ANDREW BOLT, AUSTRALIAN ULTRA-RACIST MURDOCH JOURNALIST, GETS TAKEN TO COURT ACCUSED OF RACIAL VILIFICATION.
At long last, a group of Aboriginal people are to take Australian journalist Andrew Bolt of Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Herald Sun’ newspaper based in Melbourne, Australia, to the Federal Court accusing him of racial vilification. The documents were lodged with the court on 7 September 2010, and the case is due to be heard this coming Wednesday, 29 September 2010.
For years Bolt has been vilifying people who identify themselves as being Aboriginal accusing them of abusing their racial identity in order to receive benefits and awards that are exclusively for Aboriginal people. Bolt seems to think that some people who identify themselves as Aboriginal are ‘too white’ to be Aboriginal. For Bolt, it would seem that the only test of Aboriginality is the colour of ones skin.
The group that are prosecting the matter are basing their claim about Bolt’s vilification on two articles Bolt had written and that were published in the ‘Herald Sun’ newspaper. The first appeared in Bolt’s Column and blog on 15 April 2009 and was titled ‘White is the New Black’, and the second appeared as an opinion piece on 21 August 2009 titled ‘White fellas in the black’. In both articles Bolt attempts to vilify people with pale skin and who identify as Aboriginal by implying that they are frauds. Bolt uses his own brand of genetic rhetoric of eye, hair, and skin colour to support his claims.
There’s a certain kind of inverse irony with Bolt’s racial views. Readers may remember the 1978 made-for-television film, ‘Holocaust’, about the attempted genocide of European Jewry by the Nazis during World War 2. In it there was a scene which depicted Himmler, the head of the SS, witnessing the execution of captured Jews by shooting. As the naked prisoners were being lined up prior to being shot, Himmler noticed a young man who to Himmler didn’t appear to be Jewish. Himmler called him over to ask him if he was Jewish. The young man readily identified himself as Jewish to which Himmler then responded: “Then I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do for you”. The youth then returned silently to his place at the execution pit where he and the others lined up with him were then shot. For the Jewish youth who was murdered, his Jewish identity was so important to him that he was prepared to lose his life for it despite the opportunity of possibly saving himself from dying that particular day.
For Aboriginal people, racial identification is also important. It may not be about life or death today, but it may well be about the survival or demise of Aboriginal heritage in the future if the likes of racists like Andrew Bolt are successful in denying those that identify as Aboriginal of their heritage.
One can only hope that this prosecution will be successful.
For years Bolt has been vilifying people who identify themselves as being Aboriginal accusing them of abusing their racial identity in order to receive benefits and awards that are exclusively for Aboriginal people. Bolt seems to think that some people who identify themselves as Aboriginal are ‘too white’ to be Aboriginal. For Bolt, it would seem that the only test of Aboriginality is the colour of ones skin.
The group that are prosecting the matter are basing their claim about Bolt’s vilification on two articles Bolt had written and that were published in the ‘Herald Sun’ newspaper. The first appeared in Bolt’s Column and blog on 15 April 2009 and was titled ‘White is the New Black’, and the second appeared as an opinion piece on 21 August 2009 titled ‘White fellas in the black’. In both articles Bolt attempts to vilify people with pale skin and who identify as Aboriginal by implying that they are frauds. Bolt uses his own brand of genetic rhetoric of eye, hair, and skin colour to support his claims.
There’s a certain kind of inverse irony with Bolt’s racial views. Readers may remember the 1978 made-for-television film, ‘Holocaust’, about the attempted genocide of European Jewry by the Nazis during World War 2. In it there was a scene which depicted Himmler, the head of the SS, witnessing the execution of captured Jews by shooting. As the naked prisoners were being lined up prior to being shot, Himmler noticed a young man who to Himmler didn’t appear to be Jewish. Himmler called him over to ask him if he was Jewish. The young man readily identified himself as Jewish to which Himmler then responded: “Then I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do for you”. The youth then returned silently to his place at the execution pit where he and the others lined up with him were then shot. For the Jewish youth who was murdered, his Jewish identity was so important to him that he was prepared to lose his life for it despite the opportunity of possibly saving himself from dying that particular day.
For Aboriginal people, racial identification is also important. It may not be about life or death today, but it may well be about the survival or demise of Aboriginal heritage in the future if the likes of racists like Andrew Bolt are successful in denying those that identify as Aboriginal of their heritage.
One can only hope that this prosecution will be successful.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
AUSTRALIA: FROM WHITES-ONLY RACIST BACKWATER TO WELCOMING MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY – AND BACK AGAIN.
Julia Gillard’s latest stance on boatpeople has put Australia on a slippery path toward racist and religious hatreds that could see Australia heading toward an abyss from which there may be no return.
Ever since 9/11 when the US declared war on Islam – and make no mistake, the US, together with its Western allies, have effectively declared war on Islam – the Australian people, despite the best efforts of Pauline Hanson and John Howard, managed to keep a reasonably clear head in differentiating between terrorists that claimed to represent Islam and Muslims that were fleeing war-torn Islamic nations that sought refuge in Australia. During Howard’s final term in office it became clear that Australians had rejected the kind of racism that Howard was advocating. Australia became a place where refugees seeking asylum were made welcome by all but the most right-wing of Australia’s rednecked racists.
But something has happened between then and now.
Right-wing bloggers within the mainstream media, particularly within the Murdoch stable of newspapers, have of late made headway in influencing public opinion. The extreme right-wing Andrew Bolt, for example of Melbourne’s ‘Herald Sun’ newspaper, is well known for his anti-Islamic stance and his blatantly racist views. But, while his racist Islamophobic blog attracts only a very small but nonetheless vocal and relentless group of followers, Bolt’s standing is enhanced by his other media appearances on both radio (Bolt comments almost daily on MTR 1377 in Melbourne) and TV where he has appeared on the ABC’s current affairs programs, The Insiders and Q and A and occasional appearances on Channel 9's Today show. It is this radio and TV exposure that enhances Bolt’s image to his band of loyal supporters at his blog and widens his audience base to those susceptible to his brand of rhetoric.
While Bolt caters for the more extreme of Australia’s truly racist xenophobes, other journalists in Murdoch’s group of on-line newspapers, including his flagship newspaper The Australian, tend to be a little more subtle about their racist views. Greg Sheridan, The Australian’s foreign editor for example, writes that boatpeople are illegal immigrants saying:
“If we can solve the illegal immigration problem, it will only be through Indonesia's good offices.”
Right-wing columnists also write in Murdoch’s papers. Melanie Phillips, a well known extreme right-wing Islamophobe, appears regularly in Murdoch’s Australian press. Today she writes an outrageously fearmongering piece on the Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir claiming without any evidence whatsoever that it is:
“It is one of the most manipulative and effective recruitment fronts for the Islamic jihad, particularly among the educated Muslim young.”
The common denominator in these articles is always the fear of radical Islam.
It is this kind of blatant right-wing propaganda and deceit that is misleading many Australians and causing racial tensions in Australia to increase. The problem is compounded when Gillard tells the Australian people that it’s OK to be anxious about boatpeople and that they are not being racist by expressing those concerns. The fact is; people who do not accept boatpeople in Australia are very much racist. Why else would they object to them? And, to make matters even worse and in a transparent attempt to get ‘Howard’s racist battlers’ on side, Gillard has even reinforced the ‘it’s not racist to object to boatpeople’ notion by saying that John Howard was not a racist. This is playing racist politics at its very worst.
Australia is fast sliding into the same kind of extremist anti-Islam racism that is being witnessed today in the UK and Europe.
Extreme right-wing anti-Islamic groups are springing up everywhere. In Britain the English Defence League (EDL) has grown from being just a loose-knit football hooligan skinhead neo-Nazi group into a highly structured countrywide organisation that uses the internet to call its members to rallies in areas where there are large Islamic immigrant communities throughout Britain. EDL rallies are becoming increasingly violent as they deliberately seek to provoke Muslim youths in predominately Islamic areas.
In Europe, anti-Islamic groups have been organised to the point that they now co-ordinate their activities across Europe and around the world. Anti-Islamic politicians and political pressure groups have sprung up in many countries. Geert Wilders is the leader of the Netherlands third most popular political party, the staunchly racist and anti-Islam Party for Freedom, which has enjoyed strong success in recent Dutch elections.
In Europe and Britain anti-Islam racism has almost reached the point of no return. The next very short step is to the kind of violence that can quickly escalate into the sort of ethnic cleansing that was seen in the 1990s in the Balkans.
Australia is rapidly heading down that very same road. Julia Gillard has made a very naïve but incredibly massive blunder in caving in to the right-wing Islamophobic racists of Australia over the boatpeople issue. A series of myth-busting facts about boatpeople could easily have combated the lies and perpetuated myths that the extreme right-wing racists and Islamophobes rely on to spread their hatred.
Instead, she has played into their hands and has set Australia on the same path to potential ethnic disaster as Europe seems to be heading.
Ever since 9/11 when the US declared war on Islam – and make no mistake, the US, together with its Western allies, have effectively declared war on Islam – the Australian people, despite the best efforts of Pauline Hanson and John Howard, managed to keep a reasonably clear head in differentiating between terrorists that claimed to represent Islam and Muslims that were fleeing war-torn Islamic nations that sought refuge in Australia. During Howard’s final term in office it became clear that Australians had rejected the kind of racism that Howard was advocating. Australia became a place where refugees seeking asylum were made welcome by all but the most right-wing of Australia’s rednecked racists.
But something has happened between then and now.
Right-wing bloggers within the mainstream media, particularly within the Murdoch stable of newspapers, have of late made headway in influencing public opinion. The extreme right-wing Andrew Bolt, for example of Melbourne’s ‘Herald Sun’ newspaper, is well known for his anti-Islamic stance and his blatantly racist views. But, while his racist Islamophobic blog attracts only a very small but nonetheless vocal and relentless group of followers, Bolt’s standing is enhanced by his other media appearances on both radio (Bolt comments almost daily on MTR 1377 in Melbourne) and TV where he has appeared on the ABC’s current affairs programs, The Insiders and Q and A and occasional appearances on Channel 9's Today show. It is this radio and TV exposure that enhances Bolt’s image to his band of loyal supporters at his blog and widens his audience base to those susceptible to his brand of rhetoric.
While Bolt caters for the more extreme of Australia’s truly racist xenophobes, other journalists in Murdoch’s group of on-line newspapers, including his flagship newspaper The Australian, tend to be a little more subtle about their racist views. Greg Sheridan, The Australian’s foreign editor for example, writes that boatpeople are illegal immigrants saying:
“If we can solve the illegal immigration problem, it will only be through Indonesia's good offices.”
Right-wing columnists also write in Murdoch’s papers. Melanie Phillips, a well known extreme right-wing Islamophobe, appears regularly in Murdoch’s Australian press. Today she writes an outrageously fearmongering piece on the Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir claiming without any evidence whatsoever that it is:
“It is one of the most manipulative and effective recruitment fronts for the Islamic jihad, particularly among the educated Muslim young.”
The common denominator in these articles is always the fear of radical Islam.
It is this kind of blatant right-wing propaganda and deceit that is misleading many Australians and causing racial tensions in Australia to increase. The problem is compounded when Gillard tells the Australian people that it’s OK to be anxious about boatpeople and that they are not being racist by expressing those concerns. The fact is; people who do not accept boatpeople in Australia are very much racist. Why else would they object to them? And, to make matters even worse and in a transparent attempt to get ‘Howard’s racist battlers’ on side, Gillard has even reinforced the ‘it’s not racist to object to boatpeople’ notion by saying that John Howard was not a racist. This is playing racist politics at its very worst.
Australia is fast sliding into the same kind of extremist anti-Islam racism that is being witnessed today in the UK and Europe.
Extreme right-wing anti-Islamic groups are springing up everywhere. In Britain the English Defence League (EDL) has grown from being just a loose-knit football hooligan skinhead neo-Nazi group into a highly structured countrywide organisation that uses the internet to call its members to rallies in areas where there are large Islamic immigrant communities throughout Britain. EDL rallies are becoming increasingly violent as they deliberately seek to provoke Muslim youths in predominately Islamic areas.
In Europe, anti-Islamic groups have been organised to the point that they now co-ordinate their activities across Europe and around the world. Anti-Islamic politicians and political pressure groups have sprung up in many countries. Geert Wilders is the leader of the Netherlands third most popular political party, the staunchly racist and anti-Islam Party for Freedom, which has enjoyed strong success in recent Dutch elections.
In Europe and Britain anti-Islam racism has almost reached the point of no return. The next very short step is to the kind of violence that can quickly escalate into the sort of ethnic cleansing that was seen in the 1990s in the Balkans.
Australia is rapidly heading down that very same road. Julia Gillard has made a very naïve but incredibly massive blunder in caving in to the right-wing Islamophobic racists of Australia over the boatpeople issue. A series of myth-busting facts about boatpeople could easily have combated the lies and perpetuated myths that the extreme right-wing racists and Islamophobes rely on to spread their hatred.
Instead, she has played into their hands and has set Australia on the same path to potential ethnic disaster as Europe seems to be heading.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
AUSTRALIAN 'FACEBOOK' ANTI-RACISTS & MULTICULTURALISTS OVERWHELM AUSTRALIAN 'FACEBOOK' RACISTS
Australian racists recently set up a Facebook site called ‘Dear Boat People, Australia Says, “Fuck Off, We’re Full”’. As of writing this it has 7,132 Australian racists signed up to it. In response to this, however, Australian anti-racists and multiculturalists have set a Facebook site which is called ‘I am Australian and I Would Rather Immigrants Living Here Than Racists’. As of this writing, a very heartening 21,107 Australian anti-racists and multiculturalists had signed up to it and the number is growing by the hour.
Just the title of the racist Facebook site tells you much about the type of ‘Australians’ that these people are – pig ignorant, foul-mouthed and full of hate. The kind of comments that one will find at the Facebook hate site are the same as one will find at Andrew Bolt’s racist hate site at the Herald Sun newspaper. Like Bolt’s racist hate site, the Facebook hate site tends to exclude any dissenters from their commentary.
What the two diametrically opposed Facebook sites do demonstrate however is that the support for asylum seekers, Aboriginal rights and multiculturalism generally is overwhelming and exposes the racists of Australia as a minority extremist group that exists only on the edges of mainstream Australian society, a notion that flies in the face of racist hate sites like Andrew Bolt’s who, together with his tiny flock of racist bloggies, seem to think that, because Bolt is supported by a Murdoch-owned mainstream media newspaper, reflects the views of the majority of Australians. Clearly, it doesn’t!
Just the title of the racist Facebook site tells you much about the type of ‘Australians’ that these people are – pig ignorant, foul-mouthed and full of hate. The kind of comments that one will find at the Facebook hate site are the same as one will find at Andrew Bolt’s racist hate site at the Herald Sun newspaper. Like Bolt’s racist hate site, the Facebook hate site tends to exclude any dissenters from their commentary.
What the two diametrically opposed Facebook sites do demonstrate however is that the support for asylum seekers, Aboriginal rights and multiculturalism generally is overwhelming and exposes the racists of Australia as a minority extremist group that exists only on the edges of mainstream Australian society, a notion that flies in the face of racist hate sites like Andrew Bolt’s who, together with his tiny flock of racist bloggies, seem to think that, because Bolt is supported by a Murdoch-owned mainstream media newspaper, reflects the views of the majority of Australians. Clearly, it doesn’t!
Friday, April 30, 2010
AN URGENT NEED TO PUT AN END TO INTERNET AND MEDIA RACISM
According to a recent report, “Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes, along with academics and industry groups, are taking part in the forum, which was organised by the Australian Human Rights Commission and the Internet Industry Association”.
Commissioner Innes said, “In my view and the view of other[s] speaking at the forum today it’s the tip of the iceberg, there's a lot [of] racism out there.” The good news is that Robert McClelland, Australia’s Attorney General has asked the Australian Human Rights Commission to ‘investigate the doubling of complaints’. It’s a step in the right direction, but what McClelland should be doing is setting his own team up to investigate breaches of the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 and then vigorously prosecuting those that are stirring up racial and religious tensions via the media and the internet.
Right-wing anti-Islam and anti non-white immigration journalist/bloggers and their followers are, thanks to the right-wing mainstream media owners who support them, slowly making headway in creating an atmosphere in Australia that will eventually tear Australia apart racially – which, of course, is what they want.
Andrew Bolt is Australia’s most rabid racist and, thanks to his position with the Melbourne -based and Murdoch owned newspaper the ‘Herald-Sun’, attracts the most support from like-minded racists and other misguided Australians who are gullible enough to fall for Bolts and his followers fearmongering.
The doubling of complaints is very disturbing and has been due to the likes of Bolt and his colleagues and their followers increasing prominence in the mainstream media and on the internet via their blogs.
The only way to stop these people is to prosecute them. I believe that the evidence proving that much of their racism is in contravention to the Racial Discrimination Act is overwhelming just in the blogs alone; it just needs documenting and then handed over to the Attorney General or, alternatively, handed over to a barrister with a view to a private prosecution.
So far, no prosecutions of racist journalists have occurred. This has emboldened them to be even more blatant in their racism. It’s time those that deplore racism and all that it stands for to stand firm against it and support their prosecution and the shutting down of their racist views in public forums.
Free speech is one thing; advocating racial and religious hatred, violence and vilification is something else.
Many thanks to reader Peter for his input to the discussion.
Commissioner Innes said, “In my view and the view of other[s] speaking at the forum today it’s the tip of the iceberg, there's a lot [of] racism out there.” The good news is that Robert McClelland, Australia’s Attorney General has asked the Australian Human Rights Commission to ‘investigate the doubling of complaints’. It’s a step in the right direction, but what McClelland should be doing is setting his own team up to investigate breaches of the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 and then vigorously prosecuting those that are stirring up racial and religious tensions via the media and the internet.
Right-wing anti-Islam and anti non-white immigration journalist/bloggers and their followers are, thanks to the right-wing mainstream media owners who support them, slowly making headway in creating an atmosphere in Australia that will eventually tear Australia apart racially – which, of course, is what they want.
Andrew Bolt is Australia’s most rabid racist and, thanks to his position with the Melbourne -based and Murdoch owned newspaper the ‘Herald-Sun’, attracts the most support from like-minded racists and other misguided Australians who are gullible enough to fall for Bolts and his followers fearmongering.
The doubling of complaints is very disturbing and has been due to the likes of Bolt and his colleagues and their followers increasing prominence in the mainstream media and on the internet via their blogs.
The only way to stop these people is to prosecute them. I believe that the evidence proving that much of their racism is in contravention to the Racial Discrimination Act is overwhelming just in the blogs alone; it just needs documenting and then handed over to the Attorney General or, alternatively, handed over to a barrister with a view to a private prosecution.
So far, no prosecutions of racist journalists have occurred. This has emboldened them to be even more blatant in their racism. It’s time those that deplore racism and all that it stands for to stand firm against it and support their prosecution and the shutting down of their racist views in public forums.
Free speech is one thing; advocating racial and religious hatred, violence and vilification is something else.
Many thanks to reader Peter for his input to the discussion.
Friday, April 16, 2010
NEO-NAZI ‘STORMFRONT’ BLOG EMBRACES ANDREW BOLT’S SUPPORT OF WHITE SUPREMATISM
It seems Andrew Bolt’s utterly transparent pseudo-disgust of South African white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche’s racism is seen as support for the White supremacist cause among some at the neo-Nazi Stormfront blog.
In Bolt’s latest commentary about Terreblanche’s death, Bolt attempts to invoke journalistic professionalism, (as if in his own work he actually cared about journalistic professionalism), in order to defend the monster that is Terreblanche against allegations that Terreblanche may have been sexually abusing young men.
The comments at the ‘Stormfront’ blog generally support Bolt despite Bolt’s ‘apparent’, as far as at least one Stormfront member infers, support for Jews. Another ‘Stormfront’ member, however, implies that ‘Bolt has to support Jews, Israel and Zionism because he’s part of the Jewish-owned media’.
Bolt makes it quite clear in his column that the real enemy is not Terreblanche but the blacks of South Africa – which, of course, would reflect his own views about non-white non-Europeans everywhere, particularly in Australia.
In Bolt’s latest commentary about Terreblanche’s death, Bolt attempts to invoke journalistic professionalism, (as if in his own work he actually cared about journalistic professionalism), in order to defend the monster that is Terreblanche against allegations that Terreblanche may have been sexually abusing young men.
The comments at the ‘Stormfront’ blog generally support Bolt despite Bolt’s ‘apparent’, as far as at least one Stormfront member infers, support for Jews. Another ‘Stormfront’ member, however, implies that ‘Bolt has to support Jews, Israel and Zionism because he’s part of the Jewish-owned media’.
Bolt makes it quite clear in his column that the real enemy is not Terreblanche but the blacks of South Africa – which, of course, would reflect his own views about non-white non-Europeans everywhere, particularly in Australia.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
REVIEWING BOLT’S RACIST WEEK, 10 APRIL – 16 APRIL 2010, AND THE 2 MILLION HIT CON JOB.
During the past week Bolt put up some 17 posts that can be construed as explicitly racist or designed to educe racist and or religious vilification from his blog’s regular coterie of commenters.
On Saturday, 10 April, there were two posts; one on Sunday, 11 April; six on Monday, 12 April; four on 13 April; one on 14 April; two on 15 April, and xxx on Friday, 16 April.
This week all four of Bolt’s main target groups; boatpeople, non-white immigrants (especially non-white refugee immigrants) who engage in violent activities in Australia, Islam, and Aborigines, came into Bolt’s sights.
----
In an example of Bolt’s bloggies frothing at the mouth Islamaphobia one commenter, ‘Mick of Wiley Park’, wrote:
“If we had half a clue at all, as a bare minimum, all mosques would be bugged and monitored by ASIS, and searched for weapons. Any and all mosques busted for jihad-preaching and/or weapons should not only be closed down but bulldozed.”
To which several bloggies responded saying:
“Mick, agree 100% Time to stop this crap before it’s too late”, from the aptly named ‘Rob the Redneck’.
And:
“Any religion not preaching peace and harmony should be closed down and the preachers imprisoned as security risks”, from ‘Disgruntled’.
“It is only a matter of time before we have Australians blown to bits by these monsters. Then maybe we will have some action. I say, send all of them and their offspring back to where they came from. The poor women have no say in anything and are so brainwashed they would not know what to do with freedom. Why do they call these preachers clerics? They are a disgrace to humankind. There is supposed to be a law against preaching hatred and inciting people to kill. Why are the authorities here and in America so weak against these relics of the stone age?”, from the totally paranoid ‘Glenis of Qld’.
“Add to that all Islamic colleges and schools”, from hatemonger ‘Stephen P’.
And so it goes on.
------
During March of this year Bolt reported that there had been more than two million page views to his blog yet only 156,000 of them were unique views. That means some 92.2% of the hits were mostly from his regular bloggies, who multi-click several times a day which contribute to the boost in numbers. Just a glance through a page of comments to Bolt’s posts will demonstrate the extent to which Bolt’s regular bloggies contribute to his numbers by multi-clicking – and they’re just the ones that can be seen and counted. Many of them post a myriad of comments on each and every thread.
Bolt’s numbers paint a false picture that is designed to deliberately deceive by allowing ‘stray’ (casual) readers to believe that his is a populist blog and that, therefore, the views expressed must represent mainstream Australia. The reality is something completely different – and totally dishonest.
On Saturday, 10 April, there were two posts; one on Sunday, 11 April; six on Monday, 12 April; four on 13 April; one on 14 April; two on 15 April, and xxx on Friday, 16 April.
This week all four of Bolt’s main target groups; boatpeople, non-white immigrants (especially non-white refugee immigrants) who engage in violent activities in Australia, Islam, and Aborigines, came into Bolt’s sights.
----
In an example of Bolt’s bloggies frothing at the mouth Islamaphobia one commenter, ‘Mick of Wiley Park’, wrote:
“If we had half a clue at all, as a bare minimum, all mosques would be bugged and monitored by ASIS, and searched for weapons. Any and all mosques busted for jihad-preaching and/or weapons should not only be closed down but bulldozed.”
To which several bloggies responded saying:
“Mick, agree 100% Time to stop this crap before it’s too late”, from the aptly named ‘Rob the Redneck’.
And:
“Any religion not preaching peace and harmony should be closed down and the preachers imprisoned as security risks”, from ‘Disgruntled’.
“It is only a matter of time before we have Australians blown to bits by these monsters. Then maybe we will have some action. I say, send all of them and their offspring back to where they came from. The poor women have no say in anything and are so brainwashed they would not know what to do with freedom. Why do they call these preachers clerics? They are a disgrace to humankind. There is supposed to be a law against preaching hatred and inciting people to kill. Why are the authorities here and in America so weak against these relics of the stone age?”, from the totally paranoid ‘Glenis of Qld’.
“Add to that all Islamic colleges and schools”, from hatemonger ‘Stephen P’.
And so it goes on.
------
During March of this year Bolt reported that there had been more than two million page views to his blog yet only 156,000 of them were unique views. That means some 92.2% of the hits were mostly from his regular bloggies, who multi-click several times a day which contribute to the boost in numbers. Just a glance through a page of comments to Bolt’s posts will demonstrate the extent to which Bolt’s regular bloggies contribute to his numbers by multi-clicking – and they’re just the ones that can be seen and counted. Many of them post a myriad of comments on each and every thread.
Bolt’s numbers paint a false picture that is designed to deliberately deceive by allowing ‘stray’ (casual) readers to believe that his is a populist blog and that, therefore, the views expressed must represent mainstream Australia. The reality is something completely different – and totally dishonest.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
REVIEWING BOLT’S RACIST WEEK, 3 APRIL – 9 APRIL 2010.
Over the past seven days Andrew Bolt has put up some 12 posts that may be considered racist or designed explicitly to elicit racially or religiously vilifying remarks from people who comment at his blog.
On Saturday, 3 April, there was one; on Sunday, 4 April, he gave it a rest; one on the 5 April; three on 6 April; two on 7 April, four on 8 April, and, so far, one on 9 April.
Three of Bolt’s four main target groups; boatpeople, non-white immigrants (especially non-white refugee immigrants) who engage in violent activities in Australia, Islam, and Aborigines, came into Bolt’s sights this week. Only Aborigines were spared Bolt’s vilification.
One comment in particular from a person called ‘Phyllis’ sums up Bolt’s racist views:
NZ has become a conduit for raw sewage. If they wish to fill their country with scum, fine. It is now time for Australia to apply stringent entry criteria to Kiwi passport holders, and to actively discriminate against certain sub-groups.
‘Raw sewage’? ‘Scum’? The narrative and comments prior to Phyllis’s comment makes it clear that the people Phyllis are referring to are non-white non-European people that were refugee asylum seekers who were accepted by New Zealand, who, as New Zealand citizens, exercised their right to come to live in Australia. They have done nothing wrong at all, yet Phyllis recommends that Australia ‘actively discriminates’ against ‘certain sub-groups’.
This is racial vilification. It is both immoral and it is illegal, and Bolt, by allowing it to be published on a moderated blog, is as guilty as ‘Phyllis’ is of this disgusting piece of racial vilification, vilification that is endorsed by many others who comment at Bolt’s racist hate blog.
On Saturday, 3 April, there was one; on Sunday, 4 April, he gave it a rest; one on the 5 April; three on 6 April; two on 7 April, four on 8 April, and, so far, one on 9 April.
Three of Bolt’s four main target groups; boatpeople, non-white immigrants (especially non-white refugee immigrants) who engage in violent activities in Australia, Islam, and Aborigines, came into Bolt’s sights this week. Only Aborigines were spared Bolt’s vilification.
One comment in particular from a person called ‘Phyllis’ sums up Bolt’s racist views:
NZ has become a conduit for raw sewage. If they wish to fill their country with scum, fine. It is now time for Australia to apply stringent entry criteria to Kiwi passport holders, and to actively discriminate against certain sub-groups.
‘Raw sewage’? ‘Scum’? The narrative and comments prior to Phyllis’s comment makes it clear that the people Phyllis are referring to are non-white non-European people that were refugee asylum seekers who were accepted by New Zealand, who, as New Zealand citizens, exercised their right to come to live in Australia. They have done nothing wrong at all, yet Phyllis recommends that Australia ‘actively discriminates’ against ‘certain sub-groups’.
This is racial vilification. It is both immoral and it is illegal, and Bolt, by allowing it to be published on a moderated blog, is as guilty as ‘Phyllis’ is of this disgusting piece of racial vilification, vilification that is endorsed by many others who comment at Bolt’s racist hate blog.
Monday, April 5, 2010
ANDREW BOLT: OBSESSED BARKING MAD RACIST
Republished from 18 March 2010 post at Murdoch's Propagandists
Australian ‘Herald-Sun’ Murdoch columnist and propagandist Andrew “my best friend was an Aborigine” Bolt has become increasingly – and disturbingly – obsessive about race in Australia. His outburst yesterday was about Kim Collard, an artist who identifies as Aboriginal. Since Collard’s mother is part Aboriginal, and, therefore, also identifies as Aboriginal, but has a white father, Bolt denies that Collard is Aboriginal because of his pale colour and ancestry. Bolt infers that Collard has had the Aborigine ‘bred out of him’ as the old White Australian rednecks would once say, and that, as a ‘white’ person, is not eligible for any of the various concessions, prizes, awards, etc., that are available to Aboriginal people.
This is not the first time that Bolt has denied people their Aboriginal identity. Back in March 2009, Bolt questioned the Aboriginal identity of a Queensland politician, Leeanne Enoch, who was vying for a seat in the Queensland parliament. Then later in April 2009, Bolt again question the Aboriginal identity of artists and writer Bindi Cole, Annette Sax and Tara June Winch. And then there’s his piece in November last year that criticised the Aboriginal identify of Perth model Emily Cattermole, who is the grand-daughter of WA indigenous politician Ernie Bridge whose Aboriginal identity Bolt also questions. At the end of his article he has the audacity to write this piece of hypocrisy:
“Could we stop obsessing about racial differences almost invisible to the naked eye, and almost washed out by generations of mixed ancestry? It makes us look a little bit, well, racist.”
Well, yes it does, Bolt; but the only one obsessing about it is you and your coterie of obsessed racist bloggies!
But Bolt’s obsession with race doesn’t end just with the non-question of racial identity. He also denies that there were any stolen children and denies that there was ever any policy of ‘breeding the Aborigines out of existence’.
Bolts racist obsession with Aborigines, however, extends way beyond Aborigines. Bolt also obsesses about other races, religions and cultures which are all part of his overall racist paranoia. Asylum seekers that arrive by boat regularly fall into Bolt’s racist sights mainly because they tend to be non-white. While Bolt refers to these people as ‘illegal immigrants’, he says nothing of the hundreds of real illegal immigrants that arrive here every day on tourist and work visas who come with absolutely every intention of staying on beyond the expiration of their visa’s, most of whom are white Europeans who, of course, Bolt has no problem with.
Bolt’s biggest fear is Islam. Bolt doesn’t see Islamophobia as racist. For Bolt racism does not go beyond biological and physical differences between peoples. Culture and religion, the vilification of which most people see as a form of racism, are fair game for Bolt as he attempts to justify himself and, at the same time, avoid the racist tag by denying that being anti-Islam is racist.
Another popular target for Bolt’s over the top racism is black, coloured and non-whites that are embroiled in street violence. Today Bolt has written about gang violence in Melbourne where he highlights the ethnicity of those involved in such a way as to suggest that these people are innately violent because of their ethnicity and because they are immigrants. He even criticises the police for not describing the ethnicity of offenders though this kind of criticism is confined only to the ethnicity of non-whites.
Over the years, all of Bolt’s racism has revolved around either non-whites or Islam or both. All are vilified including Somalis, Samoans, Maoris, Lebanese, Indians, Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, and, of course, Aborigines.
Bolt has become so fixated about the inferiority of races and cultures that are not Anglo-white European he has actually stated that ‘white Australian racism is a myth’. He’s forgotten, very conveniently, about Australia’s ‘White Australia Policy’, a policy which only ended in 1975.
Bolt recently told me in an email that his best friend when he was in year seven at school was an Aborigine. Given Bolt’s frothing at the mouth seething hatred of Aborigines, one can be forgiven for finding this totally impossible to believe. People like Bolt often deny their racism by telling people that ‘their best friend’ is actually someone of a race that they are vilifying.
Perhaps, if Bolt detests a multicultural Australia so much, he should find somewhere else to live. Certainly Australia will be a far better place without him. Either that or he should seek clinical help for his obsessive compulsion and delusional complexes about racial superiority. First, though, he needs to cease his denial of being a rabid racist and recognise that White Australians are as ‘ethnic’ as anyone else here in Australia and are amongst the most racist of all races that are in our multicultural society.
Australian ‘Herald-Sun’ Murdoch columnist and propagandist Andrew “my best friend was an Aborigine” Bolt has become increasingly – and disturbingly – obsessive about race in Australia. His outburst yesterday was about Kim Collard, an artist who identifies as Aboriginal. Since Collard’s mother is part Aboriginal, and, therefore, also identifies as Aboriginal, but has a white father, Bolt denies that Collard is Aboriginal because of his pale colour and ancestry. Bolt infers that Collard has had the Aborigine ‘bred out of him’ as the old White Australian rednecks would once say, and that, as a ‘white’ person, is not eligible for any of the various concessions, prizes, awards, etc., that are available to Aboriginal people.
This is not the first time that Bolt has denied people their Aboriginal identity. Back in March 2009, Bolt questioned the Aboriginal identity of a Queensland politician, Leeanne Enoch, who was vying for a seat in the Queensland parliament. Then later in April 2009, Bolt again question the Aboriginal identity of artists and writer Bindi Cole, Annette Sax and Tara June Winch. And then there’s his piece in November last year that criticised the Aboriginal identify of Perth model Emily Cattermole, who is the grand-daughter of WA indigenous politician Ernie Bridge whose Aboriginal identity Bolt also questions. At the end of his article he has the audacity to write this piece of hypocrisy:
“Could we stop obsessing about racial differences almost invisible to the naked eye, and almost washed out by generations of mixed ancestry? It makes us look a little bit, well, racist.”
Well, yes it does, Bolt; but the only one obsessing about it is you and your coterie of obsessed racist bloggies!
But Bolt’s obsession with race doesn’t end just with the non-question of racial identity. He also denies that there were any stolen children and denies that there was ever any policy of ‘breeding the Aborigines out of existence’.
Bolts racist obsession with Aborigines, however, extends way beyond Aborigines. Bolt also obsesses about other races, religions and cultures which are all part of his overall racist paranoia. Asylum seekers that arrive by boat regularly fall into Bolt’s racist sights mainly because they tend to be non-white. While Bolt refers to these people as ‘illegal immigrants’, he says nothing of the hundreds of real illegal immigrants that arrive here every day on tourist and work visas who come with absolutely every intention of staying on beyond the expiration of their visa’s, most of whom are white Europeans who, of course, Bolt has no problem with.
Bolt’s biggest fear is Islam. Bolt doesn’t see Islamophobia as racist. For Bolt racism does not go beyond biological and physical differences between peoples. Culture and religion, the vilification of which most people see as a form of racism, are fair game for Bolt as he attempts to justify himself and, at the same time, avoid the racist tag by denying that being anti-Islam is racist.
Another popular target for Bolt’s over the top racism is black, coloured and non-whites that are embroiled in street violence. Today Bolt has written about gang violence in Melbourne where he highlights the ethnicity of those involved in such a way as to suggest that these people are innately violent because of their ethnicity and because they are immigrants. He even criticises the police for not describing the ethnicity of offenders though this kind of criticism is confined only to the ethnicity of non-whites.
Over the years, all of Bolt’s racism has revolved around either non-whites or Islam or both. All are vilified including Somalis, Samoans, Maoris, Lebanese, Indians, Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, and, of course, Aborigines.
Bolt has become so fixated about the inferiority of races and cultures that are not Anglo-white European he has actually stated that ‘white Australian racism is a myth’. He’s forgotten, very conveniently, about Australia’s ‘White Australia Policy’, a policy which only ended in 1975.
Bolt recently told me in an email that his best friend when he was in year seven at school was an Aborigine. Given Bolt’s frothing at the mouth seething hatred of Aborigines, one can be forgiven for finding this totally impossible to believe. People like Bolt often deny their racism by telling people that ‘their best friend’ is actually someone of a race that they are vilifying.
Perhaps, if Bolt detests a multicultural Australia so much, he should find somewhere else to live. Certainly Australia will be a far better place without him. Either that or he should seek clinical help for his obsessive compulsion and delusional complexes about racial superiority. First, though, he needs to cease his denial of being a rabid racist and recognise that White Australians are as ‘ethnic’ as anyone else here in Australia and are amongst the most racist of all races that are in our multicultural society.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
ANDREW BOLT: ULTRA RACIST
This is a new site created specifically to document Murdoch journalist Andrew Bolt's vilification of races and religion in Australia. Readers are invited to contribute.
HERE'S A BIT OF FEAR MONGERING RACIST NONSENSE FROM BOLT:
How good would our navy be at stopping boats that don’t actually want to be detected? Say, Chinese naval ones?
Chinese navy boats coming to Australia?
Bolt's taking us back to the 'lets fear the Asiatic hordes to the north' era. The call for the return of the old White Australia policy is never far away with Bolt and his racist followers.
HERE'S A BIT OF FEAR MONGERING RACIST NONSENSE FROM BOLT:
How good would our navy be at stopping boats that don’t actually want to be detected? Say, Chinese naval ones?
Chinese navy boats coming to Australia?
Bolt's taking us back to the 'lets fear the Asiatic hordes to the north' era. The call for the return of the old White Australia policy is never far away with Bolt and his racist followers.
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