In his column today at the Herald-Sun, Andrew Bolt wrote the perfect metaphor that reflects his loathing and contempt for native Australian people.
In his article, Bolt describes how native Australian Possums in his neighbourhood are eating out the tops of the trees that have been planted down his street and have now moved into his garden. Never mind, of course, that it was he that had actually moved into their garden in the first place – a garden that they had occupied for millions of years before Bolt’s family arrived there. But that wouldn’t worry the likes of Bolt who now looks upon all of Australia’s natives, human or animal, that impinge into what he now thinks is his world, as ‘an army of giant rats’.
It’s his metaphor for describing what he feels about those that are different from him. His contempt doesn’t stop at native Australian Possums and Australia’s native peoples.
Just because he is Australian-born, he truly believes that he is a ‘native’ himself and that Aboriginal people, therefore, should become as he is – Australian.
The problem is; Bolt is not a ‘native’ as he likes to think he is. Being born here doesn’t make you a ‘native’. He is – like most who call themselves Australian – an introduced species. The word ‘Australia’ itself is a non-native construct that’s barely just a few hundred years old. The natives called their lands by other names – they still do. None of them were ‘Australia’.
(When one sees it like that, then I’m wrong in calling Aboriginal people; ‘native Australians’. I’m even wrong in calling native Possums; ‘Australian’ native Possums. More correctly I should be referring to them as being native to a land we – we who are not native to – call ‘Australia’.)
But, as I said, it doesn’t stop there for Bolt. His new-found nationalistic arrogance about being ‘Australian’ is so powerful that he now resents not just Possums living in his street but any person new to Australia who is not like him. Just as Possums and Aboriginal people are alien to him, so too are Arab, Central Asian and African people, and especially if they are Islamic and dress differently from him and what he perceives as an ‘Australian’ way of dressing.
Recently Bolt was taken to court for vilifying Aboriginal people. He was found guilty. Now Bolt is playing his conviction for all it’s worth in order further push his racist agenda.
Bolt denies that he vilified Aboriginal people claiming that he was only pointing out that some people are claiming to be Aboriginal in order to gain some kind of pecuniary advantage. He supported his accusations by saying that these people were so un-Aboriginal looking that they couldn’t possibly really be Aboriginals and that they, therefore, were frauds. Fortunately, Judge Mordecai Bromberg was able to see right through Bolt’s ploy and saw it for what it really was – blatant lies designed to specifically vilify Aboriginal people. Bromberg then ordered Bolt not to repeat such vilifying lies. Bolt has since responded by claiming he has lost his freedom of speech.
So now, instead of saying exactly what thinks, he uses metaphors as above and links to other racists writings who say what he is unable to. Despite all his denials, Bolt remains an outrageous racist. One day Murdoch will wake up to the fact that Bolt is not doing the image of Australia any good at all and shut him down. Australia will then be a far better place for everyone to live in – native or otherwise.
And even a better place for Possums to live in.
No comments:
Post a Comment