BOLT’S THINLY VEILED RACISM IS EXPOSED

In his blog today the convicted racist Andrew Bolt writes two articles that lays bare his disgusting racism. In the first titled ‘Condemning child savers as child stealers: the poison of the “Stolen Generations” myth’, Bolt tries to tell us that the Aboriginal children taken from their families were actually taken for their own good. He attempts to assert that indigenous children were some four times likely to suffer sexual abuse than other Australians. Bolt neglects to mention that most of that abuse came from non-Aboriginals and much of it after they’d been removed from their families and in the care of the so-called missions and foster homes.

In his second article, ‘No jobs in the deserts so why keep the towns?’, Bolt argues that Aboriginal communities aren't worth continued support and that Aboriginal people would be better off if they ‘assimilated’ into the nations metropolises. Bolt knows full well that, if Indigenous and Aboriginal people deserted the bush and ‘assimilated’ into the nation’s cities then they’d likely extinguish themselves within a hundred years – which, of course, is exactly what he wants to happen. For Bolt ‘assimilation’ is a euphemism for breeding out of existence.

WILL BOLT JUMP FROM CHANNEL 10 BEFORE BEING PUSHED?

In light of Gina Rinehart leaving the Channel Ten board, one has to wonder if Bolt is thinking about ‘bailing’ out before the board cans his unprofitable Bolt Report Sunday slots. If Bolt’s blog today is anything to go by it would seem that it’s crossed his mind. When a reader suggested Bolt could be "very lonely in the staff room", Bolt responded by saying: “And as a News Corp man even lonelier. Might have to bail, Frank.”

One can only hope!

BOLT’S TWIST TO SUIT THE MOMENT

Back in August 2010 Bolt argued that Islam was an ideology and not a race. Armed with this argument Bolt attempted to extricate himself from being accused of being a racist over his stance on Muslims. It’s also an argument that has long been used by his anti-Islam supporters especially those that comment on his blog.

Today, however, Bolt has done a complete U-turn and is now saying that it is indeed racist to be anti-Muslim as he calls for something to be done about “racists” that are terrorising Muslims in Australia – particularly the Australian Defence League (ADL).

As it happens, it’s been Bolt’s anti-Islam stance over the past few years that has probably done more than anything else to foster the growth of the Australian Defence League and anti-Islam sentiment generally in Australia.

BOLT HYPOCRISY: FREE SPEECH FOR THE RIGHT BUT NOT THE LEFT

Today Bolt complains in one article about students exercising their right to freedom of speech against uni fees and implies that students be denied all help for their education because they are a ‘violent mob’ (someone swore at Tony Abbott, another knocked over a police officer [makes a change; normally it’s the other way round] and a car window got broken) while in the article just before that Bolt’s going on about how important it is for people to be able  to express themselves freely.

So it’s OK, as Bolt, et al does, to promote hatred toward boatpeople who end up in concentration camps where they can be beaten to death or so neglected they die through lack of proper treatment when they fall ill, and it’s OK to promote hatred of Islam to a point where you can support going to Islamic lands to kill them and then wonder why ‘they’ hate us so. But it’s not OK to demonstrate against high education fees.

Boltologic.

BOLT: THE PRO-POLLUTIONIST CARPETBAGGER

‘Carpetbagger’ is a derogatory term which originated in the US during the Reconstruction years (1865-1877) after the American Civil War of 1861-1865. It referred to the opportunistic and mostly fraudulent Northerners who migrated to the war-torn South in order to take advantage of the Southerners caught up in the chaos that existed there after the war. The ‘carpet bag’ itself was a fashionable piece of luggage that looked like it was made from pieces of carpet that these fraudsters and conmen arrived with in the South.

Today the term ‘carpetbagger’ is used to define those that move – more metaphorically than literally these days – into areas of dispute in order to take advantage of a given situation by which they can make money both for themselves and for their backers.

The climate change debate is one such situation in which ‘carpetbaggers’ can thrive. In particular, climate change deniers, especially those among the mainstream Murdoch commentariat, who are currently making heaps by cashing in on their boss’s own interests in non-renewable resources.

The likes of Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair, Piers Akerman, Janet Albrechtsen, Greg Sheridan and many others are paid handsomely by Rupert Murdoch to demonise Green energy technology and ideology in order to halt the diminishing demand for non-renewable energy, a resource Murdoch and many of his fellow businessmen and associates have heavily invested in.

Contrary to the collective opinion of the extreme right-wing commentators and neoconservatives who Murdoch and others, including various neoconservative and right-wing think-tanks around the world financially support, renewable energy resources are making a huge dent in the bottom line of the non-renewable energy sector, particularly among the traditional energy providers.

Domestic use of solar energy in Australia generated from both photovoltaic (p.v.) roof-top panels and wind turbines has risen sharply over the last decade or so. In South Australia some 20%-25% of domestic energy consumption is derived from solar energy. Indeed, in July 2014 South Australia’s wind farms managed to provide up to 43% of the states power needs. And, as photovoltaic and battery storage technology advances, the commercial and light industrial sector is also increasingly making use of solar energy.

These advances in both technology and the expanding use of renewable energy resources has had a considerable affect on the more conventional non-renewable resources on fuel suppliers and particularly on energy generators who are experiencing a drop in demands and, therefore, profits and revenue which, in turn, has forced them to increase their charges. Increasing prices on non-renewable energy, in turn, leads to customers turning to p.v. panels and alternative power resources.

The pro-pollutionist carpetbaggers have tried every trick in the book to get people to ignore green energy. They have attempted to demonise the use of green energy by pigeonholing green energy advocates as ‘left-wing hippies’. Bolt has even tried to say that advocates of alternative energy are like the Nazis because the Nazis were a “romantic, anti-science, nature worshipping, communal and anti-capitalist movement that tied German identity to German forests.”

The pro-pollutionist carpetbagger’s biggest ploy is their denialism about global warming and climate change in which they attempt to argue that there is no need to stop using non-renewable energy because it doesn’t create global warming or climate change. They ignore, however, the vast amount of pollution that coal, oil and gas produce and which can be seen on a daily basis hanging over the world’s big industrial cities.

The non-renewable energy industry has spent billions on promoting their coal, oil and gas products while, at the same time, spending further billions on paying their carpetbagger minions in the media to demean green energy. They have even offered climate scientists inducements to become climate change deniers in order to give their arguments some semblance of credibility while others pay journalists and media commentators to demean the green energy industry using outlandish and extremist propaganda which they attempt to link with left-wing politics.

But Tony Abbott’s recent axing of the Renewable Energy Targets program will unlikely stop renewable energy from continuing to grow as people from all walks of life get to hear about the huge savings that can be made by using p.v. panels and, in the not too distant future, going off grid completely as battery technology makes it increasingly a more realistic option to non-renewable energy.

BOLT SPINS A SIMPLE LINE FOR SIMPLE PEOPLE

In his column today, Bolt accuses Hamas for breaking the ceasefire in the battle for the Gaza Strip. Using a simplistic narrative that his tiny band of followers is able to understand, he writes: “Hostilities had resumed because, as with the previous four ceasefires, Hamas started firing rockets at Israeli civilians”.

This is a blatant piece of overly simplistic nonsense and ignores the actual reasons for the resumption of hostilities. The aim of the ceasefire was to allow the two sides an opportunity to discuss a long term agreement that might lead to peace. Hamas is merely asking for freedom. It wants the blockade lifted, it wants the freedom to trade with whoever they want to and they want the facilities like a seaport and airport to be able to make these things happen. On the other hand, Israel wants Hamas to disarm; it wants to extend its no-mans land even further into the Gaza Strip thus limiting the Gaza’s ability to produce agricultural and horticultural products, and Israel wants to control what goes in and out of the Strip. Since it was clear that Israel was not going to allow the people of the Gaza Strip their freedom, Hamas and their allies have no other choice but to fight on in the only way they know how to.

Of course Hamas want peace, but they also want their freedom. Israel doesn’t want to give it to them. What Israel really wants is the Gaza Strip for themselves in order to exploit its gas reserves and to realise their dream of a Greater Israel. 

BOLT PROMOTES ABBOTT AS LEADER OF THE WESTERN WORLD

Tony Abbott seems set to get his fifteen minutes of fame - courtesy of Bolt and a tragedy that Abbott seems willing to milk for all its political worth.

In his blog today, Bolt writes: “Tony Abbott is leading the West into a confrontation with nuclear superpower Russia over the downing of MH17. The stakes are incredibly high, as the Prime Minister organises, effectively, a small army to move into Ukraine.”

What utter tosh!

The ‘small army’ turns out to be a small group of Australian Federal Police officers who will be unarmed and, rather than actually confronting ‘nuclear superpower Russia’, they’ve postponed going into Ukraine because it’s too dangerous due to the fighting between the Ukrainian forces and Russian separatists.

The way Bolt tells it you’d think Abbott was the saviour of the world instead of a bumbling lunatic who has staggered onto the misfortune of others and realised that he can make political hay from it while he has the opportunity to strut the world stage and allow his right-wing backers in the commentariat to promote him to status of ‘world leader’.

What  a load of puffed up nonsense. 

HAS BOLT FINALLY LOST HIS MARBLES?

Lately Bolt seems to have become increasingly disassociated with reality. On his blog today he’s insanely demanding that Putin hand over the ‘murder weapon’ that was used to shoot down flight MH17 over the Ukraine. Bolt writes:

Where is the Buk missile system that almost certainly brought down the Malaysian airliner?

In any murder investigation, the weapon is usually second only to the body in the search for physical evidence.

That the Buk has not been produced proves Russia is actually hiding evidence of a crime — one in which it is deeply implicated.

The Buk is so massive it should be the easiest thing for Russian President Vladimir Putin to find. It’s nearly 10 metres long and four metres high. The killers can’t drop it down a drain or toss it in a dumpster.

Moreover, it is an incredibly lethal and expensive weapon that no army would somehow lose.

Of course, Russia is no more ‘hiding evidence of a crime’ than the Americans were when they shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in July 1988. Like the 1988 incident, the shooting down of Flight MH17 was a tragic case of misidentification. The Americans did not hand over the Surface to Air Missile launcher that was used to shoot down the Iran Air Boeing A300. Apart from anything else, what would be the point? The fact is; Russia, apart from the fact that it either directly or indirectly supplied the weapon, actually had nothing to do with the shoot down of MH17. There is no way the Putin or any of his military would have authorised the shoot down of a commercial aircraft. Clearly, the entire incident, like that of the shoot down of 655, was a simple case of misidentification which, in his case, was carried out by inexperienced militiamen.

Bolt’s over-the-top demands are symptomatic of a person slowly losing his marbles as he sees support for his vision of a world reflecting his notion of Western Exceptionalism slowly disappearing into oblivion. 

BOLT DOES HIS MASTER’S BIDDING

In his blog today Bolt attempts once again to deny that he isn’t paid by Murdoch to spout anti-climate change propaganda claiming that Murdoch himself is a greenie.

What utter rubbish.

 What Murdoch says in public and what he tells his journos to write with regard to climate change are two different things.

Murdoch only changed his public stance back in 2006 in deference to his son James.

The reality is that Murdoch is not vocal about supporting climate change policies. In fact I've heard from two now retired Murdoch journos (and one cartoonist) that Murdoch has quietly encouraged them to support anti-climate change propaganda.

The reason is simple; he has a massive financial interest in oil and gas resources through Genie Energy and Israeli Energy Initiatives (hence Bolt's energetic support of fascist Israel).

Bolt claims he’s not paid to write anti-climate change propaganda for Murdoch and that his journalism is independent. However, trying to draw on Murdoch’s pathetic past effort at being a greenie is blatantly transparent – indeed, so transparent that one might be forgiven for thinking Murdoch had even asked him to write this nonsense.

HOW MUCH DOES BOLT GET PAID TO PUSH HIS ANTI-CLIMATE CHANGE NONSENSE?

As we all know, Andrew Bolt is a staunch climate change denialist and pro-pollutionist. We know because he pushes his nonsense almost daily on his online blog at the Sun-Herald in Melbourne and quite frequently on his talk show The Bolt Report on Channel 10.

What’s not quite so well known is the reason why he so vehemently opposes climate change science. One possible answer is blindingly obvious; he gets paid to – and not just by Murdoch who, incidentally, has his own vested interest in denying climate change.

Bolt has extremely close ties with neoconservatives and is no doubt familiar with the various financial offerings made by neocon think tank organisations like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) that have offered up to $10,000 for articles that undermine the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) reports.

One wonders how much of this money has found its way into Bolt’s coffers. You have to wonder who are paying his very significant legal bills and question where that money comes from and why they keep paying them.

Bolt is a paid propagandist but you can bet your boots it isn’t just Murdoch that’s paying his bills. One has to ask if, and how much, are neocon organisations like the AEI paying Bolt for his commentary – and whoever else.

BOLT EXPOSES HIS BLATANT RACISM

In his blog today Bolt continues with his Islamophobic obsession about Muslims migrating to Australia. In last Sunday’s Bolt Report Bolt asked Immigration Minister Scott Morrison if we shouldn’t be ‘screening people from or born of people from the Middle East for cultural compatibility’.

Bolt would argue that this is not racism because Islam is not a race but a religion. However, if one were to criticise Judaism, Bolt would be the first to accuse you, quite rightly, of anti-Semitism for being anti-Jewish yet Judaism is a religion and not a race. While it is true that most folk that practice Judaism are indeed Jewish, many are not racial Jews. Most are descendants of converts to Judaism but nonetheless, to criticise Judaism, regardless of whether or not those that practice Judaism are actually racial Jews, is still anti-Semitic. But that’s where the line is drawn. People like Bolt and his fellow neoconservatives would also accuse those who are anti-Zionism as being anti-Semite when the reality is that Zionism is a political ideology and race is incidental to that ideology with, again, most adherents being descendants of converts to Judaism. In short, to be anti-Judaism the religion is racist but to be anti-Zionist the political ideology is not.

By the same virtue, to be anti-Islam the religion, as Bolt and his fellow neoconservative are, is racist, while to be anti-jihad as a political creed is not.

Different religions are a part of many peoples culture and to discriminate against a culture often means discriminating against their religion and vice-versa. To discriminate against a culture by ‘screening for compatibility’ is racist. Racism is more than just being about blood and skin colour, it’s also about religion, heritage and culture. To discriminate against someone on the basis of their religion or culture is as much racism as discriminating against them on the basis of heir physical appearance such as skin colour or blood.  

BOLT BECOMES A FANATICAL HATER OF FANATICAL HATERS

Bolt today continues his relentless rhetoric of hate against Islam as he riles against criticism of his hatred.

Throughout history various religions that have at the core of their beliefs a philosophy of peace and goodwill toward their fellow man have had within their ranks murderous extremists who abuse the name of their faith to commit the most horrendous crimes against their fellow man. Even political ideologies sometimes use their religious faith to justify the most horrific crimes. Catholicism for centuries committed the most terrifying crimes against Protestants; Judaism as a religion has been responsible for crimes against Arabs in Palestine as they take over lands they claim were given to them by God; Orthodox Christians in what was Yugoslavia have committed genocidal crimes against some of their fellow citizens because they happened to be Muslims; on and off for nearly eight hundred years Christians from Europe embarked on crusades to wipe out Islam; there were Christians in America who believed African-Americans were subhuman and should be either enslaved or killed. And, of course, there were the Christians of Europe who during the 1930s and 40s attempted to exterminate all of European Jewry.

But not in any of these cases can their religion per se actually be blamed for their actions. In every case religion was used merely as an excuse to commit these crimes. But in not one case can the base philosophy of any religion be blamed for the crimes committed by their adherents.

And now here’s Bolt, ready to condemn an entire religion because of the crimes of a few misguided fanatics who claim to be part of that religion. Bolt’s obsessive hatred of Islam has blinded and confused him. He is no longer able to distinguish between the actions of fanatics and the reality of what they profess to be their faith. In short, he has become as fanatical in his hatred as those he accuses of being hate filled.   

AUSTRALIAN NAZIS VISIT THE REFUGEE CAMPS

SS-Hasseführer Morrison with SS-Obergruppenführer Angus Campbell behind are seen here visiting the Manus Island concentration camp where prisoners are held in appalling conditions, beaten – sometimes to death, and with no hope of ever knowing when they will be free.

BOLT’S ISLAMOPHOBIC BLOGGIES BLIND TO REALITY ON BOKO HARAM KIDNAPPINGS

Yesterday, Bolt posted a piece about the Boko Haram kidnappings in which he inferred that the underlying problem was Islam itself.

I responded with this comment which was published:

More fearmongering nonsense.

The issue is not Islam. The vast majority of the worlds Muslims do not support Boko Haram or any other group that goes around murdering or kidnapping civilians.

Boko Haram are nothing more than criminal thugs as are the Christian Lords Resistance Army and the Ku Klux Klan.

Boko Haram does not represent anyone – certainly not Islam – anymore than the Lords Resistance Army or the Ku Klux Klan represent Christians.

This Boko Haram incident is just another opportunity for Islamophobes to demonise all Muslims.

Bolt’s Bloggies were quick to respond with varying degrees of venom but the jist of most of the eleven responses to my comment was that, if the vast majority of the world’s Muslims do not support Boko Haram, then where are the Islamic world’s denunciations of the kidnappings?

Clearly, these Islamophobic nutjobs are incapable of performing a basic Google search to find out if there had been any denunciations because typing in ‘muslims denounce boko’ would have provided all the denunciations from the Islamic world that would have been more than enough to change the tune of all but the most diehard of Islamophobic nutjobs.

BOLT CHERRYPICKS STORIES TO HIGHLIGHT HIS RACISM

In his blog yesterday, Bolt highlighted a story about a brawl which happened to involve some young men from an African background. He says he’s “not certain [that] aspects of our immigration and refugee policies are working to the advantage of Australians”.

The reality is; he’s not actually certain that these men aren’t themselves Australian. Bolt merely assumes that, if they’re black and look like Africans, then they must be African migrants. Maybe they are, but then I don’t know anymore than Bolt does.

Just to reinforce his presumptuous and racist stance, Bolt links to two other stories about brawling in the streets apparently between young men who have an African background.

The fact is there are brawls just about every Friday and Saturday night in just about all of Australia’s cities and towns and these involve young men, and sometimes women, from all sorts of racial and ethnic backgrounds – including white Australians. Indeed, front bar brawls for decades were a bit of an Aussie tradition long before non-white migrants arrived in Australia.

But Bolt, of course, only cherrypicks the stories that suit his racist propaganda while his coterie of dedicated bloggies lap it up. Read the comments (if you can stomach it) and see.

ANDREW BOLT AND THE AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE LEAGUE CONNECTION

Last night the 7.30 Report showed a segment exposing the activities of a neo-Nazi anti-Islamic hate group calling itself the Australian Defence League (ADL), an off-shoot of the English Defence League (EDL), an extreme right-wing anti-Islam hate organisation made up mainly of ex-Nazis, skinheads and football hooligans.

Their enemy du jour is Islam. They now deny their Nazi and neo-Nazi roots and the anti-Semitism of their twentieth century background; indeed, many of their members today support the Israeli Zionist cause despite their past hatred of Jews. It’s a classic case of ‘the enemy of your enemy is your friend’. For them, Nazism is old hat. Of course, there are those that will always be Jew-haters but, for today, their hatred is directed at Islam. Today, they’ll keep quiet about their past anti-Semitism; they have a new enemy in their sights.

Many of Bolt’s Bloggies, those that regularly comment on Bolt’s blog supporting his anti-Islam rhetoric and hatreds, have openly supported the ADL in their comments. Some have even inferred that they are members.

Bolt himself is smart enough not to be associated directly with these extremists but certainly he sympathises with their views. And he is more than happy for his Bloggies to peddle support for the ADL at his blog. ADL members, in turn, support Bolt’s views and his blog.

The ADL is a growing hate organisation that Bolt indirectly supports. The Australian Federal Police need to investigate the ADL – which I understand they are – and also need to investigate Bolt’s association with them to assess the extent of his incitement to violence, either directly or indirectly, against the Australian Islamic community.

BOLT: PAID LACKEY OF ISRAELI ZIONISM

Andrew Bolt in his column today has admitted having been treated to a trip to Israel bought and paid for by Australia’s Israel lobby.

While many nations offer ex-gratia trips to politicians and journalists in order to promote some political or commercial cause for that nation, when it comes to Israeli lobby groups handing out trips to Israel to right-wing journalists you can bet it isn’t in order to influence that journalist into writing favorable tourist copy for the beaches on the sea-front of Tel Aviv.

Bolt is a classic neoconservative. He presents with all the classic characteristics of a modern neoconservative – and no, contrary to popular opinion, one doesn’t need to be Jewish to be a neoconservative, though, of course, many are.

All neoconservatives are pro-Zionist and anti-Palestinian. Neoconservatives all support the notion of Israelis settling in the West Bank and all privately believe that the territories the Israelis occupied in 1967 after the Six Day War should be annexed and become part of Greater Israel as they did to the Golan Heights. I say ‘privately’ because, at the moment, it is not politically expedient for their objectives to be so forthright. Having said that, there are some more extremist neoconservatives who have no qualms at all about saying what their objectives are but most, rather than push their own agenda, rail instead against the Palestinians particularly those in the West Bank that throw stones and those in the Gaza Strip that fire rockets into Israel in an effort to deter Israelis from shooting unarmed Palestinians near the Gaza border with Israel. Israeli Zionists and their neoconservative allies are simply waiting for an opportunity to find an excuse to once and for all fully invade and occupy these places and to destroy all of their enemies with the eventual aim of annexing all of the Palestinian territories. Any war with Iran will provide the casus belli for the Israelis to invade the occupied territories.

Part of neoconservatism’s pro-Zionist rhetoric is to label all anti-Zionists as being anti-Semites in an effort to demonise them as being Jew-haters. Bolt has frequently accused anti-Zionists as being anti-Semites and Jew-haters. However, for this rhetoric to be effective, Bolt needs to rely on the ignorance of his readers. The fact is; there are many anti-Zionists around the world who are Jewish, indeed, there are many Israelis who are anti-Zionists.

Bolt has been bought lock, stock and barrel by the Israel lobby in Australia.

RACISM BY INFERENCE: HOW BOLT’S NOT SO SUBTLE RACIST PROPAGANDA WORKS

At every opportunity Bolt can find he attempts to subtly push his racist agenda at his blog by using topical news items to demonise certain targeted groups. He achieves this by cherry-picking only news items that show non-white non-European Australians to be the perpetrators of mainly violent crimes – especially if those crimes include rape and murder.

Today, Bolt highlights an AAP story published in the Sydney Morning Herald about two sixteen-year-old girls who were sexually assaulted in a Sydney park by three men who the SMH described variously as being of ‘dark complexion, thin build and with black hair’. Bolt then cut and pastes the police media release about the crime which, as well as describing the perpetrators as the SMH did, added that the three men were of ‘Mediterranean/Middle Eastern appearance’.

This was enough for Bolt.

Bolt takes advantage of the story to push his racist agenda in two ways. First, he pans the SMH by asking; why did the SMH, a media outlet that Bolt regards as ‘Left-wing’ and also happens to be one of Murdoch’s rival newspapers, not mention the ethnicity of the perpetrators as the police had done in their media release? And, secondly, by knowing the perpetrators were of Mediterranean/Middle Eastern appearance, he knows that his readers will presume they are probably Arab and, therefore, likely to be Muslims – indeed, everything that Bolt and his bloggies hate. Added to this is the fact that, because the ethnicity of the two girls was not described, it would be presumed that they were white Europeans even though we don’t actually know their ethnicity. Bolt relies on his previous stereotyping stories of non-European men attacking white girls to complete his propaganda picture. He will leave it to his coterie of racist bloggies to complete the demonisation of Bolt’s targeted group.

Mentioning that describing the perpetrators as being of ‘Mediterranean/Middle Eastern appearance’ actually means very little ethnicity-wise since the region covers a hole region of the planet containing people of many ‘ethnicities’ ranging from Africans to Israelis would be about as useful as merely mentioning them as the SMH had.

AUSTRALIA'S CHOICE: STOP THE BOATS OR STOP RACISM

Australians are slowly edging toward facing the reality of what the boatpeople saga is really all about.

The catch-cry of the right-wing Australian commentariat and politicians has been ‘Stop the Boats’. They have claimed in their rhetoric that by stopping the boats the drownings will stop.  They have said that, in order to deter others from making the perilous journey across the sea in leaky boats, those that do safely make it to Australia’s shores must be treated harshly by being told they will never be able to settle in Australia and that they’ll be placed in camps in places that are alien and inhospitable to them and where they may face an unknown future which may remain unknown for a very long time. All this, so we are told, is necessary ‘to stop the drownings’.

Accompanying the rhetoric of ‘Stop the Boats’, there has been a relentless tirade of commentary from both commentators and politicians demonising boatpeople by accusing them of being ‘queue jumpers’, ‘economic refugees’, ‘country shoppers’, and even ‘terrorists’. From Australia’s right-wing government the rhetoric has been no less relentless. Policies have been wrapped in nationalistic slogans and titles such as ‘Border Protection’ and ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’ as though Australia was being invaded by some kind of sneaky guerrilla force attempting to stealthily infiltrate Australia rather than desperate people merely seeking asylum.

Along with the ‘Stop the Boats’ and the ‘Stop the Drownings’ rhetoric, a new catch-cry was heard: ‘Stop the People Smugglers’ and ‘Put the People Smugglers out of business’, both slogans clearly designed to shift  attention away from the actual refugees.

Both the Abbott Coalition government and the former Labor government of Rudd and Gillard have fallen over themselves to placate a now negative Australian public opinion about boatpeople.

But all of these slogans and excuses avoid saying what this is really all about.

For some reason, the non right-wing mainstream media to a very large extent have also avoided mentioning it while the right-wing media have gone to great lengths to deny that which the Left in the blogosphere and social media have been saying all along; that Australia’s policies are not about ‘Stopping the Boats’ or ‘Stopping the Drownings’ or ‘Border Protection’ or ‘Stopping the People Smugglers’ or ‘Stopping Queue Jumpers’ or ‘Stopping Economic Refugees’, they’re about stopping non-European, non-white, Muslims from coming to Australia and threatening the very core of what can only be called ‘Australianism’. In other words it’s about racism – pure and simple.

The cheerleaders for this racism – and the main source of the swing in public opinion away from the ‘fair go’ attitude of the post-White Australian era of the 70s and 80s – has been the emergence of extreme right-wing columnists in the mainstream media dominated by the Murdoch-owned newspapers.

Ironically, one of the reasons Australians are now edging toward facing the reality of the boatpeople saga really being about racism is because of the current debate over the change to Australia’s laws about racial discrimination and vilification.

Much of the debate about changes to the racial discrimination and vilification laws has be been brought about by the judgement of a Victorian court against one of the most vocal of the mainstream media’s anti-boatpeople protagonists, Andrew Bolt of the Herald-Sun newspaper. The judgement was not related to boatpeople but to one of Bolt’s other hobby horses, the demonisation of light coloured Indigenous persons who choose to identify as Aboriginal for cultural purposes, though Bolt actually accuses them of choosing to identify as Aboriginal in order to obtain some kind of pecuniary advantage.

Bolt denies being a racist; indeed, he declares that he is anti-racist. He even goes so far as to say that those who say that he is a racist are, in fact, racist themselves because they are preventing Australia becoming a nation where all Australians, regardless of skin colour or ethnicity, should be treated equally as ‘Australians’. He argues that recognising ‘race’ differences – and that includes recognition of different cultures, heritage and religions as well as actual race – is dividing Australians and, therefore, is racist. He calls it the ‘New Racism’, a term purloined from Bolt’s arch-nemesis, the historian Robert Manne. Manne, who first coined the term ‘New Racism’ in an article written in 2002 entitled ‘Beware the New Racism’ in which he argues that racism is no longer restricted to just blood and biology but also to culture and religion. Bolt, who has had a long-standing argument with Manne about the ‘Stolen Generations’, has seen fit to usurp Manne’s tag for use in describing his own version of ‘New Racism’.

What Bolt refuses to accept is that recognising and acknowledging the culture and heritage of people from different ethnicities and racial backgrounds has absolutely nothing to do with being ‘racist’ from his peculiar viewpoint but has everything to do with the sharing of heritage and the tolerance and respect of Australians’ differences regardless of whether it’s blood and biology or culture and religion. It’s not about ‘racism’, it’s about embracing and recognising diversity within a nation’s peoples.

Bolt and his fellow right-wing commentators by virtue of having access to one of Australia’s largest media organisations have over nearly two decades managed to manipulate public opinion to such an extent that Australians have been turned from being a nation keen to give people a ‘fair go’ to being a nation of intolerant bigots. The problem for Australia now is how to turn Australia’s world-wide reputation of being racists and bigots around and that can only be done by recognising that Australia has, indeed, become racist, and that in turn can only be done by education.

The current debate about bigotry in Australia can provide an opportunity to turn things around. Hopefully, that process of education, a process which rebuts the notion of Bolt’s so-called ‘New Racism’ and rejects the creeping new trend of ‘democracy by public opinion’ which gives power to those that have the wherewithal to manipulate public opinion, has now begun.

The debates are not about Left and Right politics; it’s about the morality of right and wrong and the elimination of poll-driven politics.

It’s time for Australia to put this glitch in our reputation as an easy going fair-minded multicultural society behind us and rebuild a more tolerant Australia free of racial bigotry.

THE DECEIT OF BOLT’S RACISM

The other week Bolt got all upset because someone said he was a racist on Monday, 10 March, Q & A program. He reckons he was so upset he couldn’t go to work the next day. However, that didn’t stop him writing because he still managed to post a few items at his blog on Tuesday, 11 March, including an item about someone calling him a racist.

Q & A is a fairly high profile current affairs program produced by the ABC and, as such, is considered fair game by the extreme right of both the media and politics, so when Marcia Langton accused him of being a racist Bolt couldn’t resist the golden opportunity of the publicity he would get by coming over all hurt by the remarks. All he needed to do was kick up a fuss by demanding an apology and laying it on really thick about how hurt he was by this attack on him and mumble something about suing and defamation. He then sat back at home for the day waiting for his mates in the rest of the Murdoch propaganda machine to do their bit supporting him. Considering how close Murdoch’s propagandists are to the Abbott government and how thin the relationship between the ABC and the government is, Bolt could almost guarantee a quick apology from the ABC via Q & A’s anchor, Tony Jones, a few nights later.

The whole thing was clearly just an opportunistic publicity stunt.

The truth is everyone knows Bolt is a racist. He’s even been found guilty of it in an Australian court of law. Yet still he tries to insist he’s no racist.

Not only does Bolt insist he’s not a racist, but there are many Australians out there who support Bolt who also insist they are not racist despite being so – and many of them actually sincerely believe this. They’ll swear black and blue they’re not racists. Yet they are. Why?

Quite simply, they’ve been conned by Bolt’s rhetoric which is based on his notion of Australianism and, to a lesser extent, the notion of Western Exceptionalism, whereby anyone can become Australian provided they totally accept Australia’s modern culture and values and accede to Australia’s contemporary heritage. And, of course, Australia’s contemporary heritage is white European.

Bolt has managed to con a lot of Australians – even including some Aboriginal people – into believing that we are all equals as Australians and, therefore, do not need changes to our constitution which Bolt sees as ‘separating’ and ‘dividing’ Australians. Bolt sees us as all as equals and so we should all be treated equally under one law regardless of ‘race’.

But this a deliberate deceit. What the proposed changes to the constitution are about is recognising the culture and heritage of Australia’s first peoples. Their race is actually incidental. What Bolt is really trying to achieve is the abandonment of Indigenous culture beginning with the denial of heritage of those that he thinks he can marginalise by accusing them of not being what they feel they are. He uses the various grants, benefits and scholarships that are available to people of Indigenous culture and heritage as a lever to reinforce his peculiar brand of racism accusing them of claiming Indigenous heritage in order to obtain a pecuniary advantage.

The fact is, while we are all equal as Australians, we are a multicultural society – not just of Aboriginal and Indigenous people but also Asian, Middle Eastern, European, African, etc. We are all different – even within these groupings. However, the reason why Australia is giving special significance to Aboriginal people is because they were the original inhabitants of this country and, contrary to Bolt and others denials, were displaced and ethnically cleansed from their lands by white Europeans, some of who even attempted to wipe them out completely.

Not only is Bolt a racist, he is also a deceitful racist. He is a racist adept in the use of propaganda to perpetuate his particular brand of obnoxious race hate.

And then there’s his Islamophobia… I can’t wait to see his reaction when someone on Q & A accuses him of being an Islamophobe. 

CLASSIC CHUTZPAH FROM THE MASTER RACIST

At Bolt’s blog today, he asks ‘Which Labor mudraker authorised this?’ At the top of the rant is a picture of a crumbling brick wall with the words “Can you trust Habib?” painted on it.

The Habib in question is Carolyn Habib, a Liberal candidate for the seat of Elder in South Australia. She has accused the Labor party opposition of being racist by producing this picture and asking the question. Bolt, naturally, concurs with her, inferring that it is indeed racist to write ‘Can you trust Habib’.

But then you’d have to ask; why is it racist? It’s just a name. It wouldn’t be racist if her name was Smith. So why is Habib ‘racist’?

There is a reason. It’s because Bolt himself has spent years spinning his Islamophobic propaganda nonsense demonising Islamic people and associating them with Arabic and Arabic-sounding names.

In other words, if Carolyn Habib wants to blame anyone for the racist connotations associated with the picture of the wall and words written on it, she should blame Andrew Bolt.

Only another racist could see any racist connotations in it.

BOLT BENEFITS FROM THE BRUTALITY OF EUROPEANS PAST

Bolt, writing at his blog today, has yet another rant at Australian of the Year, Adam Goodes, the Aboriginal footballer who is sticking up for his people against racism and the failure of people like Bolt to recognise the evil Europeans have done to Aboriginal people since arriving on these shores.

 Bolt’s response is predictably denialist as he reckons: “My grandparents committed no thefts, rapes or murders”.

Goodes, of course, never said they did. Who Goodes was talking about are the Europeans of the past generally, not specifically. The way Bolt carries on in his article, however, anyone would think it’s just about him.

Racism is still rife in Australia. Bolt mentions how Goodes had been vilified in the past but fails to concede that it’s not just in his distant past. Things haven’t changed. A thirteen-year-old only last year shouted racist taunts at him. And then Bolt tries to make out she’s the victim.

There will always be racism in Australia while people like Bolt insists that he personally cannot accept that Australia’s past treatment of Aboriginal people has anything to do with him despite being in Australia enjoying the fruits of the labours – and the misdeeds – of Europeans that came before his parents and him who exploited and stole from the Aboriginal people of this land to build that which he lives in today.

CONVICTED RACIST CONTINUES HATE RANT AGAINST INDIGENOUS CULTURE

Andrew Bolt, a convicted racist, today continues to rant against his pet hate; Aboriginal and Indigenous people.

His rant against Australia’s Indigenous people begins with another swipe at Adam Goodes the footballer and Australian of the Year who Bolt says was “famous for having publicly humiliated a 13-year-old girl”. As most people remember it, it was actually the 13-year-old girl who attempted to publicly humiliate Goodes in a crowded football stadium – but the truth is never anything that gets in the way of Bolt’s own peculiar brand of hate propaganda.

Bolt continues his attack against Goodes because of Goodes endorsement John Pilger’s latest film, Utopia, about the mistreatment of Aboriginal people at the hands of European settlers in Australia. Bolt, despite the clear and abundant evidence shown in the film, denies that European settlers mistreated and abused Aboriginal people. And, because his own parents are only relatively new settlers in Australia, Bolt also defers any guilt as far as he is personally concerned. Never mind, however, that, while he may have no guilt about white Australia’s past, it is he that is making up for it today by perpetuating the hate a few white people still have for Aboriginal and Indigenous people.

SYDNEY ACADEMIC ENDORSES THE RHETORIC THAT VEILS AUSTRALIA’S RACISM

Yesterday I wrote about how Australians had surrendered their compassion with regard to boatpeople. I showed how they had become convinced by the rhetoric and propaganda of the right-wing of the commentariat and the right-wing of both major political parties that stopping the boats was imperative in order to ‘stop the drownings’ of refugees seeking asylum in Australia by boat. I showed how the ‘stop the drownings’ meme had become a useful catchcry to cover for the real reason for many Australians not wanting to allow non-European non-white foreigners into Australia and that racism was the unspoken real reason behind Australia’s attitude toward boatpeople.

I suggested that by the simple expediency of providing seaworthy boats to those seeking refuge or even just flying them in would solve the problem of deaths at sea. I suggested that quick and efficient on-shore processing based on humanitarian principles would extinguish the angst refugees currently are force to endure during detention prior to processing.

Today, Dr. Gordon Menzies of the University of Technology in Sydney in an op-ed piece in ABC News Online perpetuates the nonsensical myth of the government’s policies being for the boatpeople’s own good. He writes:

The driving force of the current policy regarding refugees emerges directly from consequentialism: tough treatment now will deter future arrivals down the track.

It is important to realise, too, that this line of thought can be compassionate, which is why it has penetrated some notably left-leaning political minds. Stopping people from risking their lives is surely a compassionate goal?

In reality, no self-respecting ‘left-leaning political mind’ would be falling into that trap.

Menzies also demonstrates the point about how the lies embedded in the rhetoric and propaganda of the right-wing about boatpeople have become entrenched in the psyche of many an Australian voter. Menzies writes: 

It has taken a while, but it now appears that both the major parties, and a good deal of their support base, have reached agreement in principle on a tough stance towards boat people. The majority of voters, assailed by the twin fears of terrorism and the "wrong kind of person" entering the country, are broadly supportive of a "whatever it takes" approach to dissuading asylum seekers from coming to our shores.

The ‘fear of terrorism’ and ‘the wrong kind of person’ notions were both introduced into the boatpeople narrative by the extreme right-wing commentariat. While the ‘wrong kind of person’ rhetoric transparently attempts to disguise outright racism, ‘the fear of terrorism’ idea is not supported by any actual evidence.

Menzies avoids asking the unasked question: Why do we want to stop asylum seekers arriving here by boat? He parrots the same old line about wanting to ‘stop the drownings’. But we know this is nonsense because there have always been Australians who have wanted to stop boatpeople coming to Australia even before any of them actually drowned and, besides, as I’ve already mentioned, the problem of stopping the drownings is very easily solved without having to send thousands off to places they don’t want to be housed in concentration camp-like conditions for indefinite periods of time and without any certainty of their future and where they still risk life and limb anyway.

The tone of Dr. Menzies piece is vague and the reader is left wondering if he’s just being cynical about government policies by parodying the right-wing view about boatpeople or if his words reflect his own thinking about the issue. Either way, he’s been unable to face the real test that determines an individual’s stance on the subject; he’s failed to face the reality of Australia’s racism and, in doing so, has conceded his own racism by virtue of perpetuating the myths about boatpeople.

THE BOATPEOPLE CRISIS: THE UNSPOKEN REASONS FOR IT

This piece in The Drum the other day demonstrates clearly how democracy has been eroded and usurped by a media dedicated to manipulating public opinion with spin, half truths and outright lies.

It seems that most people who answered the question referred to in the article about whether or not they believed 'most of the refugees were genuine’ said they were not, whereas the reality is that the vast majority of them in fact actually are genuine refugees.

One needs to ask then; where are those people getting their information from that led them to making a factually incorrect decision? Clearly, these opinions are not informed and yet there is a tendency for politicians to formulate policy based on this uninformed opinion.

Furthermore, as the example shows, not only are their responses ill-informed, but they are based on their political allegiance.

Real democracy based on a properly enlightened people armed with facts has become obsolete. ‘Democracy’ today seems to revolve around those that have the means to successfully manipulate public opinion – and are able to do so with total disregard to the facts and, increasingly, with total disregard to any sense of morality or even reference to or respect for international law.

We have become a poll-driven ‘democracy’ that is dominated by the political commentariat in the employ of influential right-wing media barons for the benefit of their friends and associates in business and politics which, by its nature, is also predominately right-wing.

In the build up to the present refugee crisis, right-wing commentators have succeeded in developing an anxiety among the community based on xenophobic and Islamophobic fears bordering on paranoia. In the run-up to the last election this led to both sides of politics scrambling to pander to those fears in order to secure the votes of an electorate that had become misinformed about the realities of the boatpeople situation.

Australia’s responsibilities to asylum seeking refugees was overlooked in this scramble by both sides of politics to placate an electorate that had been whipped into a frenzy by the rightwing who had discovered that the ‘preventing deaths from drowning’ meme was a suitable vehicle to drive the anti-boatpeople propaganda.

Today, Jonathan Green in another article at The Drum takes a look at what the alternatives are to what is increasingly being seen as an entirely inappropriate system of dealing with boatpeople. He writes:

The compassion now shown to the miserable victims of circumstance and people smugglers is of course opportunistic and politically inspired. It is as genuine as the tears that flowed when Liberal members howled down the Malaysian people swap promoted by the Gillard government, only to sit back, smug and happily certain when more recent policy left people beaten to death, bloodied or shot while within the not-so-protective custody of a detention camp administered in our name. Camps, it should be said, established specifically to promote hopelessness, psychological trauma, degeneration and despair; the sum of these parts being deterrence.

Green sees the problem but, sadly, is unable to provide an adequate answer to it. Instead, he handballs the problem to Labor though he acknowledges that Labor’s initial answer to the problem of boatpeople was more or less the same as the Coalition’s. Green says that it is Labor that must rethink the problem and provide alternatives.

The main reason that both Green and the Labor opposition are unable to provide an alternative to deal with the problem is because of the way both define what the problem is. For them the problem is how to deter refugee boatpeople from attempting to sail to Australia to seek asylum yet, at the same time, deal with those that do turn up on our shores with compassion and with respect to their human rights.

Ignored is the real problem that has yet to be addressed and that is: why do we need to deter asylum seeking refugees from coming to Australia? For those on both sides of mainstream politics the answer has been to ‘stop the drownings’. For many this has become the whole reason for the entire off-shore processing exercise, but what if there had never been any drownings? What excuse then would there have been to lock people up in places they didn’t want to be for indefinite periods of time in the most appalling conditions? If there had been no drownings, would there then be no need to deter asylum seekers from coming to Australia by boat?

‘Stopping the drownings’ is just an excuse to cover the real reasons for deterring boatpeople from coming to Australia.

The unspoken bottom line lies in Australia’s innate fear and loathing of non-European foreigners coming to Australia. It is this that lies at the heart of the boatpeople problem. Everyone knows it but everyone denies it. Australians have put forward every excuse under the sun as to why boatpeople shouldn’t be allowed to come to Australia. They range from faux compassion over the drownings, to them not being real refugees, to them being queue jumpers or just rich country shoppers. It is with a certain irony that the only people being honest about their reasons for not wanting them in Australia are those monoculturalists on the extreme right who quite gleefully exclaim that they don’t want non-European non-white foreigners in Australia to dilute or change our existing culture – in other words, straight out racists the likes of which one will find commenting at blogs everywhere especially those run by Murdoch journalists like Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt, Piers Akerman, et al.

The answer to the drowning problem is simple: provide seaworthy boats – something the navy is now actually doing – but instead of sending them back to Indonesia, allow them to come to Australia. Alternatively, fly them in. Once they are here they can be quickly processed and dealt with accordingly. Those that are genuine are then released into the community and allowed to work, and those that don’t meet the requirements are then detained in humane conditions until alternative arrangements are made for them.

But before any of this or any other alternative answers to the problem can be considered, the Australian people need to either own up to being racists or do the right thing and meet the obligations we signed up for with regard to refugees because this ‘tough to be kind’ nonsense simply isn’t fooling anyone.

Australia must declare itself: we are either a nation of out and out racists or we are a compassionate fair-go nation willing to give anyone a chance.

We cannot be one while pretending to be the other. Australians need to face its racist demons and drive them out.

There needs to be honesty in the media and the propagandists need to be exposed and shut down. There needs to be penalties for lying in the media. The Australian Press Council needs its powers strengthened to ensure the media tells us the truth. And, finally, we need to look to the long term future of a compassionate Australia – and that starts with education.