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The return to racist politics in Australia
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Security officials walk outside the Masjid al Noor mosque after a shooting incident in Christchurch on March 15, 2019. - Attacks on two Christchurch mosques left at least 40 dead on March 15, with one gunman – identified as an Australian extremist -- apparently livestreaming the assault that triggered the lockdown of the New Zealand city. (AFP/Tessa Burrows)
The Christchurch attacks in New Zealand are an extreme symptom — the most extreme — of a much wider problem.
Fear of other people has been weaponized by politicians, newspaper editors and broadcasters to suit their own agendas and to boost their election campaigns. To attract viewers and sell newspapers in an era when sales are declining and paid audiences shrinking.
This is happening around the world. But it’s also happening in Australia.
This fear is driven by ignorance, and it’s this widespread ignorance that permeates the upper levels of Australian society. The male, pale and stale leaders of our businesses, our media companies and our political parties. It is their ignorance that sets the narrative about Muslims in Australia. They decide who edits their newspapers and who produces their broadcasts. The editors decide what stories are run showing what angle, which latest clickbait article will be uploaded to their news site.
And what do they know about Muslims? What they read in the paper? What they see on TV? What everybody knows?
And what do people know? That Muslims are not on “Team Australia”. They don’t integrate. They don’t assimilate. They don’t take off their headscarves. In an age of paranoia about migration in Australia, Muslims stand out. They are a problem to be watched. They follow a religion that leads to violence. This is the sort of rubbish that has become acceptable in public discourse in modern Australia.
While the Gough Whitlam government ended the White Australia Policy in 1973, it was Malcolm Fraser, Australian prime minister from 1975 to 1983, who ushered in a new era of multiculturalism by welcoming refugees from the Vietnam War with open arms. Australia has since become one of the most successful multicultural societies in the world. It is a country where people of all faiths, skin colors, cultures and backgrounds can live and work peacefully together.
