Hatestream

Like frogs in a slow-boiling pot we have become used to the mainstreaming of hate speech against Muslims over many years. The hate has come from so many corners, there are too many to point at. It’s not just the far right. It’s not just the hate media. As commentator after commentator has pointed out, the Abbott–Turnbull–Morrison governments have to take some responsibility for fomenting it, from the treatment of asylum seekers to stoking fears about Muslim immigration and Islamist terrorism, from bringing One Nation into the fold to accidentally-on-purpose voting up an “It’s OK to be white” resolution. They have to take some responsibility, and pull back from the brink of what was threatening to become a(nother) race election. Perhaps the shock of Friday’s massacre of 50 people at prayer in two Christchurch mosques by an Australian terrorist – as Opposition leader Bill Shorten said yesterday, a phrase that still takes some getting used to – will snap our politics out of it. Perhaps as well as being a referendum on wages the next election should be a referendum on hate and putting it behind us.

The overwhelming public support for a petition calling on the prime minister to force Senator Fraser Anning to resign from parliament for his offensive statements after the attack, among other things – almost 1.2 million signatures at time of writing, making it the biggest petition this country has seen (disclosure: I signed) – raises the interesting question of whether there are or should be any limits on extremist politicians. The petition’s author, Kate Ahmad, told The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday that she understood there was no mechanism for expelling politicians unless they were criminals or ruled ineligible, but perhaps there should be. Australia now has a known Nazi sympathiser in the Senate, who uses his parliamentary platform and a supple media – which turns up to his press conferences, even today – to undermine our way of life. Both major parties will have move a censure motion, but the Greens today have urged the parliament to go further, with leader Richard Di Natale exploring options including amending the Parliamentary Privileges Act to allow members of parliament to be expelled.

Australia’s hate problem goes well beyond Anning – it goes right to the top, specifically to Scott Morrison. In an indication of how sensitive the prime minister is to suggestions that he has stoked Islamophobia, The New Daily reports that his office is threatening to sue Channel 10 for defamation over Waleed Aly’s Friday op-ed that has been viewed an astonishing 12 million times and surfaced old allegations that Morrison went to shadow cabinet in 2011 and recommended taking political advantage of fears about Muslim immigration.

As the AFR’s Phillip Coorey writes [$] today, in a reminder of the Lindsay pamphlet scandal days out from the 2007 election, “conservative politics no longer dog whistles over Islam. For years now, it has been using a loud hailer.” Sean Kelly points out that only a few weeks ago the prime minister was hoping out loud that passage of the medivac bill would be his Tampa moment. Today, he is announcing $55 million to protect against terrorism at places of worship.

If Christchurch was going to force a revaluation on the conservative side of politics, then we wouldn’t be hearing Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton this morning likening Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi – who is the only Muslim in the Senate, and who has been outspoken against racism – with Fraser Anning. As former race commissioner Tim Soutphomasanne tweeted this morning: “Stop with the false equivalence. It should be simple for political leaders: condemn and reject white supremacism and far-right extremism. The problem is racism, not anti-racism.” Dutton’s comments were widely condemned, including by Labor Senate leader Penny Wong, who accused him of “normalising hate speech”.

Faruqi is the solution here, not the problem. Her comments this morning bear repeating: “Some politicians in Australia have for years been whipping up anti-muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment,” she told ABC Television’s News Breakfast, “and for years, Muslims have also been warning; we’ve been speaking out and saying this is damaging and hurting the community, and that this does have consequences – this doesn’t happen in a vacuum. And when I talk about politicians, I have to say I’m not only talking about the usual suspects like One Nation’s Pauline Hanson, or Fraser Anning.” On Radio National, she added, “It is politicians like Peter Dutton who have actually contributed to creating an atmosphere where hate is allowed to incubate in our society. They can’t shrug off their responsibility.”

As Ruby Hamad writes [$] powerfully in Crikey today, white nationalism is abundant here in Australia. The hate Australia must deal with is not only on the fringes, it is mainstream.

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