Conservative Racism: Guest Post by Felix
A couple of weeks ago the Prime Minister appeared on talkback radio and wrote two opinion pieces for Australian newspapers to spruik one message of importance to Australians. What issue deserved so much of our Prime Minister’s time?
There are a range of huge challenges facing the Australian people. Spiralling personal debt? Third world conditions in Indigenous Australia? A coherent and serious response to global warming?
The PM devoted his pen not to any of these, but to the fact that—by his numbers—less than 1% of Australian Muslims haven’t learnt English and ‘refuse to integrate’. That’s 2000 people.
Meanwhile, around the same time, the far-right ‘Australian Liberal Students Federation’ (of which our Prime Minister is a patron) held a meeting at Melbourne University to organise their campaign for student elections. It turns out that the meeting was taped, and an edited transcript has now been published, both on an Internet blog and in the Melbourne newspaper, The Sunday Herald-Sun.
Discussion at the meeting centred on the incitement of “racial tension” during the elections, and reveals the depths to which the Liberal politicians of tomorrow will stoop. Phrases like “fucking Jews” abound, as do jokes referring to middle-eastern students as “terrorists”.
It is shocking and astonishing reading, and acts to confirm what the public had seen earlier in the year, when Lateline aired footage of Liberal students chanting racist slogans at the 2005 National Union of Students conference. At the time, the increasingly irrelevant SMH columnist Miranda Devine wrote glowingly of their actions as “rocking the status quo”. For her, these people are a brave new generation of conservatives, on front lines of the war against “political correctness and reflexive left-liberal ideology”.
Since the victory of the Liberal Party at a federal level in 1996, part of the campaign to force social conservatism on every corner of Australian culture has been to attack multiculturalism and ‘political correctness’, and the conservative elite has taken to the fight with a vengeance.
In the 1980s, our current Prime Minister was shouted down even in his own party when he called for a cut in the level of Asian immigration. Ten years later, after Pauline Hanson gave her maiden speech in Parliament in which she asserted that Australia was being “swamped by Asians” he said he was glad that “people do feel able to speak a little more freely and a little more openly about what they feel.”
No doubt Howard also feels comfortable that NSW Liberal Party Leader Peter Debnam feels ‘free’ enough to pledge that, if elected, he will direct the NSW Police to arrest “200 Middle-Eastern thugs” and “charge them with anything”. In David Marr’s recent interview with him, published in the Herald, Debnam didn’t seem to understand the broader significance of his racist pledge: “I don’t see it as long term, mate.”
Whether you believe that any or all of Debnam, the PM and the Liberal students at Melbourne Uni are racist or not, their statements and actions reveal what lies beneath conservative attacks on ‘political correctness’ and multiculturalism. The racist right has re-badged itself as iconoclastic and realistic, but it’s just the same underneath.
In the Liberal Party of 2006, singling out ethnic groups on the basis of the perceived actions or thoughts of a relatively tiny number of people is not just acceptable, it is encouraged. What is presented as genuine concern for our cohesiveness as a society and a desire to speak ‘frankly’ about how one group or another doesn’t share our values is actually a carefully crafted political manoeuvre that can easily be applied to any minority.
Occasionally they misjudge just how far to go, as we saw Howard do in the 1980s, or more recently when Liberal MP Danna Vale clumsily attempted to bring race and religion into the debate on the abortion pill RU486, claiming that Australians were “aborting ourselves out of existence”, and allowing Muslims to take over.
It’s easy to see that, although the flavour of the moment is singling out Muslims, that if a politician is prepared to attack one ethnic group for political gain, they are more than likely prepared to attack another. We should hope that the events at Melbourne University will teach the next generation of Liberal politicians that the exploitation of racism and fear isn’t worth using as a political tool.
Unfortunately, it is more likely that the experience will teach them to check more thoroughly for hidden microphones.
Oz wrote:
Attacking different ethnic minorities for political gain has been a frequent historical occurence. I’d go further back than Hanson to the depiction of migrants from Southern Europe after the Second World War, the sectarianism that dominated Australia until recently and the anti-Chinese and anti-Kanaka movements during Federation. What has always happened is that as soon as there’s a new ‘ethnic minority’, they become the new scapegoat and there is a greater tolerance of previous immigrant groups.
But more just criticising the Liberals we should also which often mimics, though in a more diluted form, the same sentiments. Beazley’s ridiculous signing a pledge of Australian values is an example as is NSW being the only state in Australia to use ethnic profiling.
However my view is that analysis from alot of sides has been simplistic and often fails to acknowledge the complexities of racism. There needs to be an acknowledgement that there is significant racism towards new immigrants by second-generation Australians who aren’t from an Anglo-Celtic background.
There’s also construction of an informal hierarchy of ethnic groups with the traditional conception of Anglo-Celtic ‘Australians’ and those closest to it, more towards the top and newer groups and those seen as quite different well as indigenous Australians at the bottom.
Finally, the debate about assimilation and multiculturalism has for a long time been exclusionary. The Right stirring up populist sentiments vs ethnic organisations that claim to represent an imagined community but more and more they are less representative.
I’m not a gigantic fan of multiculturalism because I think it glosses over issues and wants to pretend everything is fine and dandy and its all great food, dance and clothes etc. But I am completely opposed to a policy of assimilation because it will involve constantly having to prove ones self as ‘Australian’ and having to live up but never achieving this ‘Australianess’. It fails to see that culture constantly changes. It’s understandable though in the sense that it is defining ourselves by what we are not. It reflects a sense of insecurity in identity by panding to vague jingoisms.
EvilPundit wrote:
Racism, schmacism.
The word has been so abused that it is meaningless in the political debates of today.
The issue is culture, not race. Your tired old rhetoric belongs to the eighties, and will gain no purchase in the more enlightened society of the 21st century.
dibo wrote:
oh, i get it. saying things like
as yobbo did in the ‘it’s toime’ thread isn’t a throwback to the days when the bulletin ran ‘australia for the white man’ on its masthead at all… it’s an expression of a more enlightened 21st century society.
what utter horseshit.
Myth wrote:
I am so sick of that stupid fucking Anglo-Celtic label. And their supposed “monoculture”. You are a fucking idiot Oz. We fucked up the racists in WWII only to have you pigs try and tell us how to do our thing.
I have never known of any discrimination of immigrants since the beginning of the 20th century. Once they become Australian, they assume our rights. If they are different, that is because they are different. If their difference prevented them from getting along with the majority of Australians, than tough luck. Go home. I am so sick of this rewriting of history by the Bob Carr brigade. We built this country only to have every aspect of its history spat on by people so stupid and ignorant that they could only be products of the education system.
P.S. When is Keysar Trad going to be arraigned for inciting racial hatred?
dibo wrote:
settle patrick - you’ve used the ‘anglo-celtic label’ at least as much as anybody on this blog for a start.
and who’s this ‘we’ you speak of? does that mean that anyone whose family came to australia after WWII has no right to claim any ownership of australian values?
if you don’t know of discrimination against migrants it’s because you’ve got your head up your arse. does pauline hanson ring a bell? or graeme campbell’s ‘australians against further immigration’? or the so-called ‘patriotic youth league’ who were so active in building up the cronulla hullabaloo?
and don’t tell people you don’t agree with to ‘go home’ - debate or don’t debate, but never tell another stousher to ‘go home’ because they hold views different to yours.
if people aren’t allowed to hold diverse views and come from different backgrounds, then why did ‘we fuck up the racists in WWII’? after all, what’s the bloody difference?
someone (not verified) wrote:
I laughed today when Howard said that the Greeks were a good example of a people who had integrated well - I knew dozens of Greek women who lived 40 or 50 years in this country, without speaking a word of English, and relied completely on their husbands and children and mourned when their children married skips. Good migrants? Yes. Integrated? Don’t really think so.
liam wrote:
Please note, stoushers, that though Felix is a ‘guest’ commenter, all of his conditions and qualifications are equivalent to those of resident authors. There has been no attempt to undercut or exploit.
…
Felix, as far as I’m concerned the money quote is this:
Well said. We ought to be very aware that the word ‘culture’ does double duty for ‘race’, especially when people like Danna Vale start worrying about Westerners aborting themselves out of existence.
Evil, did ‘race’ really go out of fashion in the eighties, or like the devil, did it just get clever and convince people it didn’t exist? You ought to read Jon Stratton’s Race Daze.
Myth wrote:
“We”
The armed forces and national purpose of Australia between 1939-1945.
” does pauline hanson ring a bell?”
ding-dong, she was only ever a media beat up. To be frank, if she had a bigger brain, she might have got into power on the back of their hatred and smear campaign. But when did Australia ever discriminate against immigrants, she never held any power? Nor do I ever know of Pauline planning to revoke the citizenship from immigrants. So that is a blank on all counts.
However if suggesting certain types of immigration policy without ever gaining power is discrimination, than Pauline along with everybody else who has ever had an opinion about the type of immigrants Australia needs, has also discriminated. That would include all of you.
“does that mean that anyone whose family came to australia after WWII has no right to claim any ownership of australian values?”
Of cause not. Alot of those Italians were partisans as well. But the point is that people have no right to make Australia, a victor against an evil genius, out to be a “racist” or “bad” country when their very presence in this country is based upon the Australian faith in egalitarianism. I am not disputing their right to say it in the sense that they should be physically attacked for saying it. Just the ignorance and intolerance for what this country was built on is deeply offensive to me.
” graeme campbell’s ‘australians against further immigration’?”
Again this is potential immigrants, not discriminatory to actual immigrants in Australia. Noone is talking about giving immigrants with the citizenship any less rights. Noone has done it. Not discrimination.
“or the so-called ‘patriotic youth league’ who were so active in building up the cronulla hullabaloo?”
Now those guys discriminate against immigrants, but you miss the point. There is no legal discrimination against immigrants and there never has been except to Irish immigrants in the 19th century, some of the Chinese here at the time but that is a muddier issue, and Islanders who were used as slaves. (Note the current Fairfax racism against Islanders). As for the youth league, they are akin to other thugs and criminals around the place who collectively discriminate against everything.
“and don’t tell people you don’t agree with to ‘go home’ - debate or don’t debate, but never tell another stousher to ‘go home’ because they hold views different to yours.”
I did not tell the stousher to go home. Here is what I said, “Once they become Australian, they assume our rights. If they are different, that is because they are different. If their difference prevented them from getting along with the majority of Australians, than tough luck. Go home.”
The point is that we should not compromise our free speech, open and mainly tolerant society for people who do not want to get along with Australians. They should go home. That is as true of non-immigrants like Germaine Greer as it is of the 30 000 estimated carryers of the Australian citizenship in Lebanon.
p.s. I am more than happy for these values visas to be applied on one condition. Personally I think they infringe on our democracy by effectively hand tying potential citizens in a free society. They attack our dignity and effectively mean nothing because they will be ignored. If they are not ignored, than effectively what will happen is discrimination against immigrants who become citizens. They will not be able to exercise their rights and freedoms like the rest of us who do not sign it.
However despite this attack on Australian traditions, I will be for it if they make those English bastards sign it before they come here. The principle clause should be “thou shall learn what fucking football is and not impose your aggressive opinion that soccer, a bloody IndoAmerican game, is football. If thou disobeys than thou shall be booted like a football back to England.”
But otherwise I am against those values because they are discriminatory against immigrants.
EvilPundit wrote:
Dibo, our culture is superior to theirs. That’s a value judgement based on factors such as respect for democracy, free speech, tolerance of personal beliefs, and other factors which have nothing to do with race. It’s about secular humanism being a better philosophy than Islamic fundamentalism. If you insist on looking at everything in terms of people’s race, you’re not only missing the big picture – you’re being racist as well.
Liam, it’s the Left that tries to convince people that race doesn’t exist – even while using it as a basis of discrimination. Thus we find lefties claiming that there is no scientific basis for the concept of race – even as they advocate for special privileges for some Australians, on the basis of race. And they condemn others, like the dreaded Anglo-Celtic ‘Australians’, who are held responsible for all the problems in the country, on a similar basis.
It isn’t the Right who are conservative and racist, but the Left who want to preserve the hierarchy of race which they have established over the last few decades as their basis for making value judgements.
arleeshar wrote:
Leaving aside your bizarre claims about the Left, EP, I do want to know -
do you, personally, draw a distinction between claiming that one culture is superior to another, and claiming that the people who create and are part of a ‘superior’ culture are ‘superior’ to those those people who create and are part of the ‘inferior’ culture?
EvilPundit wrote:
Insofar as I draw a distinction between groups and individual members of those groups, of course.
For example, a person of Islamic cultural background such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who nevertheless fights for individual rights, is superior in my regard to a person of Western cultural background such as George Galloway, who sucks up to dictators and fundamentalists.
dibo wrote:
patrick - look up the White Australia Policy.
evil - you’re distinguishing between individuals and their respective actions there, not races or cultures. so maybe your ‘our culture is better’ bollocks is shorthand for ‘i’m too lazy to actually get to know people, so i’m gonna tar them with an easy stereotype’.
EvilPundit wrote:
Dibo, I’m answering Arleeshar’s question there.
Your post is shorthand for ‘I’m too lazy to actually read the thread, so I’m going to make inane comments based on stupid assumptions’.
Myth wrote:
Dibo: That was not discriminatory to immigrants, just selective of who could become immigrants. I do not know why you brought it up. I remember when I was reading Arthur Calwell’s memoirs that it came up. He obviousy did not like Gough Whitlam and at the end of the book he was highly critical of Whitlam’s new policy. Calwell wrote something along the lines that mixed nations will inevitably fail because they always have. This is because people will be always conscious of their race and the things that divide them and it will be exploited by everyone. He also wrote that we owed the aborigines a debt that had not yet been fully payed and that we should focus on that.
arleeshar wrote:
but, insofar as you are talking about groups of people, would you personally consider that one group of people is catagorically superior to another on the basis of the culture that they live within and create? I don’t wish to put words in your mouth but it seems to me that this is what you are saying.
I am genuinely interested as to how you distinguish this from racism.
Yobbo (not verified) wrote:
“would you personally consider that one group of people is catagorically superior to another on the basis of the culture that they live within and create?”
Arleeshar: nobody is saying any person is superior to another. They are saying one culture is superior to another.
Culture is something that you can change. You aren’t born with it. Many people migrate to different countries and adopt the culture of their new home. Still more pick and choose the best parts of each culture and dump the parts they dislike.
It’s no different than a religion in that it is something if you later decide you don’t like it, you can get rid of it.
There is nothing at all wrong with criticising those who have a choice and make the wrong one.
EvilPundit wrote:
Yes.
Culture is not race.
arleeshar wrote:
actually Yobbo, as confirmed by EP’s last post, he is in fact saying that one group of people is superior to another.
Again. I am interested. You haven’t explained. How do you differentiate this attitude from racism?
EvilPundit wrote:
Are you serious?
Can you not understand a simple concept?
Culture is not race.
Use a dictionary if you have to. The words have meanings.
Yobbo (not verified) wrote:
Race: A group of persons related by common descent or heredity.
Culture: The sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.
I got these definitions from Dictionary.com. I am sure you could do the same if you weren’t trying to be wilfully ignorant.
B.S. Fairman (not verified) wrote:
Maybe the term “bigot” could then be used instead of racist?
liam wrote:
In the basic form, nobody could possibly disagree, and I don’t think anyone here does. As the concepts are used contemporarily? It’s a bit more complicated.
You can cite it like a mantra to excuse people like Danna Vale, but it doesn’t relieve the pressure the last twenty or thirty odd years of governments have put on the words. As I said before, the noun ‘culture’ does at least double duty these days: for ‘race’, for ‘ideology’ and more and more, unfortunately, for ‘religion/sect’.
As an example: when somebody makes the statement ‘Zionists are the new Nazis’ they’re talking specifically about a political and social movement—but race is there, knocking about in its nasty little dungeon.
Yobbo (not verified) wrote:
Absolute bullshit Liam. Culture is not and will never equal race.
Indians and Pakistanis are the same race. Some are Muslims, some are Hindus.
What are the odds of the next London terror attacks being conducted by English-born Indian Hindus?
Extremely fucking low.
Religion is a major part of culture, especially so in religious socities where it is the dominant factor.
Race is a completely separate issue and relates pretty much solely to how a person looks, and therefore has very little to do with anything except aesthetics.
Peter Bell and Kim Jong-Il are the same race. But they grew up in very different cultures.
This entire debate is just an excuse for you all to throw around the word “racist” to silence opposing views. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
liam wrote:
I’ve never called any blogger racist, Yobbo, and there’s hardly any silencing of opposing views here (though to be fair, I believe I’ve called Evil Pundit a sectarian once).
Agreed, without question.
The problem is that the idea of ‘culture’ is used conflatively. I’ll turn my example from earlier up into a question: if I were to criticise the policies of the Government of Israel on the grounds of a broader Zionist ‘culture’, would I be making an exclusively cultural point?
I don’t think so.
EvilPundit wrote:
I think it’s the word “racist” that is being used in a vague and conflating way, in order to smear political enemies and suppress debate. A fine example is this very thread, in which the first post tries to couple conservatism with “racism”, and Arleeshar persistently tries to attach “racism” to a completely different concept.
As I’ve mentioned, these tactics worked well enough in the eighties and nineties, but their misuse and overuse has diluted the impact of the “r” word to the point where it really doesn’t mean much anymore. Rather a shame, really, since it was useful, once. But that’s what happens when descriptive terms are hijacked for propaganda purposes.
So by all means, continue to label those who dissent from your ideological position as “racists”, or “misogynists” for that matter. Just be aware that when you do it now, you only devalue the words themselves, and not your targets.
arleeshar wrote:
Where have I accused you, or anyone, of racism?
I merely asked you to differentiate the attitude that you confirmed was yours, and which you claimed was misunderstood by the original post as racism, that one group of people are superior to another on the basis of their culture, from racism. I am asking you to back up the claim you have made.
Simply stating that culture and race are separate is not answering my question. Of course ‘culture’ and ‘race’ are different concepts; ‘racism’ is a separate concept again to both ‘culture’ and ‘race’. You claim that your position is different again. Do you want to call it ‘culturism’? I haven’t found the dictionary.com definition for that one, so you’ll have to fill me in.
I am genuinely interested. I am not trying to be imflammatory. I don’t insult people who disagree with me, just because they disagree with me - or just because they want me to discuss my beliefs or back up my claims. I also don’t try to suppress debate just because I’m yet to be convinced of your point of view, which is what you are trying to do by claiming that I have accused you of racism.
The onus is on you here to back yourself. If you don’t defend your position I will assume that you can’t.
EvilPundit wrote:
Arleeshar, you are not genuinely interested in getting an answer to your question, as far as I can tell. I’ve answered it twice now, and Yobbo has been kind enough to provide dictionary definitions for your perusal.
You’re just trying to pointscore by pretending that something is other than what it is. Everyone else here seems to be able to perceive this basic distinction, and I’m pretty sure you can too. I won’t waste any more time on this game of yours.
arleeshar wrote:
If you will do me the courtesy of reading my posts, as I have done you the courtesy of reading yours, instead of trying to read something between the lines because you have a particular opinion of me, you will see that that is not the case.
How can you possibly ‘tell’ that I am not genuinely interested in what you have to say? This is why I get so frustrated by your posts EP. How can I possibly engage with you if you won’t engage with me?
I am not out to prove that you’re an idiot. I am genuinely interested in different points of view.
The basic distinction you have drawn is between race and culture. As I noted before, racism is a third concept which - I believe - is informed by both of the first two. You clearly don’t believe this. I want to know why because I am interested.
If you are feeling attacked, I am sorry, but I can’t be any clearer. If you choose to pack up your bat and ball and go home, that’s your business, and I will never understand.
(edited for clarity).
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