White Australia began as a nation forged from the blood and misery of the destruction of a 60,00-year-old civilisation. We continued ‘developing’ through exploitation of the human detritus discarded by a Colonial power long since diminished to the status of a small Island. In the brief time we’ve existed, we’ve managed to destroy not only several indigenous cultures, but much of the very land we claim to treasure and value above all else. It seems we are continuing along this divisive path oblivious to the living hell which will ensue if we do not stop dividing and begin uniting.
The current Morrison Government demands that we must be ‘quiet Australians’ to win favour. Coupled with a stated intention to criminalise protest gatherings, demonstrations and boycotts and the ever increasing secrecy and refusal to respond to challenges or questions, it appears this Government is moving us ever closer to autocracy as our civil liberties become a faded, timorous echo of the past.
Wedge politics is a method of governmentality that is deliberate on the part of the governer and responsive on the part of the governed. We respond to the dog whistle because of our desire to move towards what are told to see as normalcy, we automatically attempt to avoid being the ‘deviant’. The clearly defined and frequently reinforced barriers between ‘normalcy’ and ‘deviance’ (Australian and UnAustralian) were redefined and resurrected from the days of the White Australia Policy by the Howard government, and refined and perpetuated by successive governments.
In Senator Penny Wong’s censure motion of a Qld senator, Frazer Anning in the Australian Senate, 3/4/2019, she forensically and passionately addressed issues that go to the heart of the place in which we find ourselves in Australia today: hate speech as the antithesis of free speech and it’s undermining effect on the underpinnings and meaning of democracy. To rephrase Senator Wong in much cruder words – as a true Australian we should forfeit the right to ‘free speech’ when you do not speak responsibly or from a position of self-awareness, consideration, fairness and a careful weighing up of the facts and evidence.
We persist in clinging to the myth of the Australian ‘brand’ – a nation of rugged individualists. We glory in our celebrated mateship, our cynicism and our refusal to kowtow to those who consider themselves our betters. When issues raise their heads, we tend to turn to this myth to pat ourselves on the back, as if any problems we have are imposed on us from outside, and not of our own making.
Yet we allow our politicians and media to simplify complex issues like immigration, refugees, crime, indigenous dispossession, and marginalisation into either/or binaries – making them a matter of choice, rather than an imperative to find a way forward in keeping with our principles. As Senator Wong so forcibly drove home, we are currently ruled by fear, divided by fear and driven by fear. As the world seemingly spins out of control around us, is it time to reconsider our view of ourselves? Is it time to overthrow the dead hand of fear and over simplification, and actually live up to our self image of what it is to be Australian: fearless, fair, kind, and inclusive.
Fear is nothing new – fear of ‘the Other’ has existed since the beginning of the human race, with its evolutionary roots no doubt in self-protective instinct. The demonisation of those outside the ‘mainstream’ to achieve political gain – witch hunts, religious persecution and the Inquisition being the obvious examples from pre-industrial times – is nothing new. The creation of a perception of risk underpinned by a people’s values and beliefs; and the use of beliefs and superstition to control, blame, divide and persecute groups and place them ‘outside’ the dominant culture has been utilised for centuries.
As Barbara Hudson notes, the identification of the different and dangerous is an ‘abandonment of liberalism’s philosophical egalitarianism and a move towards neo-liberalism...”. Bertrand Russell wrote, way back in 1943, at a time when such things were uppermost in people’s minds “Collective fear stimulates herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.” Australia, of course, is not alone in this, Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish born sociologist who resided in the UK until his death in 2017, wrote on the subjects of modernity and postmodernity, rationality, and the stranger among us. Bauman quotes Albrecht: “Demonisation has been replaced by the concept and the strategy of ‘dangerisation’. Political governance, therefore, has become partially dependent on the deviant other and the mobilisation of feelings of safety. Political power, and its establishment, as well as its preservation, are today dependent on carefully selected campaign issues, among which safety (and feelings of unsafety) is paramount” and then adds “Immigrants, let us note, fit better into such a purpose than any other category of genuine or putative villains …”
As a population, compared to some others, Australians are relatively passive, making us extra responsive to these particular instruments of governmentality. We accepted the massive restrictions to our civil liberties that were set in place as a result of 9/11 and the Bali bombings, and we continue to passively accept and even encourage the further erosion of our rights in the name of crime control, law and order, economic rationalism and the ability of people to attend to, profit from and prime the levers of business, profit and finance.
The immigration ‘debate’ grinds on and issues such as welfare, wages and survival are becoming increasingly polarised. The shameful use of asylum seekers, immigrants, welfare recipients and those who take to the streets in protest as tools and fodder for political manoeuvring and manipulation of the populace increases in intensity. The peddling of hate, lies and misinformation by the media lapdogs of the politicians continues unabated, the ability to challenge and investigate wanes as independent journalism is eroded.
As recently as the persecution of indigenous peoples by European colonists in the late 19th and early 20th century, and possibly the hysteria surrounding the fear of the ‘negro’ in early 20th century America, a case could be made that demonisation was made possible by the ignorance and widespread illiteracy and naivety of a population who knew little, if anything, of the world outside their immediate experience. Modern Australia, however, is an educated population with an excellent and free compulsory education system, we are exposed to the world through media, travel and trade. Yet, we continue to respond to the world and react to fear mongering in the same way as our ancestors. Surely this is extraordinary in the face of our massive advances as a society in all other areas. ‘The feared subject’ (criminal, immigrant, indigenous person, teenager. public housing occupant) is always among us, despite our modern rationalisation of almost everything else in our lives.
Perhaps Bauman gets to the heart of dog whistle politics when he eloquently sums up the direct link between our medieval ancestors’ fear of demons and witches and our current fear of the victims of war and religious persecution who arrive in leaky boats:
“When all places and positions feel shaky and are deemed no longer reliable, the sight of immigrants rubs salt into the wound. Immigrants, and particularly the fresh arrivals among them, exude the faint odour of the waste disposal tip which in its many disguises haunts the nights of the prospective casualties of rising vulnerability. For their detractors and haters, immigrants embody – visibly, tangibly, in the flesh – the inarticulate, yet hurtful and painful presentiment of their own disposability…”
We are all, at times, guilty of lazy thinking and snap judgements, of letting others take the running or tell us what to think, but that is no way to run a country, or indeed the world. I speak directly to those who swallow and spew back the hateful racism of ‘journalists’ and commentators and to the supporters of the current crop of right-wing conservative politicians (and many who claim to be left leaning but continue to milk the politics of fear), and those who are drawn to the repellent and unhinged rantings of people like Blair Cottrell or the above-mentioned Queensland senator.
Are you so weak and selfish that you fail to realise that you have been used as pawns and that your thoughts and words are not yours, but merely what you have been conditioned to unquestioningly think? Your wilful ignorance of the facts of a situation, or the evidence supporting a nuanced analysis is compounded by your continued use of hate speech and language that perpetuates falsehoods such as ‘queue jumpers’ and ‘illegal immigrants’ ‘gang violence’ ’welfare cheats’ and ‘culture wars’. You refuse to acknowledge the increasing marginalisation of large swathes of our population by dismissing discussion of wages, welfare and housing commission residents as ‘class warfare’.
What all this reveals is the fact that you have squandered the excellent and free education that you have received in Australia – if you want to talk about people who are ungrateful, you top the list. How dare you claim to speak for the rest of us. How dare you claim the right to air your opinion without justification or evidence and brush it off as ‘free speech’.
The fact is that we are citizens not only of Australia, but of the ever-shrinking and ever more interdependent world, the conflicts and misfortune visited on other countries and peoples are as much our responsibility as anyone else’s in the world. We are not an illiterate population, we do not believe in witchcraft or demons, we are not ruled by superstition. We are a modern, wealthy, highly educated. secular democracy who have had everything handed to us on a plate. It is our responsibility as citizens of such a country to behave in a just and carefully considered fashion.
Hate speech, demonisation and the politics of fear has no place the mythology of Australian society – can we move forward now?