Anti-Arab, Anti-Semitism & Islamophobia

WHITE AUSTRALIA has had a dreadful, 2 century history of egregious racism since the European invasion in 1788. This history of racism has principally involved the domestic Aboriginal Genocide associated with the following - the Indigenous (Aboriginal) population fell from about 1 million in 1788 to about 0.1 million in a century due to violence, dispossession, deprivation and disease; massacres that continued until the 1920s; non-recognition of Aborigines as Australians until after the 1967 Referendum; forcible removal of perhaps as many as 0.1 million Aboriginal children from their mothers (the Stolen Generations); and continuing appalling Aboriginal living conditions that result in huge differential mortality: thus the annual death rate is 2.2% for Indigenous Australians, 2.5% for pre-drought Australian sheep and 0.7% for White Australians (see MWC News ).

However other dimensions of White Australian racism included the notorious 1901-1973 White Australia Policy (that has now been replaced by a “secret” New White Australia Policy that actively discriminates against Asians, Africans, South Americans, and Eastern Europeans – especially Middle Easterners, Indians, Chinese and South East Asians - simply wanting to visit Australia as tourists or students). An appalling aspect of White Australian racism was its support for British colonialism (1.5 billion avoidable deaths in British India alone) (see MWC News ) and for post-1950 US Asian wars (18 million excess deaths in total; 3 million excess deaths in post-invasion Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan).   

White Australian racism was briefly interrupted by the anti-racism of the Whitlam (Labor), Fraser (Conservative Coalition), Hawke and Keating (Labor) years from 1972-1996. However the 1990s saw the growth of popular support for the racist, anti-Asian One Nation Party. The Conservative Coalition under John Howard developed a very successful policy of courting the xenophobic One Nation vote but in a subtle “politically correct” fashion that nevertheless was understood by the xenophobes – a process called “dog whistling” after whistles that only dogs can hear. Major vehicles of the “dog whistling” have been appalling treatment of mostly Muslim refugees (imprisonment of thousands – including hundreds of children – in traumatizing remote prisons without charge or trial) and blind support for the Bush Wars in Iraq and  Afghanistan and for Zionist atrocities in Palestine and Lebanon (see MWC News )

The Opposition Labor Party has been quite cowardly and unprincipled in supporting bad treatment of refugees; ignoring horrendous post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan (now totaling 3.0 million); supporting the continued occupation of Afghanistan; and supporting the Israeli bombing and shelling of 25,000 Lebanese-origin Australian citizens in the recent Israeli war on Lebanon and the Israeli destruction of Lebanon. The Opposition has also gone down the offensive track of singling out Arabs and Muslims as somehow insufficiently “Australian” and demanding a “test” about “Australian values” for people merely wanting to visit Australia as tourists.

With media and politicians endlessly drumming up the xenophobia, anti-Arab anti-Semitism and Islamophobia it is hardly surprising that things have gotten out of hand. Thus both parties supported horrendous human rights- and civil rights-abusing anti-Terrorism and Sedition Laws (e.g. potentially 7 years in prison for views the Government does not like) and last year we saw the horrendous Cronulla Beach race riots in which thousands of White Australian yahoos attacked people of Middle Eastern appearance.

Although millions of decent Australians are appalled by the “dog-whistling” racism of the Bush-ite Government and the cowardice of the Labor Opposition, very few politicians have stood up to be counted on the expanding xenophobia, anti-Arab anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Greens Senator Dr Bob Brown and the Australian Democrats demanded cessation of the latest war in Lebanon. The decent Conservative politicians Pietro Georgiou and Malcolm Fraser steadfastly oppose abuses against refugees. Old political foes Gough Whitlam (Labor) and Malcolm Fraser (Conservative Coalition) (both former prime ministers, Fraser replacing Whitlam as PM after Whitlam’s notorious, possibly CIA-complicit dismissal from power in 1975) have both publicly condemned the growing xenophobia.

Several recent incidents are symptomatic of White Australian anti-Arab anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

Thus The Age (Melbourne’s and possibly Australia’s top quality newspaper) recently reported awful anti-Asian and anti-Aboriginal comments from a Conservative political candidate (see: HERE ) in which this present candidate for the Victorian state election had declared that Aborigines were congenitally drunk and violent, that US political prisoner  David Hicks should be executed, that an Indian-born doctor was smelly and incompetent and that a (very popular) Chinese Lord Mayor of Melbourne couldn’t speak English properly (a bi-partisan concern in general of the “dog-whistling” major parties).