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Racism Australian style, or freedom of speech?
25 November 2012, 08:15
Racism and Aboriginal rights are still a very real and acute problem in
Australia. Recently Australia has passed a ruling which many “racist
elements” see as a threat to their “free speech” in attacking and demonizing
the already marginalized and vulnerable Aboriginal people for their own
political ends. In reality the ruling was a small victory, but in a land
where not long ago it was legal to kill the indigenous people, it has had a
resounding resonance, even making it into the Russian language press.
The decimated Aboriginal population of Australia recently won a very small
battle which has brought their struggle to the forefront, albeit on a small
scale, and has many in Australia debating journalistic ethics, freedom of
speech and just how far can politicians go to pander to the racist
sentiments of their supporters when attacking vulnerable marginalized
minorities.
The “victory” in question is a case regarding hate speech which the side of
the perpetrator is trying to portray as a freedom of speech issue and deals
with just how far Australians are allowed to go when expressing their hatred
or making offensive statements about the Aboriginal peoples of Australia and
other non-white non-Christian groups.
Nine indigenous Australians filed a complaint in Federal Court against a
columnist for the Herald Sun named Andrew Bolt who was then found guilty of
violating Australia’s anti-discrimination laws. More specifically breaching
section 18 (c) of Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act of 1975.
The case against him include stating that the nine had “identified as
Aborigines in order to gain career, social or other advantage” in two
articles published in 2009 and two blog posts on the Herald Sun’s website,
one titled “It’s so hip to be black.”
Australia, a country where not long ago it was legal to kill Aborigines and
take their children away has a very long way to go towards becoming a fair
society. Like most of the countries invaded, colonized or taken possession
of during the days of the British Empire and the European invasion of the
“New World,” countries and lands where the native peoples were brutally
exterminated, Australia is ruled and populated by the ancestors of genocidal
outcasts and the murderous misfits of European, in this case British
society. So watching their system attempt to show that they are just is
almost laughable, if it were not so tragic.
Despite the weakness of Australian anti-discrimination laws, as it true in
many countries ruled along racial lines, Australia also has laws to
“protect” free speech and “freedom of expression,” in this case Section 18D
of the same Racial Discrimination Act which allows for exemptions when done
“reasonably and in good faith” including public comments in a newspaper.
Such laws and arguments, as in the United States, allow for hate groups and
those espousing hate to operate, for the most part, unhindered by the law.
As with the US Ku Klux Klan, a group whose only goal is white domination
through the killing and eradication of other races, and neo-Nazi groups
worldwide who are allowed in many countries to march and hold public
gatherings under the protection of governments, Australia’s racists also
hide behind the banner of freedom of expression.
Watching the farce of the white justice system attempting to show it is
fair, as it rules against its own, is usually saddening and mostly
predictable, and this time is no different. The fact that it took four
publications and nine plaintiffs to bring about a grudging ruling in this
case says a lot for the fairness of the Australian system and the attitudes
of white Australians to the issue of the rights of the marginalized natives
of the country they have occupied for hundreds of years.
The reaction by the Australian media, such as the newspaper and website
The Australian and
powerful politicians who were given positions of power by millions of
like-minded voters, in
this case Australian Representative Tony Abbott,
is also a sad reminder as to how racist the system is and how many millions
still support and hold extreme racist views.
In the United States, Canada, Europe and other countries, racists and hate
groups have made huge gains over the last 20 years. In particular
Republicans and the far-right in US who have for the most part succeeded in
overturning gains made during the civil rights era. This has for the most
part been helped by Islamaphobia, crack downs on civil rights and freedoms
and the ensuing battle for “freedom of expression and “equal rights for
whites” which have been used as tools to rewrite laws and restructure the
white supremacist system in subtle and far reaching ways.
A good indicator that institutionalized racism is worldwide problem is the
case of Anders Breivik in Norway who despite his heinous crimes enjoys a
suite of rooms and superior treatment for the sole reason that he was
fighting for the white race, no matter that he is a mass-murdering lunatic.
Back to the matter at hand: Australia has one of the longest and most brutal
histories of genocide, racial hatred and institutionalized discrimination
and has only recently begun to correct some of the wrongs in the system.
Advocates of Aboriginal rights believe Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act
is worth defending, especially in light of the fact that there still exist
extreme levels of hatred, along racial, ethnic and religious lines in
Australia.
In an article for ABC Australia Mariam
Veiszadeh, a lawyer, writer and community rights advocate says,
“(Australia’s) … politicians feel the need to score political points at the
expense of the most vulnerable members of Australian society.” With regard
to freedom of speech she says: “Freedom of speech and expression is
inevitably a double edged sword. While it is very much the cornerstone of
our democratic rights and freedoms, those who spew hateful and misleading
vitriol ultimately thrive from the protection it offers.”
Though expectedly demonized by many “Australians,” last year Australia’s
Attorney-General Nicola Roxon, as reported by Mariam Veiszadeh: “…launched a
public discussion paper to seek community views on consolidating
Commonwealth anti-discrimination law as part of Australia's Human Rights
Framework."
Although Australia’s anti-discrimination laws are minimal and need to be
strengthened the Attorney General has faced harsh criticism and attacks for
her fight for justice. In the same article in The
Australian that I mentioned above,
the “freedom of speech” argument is blatantly and inaccurately put forward
once again with the publication defending hate speech by politicians by
stating incorrectly as fact that Attorney-General Nicola Roxon's proposed
changes: expand the list of things people can be offended by, expand the
jurisdiction into shops, workplaces and sporting clubs, provide a new weapon
in the war on free speech, include "political opinion" as a ground on which
people can be discriminated against and make “even innocuous political
expressions subject to the law.”
The nine “fair-skinned Aboriginals'' as they are being called in the
Australian all were carefully targeted for the smear by Bolt. They are all
high-achieving Aboriginals who have in various ways advanced the struggle of
the Aboriginal people and this is something that racist elements in
Australian want to see stopped.
Their claim that their attack was exempt from prosecution because it was
free speech was shot down by Justice Mordecai Bromberg who cited the way the
"articles were written, including that they contained errors of fact,
distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language."
In the verdict which Justice Bromberg read out in court he stated that he
had found that "fair-skinned Aboriginal people (or some of them) were
reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to have been offended,
insulted, humiliated or intimidated by the imputations conveyed in the
newspaper articles."
According to the Australian after the proceedings the author Bolt said “This
is a terrible day for freedom of speech in this country'', and the author of
the article, the director of the Legal Rights Project, Simon Breheny said:
“We've already seen the consequences of the Racial Discrimination Act for
freedom of speech. If you thought that was a miscarriages of justice, just
wait until you see the extraordinary wave of free speech litigation Roxon's
new laws will unleash.” I would argue his own statement is an admission and
a clear affirmation that widespread racism is a very serious problem in
Australia.
Unfortunately for Australian racists Australia’s genocide of the Aborigines
was not as complete as the American genocide of the Indian Nations and the
Aboriginal people still exist in numbers large enough to allow them to
occasionally be heard. This is also due to Australia’s policy of
extermination through assimilation as opposed to the US policy of outright
genocide and the following ghettoizing of the Indian people to reservations.
Few, if any, full-blooded Aboriginals in Australia are allowed to advance to
the levels that the nine defendants in this case have lifted themselves up
to, and we see that this has caused resonance. As with America most people
who posses Aboriginal or native blood are supposed to hide that fact and
quietly live under subjugation, these nine too often stepped-out-of-line,
and were therefore attacked.
Most people of native origin, if living among the “broader” populations of
their respective invaded lands, are taught to hide their ancestry, as were
the Jews during the Great Patriotic War, and any other groups living
surrounded by the “enemy.” Like my father once told me in California, where
our family was attacked by skin-heads, when I found out our hidden family
history and that I am more than 40% Taino Indian, “It is a white man’s
world. We have to live by his rules.”
Yes, Australia, most of the Americas, and many other places are now a “white
Anglo Saxon man’s world,” but the fact is that those “worlds” were stolen.
Let this serve as a warning to all Russians and nations of the world to be
forever vigilant to encroachment on your peoples and your lands.
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