MURDOCH PROPAGANDA PRESS IN AUSTRALIA ATTEMPTS CHINA FEARMONGERING.

What is it about the extreme right-wing in the Western world that it has to continually raise fears about enemies that simply don’t exist any more and probably never did?

This last week or two, the Australian right-wing has regurgitated anti-China tensions for no other reason, so it seems, than it is politically expedient for them to do so. The right-wing have seized on the opportunity of making political capital out of some petty circumstantial relationship between Australia’s Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, and Chinese businesswoman Helen Liu. All that happened was that Liu paid for a trip or two for Fitzgibbon to visit China while Fitzgibbon was in opposition.

It turns out that Liu has connections with the Chinese military which the right-wing is saying is a ‘security risk’ despite there being no reason to believe ‘secrets’ were passed on to her or, indeed, if she actually was after any ‘secrets’.

Australia and China for some years have been enjoying a great business relationship to the extent that both countries have become enriched as a result. Much of that business was conducted during the Howard years, a period, apparently, when there were no such concerns about China being a potential enemy. But now Australia has a Labor government it has become expedient for the right-wing to resurrect the old ‘yellow peril’ and ‘red under the bed’ fearmongering animosities of the last century.

And, of course, Murdoch’s shills can’t help themselves from jumping on the fearmongering bandwagon. Andrew Bolt, always quick to seize on an opportunity to either demonise other peoples because of their race, religion or culture, or alternatively, entire nations because their political systems aren’t like America’s, must think all his propaganda birthday’s have come at once with the opportunity to bash China, a nation that is both racially and culturally, as well as politically, different from Australia. Bolt has grabbed at this opportunity with both hands demanding that Australia’s Defence Minister resign because, as Bolt ridiculously accuses, “Fitzgibbon was groomed by Helen Liu” saying that, “In fact, it’s precisely because China’s rising influence here is a security threat that Joel Fitzgibbon should now resign.”

One has to ask: How come China’s ‘rising influence’ is a security threat now and wasn’t when John Howard was Prime Minister?

Warmongering and fearmongering lunatics like Bolt and his fellow propagandists should pull their heads out of the sand-pit of the twentieth century and move in to the twenty-first century where most people have moved on from the mind-numbing stupidity of the Cold War and non-existent threats.