In his column today, Murdoch journalist Andrew Bolt defends the creed of hate that motivated the killing of more than 90 people in Norway.
In his article, which he titles ‘Look not at his creed but at his wounds’, Bolt attempts to excuse the actions of Breivik by portraying him as being deeply frustrated by a sense of “powerlessness” which Bolt suggests is bought on by being engulfed by Islam, and “rejection” because of coming from a broken family.
While Bolt has used various superlatives to describe what Breivik had done including ‘murder’ and ‘atrocity’, etc., Bolt has consistently failed to wholeheartedly condemn the crime or the ‘creed’ that motivated it.
Fortunately, apart from a few of Bolt’s regular far-right Islamophobic supporters, most comments, even from some who often support Bolt, are critical of him for taking this stance.
After a careful read of Bolt’s post one can only conclude that Bolt is actually supportive of the reason why Breivik committed this crime. Certainly Andrew Bolt and his Islamophobic supporters in Australia are on exactly the same wavelength as Breivik. It was only a matter of time before Bolt's influence manifested itself in this type of violence.
We have Murdoch to thank for the part Bolt has played in bringing the kind of hate-filled thinking Breivik has displayed to Australia.
Murdoch should immediately sack this hate-monger before his Islamophobic nonsense gains a foothold in Australia and culminates in the same kind of tragedy that happened in Norway.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
MURDOCH’S AUSTRALIAN HATE MERCHANTS
Whereas in Britain Murdoch’s journalists revel in tabloid sensationalism utilising various nefarious methods of gaining material for their non-stories, Murdoch’s Australian journalists tend more to specialise in ultra right-wing racism. This includes cultural and religious racism directed mainly toward Islam, as well as blood and colour racism which is directed particularly toward Australia’s own Aboriginal people and also toward black Africans that have sought refuge in Australia.
At Melbourne’s Herald-Sun newspaper, Andrew Bolt, the ultra right-wing blogger-columnist, almost daily lays bare his racist credentials for all his followers to see. Today, for example, he tells us that the ‘underclass are stirring’. For Bolt the underclass are the whites of Australia who are lashing out against African migrants. In a futile effort to distance himself from the activities and violence of the underclass that he has stirred up by writing articles designed specifically to influence such perpetrators of violence and hatred, Bolt calls his post about the stirred underclass; ‘White trash’.
Meanwhile, at Murdoch’s Sydney newspaper, The Telegraph, another ultra right-wing blogger-columnist, Tim Blair, showed his Islamophobic colours when he made the same knee-jerk call as Bolt when the Norwegian atrocity story broke; he blamed Muslims.
The other blogger-columnist at The Telegraph is the all round racist Piers Akerman. Writing, thankfully, only intermittently these days, Akerman’s latest offering, ‘What a pack of Burqas’, was apparently written in France where he has been touring. The article covers the whole gamut of Akerman’s lunatic rantings (he once actually attempted to blame Muslims for causing the 2009 Black Sunday fires in Victoria) ranging from protecting what’s left of Murdoch’s credibility in the UK to Muslim immigration in Europe and back again.
The propaganda at Murdoch’s – and Australia’s – only national newspaper, The Australian, is only marginally more sophisticated than his regional tabloids. Greg Sheridan, Dennis Shanahan and Janet Albrechtsen, the Ann Coulter of the Australian loony right, are among the most prominent racist ultra right-wingers that Murdoch employs. Naturally, they all also happen to be climate change denialists and supporters of pollutionists. Currently, most of them are busy trying to isolate Murdoch’s Australian propaganda machine from the fallout from the misdeeds of his UK propaganda machine.
The aims of the two arms of his propaganda empire, the UK and Australia, are the same; its just that the UK arm tends more toward using underhand means of pushing their message while the Australian arm uses blatant fear-mongering racism and lies about climate change to get to its objectives of ‘regime change’ in Australia.
Murdoch’s merchants of hate in Australia have played down the events that occurred in Norway two days ago. Few have condemned the atrocity and have only reported the facts. Nor have Murdoch’s propagandists properly condemned the reactionary violence against African immigrants by racist white youths who clearly have been influenced by the likes of Murdoch’s Australian propagandists.
At Melbourne’s Herald-Sun newspaper, Andrew Bolt, the ultra right-wing blogger-columnist, almost daily lays bare his racist credentials for all his followers to see. Today, for example, he tells us that the ‘underclass are stirring’. For Bolt the underclass are the whites of Australia who are lashing out against African migrants. In a futile effort to distance himself from the activities and violence of the underclass that he has stirred up by writing articles designed specifically to influence such perpetrators of violence and hatred, Bolt calls his post about the stirred underclass; ‘White trash’.
Meanwhile, at Murdoch’s Sydney newspaper, The Telegraph, another ultra right-wing blogger-columnist, Tim Blair, showed his Islamophobic colours when he made the same knee-jerk call as Bolt when the Norwegian atrocity story broke; he blamed Muslims.
The other blogger-columnist at The Telegraph is the all round racist Piers Akerman. Writing, thankfully, only intermittently these days, Akerman’s latest offering, ‘What a pack of Burqas’, was apparently written in France where he has been touring. The article covers the whole gamut of Akerman’s lunatic rantings (he once actually attempted to blame Muslims for causing the 2009 Black Sunday fires in Victoria) ranging from protecting what’s left of Murdoch’s credibility in the UK to Muslim immigration in Europe and back again.
The propaganda at Murdoch’s – and Australia’s – only national newspaper, The Australian, is only marginally more sophisticated than his regional tabloids. Greg Sheridan, Dennis Shanahan and Janet Albrechtsen, the Ann Coulter of the Australian loony right, are among the most prominent racist ultra right-wingers that Murdoch employs. Naturally, they all also happen to be climate change denialists and supporters of pollutionists. Currently, most of them are busy trying to isolate Murdoch’s Australian propaganda machine from the fallout from the misdeeds of his UK propaganda machine.
The aims of the two arms of his propaganda empire, the UK and Australia, are the same; its just that the UK arm tends more toward using underhand means of pushing their message while the Australian arm uses blatant fear-mongering racism and lies about climate change to get to its objectives of ‘regime change’ in Australia.
Murdoch’s merchants of hate in Australia have played down the events that occurred in Norway two days ago. Few have condemned the atrocity and have only reported the facts. Nor have Murdoch’s propagandists properly condemned the reactionary violence against African immigrants by racist white youths who clearly have been influenced by the likes of Murdoch’s Australian propagandists.
Friday, July 22, 2011
MURDOCH JOURNO ANDREW BOLT FAILS TO CONDEMN FAR-RIGHT KILLINGS AND BOMBING IN NORWAY
Murdoch journalist and extreme right-wing Australian racist, Andrew Bolt, is always quick to condemn Islamic terrorism wherever it may occur. Of course, all terrorism needs to be condemned but for Bolt, such condemnation is also seen as an opportunity to push his hate spiel against Islam for his racist followers to feed on.
Yesterday, as news came in that bombing and shooting atrocities had occurred in Norway, Bolt was quick off the mark to blame Islamist extremists saying “Once the identity of the attackers becomes known, the consequences for Norway’s immigration policies could be profound”.
Well, the identity of the attackers did become known and it seems at least one of them, who has been arrested, is actually just like Bolt and his crew of haters – an Islamophobic far-right racist.
Once Bolt realised that the attack had not been perpetrated by Islamic terrorists, he began to report only the bare facts in a series of updates to his original post. All of the updates were noticeably devoid of any condemnation. To date there have been no further posts on the attacks at Bolt’s blog.
This is part of the Murdoch style of journalism in Australia. Whether or not there is phone hacking going on in Australia is as yet unknown, but certainly there is a distinct pattern of anti-Islamic and anti non-white racism running through most of Murdoch’s publications in Australia particularly in Sydney where another Murdoch racist, Tim Blair, operates, and in Melbourne which is Bolt’s hate base.
Yesterday, as news came in that bombing and shooting atrocities had occurred in Norway, Bolt was quick off the mark to blame Islamist extremists saying “Once the identity of the attackers becomes known, the consequences for Norway’s immigration policies could be profound”.
Well, the identity of the attackers did become known and it seems at least one of them, who has been arrested, is actually just like Bolt and his crew of haters – an Islamophobic far-right racist.
Once Bolt realised that the attack had not been perpetrated by Islamic terrorists, he began to report only the bare facts in a series of updates to his original post. All of the updates were noticeably devoid of any condemnation. To date there have been no further posts on the attacks at Bolt’s blog.
This is part of the Murdoch style of journalism in Australia. Whether or not there is phone hacking going on in Australia is as yet unknown, but certainly there is a distinct pattern of anti-Islamic and anti non-white racism running through most of Murdoch’s publications in Australia particularly in Sydney where another Murdoch racist, Tim Blair, operates, and in Melbourne which is Bolt’s hate base.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF MURDOCH?
It’s tempting to suggest that the scandal enveloping the Murdoch media empire may well see the demise of the world’s largest political propaganda machine. Unfortunately, the very fact that it is such a massive propaganda machine will likely ensure that his empire does survive – albeit needing some considerable time to recover.
Apart from being a massive world-wide propaganda machine, Murdoch himself wields much personal and political influence. There are many leaders around the world, past and present, who owe much of their success to Murdoch and his media empire. Even the current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, arguably, may not have got into power without Murdoch’s backing. And Tony Blair too might not have enjoyed such a large victory at the polls as he did in May 1997 without the last minute support of Rupert Murdoch. In the US, Murdoch’s long string of media enterprises, in particular Fox News, helped George W. Bush gain American support for the war against Iraq. Around the world, Murdoch’s newspapers and media served Bush’s cause and those of his allies including Tony Blair; Australia’s Prime Minister of the time, John Howard; Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar, all of whom benefited from Murdoch’s unwavering support for the war. Aznar even went on to become a senior member of the board of directors for News Corporation.
In the current crisis, Cameron initially supported Murdoch in the hope that it would all be just a flash in the pan and, after a few smaller heads were made to roll, all would be well again. Cameron supported Murdoch’s push to buy up all of Britain’s BSkyB media company but, in the wake of the growing crisis and the now obvious fact that it isn’t simply going to go away, Cameron has now joined the political call from Britain’s other major parties for Murdoch to abandon his plans to take over BSkyB which will be a major blow for Murdoch.
As the crisis deepens and it’s becoming apparent that the practice of phone hacking was far more widespread than initially thought, many are wondering how far the practice did extend and to what extent were senior and top managers aware of what was going on or even approved or, worse still, had instigated the practice. Did Murdoch himself know or approve of it? He’s hardly likely to admit it if he did though if he’s hauled up to front an inquiry and denies it and then is subsequently found to be a part of the practice then that surely would be the end of him.
Whether it comes to the demise of Murdoch himself remains to be seen. Murdoch has enough personal wealth to ensure that he will be very comfortable for the rest of his days; however, doing business is his obsession and he wouldn’t last very long without the fix of doing deals so I’d suggest that he’ll fight this all the way – even if it’s just for the thrill of it. Whether he wins or not is another matter.
In Australia, where it all started for Murdoch, his newspapers are relatively safe. His flagship paper, the nationwide The Australian, has all but ignored the crisis on the other side of the world, as have his regional and city papers. All of them seem to be reporting only the bare facts of what’s happened with very little comment or opinion being aired.
For his rival newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald in Sydney and The Age in Melbourne, it’s a different matter. Both have been giving the emerging stories full headlines though the intensity of reporting and commentary has now dropped off a little – at least for now.
A world without Murdoch’s propagandists in it, however, is still some way away though the next few months will likely see some interesting developments that will see them pull their horns in.
Heads will roll; it’s going to be interesting to see whose.
Apart from being a massive world-wide propaganda machine, Murdoch himself wields much personal and political influence. There are many leaders around the world, past and present, who owe much of their success to Murdoch and his media empire. Even the current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, arguably, may not have got into power without Murdoch’s backing. And Tony Blair too might not have enjoyed such a large victory at the polls as he did in May 1997 without the last minute support of Rupert Murdoch. In the US, Murdoch’s long string of media enterprises, in particular Fox News, helped George W. Bush gain American support for the war against Iraq. Around the world, Murdoch’s newspapers and media served Bush’s cause and those of his allies including Tony Blair; Australia’s Prime Minister of the time, John Howard; Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar, all of whom benefited from Murdoch’s unwavering support for the war. Aznar even went on to become a senior member of the board of directors for News Corporation.
In the current crisis, Cameron initially supported Murdoch in the hope that it would all be just a flash in the pan and, after a few smaller heads were made to roll, all would be well again. Cameron supported Murdoch’s push to buy up all of Britain’s BSkyB media company but, in the wake of the growing crisis and the now obvious fact that it isn’t simply going to go away, Cameron has now joined the political call from Britain’s other major parties for Murdoch to abandon his plans to take over BSkyB which will be a major blow for Murdoch.
As the crisis deepens and it’s becoming apparent that the practice of phone hacking was far more widespread than initially thought, many are wondering how far the practice did extend and to what extent were senior and top managers aware of what was going on or even approved or, worse still, had instigated the practice. Did Murdoch himself know or approve of it? He’s hardly likely to admit it if he did though if he’s hauled up to front an inquiry and denies it and then is subsequently found to be a part of the practice then that surely would be the end of him.
Whether it comes to the demise of Murdoch himself remains to be seen. Murdoch has enough personal wealth to ensure that he will be very comfortable for the rest of his days; however, doing business is his obsession and he wouldn’t last very long without the fix of doing deals so I’d suggest that he’ll fight this all the way – even if it’s just for the thrill of it. Whether he wins or not is another matter.
In Australia, where it all started for Murdoch, his newspapers are relatively safe. His flagship paper, the nationwide The Australian, has all but ignored the crisis on the other side of the world, as have his regional and city papers. All of them seem to be reporting only the bare facts of what’s happened with very little comment or opinion being aired.
For his rival newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald in Sydney and The Age in Melbourne, it’s a different matter. Both have been giving the emerging stories full headlines though the intensity of reporting and commentary has now dropped off a little – at least for now.
A world without Murdoch’s propagandists in it, however, is still some way away though the next few months will likely see some interesting developments that will see them pull their horns in.
Heads will roll; it’s going to be interesting to see whose.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
MURDOCH JOURNALIST, GREG SHERIDAN, DISPLAYS HIS RACIST CREDENTIALS.
In a lengthy article last Saturday in The Australian titled ‘How I lost faith in multiculturalism’, Greg Sheridan finally showed himself to be the racist that we always knew he was. Of course, having ranted against Islam in the past, usually when discussing the war against terrorism, we already knew that he was a racist. But in those circumstances he usually denied being racist by saying that his rants were directed against extremist Muslim, not moderate Islam. But now he has finally come out against Islam generally thus displaying his true racist credentials. At one point in his article Sheridan relates how he witnessed a white Australian women being verbally abused and then spat on. He explains that the men who abused this woman were of ‘Middle Eastern appearance’ inferring that because they were Middle Eastern they must have been Muslims and so, therefore, were behaving offensively because they were Muslims. As historian Robert Manne pointed out in response to Sheridan’s hate piece, if Sheridan had replaced the words ‘…of Middle Eastern appearance’ with ‘…of Jewish appearance’ then one would have a quote worthy of something that may have been found in Julius Streicher’s Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer. With this disclosure of his racist attributes, Sheridan now joins the ranks of those other leading Murdoch racists; Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun in Melbourne, and Tim Blair and Piers Akerman of the Daily Telegraph in Sydney. Andrew Bolt, Australia’s premier racist, couldn’t help himself but pass comment over Sheridan’s racist rant and Manne’s response. Bolt called on Manne, who also happens to be Jewish and who is also Bolt’s arch nemesis, to apologise to Sheridan saying Manne ‘demeans’ both Sheridan and the Holocaust. As it happens, while Sheridan deserves to be ‘demeaned’ on the basis of his declaration of being a racist, Manne actually didn’t mention the Holocaust. In the course of his racist rant, Sheridan mentioned that many of the Right wing parties in Europe that were now anti-Islam had in the past been anti-Semitic but have now changed their stance. He says, for example, the French National Front party had “recently ditched the anti-Semitism and now stands primarily against Muslim immigration and Islamic influence”. The reality is that many of those white European Australians that are now opposed to Islam were once also anti-Semitic themselves like their peers in England. One wonders if the likes of Murdoch’s journos in Australia weren’t once amongst them. Like in Orwell’s 1984, for the likes of Bolt, Sheridan, Blair, Akerman, et al, they occasionally need to change their enemy but they always must have an enemy. The right-wing in the post war years still hated Jews even in Australia but, like leopards, they can never change their spots but the can attempt to hide them. Once a racist, always a racist.
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