CONVICTED AUSTRALIAN RACIST ANDREW BOLT WANTS TO STOP BLACK AFRICAN IMMIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA

In his online blog today at Murdoch’s Herald-Sun newspaper, Andrew Bolt, a well known convicted Australian racist, has suggested that Australia stop allowing black African migrants into Australia.

The article is probably the most blatant piece of racism yet from Bolt who usually attempts to avoid being so obvious about his racism.

Bolt uses an article in the Age newspaper as an opportunity to peddle his hatred. The article tells of a group of Australian students who happen to be black who are complaining of police harassment when they visit the inner city in Melbourne. They have said that many of them are getting fed up with this harassment and, if it continues, there could possibly be a backlash such as there was last August in the UK when Londoners rioted over the death of a black Londoner who was shot to death by the police.

Racism, sponsored deliberately by the likes of Andrew Bolt and his fellow Murdoch so-called ‘journalists’ like the Islamophobic Tim Blair, Piers Akerman et al, is marginalising black youth in Melbourne who, in turn, look to each other for socialising and studying whilst readying themselves for work – if they can get it.

It’s time to end racism in Australia. Bolt’s blatant racism should never be allowed to take hold in Australia.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AMERICAN NATIVE IDENTITY RACISM AND AUSTRALIAN NATIVE IDENTITY RACISM

White ultra right-wing racists in Australia and neoconservatives in America have both adopted a propaganda line which seeks to vilify people who identify as having native heritage. The racists of Australia and the neocons of America do this by claiming that some people who identify as having native heritage but who have lost much or all of the physical features associated with the native people of Australia or America respectively are using their racial identity for purely pecuniary reasons. However, while both propaganda memes are racially based, the reasons why Australian natives are abused in this way and the reasons why American natives appear to be abused similarly are quite different from each other.

In Australia, the ultra-racist Murdoch journalist, Andrew Bolt, was recently found guilty of racial vilification in an Australian Federal Court. Judge Mordy Bromberg found Bolt guilty of vilification by virtue of Bolt’s claim that the Aboriginal people he was referring to were not really Aboriginal and only claimed to be Aboriginal in order to gain certain financial benefits. Judge Bromberg found for the plaintiffs based on the fact that the plaintiffs, all with Aboriginal heritage, had, despite their lack of Aboriginal features, identified as being Aboriginal and had always been accepted as Aboriginal by Aboriginal people for all of their lives and long before they had any knowledge of awards or grants being available to Aboriginal people. Judge Bromberg found that Bolt had failed to support his claim that those Aboriginal people concerned had claimed Aboriginality solely for the purpose of gaining a pecuniary advantage and that, in accusing them of fraud, Bolt had racially vilified them. For Bolt the intent was to vilify Aborigines that were fair skinned and had lost the Aboriginal features of their ancestors. The accusation that they had defrauded the Australian taxpayer by claiming Aboriginality was merely an excuse that provided Bolt with yet another opportunity to push his racist propaganda in his online column at Melbourne’s Murdoch-owned Herald-Sun newspaper. Judge Bromberg saw through Bolt’s deception and found for the plaintiffs.

In America, the neoconservatives are currently pushing a similar line about racial identity against a candidate for the US Senate, Elizabeth Warren. Needless to say, Professor Warren is a Democrat and she will be running against the Republican incumbent, Scott Brown in the upcoming elections.

As seems to be the norm in American politics these days, especially during election seasons, both sides tend to dig up as much ‘dirt’ as possible about their adversary and sling it at each other in the hope that some might stick thus giving the other some kind of advantage. Usually, the kind of ‘dirt’ dug up tends to be about the honesty and integrity of the other and thus goes to credibility.

In the case of Elizabeth Warren, it appears that at some stage in her career she had claimed American native heritage by virtue of her great-great-great-grandmother being identified as a Cherokee Native American. Warren’s neoconservative detractors claim that she made such a claim in order to gain a benefit in her academic career. Following typical neoconservative propaganda practice, the author of The Weekly Standard article, Michael Warren, (presumably no relation!) isn’t quite game enough to out-rightly state that Elizabeth Warren was flat out lying about her heritage, so instead, he quotes someone else who is game enough to say she is lying and, in this way, projects his endorsement of the idea whilst avoiding any potential legal action against him for defaming her.

While the accusations made by Andrew Bolt in Australia are the same as the accusations made by the Republicans and their neoconservative supporters in the US and which are as despicable as each other, the motives for Bolt’s accusations against the Australian Aboriginals are completely different from the neocon’s accusations against Elizabeth Warren. For Bolt the motivation was quite simply to racially vilify Aboriginal people generally, while in the US the neocons were simply attempting to defame a political adversary for political reasons though, in the process, they have also managed to vilify a person of native heritage.

Bolt is complaining that he is being denied his freedom of speech by being ordered by Judge Bromberg not to vilify in future. He points to the same accusations being levelled freely against Elizabeth Warren in the US as an example how the right to freedom of speech should be applied in Australia. But this, again, is just a propaganda ploy Bolt is using. Judge Bromberg has not deprived Bolt his freedom of speech as he claims, but rather Bromberg has merely found Bolt guilty of vilification and has warned him against re-offending.

Conversely, in the US, while the neocons accusations are despicable and may be considered bordering on vilification, the accusations were made primarily and deliberately to defame Elizabeth Warren for political reasons. Warren may or may not find that she has reasonable grounds to take her detractors to court but, if she does, it will be to sue them for defaming her whereas the Aboriginal people who took Bolt to court did so because they were vilified by him. His defaming them was as a result of his vilification of them, but in the case of Elizabeth Warren, her vilification is as a result of the neocons defaming her.

The two cases have similarities but have very different motives. Bolt cannot claim they are the same and hold the US up as a shining example of free speech.    

ANDREW BOLT THINKS AUSTRALIAN NATIVES ARE LIKE AN ‘ARMY OF GIANT RATS’

In his column today at the Herald-Sun, Andrew Bolt wrote the perfect metaphor that reflects his loathing and contempt for native Australian people.

In his article, Bolt describes how native Australian Possums in his neighbourhood are eating out the tops of the trees that have been planted down his street and have now moved into his garden. Never mind, of course, that it was he that had actually moved into their garden in the first place – a garden that they had occupied for millions of years before Bolt’s family arrived there. But that wouldn’t worry the likes of Bolt who now looks upon all of Australia’s natives, human or animal, that impinge into what he now thinks is his world, as ‘an army of giant rats’.

It’s his metaphor for describing what he feels about those that are different from him. His contempt doesn’t stop at native Australian Possums and Australia’s native peoples.

Just because he is Australian-born, he truly believes that he is a ‘native’ himself and that Aboriginal people, therefore, should become as he is – Australian.

The problem is; Bolt is not a ‘native’ as he likes to think he is. Being born here doesn’t make you a ‘native’. He is – like most who call themselves Australian – an introduced species. The word ‘Australia’ itself is a non-native construct that’s barely just a few hundred years old. The natives called their lands by other names – they still do. None of them were ‘Australia’.

(When one sees it like that, then I’m wrong in calling Aboriginal people; ‘native Australians’. I’m even wrong in calling native Possums; ‘Australian’ native Possums. More correctly I should be referring to them as being native to a land we – we who are not native to – call ‘Australia’.)

But, as I said, it doesn’t stop there for Bolt. His new-found nationalistic arrogance about being ‘Australian’ is so powerful that he now resents not just Possums living in his street but any person new to Australia who is not like him. Just as Possums and Aboriginal people are alien to him, so too are Arab, Central Asian and African people, and especially if they are Islamic and dress differently from him and what he perceives as an ‘Australian’ way of dressing.

Recently Bolt was taken to court for vilifying Aboriginal people. He was found guilty. Now Bolt is playing his conviction for all it’s worth in order further push his racist agenda.

Bolt denies that he vilified Aboriginal people claiming that he was only pointing out that some people are claiming to be Aboriginal in order to gain some kind of pecuniary advantage. He supported his accusations by saying that these people were so un-Aboriginal looking that they couldn’t possibly really be Aboriginals and that they, therefore, were frauds. Fortunately, Judge Mordecai Bromberg was able to see right through Bolt’s ploy and saw it for what it really was – blatant lies designed to specifically vilify Aboriginal people. Bromberg then ordered Bolt not to repeat such vilifying lies. Bolt has since responded by claiming he has lost his freedom of speech.

So now, instead of saying exactly what thinks, he uses metaphors as above and links to other racists writings who say what he is unable to. Despite all his denials, Bolt remains an outrageous racist. One day Murdoch will wake up to the fact that Bolt is not doing the image of Australia any good at all and shut him down. Australia will then be a far better place for everyone to live in – native or otherwise.

And even a better place for Possums to live in.

A NEW SEEPING PARADIGM THAT COULD DESTROY DEMOCRACY: GOVERNMENT BY THE MEGA-RICH

The very rich have always played a part in government but, for most of them, their decision to enter politics was for truly altruistic reasons. They believed that their experience in business could contribute to the well-being of the entire nation and that the nation as a whole would benefit from their management and decision-making skills. There were, of course, some that said that they were entering politics for purely altruistic reasons but either had ulterior motives for doing so in the first place or, alternatively, soon discovered that their position offered opportunities that could be exploited in order to covertly enrich themselves through various devious contrivances while being in politics. Such people, for better or worse, have been involved in politics for eons ever since ‘politics’ was invented.

Today, however, a frightening new trend is developing in Australia. No longer are the mega-rich entering politics in order to help create a better nation - and in recent history the likes of Malcolm Fraser and Malcolm Turnbull might be numbered among those. Today the mega-rich are quite overtly attempting to buy their way into both power and influence for no other purpose than to further enrich themselves and their shareholders.

Yesterday, Queensland businessman Clive Palmer announced his intention to enter Federal politics by running against Labor Federal Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan in Swan’s electorate of Lilley, Queensland. Palmer, whose main business interests are in mining, has made it quite clear that his purpose and intention for entering politics in this way is to fight against the proposed Mineral Resource Rent Tax and carbon tax which would directly affect his personal fortune and his company’s bottom line.

Joining Palmer in the quest for governmental power and influence in order to directly protect their assets and avoid having to pay the proposed taxes is fellow mining magnate Gina Rinehart of Western Australia. While Palmer is attempting to get into Federal parliament in order to get rid of the taxes, Rinehart’s preferred method of influence is to buy up interests in Australia’s media through which she hopes to influence public opinion by using aggressive right-wing media propagandists. In 2010 Rinehart took a 10% holding in Ten Network Holdings and has also latterly acquired a substantial holding in the slightly left of center Fairfax Media.

Already Rinehart’s influence in the Ten Network is paying dividends. The right-wing Murdoch commentator and Rinehart and Palmer supporter, Andrew Bolt, now has his own program at Ten, The Bolt Report, which overtly and frequently pushes  both Palmer’s and Rinehart’s personal agendas with regard to the mining tax and the carbon tax. Bolt also pushes those same agendas at his online column and blog at Melbourne’s Murdoch-owned Herald-Sun.

And, finally, there’s the perennial right-wing media player himself, Rupert Murdoch, who already wields massive conservative media influence throughout Australia and much of the Western world and whose journalists and commentators in Australia are already pushing the new paradigm of governance by the mega-rich in order to further enrich those that hope to eventually govern. Besides Andrew Bolt, Murdoch’s Australian media has a whole gamut of journalists and commentators who seem willing to take up the miners cause. In recent days, Murdoch’s UK newspaper The Sun has even been seconded to help the conservative cause in Australia with headlines that blatantly demonised the Gillard government.   

The domination of government and the media by the wealthy for the sole purpose of further enriching those that govern represents a fundamental change in our democratic system that, if successful, does not bode well for the political health of Australia. With the demise of the altruistic motives of the well-heeled and the well-intentioned being replaced by those that openly wield their wealth in order to influence, govern and then profit, Australians face a bleak future – if, that is, the mega-rich are allowed to get their way.