Immigration

[stui magpie]

Interesting unit, Anning

68 year old, grew up as a grazier now owns pubs in QLD, went to Ag College (doubt they prioritised the Holocaust over how to reverse a tractor there) and introduced a private members bill to make it easier for women to get Mace and tasers for self defence.

Pretty much old school country member.

[Pies4shaw]

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/fraser-anning-achieves-what-he-deserves-denunciation-from-the-ages-20180815-p4zxm3.html

[Mugwump]

[Mugwump]

[Pies4shaw]

Perhaps he did miss it:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-15/fraser-anning-history-of-the-nazi-phrase-final-solution/10122812

[Mugwump]

I do think that all parliamentarians ought to have a well-above average knowledge of history and the Constitution, by passing a test prior to an election, and attending classes if they fail. We would not select anyone for a job without the basic qualifications in any other field of endeavor.

I don’t think he realised the implications of what he was saying. It was self-defeating to use the phrase, and no rational actor who understood its meaning would do so. The teaching of history in Australia has been degraded for many years now.

[HAL]

What made it so self-defeating to use the phrase and no rational actor who understood its meaning would do so

[stui magpie]

[Mugwump]

^ or be a bit of a dill.

Oh... wait............

[stui magpie]

Snap.

[David]

Funny hearing Hanson, Dutton, Turnbull and the rest express their moral outrage about Anning’s speech. Must feel good to be the moderates for once. Even Labor support locking refugees up in island cages, FFS, yet they’re treating a call to return to pre-1960s Australia as unprecedented and reprehensible. They’ve already taken us back there, and they all do much of what Aning’s calling for – they just use nicer language while doing it.

[Mugwump]

[David]

And another kind of freedom dies when the fascists take charge...

[Mugwump]

[David]

Fascism is not only a way of running government, but also an ideology. There are plenty of politicians out there who might not be full-blown fascists but who nonetheless embrace fascist ideas.

I’m a strong supporter of free speech, as you know, and believe that it is essential in its own right, but I’m a bit sceptical of the notion that it is much of a protective mechanism against fascism. Fascists will suppress speech, certainly, but to do so they need to get into power. How effective is free speech alone at actually stopping that? Could Hitler’s or Mussolini’s rise have been prevented by more freedom of speech? If not, what other tactics do we have access to?

In Anning’s speech, he repeatedly invokes Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland as his model for how Australia should be. This was a state government that banned protest, allowed police significant power and little oversight, subverted the democratic pricess in order to retain power, beat up on minorities and of course supported the racist (by definition) national immigration policy that was in place when it first took power. So I think it’s fair to say that he is, at best, a fascist sympathiser. He may come across as just a conservative old farmer, but where do you think mainstream support for leaders like Mussolini actually came from? It wasn’t from brainwashed ideologues waving little red books; it was from conservatives with views that were only slightly to the right of mainstream paradigms of that time in history in places like Australia. They believed in strong borders, a strong nation, unfettered industry and the exclusion of undesirables. It’s not such an alien philosophy even now.

Anning may not be within the corridors of power himself, but some are justifiably worried that beliefs like his are becoming increasingly mainstream. It’s not him or the Katter Party that worries us; it’s what they are potentially paving the way for.

Could people like him ever take power? Perhaps. My impession is that, culturally, Australia has a strong authoritarian streak underneath its supposedly easygoing surface, combined with an apathetic tendency to accept the status quo without question. And look at what our government is already doing: your private communications are being monitored by government agencies; is that freedom? People are locked up indefinitely in detention centres: do they have freedom? A whistleblower is being prosecuted by our government for revealing the truth about illegal government actions in another country: is that freedom of speech? Civil liberties are slowly being wound back for the sake of “national security”: is that freedom?

It’s all very well to debate whether a far-right politician ticks the boxes to meet all the criteria of being a fascist, or argue that anti-Islamic “patriot” groups aren’t truly racist because Islam is a religion, etc. But how far right does mainstream discourse have to go before we accept that we have a problem, and would we even recognise the turning point when we get there? An analogy about boiling frogs comes to mind here.