Last Friday’s car rampage in the Bourke Street Mall was labelled as a terror-inspired attack almost before it was over. Herald Sun crime reporter Andrea Hamblin uploaded a video of a clearly shocked and nervous bystander saying the man driving the vehicle that killed five people and injured more than 35 had shouted “Allahu Akbar” several times. The driver of the vehicle was described as “of Middle Eastern appearance”. Even though the Victorian Police Commissioner Graham Ashton, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle all quickly issued statements that the incident was not terror-related, the report quickly spread and was widely distributed on social media. The Herald Sun quickly pulled the video down at the request of police, as the reporter later said.
One person who quickly jumped on this news to make a political point of this misinformation was One Nation leader Pauline Hanson. As she was speaking to the media in Western Australia, staffer James Ashby whispered the news in her ear as she was being filmed. What quickly followed was a statement along the lines of we can’t have these people in our country. It was in line with the anti-immigration and anti-Muslim rhetoric she has adopted in her latest incarnation as a senator, and without checking or knowing any of the facts of what happened in Melbourne she went on to falsely claim that “all terror attacks in Australia had been carried out by Muslims”.
When one reporter pointed out that was not true and mentioned the neo-Nazi attacks carried out by Jack van Tongeren, Hanson said she simply wasn’t aware of that case.
The incident was quickly buried with the ongoing reporting of the dead and injured in Melbourne and the details of the attacker were revealed. Although it did become the subject of news reports discrediting the original assertion that what had happened in Melbourne was a terrorist attack.
This isn’t the first or the last time the violent actions of a disturbed, drug-affected or mentally ill individual has been or will be attributed to Islamic terrorism. The immediate reaction by Hanson to link terrorism, immigration and the demonisation of Muslims together following a random violent act for political point scoring is an extension of what has been happening in Australian politics and some sections of the media for years.
Contrast this with say the recent shootings at the airport in Fort Lauderdale in Florida and how that was reported. There, a former US soldier who had been receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder after multiple tours to Iraq opened fire on people waiting at a baggage carousel. He had actually gone to the FBI beforehand and told them the CIA had forced him to watch Islamic State videos and that he was hearing voices. Probably because he was a former soldier, the FBI dismissed him as a bit of a crank and let him leave, with his weapon. Not much has been written about that case since. He went on a shooting spree that killed five and wounded more than 30 people, but it has received little attention.
But the point is the default position of many media outlets and some politicians to instantly label any violent incident as inspired by “Islamic Terrorism” has some knock-on effects in the community. Take this one from Sydney the other day. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, a Muslim woman had just finished an exam for her medical science degree and got into her car. A woman confronted her through the windscreen and yelled: “Who are you? Why you got a mask? Terrorist. You got a gun?”
Islamic State put this message out in 2014:
“Strike their police, security, and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents. Destroy their beds. Embitter their lives for them and busy them with themselves. If you can kill a disbelieving American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French — or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war …”
That statement has been endlessly repeated by agenda driven websites like this.
ISIS propagandists were smart in putting out that statement; it meant they could claim any violent act, by anybody, as their work. Which is why they did it.
Friday’s events in Melbourne showed how quickly the police and the government had to move to hose down terrorism speculation in the media. It was about to get out of hand, and with Hanson’s clumsy comments and the work of right-wing bloggers, it almost did. And what good would that have done? More bashings, more abuse in the street and on public transport and more disaffected and marginalised Muslims.
Good article but I wouldn’t call the One Notion founder’s accusation clumsy. She got her bigotry out there quickly and there are probably many people who heard the remarks and still believe what she said.
Agree with your first sentence Rais and note that Rourke’s comment below confirms the second sentence.
Alt-facts and fake news.
And Pauline? She speaks from experiments.
And isn’t it nice they’re going to overhaul bail legislation?
So much cheaper than addressing the years, at all levels of government, of funding emasculation of health, not least mental health? Particularly from Howard-Costello on – mining boom, tax cuts and all?.
… The money they’ve saved on that?
“the violent actions of a disturbed, drug-affected or mentally ill individual has been or will be attributed to Islamic terrorism.”
Such as Man Mohan Monis, or whatever his name was, much more a mentally unstable idiot than he was ever a terrorist.
It was terrorism by any definition except the one that matters, was it moozie?
Was it the real thing that we should enact laws about, conduct town plaza burni… ohh, we don’t have town plaza, just the idioverse of the electronic ether.
I don’t think you understood the lesson here. Police moved to shut down the Muslim theory, but it is already out there and believed by tens of thousands of people who now regard the denials as fake news. Just look around social media.
Alt-Fact-1: There was one eyewitness on video, Stefano Pavan variously reported as being from St Kilda or an Italian tourist. In Hamblin’s video he is either unusually animated, or a little off his tree. The Herald Sun website reported until at least 9pm that he heard “Allahu Akbar” and “Middle Eastern music”, before changing its copy to describe Pavan as repeating his story to a growing crowd on the street with extra embellishment as he went.
Alt-Fact-2: When the evening news showed Flinders St car videos, it bleeped out the swearing from the driver. Many conspiracy theorists leapt to the conclusion that the mainstream media was censoring “Allahu Akbar” in order to suppress the Muslim terrorism connection. This was reinforced when Hamblin was asked to take her video down.
Alt-Fact-3: These two things together became a blog story / YouTube blather that reported “over 30” witnesses reporting he yelled this. I’ve watched and listened to every video I can find and there is no evidence to support even a second witness. Believe it or not, some “truthers” see his middle finger gestures as support of ISIS!
Alt-Fact-4: On the driver’s Facebook page, one of his rants described himself as a “Greek Islamic Kurdish ANGEL OF CULT”. Just that one mention of Islam among a whole lot of clearly delusional religious references is enough for some people to declare him a Muslim terrorist.
You see? I already have four truthy facts, and a media that is covering them up. This is the world we are living in: a man of Greek descent with severe mental illness, who may or may not have yelled and written Islam-ish stuff, actually reinforces the paranoid theories of a growing minority who don’t trust the media or experts. Confirmation bias run riot. To quote a certain rich man: Sad!