We now have three Peter Dutton data points in three months that tell us about the Trumpification of the Australian right: “African gangs”, “white farmers” and “dead to me”.
This Trumpeting has been amplified by an unstated rule of journalistic practice: it’s more divisive to call someone a racist than it is to make racist comments.
It’s easy to assume Dutton makes it up as he goes along. It’s too easy to dismiss his thoughts as just the ramblings of a Queensland copper. But each of these interventions on the fraught race debate are better understood as a considered adaptation of global racial talking points into the Australian context in pursuit of clear political goals.
Dutton’s mythical “African gangs” of west Melbourne stood as the Australian proxy for the alleged “no go zones” in British cities, or Trump’s “American carnage” plaguing “inner cities” and the Central American MS-13 gang.
The supposed plight of the South African white farmers is an online talking point across social media through the UK, the US and, of course, South Africa. As the editor of South Africa’s Mail & Guardian Khadija Patel tweeted: “[Dutton’s] concern for SA white farmers is no coincidence. It’s the result of a co-ordinated campaign to take white fright global.”
So global, that right wing Daily Mail Online columnist Katie Hopkins has said she’s preparing a documentary on the issue, which has already been accused of “inciting racial hatred”.
Attacking journalists as “fake news critics” and “crazy lefties” was a pure application of Trumpian language to the Australian context, and “dead to me” could have come from a Trump tweet. Although Dutton named no names, First Dog on The Moon was quick to claim credit, shout-tweeting “MEAN CARTOONS!” (To be fair, First Dog has fixed the image of Peter Dutton as, well, a potato.)
Serious journalists rush to assume that these interventions mean Dutton can never be prime minister (or, at least, never be prime ministerial). Perhaps they should read just about any “serious person’s” commentary on Trump in 2015.
But, unlike the Turnbull campaign, Dutton isn’t campaigning to be prime minister. He’s campaigning to be leader of the Liberal Party. After all, that’s what worked for Trump. And for Tony Abbot before him for that matter.
The ABC’s Wendy Harmer called on the Prime Minister to intervene, tweeting, “A real life consequence of your Minister Peter Dutton, calling @ABCaustralia employees ‘crazy lefties’ and ‘you are dead to me’ is that I feel unsafe at my workplace.”
To the surprise of no one, Turnbull has not responded one way or the other to Dutton’s interventions. Equally unsurprising has been Abbott’s eager endorsement. Labor has largely refrained from poking the bear, while the Greens have called Dutton’s comments “racist” and “fascist”.
This limited the ability of journalists to deal with the debate in the usual “he said, she said” kind of way.
The Greens intervention has caused its own dilemma. As we learnt (again) in last month’s brouhaha over Senator Jim Molan posting far-right anti-Muslim videos, it’s far, far worse and much more “divisive” to call someone a racist than it is to spread racist talking points. (Psst: it’s not!)
This tension emerged in a brief Twitter spat between News Corp’s Chris Kenny and his Sky News colleague Samantha Maiden after Greens Senator Nick McKim described Dutton as a fascist who had “exhibited racism right through his public career” on Maiden’s program.
For Kenny, this was “hateful, divisive and idiotic bile”. Maiden responded that Sky isn’t “an echo chamber featuring me wearing a Liberal Party logo t-shirt”. Kenny amplified his comments in The Australian last Friday.
In part, this was a brief public glimpse of the decades-long internal fight between News Corp’s traditions of journalism and of its political advocacy for the right. Or, in a broadcasting context, between Sky News during the day and Sky TV after dark.
In the US, journalists have the excuse of being taken by surprise by Trump. In Australia, we have the benefit of seeing the pattern and studying the lessons already learnt.
First lesson: it’s racism that’s “divisive bile”.
We need to start an urgent Twitter campaign to ensure that anyone who is News-polled over the next fortnight gives support to Malcolm Turnbull, to prevent the dreaded “30 News polls in a row” and stop this clown from getting his hands on the Prime Ministership. Don’t mind if everyone changes their mind back against Malcolm in the following poll, but for Australia’s sake we are far better off resetting the count this fortnight. Who has enough followers to get this started?
Not so fast K. Dutton as PM would mean a drovers dog could flog the Liberals at the next election while it cocked its leg on whatever was leading the Nationals at the time.
With Dutton as PM the Newspoll might swing from 53-47 up to 57-43. I don’t think his party would risk that.
First Dog does not only depict P Dutty as a spud, but my personal favourite is as a cruciferous vegetable – “the looks and wits of a brussels sprout”
Given the appalling misjudgment by the guessperts over the Drumpfster – not so clamorously wrong as I – it should not be assumed that Dunnuttin is so far beyond nauseating that he doesn’t have support amongst the pig ignorant, the viciously racist and the plain evil in our midst.
Tune in to Blot & the Poison Dwarf Mon-Thurs at HateCentral or their (un)stable mate Rat Hately.
Next time you walk down the street, look around and deal with the fact that 30%+ of your fellow citizens think that Dunnuttin & Morriscum are just the ticket.
Australia has struck her new colours. Without exclamation or pre – notification . . . for all the world at large to know; we no longer hold to past values, decencies or behaviours. We now cohabit, share with totalitarian regimes. Oppress and embrace torture, choose might over compassion and indulge excess in favour of elites.
Those that see succour in anointing Minister for Home Affairs as Prime Minister – in- waiting, in the hope an avalanche of ‘peoples will’ may launch him into anonymity, deny the man’s authoritarian bent. Australia gambles . . . every time we step back from reality of how fragile democracy unattended is.
Perhaps the Crikey research department would like to report on Australian crime rates for white Africans (South Africa, Zimbabwe etc) and black Africans living here.
I am willing to stick my neck out and predict that (like Indians) in Australia, white African crime rates are very low to negligible and black African rates are amongst the highest. I threw in the Indians because I did not want to be accused of racism.
Please give reasons, and then draw conclusions from same.