Andrew Bolt: Attacks on Israel Folau and his supporters have become mean and nasty
You can criticise Folau’s opinions about gays but this is actually about people using someone else’s bad behaviour as an excuse to behave even worse, writes Andrew Bolt.
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Israel Folau’s critics attack him for being mean. But if being mean is his crime, why do those critics feel licensed to act even meaner?
Take a perfect illustration from just last weekend — Professor Marcia Langton, Melbourne University’s associate provost and Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor.
Langton is prominent in the compassion industry, and has called more people racist than I can count.
On Saturday, Langton saw a fresh excuse to vomit over someone.
This time her target was Tyson James, a young man who, despite being gay, didn’t like how some people monstered Folau for quoting the Bible against homosexuality.
James tweeted that while he loved Magda Szubanski as an actor, he was appalled by her attack on the rugby superstar.
Professor Langton unloaded.
“(James) probably thinks he’s gay because he masturbates too much,” wrote Melbourne University’s Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor.
“Besides, he’s American and (a) self-proclaimed ‘conservative’ … Ignore him.”
When challenged on Twitter for her meanness, Langton doubled down with a slur that also targeted libertarian Milo Yiannopoulos: “Gay? I don’t think so; more like Milo. Twisted.”
This is a perfect illustration because here is a champion of the Left using someone’s alleged meanness to be much, much meaner herself, attacking him in tweets that were not just cruel but bigoted and even homophobic.
Oh, and false. For instance, James is an Australian who has never even been to America.
Don’t think Langton is some atypical example of the savagery of today’s hypocritical Left. The huge public support of Folau is in large part a revolt against too much of just that.
It is absolutely true that Folau has said nasty things about gays. But it is just as true that his loudest critics are much nastier.
Folau simply quoted a Bible passage describing what God would allegedly do to gays — and to drunks, liars, thieves, adulterers and others in the afterlife.
He did not urge anyone to do anything bad to any gay on Earth — certainly not to sack or abuse them.
But his critics have done all that and more to him. Folau has been sacked by Rugby Australia and abused by gimlet-eyed commentators everywhere.
ANZ Bank even rang his wife’s bosses at New Zealand Netball, which it sponsors, to complain that she’d supported her husband.
Isn’t that nastier than anything Folau has done to any gay?
We see this same double-standard in other fights of the Left, of course.
Remember the owner of a Canberra party entertainment business who sacked an 18-year-old Christian woman for saying she’d vote no in the same-sex marriage plebiscite, and publicly called her a “homophobe” with “s--- morals”?
Recall the anarchist supporter of gay marriage who headbutted former prime minister Tony Abbott for not sharing his moral views?
And have you seen how so many other tribalists claiming to fight for a more moral world — a green, woke or rainbow one particularly — have turned to threats and violence?
Meetings of conservative and libertarian speakers such as Yiannopoulos, psychologist Bettina Arndt, Senator Cory Bernardi and Dutch politician Geert Wilders have been physically attacked.
Just last Saturday, in Portland, Oregon, masked protesters of the allegedly anti-fascist Antifa group bashed conservative photojournalist Any Ngo, criticising the Quillette editor’s supposed moral inferiority by repeatedly punching him in the face, dousing him with milkshakes, pelting him with rubbish and spraying pepper spray into his face.
This phenomenon has a long history, and sometimes bloody. The moralising French Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks both slaughtered people who did not share their lofty ideas of brotherhood and love.
Oh, what freedom, to smash someone’s face and STILL think you are the nicer person for doing it.
This is a freedom that leads straight to hell, because there are no brakes.
So what’s now happening to Folau seems not just terribly familiar but deeply disturbing.
Note that I’m not talking here about what’s healthy: criticising views and behaviour you think are bad.
Go ahead, criticise Folau’s opinions about gays. I sure do.
No, this is actually about people using someone else’s bad behaviour as an excuse to behave even worse.
This is not about a battle for morality but a battle for power.
Again, this is not new. Philosopher Bertrand Russell, a man of the Left, put it brilliantly when receiving his Nobel prize in 1950: “Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.”
Except, of course, much that passes as idealism in the savaging of Folau is a hatred not disguised at all.
Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Attacks on Israel Folau and his supporters have become mean and nasty
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