Anning pile on is rank Left hypocrisy
The outrage over Fraser Anning attending a right-wing rally is a classic example of the rules not applying to the Left, writes Miranda Devine.
FRASER Anning is the first media villain of 2019, reviled as a racist and a Nazi, to boot.
The crossbench Senator is an Unperson because he used taxpayer money to attend an anti-immigration rally in Melbourne on the weekend.
Exhibit A: Footage of an anonymous man in sunglasses near the “Reclaim St Kilda” rally performing a John Cleese-style Hitler salute complete with finger moustache, right before giving both fingers to the camera.
That was all it took for Anning to be condemned as a Nazi, again. Hypocrites and virtue-signallers have slammed him non-stop ever since.
“There is no excuse or explanation that justifies Anning’s attendance at this rally”, thundered Opposition leader Bill Shorten. More on his hypocrisy later.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison broke his holidays to blast Anning as a “repeat offender” on racism.
But Anning claimed that “the only people who were doing Nazi salutes were the far-left extremists 100m away who came to try to disrupt a peaceful rally…
Claims that this rally was a ‘far right’ event appear to be left-wing media attempts to distract attention from the purpose of the protest — African gang violence…
“There were no skinheads, just ordinary working people who’d had enough…including Vietnamese shopkeepers who were there because they were sick of being victims of these gangs.”
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Anning rejected the anti-Semitic views attributed to rally organiser and alleged Hitler fan Blair Cottrell: “I’m a supporter of the Jewish community, always have been, and particularly the Israelis,” he said, pointing out his critics are “all the same people who vote against me when I try to stop funding the Palestinian Authority.”
No one is prepared to take Anning at his word, for fear of being smeared by association.
And no one has engaged with what he actually believes in, which is a ban on “any Muslims or Sudanese” migrating to Australia. “Any of them that commit a crime I would be shipping them home to where they came from,” he told Channel 9.
Anning’s prescription won’t solve the problem of Victoria’s police and courts failing to do their job. So instead of insulting him, why not combat his argument with a better argument. That’s what politics is meant to be, not a one-sided denunciation by cowards who treat anyone who disagrees with them as a moral leper.
The pile-on against Anning only adds to the paranoia of the disenfranchised, who feel politicians and establishment media are conspiring to destroy their way of life.
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Dismiss their real concerns and you only send their views underground where they really turn rancid.
What led to the rise of Pauline Hanson but the feral protesters and leftist media trying to shut her up? What fuels Donald Trump’s popularity but the constant attacks? What publicises Cottrell’s small rallies but the left-wing activists who try to shut them down?
Genuine anti-racists would understand that this fuels the very evil they claim to oppose.
Maybe everyone at that rally in St Kilda was a Nazi, but chances are that many were just Australians who feel powerless to protect themselves from Melbourne’s violent car-jackings and home invasions and who are sick of soft, politically correct policing.
They probably also reject the establishment line on immigration and multiculturalism.
This is the nationalist, populist mood across the western world which has driven Trump and Brexit. It is intellectually lazy to dismiss it as racism or fascism.
Anning will be irrelevant after the next election. But the hypocrisy of the pile-on merchants needs to be noted.
MORE FROM MIRANDA DEVINE: Morrison’s immigration cut is anything but racist
When they couldn’t convict him of racism, they started hyperventilating about the $2800 cost to taxpayers of ferrying him from Brisbane to St Kilda beach.
Yet no one had any problem when Bill and Chloe Shorten spent far more taxpayer dosh to whoop it up at the mardi gras last year in Sydney, an equally boutique event.
“Official business”, they called it.
The Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority website shows that the Shortens’ return airfares cost a staggering $1542.58 each, plus $446 at a plush hotel the night of Saturday, March 3. Then there was a $670.20 ComCar bill on March 3, and another $280 the next day, leading to a grand total of $4,481.36.
You have to ask why politicians feel they must fly business class on a 90-minute flight when they could save the taxpayer millions by flying economy, as do most people in the private sector for short flights. Jetstar flies between Melbourne and Sydney for $73, a tenth the price of business class.
As for accommodation, the four-star Vibe hotel in Rushcutters Bay is delightful at half the price of the Shorten digs.
A cab between Shorten’s Melbourne home and the airport would cost about $50, and the same from Sydney airport to the CBD. That’s $200 return, a lot less than almost $1000 splashed out on ComCars.
The only reason anyone is kicking up a stink about the cost of Anning’s snout at the Canberra trough is because they don’t like him.
Leftie causes, on the other hand, and left-wing hate groups such as GetUp, always get a free pass.
“I don’t think the Australian taxpayer should be footing the bill for [Anning] to hang out with these Nazi mates of his,” said Greens Senator Sarah Hanson Young.
That’s the same Hanson-Young who once appeared at another rally in Melbourne, organised by “Australians for Palestine”, where placards reportedly featured swastikas and a Star of David superimposed over a pig.
But that’s OK because she’s a leftie.
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