Australia Has Fallen: Hashtag making light of Holocaust memories

Far-right commentators in the US comparing Australian border rules with oppression experienced during the Holocaust need to stop, argues BETHANY GRIFFITHS.

A QUICK scroll through Twitter last week uncovered a disturbing movement.

The hashtag #AustraliaHasFallen was trending, with posts from what seemed to be a lot of far-right supporters, a lot seemingly nowhere near the land down under.

Among the chorus were keyboard warriors calling us oppressed or accusing the government of pedalling vaccine propaganda.

But what really hit home was the comparison of Howard Springs to Nazi-operated concentration camps.

Having been to both — I spent time in the Howard Springs camp when I moved up from Melbourne, and I visited Berlin Sachsenhausen concentration camp as a horrified tourist — I can confirm they are nothing alike.

A (what later turned out to be fake) profile used the social media platform to post side-by-side photographs, writing “Australia’s COVID (concentration) camp”.

It was this tweet which kicked off the narrative that Australia needed help.

American journalists and public figures even got behind the calls, with the NT’s Chief Minister getting a special shout-out from Republican senator Ted Cruz after imposing the statewide vaccine mandate.

Had the anti-Australia campaigners done an ounce of research they could have seen the real stories of Howard Springs.

Numerous Instagram accounts have detailed travellers’ experiences there, and apart from the odd critical review of the meal served up that day, people were not experiencing anything close to concentration camp level. What could be seen were often fit, young people using their downtime to read or stretch in an outside area where they could bask in the glory of the Northern Territory sun.

Olympians and an internationally-famed DJ even documented their two weeks, which were anything but memoirs of prisoners.

Of course, it’s not an ideal situation, but what is the alternative? Let the virus run wild and see thousands more Australians get sick or even die?

Personally, I’d take two weeks watching Netflix and doing yoga workouts on YouTube over that.

During my time in the Centre for National Resilience, I had one neighbour who was resistant to the idea of spending two weeks there when she was just minutes from her home. The next day she tested positive and was moved to another part of the facility.

Had she not been in isolation she could have infected her family, friends and countless other vulnerable people.

It must also be noted the freedom that the open-air accommodation provides compared to other options.

Another fellow quarantinee had done four rounds of government-mandated isolation in hotels and said — far and away — what the NT offered was the best, with daily interaction with others and space to spend outside largely to thank.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before Australians hijacked the hashtag, and rightfully so, ridiculing the idea that residents were oppressed.

Rather, it instead turned out that #AustraliaHasFallen in love with quokkas, or a plethora of other parts of the country including universal healthcare and high vaccination rates.

#AustraliaHasFallen for quokkas. Seriously, is this not the happiest animal in the world? pic.twitter.com/x5KBz7VuDK

— ✨ Miss Natski ✨ (@Natski82) December 5, 2021

Now a distant memory in terms of what is trending on Twitter, the nerve to even bring comparisons of genocide into the argument baffles me.

How can you compare the annihilation of millions of people based on their ethnicity, religion or sexuality to spending a couple of weeks chilling in an air-conditioned cabin.

Yes, there have been restrictions on our freedoms, but in the name of public health.

And it’s still not an excuse to bring the Holocaust into it.