Last Friday, a gunman murdered 50 New Zealand Muslims in a massacre at two Christchurch mosques. Among the victims were men, women and children, including a three-year-old boy. They were Kiwis, our closest friends. Worse, it was an Australian who allegedly slaughtered them.
Aside from offering our condolences and assistance, it was a time for respectful silence and mourning. It was also a time for doing something many Australians are not good at, namely shutting an oversized mouth. While it is vital we learn what led to this atrocity, it would be unwise and disrespectful to pre-empt the police and judicial process. Would it be too much to expect the usual postulators to hold off attributing blame until then?
It certainly was. “It’s not like we haven’t been warning about the rise of far-right extremists and white supremacists,” tweeted former Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane and now University of Sydney professor the day after the tragedy. “But this is what you open up when the government attacks race hate laws and defends a right to be a bigot.”
It’s not like we haven’t been warning about the rise of far-right extremists and white supremacists. But this is what you open up when the government attacks race hate laws and defends a right to be a bigot https://t.co/PRDbP0n8CS
— Tim Soutphommasane (@timsout) March 16, 2019
He was referring to the government’s failed attempts to amend section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which makes it unlawful to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person on basis of race, colour, or national or ethnic origin. It would seem to take a special kind of arrogance and obtuseness to immediately link this with the Christchurch attack when very little information was known about the circumstances, but Soutphommasane is your man.
The verbose professor was not quite so vocal about the revelations this week that NSW Labor Leader Michael Daley had, during a fundraiser at a Blue Mountains pub last year, warned of young people from Asia with PhDs taking the jobs of young Australians. Only after Sky News called out Soutphommasane and many other left-wing commentators for their silence did he retweet a link to a news article about Daley’s remarks. Tellingly, the normally-prolific tweeter not add either criticism or comment.
Who tweeted in 2015 “let’s not be afraid to call out racism”, professor?
It's been a week of debate about race. But let's not be afraid to call out racism. Proud to stand with @adamroy37 pic.twitter.com/EmrJNzRuQC
— Tim Soutphommasane (@timsout) July 31, 2015
Soutphommasane did tell ABC TV that Daley’s remarks were “disappointing”, and that “Many people would have interpreted them as involving an appeal to racism. You can have a debate about congestion or housing affordability or quality of life without ... singling out racial groups.” Compared to his normally strident tones, this sounds like a mere admonishment. In one of his last interviews as Race Discrimination Commissioner, Soutphommasane claimed “As for identity politics, that’s being practised most intensely by those who object to 18C.” He might care to reassess that.
Had Daley been a conservative leader who made such remarks on the eve of an election, Soutphommasane, a former Labor staffer, would have personally chartered a skywriter to register his outrage.
As risible as Soutphommasane’s linking of Christchurch with the Coalition’s attempts to reform section 18C was, it did not win him the causational goose of the week award. No, that honour belongs to University of Sydney academic and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activist Dr Nick Reimer, who has long protested his institution’s collaboration with the Ramsay Centre’s proposal to fund a degree in Western civilisation studies.
“If Australian universities really want to combat Islamophobia after Christchurch, only one course is possible: abandon Ramsay immediately,” he wrote in a column for the Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday. “There is a clear analogy between thinking that European books belong together and thinking that European people do too.” How edifying. Using this ‘logic’ we should conclude that students undergoing Asian studies at the university are at risk of becoming Genghis Khan.
On Monday, The Drum featured an all-Muslim women panel to discuss what the promotional blurb claimed would be “the social, cultural & political influences leading up to the Christchurch terror attack”. In reality it was an opportunity for some panellists to ride their hobby hate horses.
“White settler societies are fundamentally founded on violence,” declared author and human rights activist Randa Abdel-Fattah. “So unless we acknowledge that violence is innate to these societies — that this is just an extension — expression of the rot at these societies which is we do not acknowledge that these societies are founded on violence, dispossession, genocide and that … these Australian societies, New Zealand societies do not respect indigenous sovereignty.” No doubt New Zealanders watching much have really appreciated this opinionated Australian’s gratuitous rant. Abdel-Fattah, ironically, later condemned political leaders for their “wedge politics”.
Her co-panellist and clinical and forensic psychologist Hanan Dover agreed. Taking advantage of the so-called independent broadcaster, she appealed to the voters of Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s electorate. “I do hope whilst I’ve got the attention of the Australian public, especially the people of Dickson, to vote him out at the next election,” she told host Ellen Fanning. According to her Twitter profile, she is a “Palestinian living on Aboriginal land”. Among her beliefs, she regards Israel as “a terrorist state”.
@Meirka Israel is a terrorist state. It was terrorising before Hamas existed. Find a new argument m8
— Hanan Dover (@HananDover1) August 5, 2014
Dover also tends to frame Islamist terrorism as an act of mental aberration, as was demonstrated by the case of Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a Muslim who in 2014 murdered a Canadian soldier in the Parliament House Ottawa shootings. Prior to the shooting he recorded a video declaring the act was in retaliation for Canadian action in Afghanistan and Iraq. Only a month after the killing Dover tweeted that he “was NOT a terrorist”, saying he was “untreated for his mental illness”.
Commenting in 2015 on Lindt Café gunman Man Haron Monis, Dover tweeted that she could not “see how the Sydney Siege was an act of terrorism when the perpetrator was known to be mentally ill of the violent kind”. When Somali-born terrorist Hassan Khalif Shire Ali stabbed three people, including one fatally, in last year’s Bourke Street attack in Melbourne, Dover was again outspoken. On the day of the attack she cited reports from Ali’s family about his alleged mental illness, tweeting sardonically “But guess what, he’s still a terrorist because he’s Muslim”.
Bourke St -seriously violent with fatality
— Hanan Dover (@HananDover1) November 11, 2018
Seeing a psychiatrist & psychologist Family and Imam confirm history of mental illness indicative of persecutory delusions.
Peter Dutton said he had no ties to ISIS.
But guess what, he’s still a terrorist because he’s Muslim
Dover’s defence of Afghan-born Ahmad Numan Haider, who in September 2014 was shot by police as he stabbed a counter-terrorism officer, is especially concerning. Two days before his death Haider accessed Islamic State videos with graphic instructions on how to kill and maim nonbelievers. A coroner would later clear the police concerned and commend them on their bravery. Two months after the shooting, Dover tweeted “Haider was NOT a terrorist. He is a dead victim of police fatally shot in the head, mths of harassment prior.”
.@QandA 18 year old Abdul Numan Haider was NOT a terrorist. He is a dead victim of police fatally shot in the head, mths of harassment prior
— Hanan Dover (@HananDover1) November 21, 2014
That tweet remains online. The ramifications of this are serious, as Dover is an influential member of the Islamic community. In 2016 it was reported she runs eight psychology practices in Sydney’s west. Yet Fanning raised none of these divisive and disconcerting tweets when Dover complained that “Media fuel and normalise … hate speech”.
Admittedly the fact The Drum features people that produce this drivel is of no surprise. Unfortunately, so too does other Australian media, as demonstrated by its reaction to the false report that Sky News New Zealand had pulled the live news feed from Sky News Australia because of the latter showing “distressing video” of the Christchurch shootings. In fact, senior management at Sky News Australia had acted decisively and proactively early Friday evening by alerting their New Zealand partner in order to avoid sub judice issues. Both agencies then agreed to switch from the live news feed to sport coverage; however, Sky New Zealand, in a poorly-worded tweet that was later deleted, gave the impression it had acted on its own initiative to prevent reckless and distressing coverage.
What followed simply confirmed the leftist mindset that characterises much of the Australia media today. This ranges from those whose influence is relatively insignificant; for example, New Matilda correspondent Ben Eltham who tweeted “It’s genuinely time to have a debate about whether Sky News should be taken off the air”, to one of the most prominent journalists in the country, Monica Attard.
“Sky New Zealand pulls Sky News Australia off air over Christchurch massacre coverage,” the five times Walkley Award winner and professor of journalism at University of Technology tweeted. “Good move. There’s a lesson in this for Sky Australia. Hope they get it.” Before that she had sent a near-identical tweet, the only difference being the last sentence “Can we remove Sky Australia from Australian TV now?” She deleted it seconds later.
Just reflect on the enormity of that remark, which comes from a former host of ABC’s Media Watch. “It seemed on reflection inaccurate,” she later told Sky News host and Associated Editor of The Australian Chris Kenny. “I do not want a media organisation to disappear from our media landscape.”
Really? I have little doubt — well none actually — that a sizeable portion of the so-called progressive journalists in this country would love to see Sky News snuffed out, such is their rancour for conservative commentators. The orgy of opportunism that has followed the Christchurch shootings is testament to that.
In fairness to Attard, let’s defer judgment until we see what she and other journalists do to defend media independence from the ideologues of groupthink. Let’s see if she denounces disinformation campaigns like that of Sleeping Giants which attempt to shut off Sky News’ advertising revenue. Let’s see her loudly castigate the ABC when it published an opinion piece, as it did on Tuesday, which falsely asserted Sky News broadcast the live stream of the Christchurch gunman’s rampage from inside a mosque. And let’s see her acknowledge she and others got it badly wrong in their rush to indict Sky News.
To paraphrase you, Professor Attard, there is a lesson in this for you and many other journalists. Hope you get it.
This story has been updated to reflect remarks made by Mr Soutphommasane’ to the ABC about Michael Daley
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