How ‘it’s okay to be white’ message humiliated the Coalition

Lauren_Southern touches down in Brisbane wearing 'It's okay to be white' T-shirt. Credit: Twitter

It began as a politically-loaded, Halloween prank.

Two years ago, an anonymous writer on 4Chan, an online message board, came up with a plan to fuel white grievance in America and recruit more followers to the Alt Right movement.

On 31 October, 2017, the author and like-minded activists, under the cloak of Halloween costumes, would tack up posters around college campuses with a seemingly innocuous message: “it’s okay to be white.’’

The author predicted what would happen next:

“the next morning, the media goes completely berserk. normies tune in to see what’s going on, see the posters saying ‘it’s okay to be white’ and the media & leftists frothing at the mouth

“normies realise that leftists & journalists hate white people, so they turn on them. credibility of far left campuses and media get nuked. massive victory for the right in the culture war, many more /ourguys/ spawned overnight’’

The author couldn’t imagine the same message, an Alt Right meme that has since been embraced by white supremacist David Duke and the gun toting provocateur Lauren Southern, would be supported by government senators on the floor of the Australian parliament.

There is fierce argument about how this happened.

The government, from Prime Minister Scott Morrison to Senate Leader Mathias Cormann to Christian Porter, insist it was a stuff up; that the government intended to vote against the Pauline Hanson motion and instead, issued its MPs with the wrong voting instructions.

On the red seats opposite, this explanation is being met with a mixture of incredulity and deep scepticism. Greens Senator Richard Di Natale, the only person to draw the senate’s attention to the white supremacist origins of Senator Hanson’s motion before the vote, said it was clear during the division that at least some government senators knew exactly what they were voting for.

Either way, the government has been left humiliated by a chain of events that can be traced to the bitter culture wars of America and the Alt Right’s use of cleverly concealed language to infect mainstream political discourse with sentiments designed to sow racial discord.

Mark Bray, a history professor at Dartmouth College, former Occupy Wall Street organiser and the author of ANTIFA: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, said the episode shows how insidious white supremacist messaging has become.

“If the statements of the senators who supported it and are now denouncing it are to be believed, they were victims of misinformation; a wolf in sheep’s clothing that tries to rebrand white supremacist talking points,’’ Bray explained to The Australian from New York.

“White supremacists and Nazi groups, if they speak in Nazi terms, are not going to reach the white people they aim to reach. What they are trying to do is tap into what they believe is an underlying sentiment of victimisation and marginalisation; the sense that some white people have that they are the ones who are being oppressed or victimised.

“A lot of people feel this way but don’t consider themselves as Nazis or white supremacists. If you can get this sort of statement accepted on college campuses and articulated by politicians and backed by a parliament, it can create a platform for angry and frustrated white people to vent the belief that they are not racist but are the ones being targeted by racism.’’

Senator Hanson’s motion, called for debate just after 4pm Monday, read in full:

That the Senate acknowledges:

(a) the deplorable rise of anti-white racism and attacks on Western civilisation; and

(b) that it is okay to be white.

One Nation Leader Senator Pauline Hanson, whose motion called for debate about “white racism’’. Picture Gary Ramage

The potency of “it’s okay to be white’’ is two-fold. It presents a self-evident proposition which, if taken at face value, gives no clue to its socially corrosive intent. It also turns the language of the left against its political masters, in the same way that Black Lives Matter has been distorted into All Lives Matter, another siren call to white grievance.

“It puts the onus on those who oppose it to do the work of trying to get out from under it,’’ Bray said. “Talking through where it came from and the purpose it is trying to serve in creating a pathway for white supremacist politics is a good place to start.’’

It’s okay to be white is not entirely foreign to Australian politics. It was boldly printed on a T-shirt warn by Lauren Southern earlier this year when she arrived in Brisbane at the start of her speaking tour.

In the US, it was the title of a speech that Lucian Wintrich, the White House correspondent of the Alt Right website Gateway Pundit, attempted to give late last year at Connecticut University before violence stopped the event and led to his arrest.

Its migration from a 4Chan forum page to an Alt Right meme has been well documented, most notably by the Anti-Defamation League. It is now a Twitter hashtag, #IOKTBW.

Senator Di Natale says he recognised the phrase when he saw the wording of Senator Hanson’s motion and studied its origins before Monday’s vote.

“It trivialises the very real problems we have with structural racism in this country and mobilises a group of people who hold very deeply racist views and emboldens them by creating the impression that they are themselves the subject of disadvantage,’’ Senator Di Natale told The Australian.

“There is a sense that somehow, as a white person, I am being ignored. The reality is we have systemic, structural racism in Australia. ‘’

The debacle in the senate has produced precisely the kind of debate “it’s okay to be white’’ was designed to unleash.

Katter Australia Party Senator Fraser Anning, who two months ago evoked the notorious phrase “final solution’’ in his maiden speech to the Senate, voted for the Hanson motion and derided the “hysterical response’’ to the government’s support for it.

“Of course it is ok to be white,’’ he said.

“There is nothing racist about being proud of whom you are. If Senator (Mehreen) Faruqi stood up and said she was a proud Muslim woman she would be hailed as a hero. Conversely with any discussion or suggestion of being proud of being white, you are labelled a white supremacist or a fascist — tired old labels the left attaches to anyone they disagree with.”

James Ashby, an adviser to Pauline Hanson, said the One Nation leader did not know the full history of “it’s ok to be white’’ but had evoked it to give voice to the frustration of white people who feel they are no longer given a fair deal.

“We are tired of seeing this uncivil behaviour towards white people,’’ Ashby said. “That’s where it comes from.

“We are seeing it every day. People talk about it to us on the street. They are getting pretty jack of it and the more you play it up, the more people agree with us. There is a genuine argument out there and someone has had the guts to come out and say it.’’