John Howard, as Prime Minister of Australia, must take full responsibility for the current racial tensions which have come to a head recently in Sydney. Howard’s deliberate policy of creating fear and distrust in the community has resulted in hatreds bubbling to the surface of Australia’s social structures.
Much of the violence in Sydney over last weekend was helped along by Howard’s friend and radio talkback host, the racist and fascist Alan Jones who proudly concedes that it was he “…who led this charge here.” Howard himself, while condemning the violence and the actions of all the participants, has pulled up short of condemning it as racism
saying “…but I'm not going to put a general tag of racism on the Australian community”.
Gerard Henderson, Howard’s knee jerk apologist, tries desperately to endorse the Prime Minister’s denials by downplaying the obvious racism by saying: “This is not so much a clash of civilisations but, rather, a series of disputes between some aggressive Australians of Lebanese Muslim background and a group of aggressive (and drunk) Australians of Anglo-Celtic background,” as if the fact that the belligerents are polarised by their racial background is just incidental and that too much should not be construed by this fact.
Howard supporter Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper, The Australian, filled its editorial pages with opinion and commentary that tried to shift the blame for the troubles away from the racism Howard has promoted by his stance against home-grown ‘terrorism’ and his refugee policies. Tim Priest, for example, blames the police for neglecting to control the crowds while Paul Comrie-Thomson blames the Lebanese gangs for causing the trouble in the first place and the police for not nipping the problem in the bud. Meanwhile, the cartoon on the Opinion page depicts that 90% of the crowd on the ‘Aussies’ side are just ‘piss-heads’ and only 10% are ‘Aussie racists’ sums up the extent to which Murdoch’s media wish to lie and mislead.
The reality is Howard and his fascist supporters in the media have succeeded in polarising a nation. One more step down the road to a Fascist Australia.
AUSTRALIANS AT WAR
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