AS JULIUS STREICHER WAS TO 'DER STÜRMER' SO ANDREW BOLT IS TO THE 'HERALD SUN' AND GREG SHERIDAN IS TO 'THE AUSTRALIAN'

It’s interesting that historian Robert Manne should liken the Islamophobic racist Greg Sheridan to Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher and his Der Stürmer hate newspaper of the Nazi era. Contrary to the opinion of Gerard Henderson of the right-wing Sydney Institute who thinks such comparisons to Nazi propaganda are inappropriate, considering the circumstances of today’s modern Islamophobic and racist propaganda, such comparisons are very much appropriate. Whereas Streicher’s paper specialised in demonising Jews, Greg Sheridan and Andrew Bolt, as well as others, specialise in demonising both Aboriginal people and Islam in their respective newspapers, The Australian and the Herald Sun – both of which happen to be owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Julius Streicher was a low-life Nazi Jew-hater whose diatribes about Jews were often so disgusting they even offended fellow Nazis. Streicher was eventually hung at Nuremberg after being found guilty of crimes against humanity. But, it seems, extreme right-wing racists have not learnt from the lessons of the Nazi era. Again, racists are using newspapers to spread hatred and fear. And now it’s not just newspapers that are being used; Andrew Bolt has just been given a Sunday morning time slot on Australian Channel Ten TV.

Like Streicher, Andrew Bolt is a low-life Muslim and Aborigine hater whose diatribes about Aborigines and Muslims as well as other non-white Australians generally are also offensive even to other right-wing Australians. Greg Sheridan has come out with his racist agenda and has now also placed himself in the ranks of low-life Muslim haters when he wrote his lengthy diatribe last Saturday in The Australian.

Like the era of anti-Semitism during the last century, so Islamophobia and racism against non-whites is a threat to the future of the world. If the racist and Islamophobic hatreds peddled by the likes of Sheridan and Bolt are not stopped then the world has no more to look forward to than it did in those dark days that culminated in the deaths of millions in the middle of the last century.

These people are using the rhetoric of ‘the right to free speech’ to deprive people of their freedoms and rights – just as the likes of Julius Streicher did back in the 1930s.