The bigotry genie | Blogotariat

The extremely limited Treasurer,
Josh Frydenberg has tweeted the following:

“I’m deeply concerned about the
reports of children as young as 5 being attacked in schools because of their
Jewishness. It’s completely unacceptable in our civilised society & State
& Federal Govts must work together to educate our community about the
atrocities of the Holocaust.”1

This coming from a member of the
government shows an exceptional lack of awareness of the impact of one’s own
actions. This government has used the dog whistle at almost every opportunity
when it thought it could gain some electoral advantage among the knuckle-draggers.
It has referred to African gangs, Muslim immigration and boat people whenever
it suited their purposes2,3,4. The government’s readiness to use the
dog whistle was made clear when the reports were leaked of Morrison’s suggestion,
in a shadow cabinet meeting, that the government should use community fear of
Muslims to political advantage5. As if to emphasise the point, now
the government wants to legislate more bigotry with their ‘religious freedom’
act6,7.

What Frydenberg fails to understand is
that once a government unleashes bigotry, it gives licence to ALL bigotry, and
once this genie is out of the bottle, it cannot easily be put back in. Unlike
Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison and Howard before them, Paul Keating understood this
when he said: “I think it’s a Prime Minister’s duty; one of the primary duties
of a Prime Minister is to protect the country from prejudice. Howard was happy
to let the racism virus out. And it’s like a flu virus, you never get it back.
You know, when someone at the top of the system … you see Bob before me,
Malcolm Fraser before him, Gough Whitlam, John Gorton – none of us would play
around with this issue. None. The only one to do it was a little guy from
Bennelong.”8

Now, poor, vacant Frydenberg bemoans the
fact that Jewish children are being ‘attacked’ in school because of who they
are, just like African children and women were, and Muslim women and children
were, and homosexuals were when the government gave the nod to racists and
other bigots. Can Frydenberg actually be so stupid that he does not realise
from where this bigotry against his coreligionists comes?

Sources

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