‘Neo-Nazis’ or ‘good people’? Albo pressured over immigration
MARCH FOR AUSTRALIA RESPONSE
The response to the anti-immigration rallies at the weekend dominated coverage yesterday and leads numerous news sites again this morning.
The Australian Financial Review claims the Albanese government is “under pressure to show more leadership on population policy to prevent it from being hijacked by extremists”, while highlighting the prime minister yesterday said some of those who marched on Sunday held legitimate concerns.
The paper cites sources as claiming the government is “very close” to releasing its permanent migration target for this financial year, which will apparently stay unchanged at 185,000.
The AAP says experts have warned that Sunday’s rallies represented opportunities for neo-Nazi groups to enlist more members. “A rally that has a presence from a group like the neo-Nazi organisation presents a prime opportunity for recruitment,” said Dr Levi West, a research fellow at the Australian National University.
“People whose grievances are potentially based in conspiracy theory or misinformation can quite easily be drawn towards the simplicity of the ideas that are embedded in neo-Nazi ideology as providing some sort of solution or solace for the thing that they feel a grievance about.”
The newswire also highlights Anthony Albanese’s comments to the ABC on Monday, in which he said that while there would have been “good people” who attended to express their views, the protests were about sowing division.
“What we have here is neo-Nazis being given a platform. The tone, of course, of much of the rallies was unfortunate — is the best way that you could put it — but hateful in some of the extreme examples,” the prime minister said.
When asked if resentment towards migrants was rising in Australia, Albanese said those elements had always been there, adding: “What we need to do is to be vigilant about it. It’s much easier to organise through social media … for people to have their views reinforced, often … based upon things which aren’t just fact.”
Coalition leader Sussan Ley said the rallies had been “hijacked by violent neo-Nazis spouting hate and racism”.
The Nine papers said parliament “erupted” yesterday as the major parties “blamed one another for fuelling the hostility displayed by far-right extremists on Sunday and those waving terror group insignia at pro-Palestine rallies”. The report says senators also “brawled” as they tried to agree on a written motion condemning “fringe elements involved in the marches”.
SBS News highlights Senator Lidia Thorpe has called for a federal inquest after the Indigenous Camp Sovereignty site was attacked by participants in Melbourne’s rally on Sunday.
“Indigenous leaders have described as terrorists and cowards a group of neo-Nazis who stormed an Aboriginal camp in central Melbourne, landing in hospital two women who tried to intervene,” The Age adds.
Victorian Police Minister Anthony Carbines told ABC Melbourne radio: “It’s gutless, and it needs to be called out. This is people intimidating and bringing violence, and we won’t stand for it. We’ll hold them to account.”
Victoria Police said the force is investigating the incident.
EIGHT HUNDRED KILLED IN AFGHAN QUAKE
Rescuers are scrambling to reach areas impacted by Sunday’s deadly earthquake in Afghanistan, which is said to have killed over 800 people.
The ABC reports the Taliban has called for international help after the 6.0-magnitude quake struck near the city of Jalalabad, with spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid saying at least 812 people have been killed in the eastern provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar, with reports of almost 3,000 injured. Local authorities have said the death toll will likely rise once rescuers reach more remote areas.
CNN says a “mammoth rescue operation” has been launched along a mountainous stretch of provinces where the population was already facing hunger and economic crises, while Reuters reports that in Kunar province alone, three villages were razed by the quake.
“Children are under the rubble. The elderly are under the rubble. Young people are under the rubble. We need help here. We need people to come here and join us. Let us pull out the people who are buried. There is no-one who can come and remove dead bodies from under the rubble,” the Associated Press quotes a villager in Nurgal district as saying.
Filippo Grandi, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said the devastating earthquake “adds death and destruction to other challenges including drought and the forced return of millions of Afghans from neighbouring countries. Hopefully the donor community will not hesitate to support relief efforts”.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan director of the International Rescue Committee Sherine Ibrahim declared: “This latest earthquake is likely to dwarf the scale of the humanitarian needs caused by the Herat earthquakes of 2023. Within the first twelve hours, at least 2,000 people are reported to have been injured and entire roads and communities have been cut off from accessing nearby towns or hospitals.
“Although we have been able to act fast, we are profoundly fearful for the additional strain that this disaster will have on the overall humanitarian response in Afghanistan. Global funding cuts have dramatically hampered our ability to respond to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.”
ISRAEL COMMITTING GENOCIDE: EXPERTS
The world’s leading association of genocide scholars has declared Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the BBC reports.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has backed a resolution that declares Israel’s “policies and actions in Gaza” have met the legal definition set out in article II of the 1948 UN convention on genocide, Reuters adds.
The BBC says of the IAGS’s 500 members, 28% took part in the vote and 86% of those who voted supported the resolution.
“This is a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide,” the association’s president Melanie O’Brien, a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia, told Reuters. “There is no justification for the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, not even self-defence.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the statement from the IAGS disgraceful and “entirely based on Hamas’ campaign of lies”.
On Monday, publications like Al Jazeera and The Guardian published features highlighting the hundreds of Palestinian journalists who have been killed in Gaza, with the former saying it was “the deadliest war for media workers in history”.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
Tim Sullivan was struggling to come up with a way to propose to his girlfriend Caroline Liggett.
The pair work in agriculture and Tim told NBC News they both “really like corn a lot, not to be corny”.
“I wanted to do something that we would both be able to remember for the rest of our lives,” Tim said upon eventually coming up with a plan in April.
His family’s farm has an annual corn maze, and he decided to design a maze that included a proposal. So he planted it and waited.
In August, Tim and Caroline took a helicopter flight over the farm and Tim’s question was finally revealed.
“I looked back at her and she’s looking out the other side of the plane,” Tim said, so the pilot circled back. “I’ve never seen her face light up as much as she did.”
“I was just so shocked,” Caroline said. “Tim is quite the planner, so I knew it was going to be something quite elaborate. I had quite a bit of patience.”
Say What?
It’s hardly secret, you just are asking me about it on national TV.
Anthony Albanese
The prime minister was asked about the $408 million deportation deal with Nauru, which was quietly uploaded to the Department of Home Affairs website on Friday and not publicised. But you know, not secret.
CRIKEY RECAP
Thousands gathered in Melbourne’s CBD yesterday both in support of and in opposition to the MFA, one of a number of rallies and counter-rallies rolling out nationwide. Conjecture over who the official organisers were, claims of event ownership by the country’s largest neo-Nazi group the Nationalist Socialist Network (NSN), and support from sovereign citizens contributed to the chaotic and controversial lead-up to the day.
Matt Trihey, leader of nationalist group National Workers Alliance, was initially named as the organiser for the Melbourne rally. Trihey would bow out from organising for publicly unknown reasons. Hugo Lennon, who on social media goes by “Auspill”, was then floated as an organiser by leading names in the movement but rejected this notion, allegedly saying he would be out of the country at the time of the rally. In the end, Lennon did make an appearance and even addressed the crowd as a speaker.
As for any doubt over the participation of neo-Nazis, the NSN led the march in Melbourne and NSN leader Thomas Sewell delivered one of the major speeches.
People are using autism to rort the NDIS, but it’s not the people with autism
People are using autism to rort the NDIS, but it’s not the people with autism. Two-plus years as a support worker (an autistic one to boot) has given me a grim ground’s-eye view of an industry with little to no oversight — one where government policy has had the marrow sucked out of it by a vicious circle of shoddy private companies that had positioned themselves between their “clients” and those clients’ funding.
Like almost every major Australian government policy of the past 30 years, the NDIS is a tragic farce of state responsibility being outsourced to rapacious contractors. It’s an industry designed to get between those in need and the financial help intended for them. The sole purpose of most disability support organisations was seemingly to create the illusion of work (much like our private job providers) to meet government quotas, while charging clients for what is best described as the illusion of care. The efficacy of said illusion usually lived or died in the hands of the individual workers themselves.
Trump, Putin, Netanyahu — Australian media has Daddy Issues
The news we need is not what a handful of individuals say they feel or think. It’s their actions, interests and apparent intentions, as well as those of the people and organisations around them. In that context, we can better understand, for example, that the Alaska summit was about engineering a Russia-friendly outcome to the war — or, at least, shifting the global debate along to make that outcome more likely — than it was about Trump’s apparent narcissistic desire for a Nobel Prize.
That means reaching beyond the legacy media’s reporting, particularly the US billionaire-owned media whose corporate self-interest demands they nod along to the pretence that Trump is politics as usual — just a bit more so. It calls for a journalism that puts reporting about the world in the context of the global democratic and human rights crisis that the killings in Gaza and the invasion of Ukraine represent.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Fugitive wanted over Australia police killings being helped, police say (BBC)
Thousands of Australians claim there’s been unprecedented migration. Here’s what the numbers say (The Age) ($)
Katter doubles down on threat to punch journalist, says he should have been more aggressive (The Sydney Morning Herald) ($)
Xi, Putin and Modi pledge unity at summit to counter US-led global order (Al Jazeera)
Russia suspected of jamming GPS on plane carrying Ursula von der Leyen (The Guardian)
New Zealand reverses course to let some foreign investors buy homes (Reuters) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
The March for Australia’s racism can’t just be blamed on far-right ‘extremists’ — it’s been enabled by the mainstream — Liam Gillespie (Guardian Australia): To understand the success of March for Australia, an appreciation of the politics of language is crucial. This is because euphemism is a central political strategy of the far right and one they are particularly adept at weaponising — whether to launder their public image or to mobilise political violence.
Far-right activists will use terms such as “protest” to invoke a sense of legitimate grievance, “anti-immigration” as an obvious dog whistle for racism, and “Australian heritage” or “Australian culture” as a stand-in for ideas of racial purity.
Even the word “Australia” itself can be deployed as a euphemism, supposedly invoking something everyone would want to protect and preserve, and in the name of which to mobilise. However, when we consider that one of the National Socialist Network’s slogans is “Australia for the white man”, the euphemism quickly unravels and March for Australia is revealed as “March for White Australia”.
Politicians have scapegoated immigration for decades. It’s time to flip the script — Jane McAdam (The Conversation): For the Coalition, it was about stopping so-called “illegals”. For Labor, it was framed as “saving lives at sea”.
For both, it was about keeping people seeking asylum out of contact with the Australian community, demonised and dehumanised, called by numbers, not names.
Against this backdrop, it’s perhaps unsurprising Australians turned out in the thousands to rally against immigration this weekend. It could be seen as the culmination of years of MPs using immigration issues for short-term political gain.
But just as government messaging has partly contributed to this situation, it could also help get us out of it.
