It’s surprising what you can get away with provided you stick to the script on ‘hating the other’. Michael Brull explains.
The fringe movements of the far right basically don’t like Muslims. They claim various other values, but they’re mostly just a smoke screen. If you look at the kinds of mini celebrities among their ranks, you’ll find that whatever they claim, basically all they need to do is trash Muslims and Islam. The rest is basically flexible. Including the patriotism stuff.
If you watch videos by the various racist and neo-fascist personalities of the far right, they typically begin with the salutation: “G’day patriots”. Ordinarily, one might think that Australian patriots would be Australian, Australia would be the only country they loved and were committed to, and they just wanted to protect their beloved country from foreigners (above all Muslims) who were going to wreck the place. But the thing is, the patriots seem flexible on what one might’ve thought were the fundamentals of patriotism.
Take Senator Malcolm Roberts, from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party. It turns out, when he stood for election as a Senator for the most xenophobic party in parliament, he wasn’t just an Australian citizen. He was also an English citizen. The High Court judgment on his case makes for amusing reading.
Read the full article by Michael Brull at New Matilda.