BOO HOO, ANDREW BOLT IS HURT. IS HE FOR REAL?
HE IS A KNOWN MINION FOR RUPERT MURDOCH, IPA,CONSERVATIVES AND THE ABBOTT GOVERNMENT.
It feels like I have lost; do I run or resist?
Herald Sun
March 12, 2014
- 285 comments
The Q & A panel: Lisa Wilkinson, George Brandis, Marcia Langton and host Tony Jones.
Source: ABC
Source: ABC
STRANGE, after all I've been through, but Monday on the ABC may have been finally too much for me.
You see, I was denounced on Q&A - on national television
- as a racist. I watched in horror as Aboriginal academic Marcia
Langton falsely accused me of subjecting one of her colleagues - "very
fair-skinned, like my children" - to "foul abuse ... simply racial
abuse".
Blog with Andrew Bolt
Langton falsely claimed I was a "fool" who
believed in "race theories" and had "argued that (her colleague) had no
right to claim that she was Aboriginal". I had so hurt this woman she
"withdrew from public life" and had given up working with students
(something seemingly contradicted by the CV on her website).
And
when Attorney-General George Brandis hotly insisted I was not racist,
the ABC audience laughed in derision. Not one other panellist protested
against this lynching. In fact, host Tony Jones asked Brandis to defend
"those sort of facts" and Channel 9 host Lisa Wilkinson accused me of
"bullying". And all panellists agreed Brandis should drop the
government's plan to loosen the Racial Discrimination Act's restrictions
on free speech, which the RDA used to ban two of my articles. Can the
Abbott Government resist the pressure from ethnic and religious groups
to back off?
So it feels I've lost, and not just this argument. I
feel now the pressure to stop resisting the Government's plan to change
the Constitution to recognise Aborigines as the first people here - a
dangerous change, which divides us according to the "race" of some of
our ancestors.
My wife now wants me to play safe and stop fighting
this new racism, and this time I'm listening. This time I was so
bruised by Q&A that I didn't go into work on Tuesday. I couldn't
stand any sympathy - which you get only when you're meant to feel hurt.
REALITY CHECK
1:49
Truth or dare... Andrew Bolt reveals his salary. Well, the relevant bit anyway.
lawyer told a Jewish Federal Court judge that my kind of thinking was
"exactly the kind of thing that led to the Nuremberg race laws" and the
Holocaust - a ghastly smear published in most leading newspapers. That
time, at least, half a dozen Jewish and Israeli community leaders and
officials, who knew my strong support for their community, privately
assured me such comments were outrageous and the attempt by a group of
Aboriginal academics, artists and activists to silence me wrong.
True,
none said so publicly for the next two years for fear of discrediting
the RDA, which they hope protects them, yet it was some consolation.
But this?
How could I have failed so completely to convince so many people that I am actually fighting exactly what I'm accused of?
The
country's most notorious racist today is someone whose most infamous
article, now banned by the Federal Court for the offence it gave
"fair-skinned Aborigines", actually argued against divisions of "race"
and the fashionable insistence on racial "identity".
It ended with
a paragraph the court does not let me repeat, but which I will
paraphrase as precisely as my lawyer allows: Let us go beyond racial
pride. Let us go beyond black and white. Let us be proud only of being
human beings set on this country together, determined to find what
unites us and not to invent racist excuses to divide.
REALITY CHECK
1:06
Will this be the last time a minister makes such grand pronouncements about climate change? Bolt Ep25 Seg4
getting no more than what I gave out - except, of course, this is more
vile and there's no law against abusing me, or none I'd use.
No, what's made me saddest is the fear I'm losing and our country will be muzzled and divided on the bloody lines of race.
I worry, for instance, for the kind of person who turned up in the Q&A
audience on Monday and still dared ask why so much land was being
returned to Aborigines when "really we're all here, we're all
Australians".
He was shown the lash just used to beat me. He was
corrected (rightly) for overstating the effect of land rights laws but
reprimanded (wrongly) for allegedly ignoring Aboriginal disadvantage, as
if he were some, you know, racist.
No panellist addressed his
deepest concern, that we are indeed all in this together, yet find
ourselves being formally divided by race and by people only too keen to
play the race card against those who object.
Langton is an
exemplar of those who use the cry of "racist" not to protect people from
abuse but ideas from challenge. She's accused even feminist Germaine
Greer of a "racist attack" for criticising Langton's support for federal
intervention in Aboriginal communities.
She accused warming
alarmist Tim Flannery of making a "racist assumption" in arguing
wilderness was "not always safe" under Aboriginal ownership and when
Labor lawyer Josh Bornstein protested, she slimed him as a racist, too:
"Doodums. Did the nig nog speak back?"
And three years ago Langton wrote an article in The Age falsely claiming I believed in a "master race" and "racial hygiene" - like the Nazis.
It was a public vilification for which she privately apologised two years ago, but never publicly.
Instead, she now accuses me of this "foul abuse" of her colleague, Dr Misty Jenkins, in a column six years ago.
HER
allegations are utterly false. My column, written before my now-banned
articles, was on the group-think Leftism at Melbourne University, of
which I gave many examples.
I wrote: "Read the latest issue of ...
the university's alumni magazine ... The cover story argues that the
mainly black murderers (in the Deep South) ... are victims ... Page two
promotes Kevin Rudd's apology ... Page three announces that Davis has
picked … global warming alarmist Ross Garnaut, as one of his
Vice-Chancellor's Fellows.
"Page four has a feature on Dr Misty
Jenkins, a blonde and pale science PhD who calls herself Aboriginal and
enthuses: 'I was able to watch the coverage of Kevin Rudd's (sorry)
speech with tears rolling down my cheeks ... Recognition of the
atrocities caused by Australian government policies was well overdue'
...
"Pages six and seven boast that the university hosted Rudd's 'first major policy conference' ... You get the message."
Where's
the "foul abuse", Marcia? Where have I "argued that [Jenkins] had no
right to claim that she was Aboriginal" - something I have never
believed and never said of anyone?
But that's our retribalised
Australia. Criticise the opinions of someone of an ethnic minority and
you're ripe for sliming as a racist.
How dangerous this retreat to
ethnic identities and what an insult to our individuality. And how
blind are its prophets. Take Lisa Wilkinson, who actually uttered the
most racist sentiment of the night, accusing Brandis of being a "white,
able-bodied heterosexual male" suggesting this was "part of the reason
why you can't sympathise" with victims of racism.
White men can't sympathise? Pardon?
And so today's anti-racists become what they claim they oppose. Do I resist or run?
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