Counter-rallies challenge 'Reclaim Australia'

Chris Peterson & Sarah Hathway write that Counter-rallies challenge 'Reclaim Australia'.

Indigenous activists were prominent in the counter-mobilisations against Reclaim Australia.

Burgess's efforts to disguise his anti-Aboriginal racism are in line with the “Reclaim Australia” organisers strategy of denying their racism and framing their rallies in terms of opposition to “Islamic extremism”. This has been enabled by the increasing scaremongering around a much exagerated threat of terrorism and scapegoating of Muslims and asylum seekers by mainstream political parties and media — tactics used to diverrt attention from unpoular government policies and justify anti-democratic laws.

Their demands include preventing Sharia law from being enforced in Australia, to ban Halal certification, to introduce pride in the Australian flag and the national anthem at schools, and to ban the burqa (or equivalent). All of these demands, absurd or extremist as they are, can be regularly heard in federal parliament and in the opinion pages of the Murdoch press.

Despite claims that “Reclaim Australia” was not a racist or neo-nazi event, several participants had with visible SS and swastika tattoos.

The Melbourne counter-rally built on the success of the previous week's 15,000-strong rally for refugees, which the media largely ignored. In contrast, the media heavily reported “Reclaim Australia”.

Emphasis Mine

I especially love the slogan from the Aboriginal activists in the photograph below—Not Yours to Reclaim:

One could take the charitable view that the people at the “Reclaim Australia” rallies were completely unaware that they are swimming in a sea of racism: mass media; books; movies; official history; paintings; sculptures; television shows; political discourse; place names; etc.. This racism is so prevalent that it is invisible.

It only becomes visible and audible when someone takes the logical conclusion from this prevailing racism and ends up on YouTube sprewing a racist rant. Then they are shocked to learn what thought to be a reasonable conclusion based upon they know to be true, is virulently racist. You cannot build truth from lies.

I imagine it would be an extreme shock to them to learn that they are being lied to everyone they trust and respect. These people are only repeating what is received knowledge.

To even imagine that all of these nice and respectable people are propagandists for racism is frightening for most people to contemplate. To do would undercut their own rationality. Their world would collapse into a fog of helplessness.

It is safer to deny their own racism and lose empathy for the victims of racsim. Racism corrodes one's own humanity ever so subtlely until the swatiska is just a badge of honour: