Submitted by Paul Daley on
Fraser Anning, as well as sections of the media and parliament, continue a long tradition of racist rhetoric in Australia
It was heartening to see federal parliament roundly condemn the latest psephological boundary rider to demand national attention with an inflammatory Senate speech invoking the worst crimes of the Holocaust, praising the white Australia policy and proposing a ban on migration for Muslims.
Nobody much had ever heard of (let alone voted for) the racist barnacle, Fraser Anning. So that’s a box ticked for him and his “leader”, Bob Katter, whose praise for the speech now stands as a full stop between his name and political decency.
Related: The Coalition has been playing with fire on race, and this is their inferno | Katharine Murphy
Related: Australia is deplorably racist, as people of colour are reminded when they speak up | Jack Latimore
Popular memory of the First World War knows little or nothing of the racial dimensions of Australia’s commitment to Gallipoli, the Middle East and the Western Front. There is no place in that memory today for Australia’s obsession with race purity or for the way that race fear – fear of Japan – drove the strategic thinking of the nation’s leaders both before and during the war, with the defence of white Australia at the very heart of their anxieties and deliberations.
Related: The origins of genocide lie in permissive bias and discrimination | Alex Ryvchin
Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia writer and columnist
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