Dutton’s ‘profiling’ terminolgy risks stirring ugliest passions

I MMIGRATION Minister Peter Dutton is not only inhumane but he is not averse to dog whistling about race.

On Wednesday Mr Dutton took to telling Miranda Devine, a columnist at the Daily Telegraph, that he would look at allowing white South African farmers having their visa applications prioritised because they are being “persecuted” by the black majority in that country.

Mr Dutton’s comments were dog whistle politics par excellence. By this we mean “expressing racially loaded ideas in coded terms,” as Ian

Greg Barns

Haney Lopez, a University of California Berkeley Law professor explains it. Terms such as “illegals” to refer to asylum seekers, or “African gangs”, are classic dog whistle terms.

As Professor Haney Lopez rightly says, dog whistle politics is “socially destructive, intentionally firing the ugliest passions and pitting people against each other. It undermines democracy, manipulating voters through appeals to their worst instincts while distorting the real issues of the day. It’s an economic catastrophe, convincing working people to fear other vulnerable populations and instead to cast their lot with the plutocrats. It shatters the “we,” destroying our commitment to the community and public and instead fostering frightened isolation and anomie.”

This columnist has proffered the view previously that Mr Dutton and the neo fascist movement in Europe have some political strategies in common and dog-whistling is one of them.

So back to South African farmers. Recently the South African parliament, controlled by the governing ANC (Nelson Mandela’s movement) and the Economic Freedom Fighters, passed a resolution which asked an all party committee to examine amending South Africa’s 1996 Constitution to allow for expropriation of property without compensation in all cases. Because white farmers still control 73 per cent of agricultural land in South Africa the new President Cyril Ramaphosa and his administration is targeting this sector for land reform.

Mr Dutton, careless or ignorant of the fact that South Africa’s farmers are not yet facing expropriation as occurred in Zimbabwe, told Ms Devine last Wednesday, “If you look at the footage and read the stories, you hear the accounts, it’s a horrific circumstance they face.” Mr Dutton says these farmers “need help from a civilised country like ours”. Then there was the dog whistle comment from the Immigration Minister, “We want people who want to come here, abide by our laws, integrate into our society, work hard, not lead a life on welfare. And I think these people deserve special attention and we’re certainly applying that special attention now.”

In other words, because the group in question are white farmers and they are a minority in a black country

then they are far more deserving than say desperate Rohingyas fleeing persecution in Burma, or Palestinians who have Israeli government officials invading their land, or Afghan farmers having their livelihoods ruined because of the US-Australian destruction of their country.

What Mr Dutton really meant in his interview with Ms Devine was this. Whites are superior migrants. And hard working white farmers from South Africa won’t use the welfare system the way asylum seekers in Australia do.

Note also the reference by Mr Dutton to Australia being a “civilised country”. A bit rich coming from the man who presides over the gulags of Manus Island and Nauru where there is daily torture inflicted on helpless persons seeking asylum. But of course the phrase was used to portray South Africa as being “uncivilised” despite the fact that the apartheid regime is to blame for social unrest and dislocation that still exists in that country today.

By the way Mr Dutton might like to note that many of the farmers in South Africa he wants to assist do not speak English. They speak Afrikaans and in fact the main farmers lobby group, Afriforum SA has a website which is written in Afrikaans! Hang on a minute. Only a week or two ago Mr Dutton and other Turnbull government ministers were dog whistling about migrants who can’t speak English and promising that anyone who comes to Australia must be proficient in English to get through the migration door. Of course, those sentiments only apply to people who are not from a European background.

Once again Mr Dutton confirmed why many around the world think Australia is still a racist country. His dog whistling on South African farmers has done the image of this nation yet more harm on the international stage and made one cringe again to be the holder of an Australian passport. Peter Dutton is a danger to democracy and the fact that his Prime Minister did not pull him into line is deeply depressing.