MORE HATRED FROM MARCIA
MARCIA Langton is the most toxic example of Australia’s new habit of screaming “racist” just to shut down debates. She is the most toxic of many, in my opinion, because Melbourne University has honoured her as one of our finest professors.
The university made her a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, as well as its Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies. Here, we’re asked to believe, is a great role model of an academic.
Yet a month ago she heaped homophobic abuse on a young gay man who’d defended the free speech of Israel Folau, sacked by Rugby Australia for quoting the Bible against gays. Langton sneered: “He probably thinks he’s gay because he masturbates too much.”
When challenged on Twitter, Langton replied with even more homophobic abuse: “Gay? I don’t think so; more like Milo. Twisted.”
That was appalling enough, but what followed demonstrated Langton’s more dangerous influence on public debate. I’d criticised Langton’s homophobic abuse in one of my columns, and last Thursday I paid for it. Langton was interviewed on the ABC’s Late
Night Live and teed off. She claimed that northern Australia had once had “Ku Klux Klan” groups that “wanted Aboriginal people wiped off the face of the earth”.
A few minutes later, Langton added: “If the likes of Andrew Bolt don’t stop his vendetta against us (Aborigines), his racist vendetta against us, will he stop doing this to our children …
“They are spiteful, vicious peddlers of hate and there’s not an original idea between the lot of them. It’s all borrowed from the Ku Klux Klan and the far-Right in America.”
Everything Langton said was false. I am not a racist, am mounting no such “vendetta”, and am not borrowing from the KKK, which I loathe.
The insinuation that I want Aborigines “wiped off the face of the earth” is a grotesque falsehood.
I have asked the ABC to publicly apologise for broadcasting such a defamatory attack.
If it does, it won’t be the first time. The ABC five years ago apologised to me for broadcasting similar falsehoods from Langton, when she claimed I’d racially abused an Adelaide Aboriginal academic (I hadn’t) who as a result “withdrew” from public life (she didn’t).
Days later, Langton herself apologised to me on 2GB for those untruths and for also once falsely claiming I believed in foul theories of “racial hygiene” and “the master race”.
She admitted of me: “I don’t think he’s a racist.”
Still, the times being vicious, I’m hearing from Leftists gloating that Langton has smeared me again.
But they overlook that Langton uses this same sick tactic against many on the Left, too.
Here is a partial list of the people she has vilified with the great shut-up word of our times: ENVIRONMENTALIST Tim Flannery — accused by Langton on the ABC of pushing a “racist” argument that Aborigines had not been great preservers of nature.
LABOUR lawyer Josh Bornstein — implicitly accused of racism in defending Flannery, with Langton snapping: “Doodums. Did the nig nog speak back?”
LEFTIST professor and green Boris Frankel — accused of a “racism (that) is obvious” after criticising Langton for telling the ABC the green movement was racist.
LEFTIST journalism academic Wendy Bacon and journalist Wendy Carlisle — accused of failing to grasp the “invisibility of racism” after they criticised Langton’s ABC Boyer lectures.
FEMINIST Germaine Greer — accused by Langton of making “racist” arguments about the rage of Aboriginal men, and of having a “cleverly disguised contempt for Aboriginal people”.
PROFESSOR Larissa Behrendt, who identifies as Aboriginal and has a white mother — accused by Langton of having “assumed the role of superior thinkers whose grand education and positions in the metropolis qualify them to heap contempt on the natives”.
FORMER Prime Minister John Howard — accused by Langton of having wielded “rate hatred” with “callous deliberation”.
HISTORIAN and author Geoffrey Partington — likened by Langton on ABC radio to a notorious Nazi racist: “Hitler had Goebbels, John Howard’s got Geoffrey Partington.”
Who hasn’t Langton accused of racism, when she’s also said “Australia is an extremely racist country”?
True, Langton’s attacks are sometimes on people I’ve criticised, too, and for much the same reasons.
But Langton’s use of a high-impact hate word like “racist” so often and so unfairly is not just vicious but makes important debates almost impossible.
So how can Melbourne University advertise Langton as one of its most distinguished professors?
How sad if that’s so.
And how can the ABC, our national broadcaster, keep helping Langton to spread her smears?