POLICE FLY FLAG FOR TYRANTS

THANK you, Victoria Police, for flying China’s communist flag over your Box Hill station last week.

What a great lesson on the dangerous idiocy of multiculturalism.

And what made this lesson so perfect? It occurred on the same day that Hong Kong protesters risked being shot as they protested for freedom from that same Chinese regime.

Check out the difference between these two events on the 70th anniversary celebrations of China’s dictatorship.

In Australia, we had police appealing to ethnic identity by flying the flag of the Chinese regime in a suburb where 35 per cent of locals have Chinese ancestors. Australian police treated those residents as Chinese on China’s national day.

Ignore for now the insult: that here were police insulting many ethnic Chinese who don’t at all feel loyal to a communist dictatorship. Look instead at the intent. This was classic multiculturalism: officially encouraging Australia’s ethnic Chinese to think of themselves as forever Chinese in their loyalties.

That’s obviously dangerous when we have 1.2 million Australians with Chinese ancestry, and a Chinese dictatorship that’s throwing its weight around.

But also think how alienating that kind of multiculturalism is for everyone else.

When governments help Chinese Australians to celebrate being Chinese, how does that include the rest of us? How can that unite us?

Now, compare that flag raising in Box Hill to what happened in Hong Kong on the same day.

In Hong Kong, protesters once again demanded democracy and free speech from their communist overlords.

They risked their lives for those ideals. One student was shot in the chest.

What a contrast. In Victoria, police appealed to the “race” of local citizens — but just the Chinese ones.

In Hong Kong, protesters appealed instead to values of local citizens — both Chinese and non-Chinese.

In Victoria, police appealed to a tribe. In Hong Kong, protesters appealed to all.

That’s why the Hong Kong protesters inspire so many people of so many races, and made them feel a bond. Their appeal is not to blood but to the mind — to values of freedom that can unite people of all races.

Shouldn’t that work here, too? A call to values, not “race”, could unite everyone in this country, too, so fractured by ethnic loyalties.

Values can make one out of many. Flying tribal flags can only make many out of one.