OUR NATION ON ITS KNEES

IF you believed your eyes, every AFL player and umpire is so sure our police are killing Aborigines in jails that they couldn’t play last weekend before bending their knees in silence. Same with NRL players at several games. All bent the knee “in support of the Black Lives Matter movement”, noted the ABC approvingly. Really? Black Lives Matter is a racist group that officially declares it wants to “defund the police”. “F--- the police” chanted protesters at the Sydney Black Lives Matter protest a week ago.

Is this agenda really endorsed by every single player and official? This total unanimity of belief seems laughably unlikely.

Ask the fans if they are 100 per cent behind this genuflecting. No, what we saw on the weekend was a startling illustration of a new race bullying, which too many people — even tough football players — are too frightened to resist. They’re rather fall to their knees than speak their mind. In fact, they were kneeling to a falsehood. The statistics are clear: Aboriginal prisoners are actually less likely than white prisoners to die in jail.

Yes, Aborigines are more likely to be jailed, but that’s because Aborigines are more likely to commit murder, rape, assault, domestic violence and theft, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology.

And defund the police? Hands up anyone who wants fewer police in their neighbourhood.

Sure, I can understand why players would be too scared to resist the race bullies. Refusing to kneel would make them the target of a media pack attack. Sponsors would faint. Clubs would freak.

Jessica Mulroney is the latest warning. She refused to publicly support Black Lives Matter, and was smashed. She lost her reality show I Do Redo, was fired from Good Morning America and even dumped as a friend by royal flake Meghan Markle, who’d had Mulroney’s daughter as flower girl at her wedding.

Why should we ask footballers to be brave when they see journalists — who boast of their own fierce independence — not just kneel but crawl to the race baiters and hustlers?

Take the ABC. This state-funded collective has its presenters preach with one voice in support of those baiters and hustlers. Worse, its journalists publish the most toxic falsehoods to seem more race-woke than thou.

Take this effort last week: “After a massacre, those Aboriginal people who were not killed were often enslaved.”

Incredible. Lies are good and truthtellers are racist, as mobs hunt for more statues to deface or destroy, attacking even ones of former Liberal leaders John Howard and Tony Abbott. Must we kneel to that, too?

Guess so, given how Channel 10 journalists and presenters are grovelling, too, with The Project host Waleed Aly complaining that talking about the widespread violence and looting in the US race riots was “sidestepping the main issue”.

At first I was astonished to hear so many Channel 10 presenters say things so stupid and inflammatory. How could indigenous Studio 10 host Narelda Jacobs claim our police forces were so racist that they should be abolished?

How could Aly and co-host Carrie Bickmore then prattle approvingly about the Black Lives Matter demand to defund and dismantle the police?

“They’ve done it before: Camden, New Jersey, Compton, California,” Bickmore claimed.

“Did it work?” asked panellist Steve Price, the token conservative.

“I don’t see why it wouldn’t have,” said Aly, looking over notes given to him by someone backstage.

“It doesn’t say that,” said Bickmore, checking her own notes.

In fact, Camden simply replaced its police force with a new one with that’s now bigger than ever. Compton merely got Los Angeles police to replace its own.

Maybe Aly and Bickmore really do believe such foolishness, or maybe the only note they checked was this from their Network 10 bosses: “We stand in solidarity with our black colleagues, storytellers and viewers in Australia and the world because #BlackLivesMatter.”

Network 10 repeated that support in a staff email, yet has the hide to claim: “Any inference that our corporate support would impact our ability to provide and present balanced news reporting and stories … is completely false.”

As if. The muzzle is on. Which Network 10 presenter would dare say Black Lives Matter is a cancer?

True, Aly and Bickmore maybe do just speak their minds rather than read out notes from their masters. But how can we now know that? How can we be sure that they, like AFL players and most politicians, aren’t just falling to their knees in fear?