As small men reduce us all to a small nation, we must decide who we want to be
For those who understand the nature of racism and violence, many horrors creep in when men like Fraser Anning and Bob Katter speak.
There is a dismay knowing the impact of what they say will have on communities: the harassment, violence, and anger at the Muslim community for crimes, transgressions and breaches not committed.
Then there is a very personal type of horror that comes from witnessing the ease with which an entire community of people are identified and targeted for hate. There is abhorrence of watching Anning’s Senate colleagues congratulate him after his maiden speech because that is the customary thing to do.
And there is the brutalising nature of it all, the anger, the repulsion and the disgust with the pettiness and ugliness – small men reducing us all to a small nation.
But there is also something deeper and more profound. There is something about the impoverishment of it all, the impoverishment of these men and the impoverished place they take us to as a nation, and how willingly and quickly we go into that space.
It is from that constricted place of identity and understanding that men like Anning operate, it is not about political expediency and a pulling back from what is different, there is an impulse too, an impulse towards hatred and a type of self-glorification for one’s capacity to hate, to denigrate not a community one knows but a community one does not know.
The community of which both Anning and Katter speak does not exist, Muslim or otherwise. It is not that it is imagined – it is not an unconscious outpouring of fears that are projected onto others. Rather, it is constructed, purpose built, not solely for political imperatives but for personal ones too – it is about who these men are and their funnelling of hate.
These are men who do not understand the world and appear to take pride in it– Katter demonstrates this when he says that Anning did not go to university. Universities do not make for better people – but nor does an absence of higher institutional learning make for a more authentic and superior human being whose opinion is nobler because he doesn’t have a degree.
They don’t have to know communities to damn them, they experience a sentiment and therefore it is real and the world must be made to acquiesce. This is evident in the mad flailing around for information about Muslims that both Anning and Katter display: it is about welfare dependency, then it is about terrorism, then it is about unemployment and incarceration, then it is antisemitism, then it is about gangs, then it is Josh Frydenberg failing “his” people and then it is about immigration, and then it is about the Palestinian Authority.
It is about everything that can be used to beat down an already vilified and marginalised community.
The chaos here is designed to obscure the facts. But nonetheless facts are important and here are just a few: 70% of Muslim men of working age are employed. Muslims are more likely to have completed year 12, Muslim men are also more likely to have completed bachelor’s degrees or post graduate studies than the general population. Muslim women are almost on par with women from the general population in bachelor/post graduate degrees. Despite their educational attainment, Muslims are more likely to be unemployed, more likely to be living in poverty, are less likely to be working in the professions for which they trained, are less likely to get the economic return for their education and less likely to be granted a job interview.
The Muslim story of employment is less about migrating to Australia to take advantage of the welfare system (which secures its recipients a rate of pay that situates them below the poverty line) and more a story of social and labour market discrimination.
Here is another fact: Anning’s “not every Muslim is a terrorist, but every terrorist is a Muslim” venomous jingoism has been a trademark of the ideological right. The list of nonMuslim terrorists is extensive, but as a politician, Anning would surely be aware of the 2017 shooting of a Republican congressional baseball team, in which four people were shot. We have recently commemorated the anniversary of the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, in which Heather Heyer was killed and 19 people were injured, and men turned up carrying weapons, including semi-automatic guns – it is terrorism by any other name. If you’re unsure, replace those young white men with Muslim men spewing hatred and bigotry and threats of violence.
It is possible to demolish every other accusation Anning and Katter have made; Victorians have been trying to do this with the “African gangs” debacle. It is bewildering to witness how quickly those inspired by hate are called to arms while the rest of us desperately try to articulate the reality we know to be true.
It does not seem to me any longer that Australia is a nation in which someone like Anning ruptures who we are and then there is a correction and return. I think we need to consider whether Anning is now who we are and what we will do.
• Joumanah El Matrah is the CEO of the Australian Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights and PhD student at Western Sydney University
• Comments on this article have been pre-moderated to ensure the discussion is on the topics that have been written about in the article.
These are men who do not understand the world and appear to take pride in it