Dog Whistle Of The Century

Dog Whistle Of The Century

The Daily Telegraph has brilliantly employed juxaposition of text and image on its front cover 29-May-2009 to Dog Whistle to the fear and paranoia of Muslims and Islam felt by many of the ‘Howard Battlers’ or ‘working families’ of Sydney.

The cover is completely filled with a picture of one of Skaf brothers (notorious young Lebanese Muslim rapists) being visited by his parents in jail. Skaf and his mother occupy most of the shot. Skaf has his arm and hand extended towards his mother palm-up and is holding something indistinguishable. The text reads (to paraphrase) ‘How did the evil Skaf brothers get a mobile phone in jail ?’

The answer, supplied by the highly suggestive picture is that his mother smuggled it in under her Islamic garb in which she is dressed. Here’s the story from the on-line edition.

Islamophobic fear, for which female Islamic attire is a lightning rod, is thus aroused by the implication that a MUSLIM RAPIST has received COVERT SUPPORT from an ISLAMIC woman DECEITFULLY using HIJAB to CONCEAL CONTRABAND.

The sub-texts:
- They can’t be trusted.
- They are not repentant.
- SHE COULD HAVE A BOMB just as easily as a phone.

The sales strategy of the Daily Telegraph is to reflect, reinforce and justify prejudice (and supply the racing form guide). The May 29 issue is a surpassing example.

Whatever Skaf’s crimes I find it entirely understandable that his mother should wish to be able to speak to him and, notwithstanding the repulsive nature of Skaf’s crimes, it is understandable he wishes to speak with her. But its jail. He can’t have a mobile phone.

The Daily Telegraph does not explore this human angle on the story, but instead bashes on relentlessly in its supporting article about Law And Order issues, content to let its cover Dog Whistle the rest.

Which it does brilliantly for the coffers of the Telegraph, for the xenophobia of its readership and to the general poisoning of the mass culture.

Feminist Androgynists Are Everywhere

Reds Under The Bed, Femmos Under The Fridge

Miranda Devine makes a puzzling – borderline crazy – analysis of the recent Matthew Johns/Cronulla Sharks scandal in her article “Natural Men Scolded Into Timidity” which appeared in WA Today, 21-May-2009.

Johns was alleged to be the ringleader (Johns denies being the ringleader but admits being involved) in a gross humiliation perpetrated by him and his football club colleagues on a New Zealand woman in 2002.

Devine ascribes the outrage which followed revelation of this horrific event and the calls for retribution against Johns and his team-mates as being the product of Feminism and the Feminist movement.

She says:

The initial criticism of Johns was warranted [...] But since then, Johns has been crucified, with demands he name his teammates, sponsors threatening to pull out of rugby league, a school principal banning NRL players from visiting classes and mothers stopping their sons playing the game.

You always know when zealotry creeps into a story there is another agenda at work – and that is that the Johns case is a beachhead in the war against masculinity, waged by [...]the women’s studies movement.

Feminists v. NRL

In Devine’s conception, the women’s movement is responsible for the outrage directed against Johns et. al. and has an agenda to destroy Rubgy League since League is a place where men and boys can behave in unambiguously masculine fashion, this being anathema to Feminists who wish to

produce an androgynous utopia.

in which authentic masculinity and feminity are to be suppressed and replaced by non-gender identities and hence Feminists have the objective of

Killing off rugby league

The Awesome Power Of Feminist Androgynists

Devine’s attribution of such agenda-setting power to the minority viewpoint of Feminists seeking androgynous utopia (surely even a fringe within Feminism) is Howardesque in its gigantic view of the political power of selected elite minorities.

Howard famously identified Aboriginals, Feminists and Left-Wing Intellectuals as representing an near-irresistible tide of political power which had captured Australian society and thinking in order to promote their selfish, sectional interests against the ‘mainstream’.

In Devine’s view then, corporate sponsors, school principals and mothers are the foot soldiers of the Feminist Androgyny Movement, screaming the slogans of their ideological masters who remote-control their brains from command centres in Darlinghurst and Ultimo.

It’s plain weird.

Return To Sanity

In my view the general repulsion of a broad spectrum of society including the corporate sector, middle-class mums, male commercial media identities and famous famous Rugby League persons themselves reflects a sane rejection of vicious and sick behaviours exhibted by the Cronulla Sharks in 2002, Canterbury Bulldogs in 2004 and what Roy Masters (see comments by Bob Ellis here) admits has been common-place in League for years or decades.

Those vicious and sick behaviours include intimidating younger women into ‘consent’ when outnumbering them by twelve to one, self-abusing en masse while watching team mates perform such ‘consensual’ acts, rubbing themselves (more than one player simultaneously) over the face of the woman while other acts are in progress and queueing-up to join in and sneaking into the room to do so without the knowledge of the woman.

The Zealot’s Own Zealotry

It seems to me that Devine is missing the point in an almost unbelievable manner on this topic. In fact, it seems to me that Devine is a victim of the syndrome that she herself identifies:

You always know when zealotry creeps into a story there is another agenda at work

Devine’s agenda is the evil of Feminism possibly in conjunction with the moral laxity of certain young ladies which are topics to which Devine continually returns. Her zealotry has caused her to rather crazily ascribe outrage over this issue to the agency of the Feminist Movement and miss the central and obvious reason for the public outcry, which is consent and violence toward women.

Don’t Waste A Good Crisis

In my view, media commentators such as Miranda Devine and Steve Price of 2UE, who are fans of Rugby League, are missing a golden opportunity to save the game they love. League now has the opportunity to eradicate the culture of disrespect toward women which is producing the sick behaviours causing public disgust.

By confronting the problem squarely, by admitting responsibility and complicity, the clubs, players and NRL can establish a complete no-tolerance policy toward (group) intimidation of women into ‘consent’. They can clean themselves up, then get on with playing the game they love.

Hiding the problem and blaming Feminist Androgynists, the women involved or any other agency will only allow this game-threatening behaviour to linger and fester. Devine and Price should get smart and admit the problem.

Otherwise, left to its sick culture, NRL can expect to be held in contempt forever.

Its their choice.

Other Blogs

The Michael Duffy Files deconstructs Devine’s article into an entertaining series of self-contradictions.

Errr.. that’s about it.

A Shocking Hour With Steve Price and 2UE

Through The Looking Glass
Out of curiosity and since they are electorally influential to the point of being Kingmakers, I decided to listen to what the Shock Jocks were saying about the Budget and what their listeners thought, so I tuned into Steve Price 2UE on Wed 13th May from 10:45 to midday.

It was an entertaining 75 minutes in a gut-wrenchingly disgusting kind of way.

How To Miss The Point

The Four Corners report on NRL player behaviour ‘Code Of Silence’ .
Price’s take on this story was staggering. Ignoring the central issue of the Four Corners report which was the NRL footy culture of intimidating women into non-consensual sex, Price chose as the major issue of concern the effect of the Four Corners report on the career of Matthew Johns.

Moreover, it appeared to me that Price was insinuating that the girl assualted by Johns’ teammates got what she deserved. i.e. non-consensual sexual assault by four Rugby League players while eight others looked on, enjoying the humiliation and degredation poured out on the victim.

Price had a couple of interviews and several listener calls on the issue while I was listening. The first interview was with Channel 9’s Ken Sutcliffe who talked mostly about whether or not Johns would lose his job at Channel 9.

The second interview occurred at approx. 11:20 and contained some very noxious insinuations that the girl deserved it.

Price was happy to let these comments pass without challenge. The interviewee appeared to be known to Price, I didn’t catch his name but I’m pretty sure it was ‘entertainment reporter’ Peter Ford, because he was expressing outrage that Four Corners reporter Sarah Ferguson had described ‘our’ (i.e. Price and his) comments on the Johns incident as being ‘predatory’, which comments occur in the interview ‘Something Disturbing In The Code’ between Peter Ford and 2UE’s John Stanley of 12th May, currently on 2UE’s Home Page

Here’s what I wrote to Price:

The interview you just did approx. 11:20 Wed 13th May on the Johns group sex story was ludicrously biased.

Yes, the girl should not have gone to their room since she had a boyfriend. Yes, she must have expected and even perhaps consented to sex with the two players.

The reason why she is traumatised and which you and your interviewer did not mention was that she did not consent to sex with the additional four players nor to the six additional others who came in just to watch.

Your failure and that of your interviewee to recognise or even mention the non-consensual nature of the sex with the four players and the presence of the eight others watching (in this interview at least) may be why your interviews on the subject can be construed as encouraging sexual predation.

Price responded:

Barra – I spent 3 hours yesterday talking about this case and mentioned more than once the awful nature of that girl’s experience. What you were listening to at 11.30 was a talkback caller not an interview…not sure what your problem is SP

Awful But Not Undeserved

The girl’s experience was indeed awful.
But Price did not say it was undeserved, at least while I was listening.

My problem is that at no time today did Price say that the sex acts perpetrated after the initial two were non-consensual.

The focus of Price’s comments and those of his interviewees, not challenged by Price were:

1) Matthew Johns is being unfairly treated in that only he is being punished, not any of the other 11 also involved (A red herring – only Johns has a media career to lose. Of the others only one other is still in football. Furthermore, the victim identified Johns as having a leading role in the assault.)
2) The girl made a mistake and was morally deficient in going with Johns and the other player, especially since she had a boyfriend (A reasonable point)
3) The girl must have expected and consented to have sex with at least one of the players that she accompanied to the hotel room.(A reasonable point)
4) The incident wasn’t considered wrong enough to punish in 2002. (A reasonable point)
5) The girl wants to wreck the lives of the players involved. (Inferring she is mentally unstable and hence that her account of the Johns group incident is unrealiable)
6) Girls go nutty around sports stars. (Inferring she deserved or asked for the treatment he received)

The problem is what Price left out:

1) The girl did not consent to four players having sex with her while eight others were in the room.
2) Nor did she consent to the ‘watching’ players standing around her bed performing acts of self-abuse o rubbing their pensises on her face (which happened) while a string of others sexually penetrated her.
3) Even if she consented to one or two that does not permit the additional four or the eight watching.
4) The girl had her eyes closed while the assaults were taking place just wishing it would finish.
5) The assault lasted two hours and only finished when the players relesed her. She was intimidated nto submission by the physical strength and number of the players.

It is true that Price made or permitted the following comments that could be construed as sympathetic to the girl:

a) He ‘feels sorry’ for her because she is suicidal
b) She ‘didn’t go in with all them guys’
c) He permitted without challenge a comment from Sutcliffe that what Johns did was ‘morally wrong’
d) She ’shouldn’t have felt frightened’. i.e. the fact she was frightened pointed to something amiss in the encounter.

But the overall effect of Price’s comments and interviews *today* was to insinuate that she deserved it.

Price did not say he feels sorry for her because she was sexually abused by twelve men, just sorry for its effect on her.

Making Martyrs Of The Perpetrators

Price said something like ‘What I find very disturbing about the case is that she wants to wreck the lives of those involved.’This to me is an inference she is mentally unstable and hence unreliable in her accounts of the abuse. The vengeful intention of the girl in giving her story is at best a sub-plot. Price uses it to switch outrage from the players’ actions to the girl’s actions.

Price’s assertions that he is sorry for the girl are limited to her current medical/psychological condition e.g. that she is suicidal. This neatly bypasses the central ethical issue involved which is that what happened to her was not consensual.

Steve Price today was far more interested in sub-plots than the main event. Those sub-plots have the intention of minimizing or excusing the non-consensual acts perpetrated on her. The non-consensual acts are the central issue and what deserves most attention. The sub-plots of course merit discussion but not at the expense of excusing non-consensual gang bangs.

Just saying ‘a caller said it’ (in fact it was Peter Ford, a reporter and Price regular on ‘entertainment’) does not excuse Price’s responsibility as a broadcaster to bring the full picture, or any propensity to use his interviewees as stalking horses for personal views especially on grevious issues such as non-consensual gang bangs.

Blind To The Issue

The following day, Price revisited the issue this time saying ‘let’s examine the wider effect of this report on NRL’. Interviewing Ken Sutcliffe again, this time in company with Sydney Morning Herald reporter Jacqueline Magnay, Price asked Sutcliffe what the main issue of concern in the Four Corners report was. Sutcliffe answered and Price agreed that it was ‘Group Sex’. Magnay said ‘Sorry, I disagree. The issue is consent and violence toward women.’. Price and Sutcliffe were silent. It would appear the thought had never occurred to them.

It would seem that Price is prejudicially blind to issues of violence toward women or ‘consent’ gained through intimidation at least where this interesects Rugby League. Price loves Rugby League and sees the Four Corners report as constituting a threat to the game which may cripple its popularity. Behind this, violence to women is nearly irrelevant.

Ostrich Time
Price’s initial ‘editorial’ on the issue, with which he opened his Monday morning program described the Four Corners report as ‘cobbled together’ from ‘two reports over seven years’, strongly inferring that incidents such as the Cronulla Sharks Christchurch encounter are isolated and that the Four Corners report was a witchhunt and not justified. Price therefore denies and ignores what any impartial observer of Rugby League knows (and as Magnay stated) that intimidation and trapping of women into non-consensual gang bangs is an entrenched part of the depraved culture of NRL footballers and has been for a long time.

If Price was smart he would welcome these revelations as an opportunity to clean up the game and flush out this repulsive behaviour. He would prefer, however, to stick his hands in the sand, to cast aspersions on the victims and Four Corners, make martyrs of the perpetrators deny the truth and in so doing maintain NRL as a haven for those who sexually assault women.

Price Spruiking The Interests Of Private Medical Insurance

Also in that 75 minutes, Price conducted an interview with Michael Armitage, Chief Executive, Australian Health Insurance Association.

Armitage and Price carried on like two sides of the same mouth in this interview being highly critical of Swan/Rudd for reducing the scope of the Private Medical Insurance rebate.

Price and Armitage dwelt on the fact that this action breaks an election promise.
They stressed many times it affects EVERYONE because
a) Private Health Cover premiums will rise as a result of people dropping out of health funds
b) The ‘beleaguered (Price)’ Public Health System will be additionally burdened

They dwelt on those likely to drop out
a) Young people earning approx. 80k
b) Older people as they have lower incomes

In my opinion Price concentrated on the elderly here as it takes the shine off their pension increases, the most unambiguous ‘winner’ item in the Budget.

Both Armitage and Price said, accurately, the additional cost to those losing the full rebate is 42%, not 30%.

On its own this interview was mostly just a dig at Swan/Rudd. What followed made it’s partisan nature clearer

Later in his show Price interviewed Steve James from CommSec on the sharemarket reaction to the Budget. James reported a generally positive reaction from Business with a particular leap in the fortunes of the HealthCare Sector.

You see, the Budget increased the overall funding for Medicare (which Price did not mention when interviewing Armitage) and so companies like Ramsay Health etc. can expect to be more profitable.

Needless to say Price did not express surprise or even comment that Swan’s supposed horror attack on health was construed as good news for the HealthCare sector by the sharemarket. That was in direct contradiction to his lovefest with Michael Armitage, a kick-Rudd-in-the-guts duet which Price said ‘cut through the spin’ of the Rudd government.

So Swan/Rudd have compensated the Public Sector for an expected additional burden resulting from drop-out from private health funds as a result of decreasing the rebate on private health insurance. There will not be an additional unfunded burden as Price implied.

In fact the 2009-2010 Healthcare budget contains a record $64 billion healthcare agreement with the states and territories – to provide record levels of funding for public hospitals and reduce pressure on emergency departments and includes specific new spending of more than $1 bn on Cancer treatment. I could go on.

Why Price should be giving Armitage’s Australian Health Insurance Association free kicks on his program is a matter of speculation. Probably it’s just a convenient vehicle for a partisan attack on Swan and Rudd.

Update 14th May:

Listening to Malcolm Turnbull’s Budget In Reply speech it was striking that Price/Armitage’s objections to Rudd/Swan’s means test of the Private Health Care rebate were identical.

Quite plainly the Libs have leaked this part of Turnbull’s speech to Armitage/Price to warm up the electorate to the Libs argument.

Price is utterly partisan. He is willing servant of the Liberal Party. Any political comment of his should be regarded as being written and authorised M. Turnbull Parliament House, Canberra.

Here is Turnbull verbatim:

Australians know that and that is why in the lead up to the last election the Prime Minister was asked time and time again whether he would change the private health insurance rebate.

Again and again he and his shadow health minister said they would not.

Never was an election promise given more emphatically and then broken so brazenly.

Every Australian knows that the cost of public health is growing as are the waiting lists for public hospitals.

Every Australian knows that as our population ages the need for more self reliance in the provision of health services becomes greater.

This broken promise will be a direct hit on the family budget of at least 1.7 million Australians and indirectly will result in higher premiums for all Australians – including those on very low incomes.

And it is just the beginning – the thin edge of the wedge.

And as private health insurance costs go up, more pressure is put on public hospitals.

The Awesome Ineffectiveness Of The Soft Left

Tom Switzer, former senior Liberal Policy advisor to Brendan Nelson, former Op-Ed Editor at the Australian and Research Fellow for the Institute of Public Affairs, is confident that the right is in control of the political agenda in Australia.

Writing in the SMH this week he said:

notwithstanding the loss of conservative government, the centre of political gravity in Australia remains conservative. No longer, for instance, is welfare seen as an unconditional right. No longer are activist judges rewriting our constitution. No longer are Australians ashamed of our past, pessimistic about our future and unsure about our place in the world. In this environment, why should Liberals lurch left when Labor could only win power by moving right?

Switzer’s fundamental political and cultural (as in Culture Wars) orientation is exactly that of John Howard’s. Just read that second last sentence again. Its almost verbatim what John Howard said was the greatest achievement of his regency.

Given that, I wonder if Tom Switzer shares Howard’s views that the media and Universities are dominated by an adversarial soft-left. And if so, how does Switzer account for his assertion, with which I agree, that the political centre of gravity in Australia is firmly controlled by the right.

Are the soft left so ineffective that even with control of both the media and Universities, the two most powerful opinion-shaping institutions in the world (behind the family) that they cannot change anyone’s mind ?

I wrote the following email to Tom Switzer. If he gives permission to quote from his reply you’ll be the first to know.

Dear Mr. Switzer,

I read your article No need for the Libs to move left in the SMH and found myself largely in agreement with it, particularly these thoughts of yours:

“notwithstanding the loss of conservative government, the centre of political gravity in Australia remains conservative. No longer, for instance, is welfare seen as an unconditional right. [snip] In this environment, why should Liberals lurch left when Labor could only win power by moving right?

I was wondering if you share John Howard’s beliefs that the media and Universities are dominated by the soft left (presumably since at least the Keating era) and if so, how is it that the centre of political gravity in Australia is conservative ? What conservative forces are countervailing the media and Universities to produce this rightward shift in our polity ?

Here are John Howard’s comments:

To the American Enterprise Institute inter alia Iraq:

“But perhaps the most convincing sign of all that some progress has been made is the significant decline in media coverage of Iraq – noticeable both in the United States and Australia. The dominant left-liberal elements in the media in both our countries apparently cannot bring themselves to acknowledge good news stories coming out of Baghdad.

To Quadrant Magazine 2006:

“Despite a more diverse and lively intellectual environment in Australia compared with past decades, we should not underestimate the degree to which the soft left still holds sway, even dominance, especially in Australia’s universities.”

Best Regards,

Baraholka

The Cleansing Of The Australian Media Under John Howard

In August 2004, Margot Kingston asserted that John Howard was creating a ‘pre-fascist’ society in Australia, a characterisation that Gerard Henderson in this article, ‘Fascist Australia’ in The Age described as ‘nuts’ and a ‘fantasy’ and elsewhere as ‘psychotic’

To suggest Australia or Britain or the US today are fascist is just, well, nuts. The use of such a label in a modern context indicates a total misunderstanding of both democracy and fascism

To make his case, Henderson cited two scholarly works on Fascism, Roger Eatwell’s Fascism: A History (Pimlico, 2003) and Robert O. Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism (Allen Lane, 2004). Paxton typified Fascism

as a form of political behaviour “marked by an obsessive preoccupation with community decline” and by “compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity”. All this combined with the creation of “a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants” that “abandons democratic liberties” and embraces “redemptive violence”.

Henderson summarized:

It does not sound like Australia in 2004.

Contrary to Henderson, I think that certain of Paxton’s hallmarks of Fascism are readily discernable in John Howard.

The Redemptive Violence Of Cronulla

Howard’s embrace and support of the prominent broadcaster, Alan Jones, even when Jones had just been found guilty of inciting racist violence leading up to the infamous Cronulla Riots as well as Howard’s refusal to condemn the use of the Australian flag by the rioting thugs as a banner for racist thuggery indicates that Howard is willing to tolerate the redemptive violence of the Anglo rioters as they attempted to reclaim Cronulla beach from aggressive, lewd Lebanese-Arab-Muslim youth.

It is characteristic of Fascism that symbols of state are employed during attacks on unwelcome minority populations.

Howard tried to draw a distinction between pride in the Australian flag and the thuggery of those wielding it at Cronulla. If Howard loved Liberal Democracy and the Flag as much as he continually claimed then he should have been disgusted at the use of the Flag as a rallying cry for brutality. His inability to express disgust at the desecration of the Flag by the Cronulla thugs leaves open the suggestion he may have approved of its use in that context i.e. that of beating up wogs and telling them to get out and go home.

Cleansing The Media

Further, under Howard, police were desptached to “cleanse” (close enough to Paxton’s ‘purify’ for me) the media of anti-Howard elements using the violence of physical destruction of journalists’ computers

[Journalist] Travers later described to SBS Dateline how the officials spent all day trawling for information and smashed computer hard-drives with hammers in what they called an act of ‘cleansing’ that they performed regularly (‘We do this every day’) , and that they’d carried out perhaps ‘70, 72 or 73 times.’
From ‘Conservative Correctness’ By Mark Davis, ‘New Matilda’ 21 November, 2007

Howard’s intimidation of the media, so shockingly demonstrated by the assault on those sympathetic to Wilkie, was not designed to protect national security but simply to warn media to stay away from Howard’s vulnerabilities. Indeed, Howard was quite happy to leak national security documents to friendly media when it suited him, doing just this by sending classified security materials thought to contradict Wilkie to Howard-friendly journalists.

Is This Where You Live?

Did you catch those words from Howard’s Goon Squad ? Every day they were out there smashing the hard drives of persons inicimal to Howard. This is behaviour characteristic of Totalitarianism. I would expect merciless intimidation of the media in say the former USSR or current day Turkmenistan, but we got it under Howard.

Abandoning Democratic Liberties

Howard professes a love for “liberal democracy” and considers himself a faithful conservative with reverence for noble tradition but introduced counter-terrorism legislation which removed democratic rights and liberties from the general population. While many in the general public sympathised with the temporary need for additional police powers and even the reduction of some much cherished democratic liberties, Howard prevented Parliament from debating his Bill and tried to hide its existence from the general public. Howard does not love democracy, parliament or tradition so much that he will abandon any of them when he feels appropriate.

The counter-terrorism laws were introduced into Parliament on Melbourne Cup Day. Howard fully realised of course that the Melbourne Cup would fully divert the general public’s attention from any political news and thus lessen public scrutiny of the Bill. He also insisted that Paraliament vote on the Bill on the same day that it was introduced.

It is almost impossible to believe that Howard could hold the Parliament and Australian people in such contempt. When democratic liberties are sneakily done away with, when Parliament is trampled on, one must ask serious questions about the totalitarian tendencies of the government, which during Howard’s tenure was, in a practical sense, a regency.

The Fostering Of Exclusivist Nationalism And The Taking Of Political Prisoners

Fascism is associated with an unhealthy exclusivist nationalism. Howard’s dog-whistle 1996 Election slogan ‘For All Of Us’ along with his condemnation of ‘vocal minorities’, his assertion that non-mainstream elite interest groups were appropriating an unfair proportion of public resources and legal advantage, his protection of the bigotry of Pauline Hanson, his support for the racist invective of Alan Jones, his encouragement of hostility toward and rejection of Middle Eastern boat people allowed sour concepts of intolerance and racially-based suspicion to settle in the public imagination.

Howard frequently voiced his veneration of the Australian flag while mixing the volatile brew described above. While it is perfectly acceptable to love and respect the national flag and to encourage citizens to likewise respect Australia’s best traditions and national symbols, Howard’s overall tone in regard to nationalism and patriotism always carried with it a menacing tinge for those outside Howard’s mainstream which even sickened and alienated many who otherwise qualified for Howard’s unqualified acceptance by reason of Anglo heritage.

Howard’s nationalism always left someone feeling under threat and political prisoners (Hicks and Haneef) became a reality on his watch.

Henderson feels that Kingston misunderstands both democracy and fascism. I say that Henderson failed to understand what was happening right in front of his eyes.

More
More on Pre-Fascist Australia here