Why don’t you all just f*** off: On immigration, ignorance and fear

Bend over White Australia: we’re a nation of trembling, gutless, fearful pushovers. Passive, inert and devoid of an original thought, we deserve every thrust of every f***ing over our politicians dish out.

Fear is not an emotion that is readily associated with the Australian ‘brand’. Aren’t we all rugged individualists? Isn’t White Australia a nation forged from the blood and guts of another country’s human detritus? How about our celebrated mateship? Our self-expressed cynicism and refusal to kowtow to those who consider themselves our betters?

Well, I have one thing to say to that: you’re dreaming mate, if that Australia ever really existed, it exists no longer except in mythical form; a myth that we treasure and nurture certainly, but which bears little resemblance to reality. The reality, my fellow Australians – and I make no apology for this – is that we are ruled by fear, divided by fear and driven by fear.

Sometimes, often in fact, a situation presents itself that is complex, with many shades of grey and no possible wholly right or wrong outcome. Crime, immigration, race, social welfare are all examples of such issues; and I’ll agree, it is time consuming and without the reward of immediate gratification to take time from our busy lives to devote the requisite time and thought to these thorny problems. Instead, we consume pre-packaged opinion and analysis from our media, our politicians and our opinion makers. Some of us consume in a questioning and demanding fashion, prepared to take issue, to challenge and to seek out and demand rigorous research and intellectual analysis. Others are happy to take our opinions pre-packaged and unchallenged, particularly if they conform to ideas, preconceptions or notions that we already hold.

Criminologist and sociologist Murray Lee has written of the Fear of Crime Feedback Loop, which exists as a perpetual and finely tuned force in Australia and which can be applied to more than just crime. This loop is the process of the manufacture of a fear, threat or risk, the official response to that fear, the discussion of the fear and response in the media and wider community and the actions and (importantly) reactions arising from and contributing to this process.

Essentially, and this in no way does justice to the enormous body of work and the subtleties of the various approaches and writers (for example Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck), there is a school of thought which holds that our world today is uncertain and rapidly changing, certainties that once existed no longer exist and as a result we feel threatened and insecure. Living on such shifting sands, we tend to herd towards what we see as (or are told are) small patches of solid ground, whereupon we defend that ground, attempting to build seawalls of laws, regulations and actuarial calculation of perceived or actual risk. This fear and uncertainty creates a compliant population which is easily controlled by those who practise the now finely tuned art of ‘dog whistle politics’ and who, it seems, know us far better than we know ourselves.

Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish born sociologist who resides in the UK, writes on the subjects of modernity and postmodernity (which he calls solid and liquid modernity), rationality, and the stranger among us. His observations, insights and predictions regarding our current state of existence in the Western world are beautifully written, enlightening and potentially life changing. Among many other theorists, philosophers and sociologists, Bauman identifies fear of ‘the Other’ or ‘the Stranger’ as one of many tools used by governments and those in power to exercise control over the populace.

As Barbara Hudson notes, the identification of the different and dangerous is an ‘abandonment of liberalism’s philosophical egalitarianism and a move towards neo-liberalism. .”. Bertrand Russell wrote, way back in 1943, at a time when such things were uppermost in people’s minds “Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.”

Wedge politics is a method of governmentality that is deliberate on the part of the governer and responsive on the part of the governed. We respond to the dog whistle because of our desire to move towards what we see as normalcy, we automatically attempt to avoid being the ‘deviant’. The clearly defined and frequently reinforced barriers between ‘normalcy’ and ‘deviance’ (Australian and UnAustralian) laid out by the Howard government, and the added ‘condition of possibility’ of a population, which compared to some other democracies is relatively passive, made us extra responsive to these particular instruments of governmentality during the events and election of 2001, and the massive restrictions to our civil liberties that were set in place as a result of 9/11 and the Bali bombings.

As the current immigration debate takes shape, it seems that not much has changed. Both parties have (mostly) deleted the vitriol and the most vindictive of their policies, and are making an effort to present themselves as more humane. However, the shameful use of asylum seekers as tools and fodder for political manouvering and manipulation of the populace continues unabated, albeit in a more sophisticated form; and the peddling of hate, lies and misinformation by the erstwhile media lapdogs of the Howard government continues unabated.

But surely fear is nothing new? Fear of ‘the Other’ has existed since the beginning of the human race, with its evolutionary roots no doubt in self-protective instinct and superstitions. The demonisation of those outside the ‘mainstream’ to achieve political gain  – witch hunts, religious persecution and the Inquisition being the obvious examples from pre-industrial times – is nothing new. The creation of a perception of risk underpinned by a people’s values and beliefs; and the use of beliefs to blame, divide and persecute groups and place them ‘outside’ the dominant culture has been utilised for centuries.

As recently as the persecution of indigenous peoples by European colonists in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, and possibly the hysteria surrounding the fear of the ‘negro’ in early 20^th century America, a case could be made that demonisation was made possible by the ignorance and widespread illiteracy and naiivety of a population who knew little, if anything, of the world outside their immediate experience. But the fact that an educated population, exposed to the world through media and travel, continue to respond in much the same way today is surely extraordinary in the face of our massive advances as a society in all other areas.  ‘The feared subject’ (criminal, immigrant, indigenous person, teenager) is always among us, despite our modern rationalisation of almost everything else in our lives.

Bauman quotes Albrecht:

“Demonisation has been replaced by the concept and the strategy of ‘dangerisation’. Political governance, therefore, has become partially dependent on the deviant other and the mobilisation of feelings of safety. Political power, and its establishment, as well as its preservation, are today dependent on carefully selected campaign issues, among which safety (and feelings of unsafety) is paramount” and then adds “Immigrants, let us note, fit better into such a purpose than any other category of genuine or putative villains …”

Bauman eloquently sums up the direct link between our medieval ancestors’ fear of demons and witches and our fear of the victims of war and religious persecution in leaky boats thus

“When all places and positions feel shaky and are deemed no longer reliable, the sight of immigrants rubs salt into the wound. Immigrants, and particularly the fresh arrivals among them, exude the faint odour of the waste disposal tip which in its many disguises haunts the nights of the prospective casualties of rising vulnerability. For their detractors and haters, immigrants embody – visibly, tangibly, in the flesh – the inarticulate, yet hurtful and painful presentiment of their own disposability..”

The fact is that we are citizens not only of Australia, but of the ever-shrinking and ever more interdependent world. The conflicts and misfortune visited on other countries and peoples are as much our responsibility as anyone else’s in the world.

We are all, at times, guilty of lazy thinking and snap judgements, of letting others take the running or tell us what to think, but that is no way to run a country, or indeed the world.

I speak directly to those who follow the hateful racism of ‘journalists’ such as Andrew Bolt or the ‘leadership’ of the likes of Wilson Tuckey, Alex Hawke or Jim Saleam  – you know who you are, and so do the rest of us – when I say:

You are lazy, you are pathetic and you are ruled by fear. Your tough talk and your hate do not make you important, instead they underline your puniness in the face of manipulative people who seek to use you for their own ends and then cast you aside. You have no backbone, you have no pride in your country, you have no world view outside the tiny piece of ground you think is yours. Your bullying of those less fortunate than yourselves reveals your small mindedness and your misguided sense of your own importance.

You are so stupid, weak and blinkered that you fail to realise that you have been used as pawns by men in suits and that your thoughts and words are not yours, but merely what you have been conditioned to unquestioningly think. Your wilful ignorance of the facts of a situation, for example the fact that asylum seekers are not illegal, and your continued use of terminology and language that perpetuates falsehoods such as ‘queue jumpers’ and ‘illegal immigrants’, betrays the fact that you have squandered the excellent and free education that you have received in Australia – if you want to talk about people who are ungrateful, you top the list.

How dare you claim to speak for the rest of us. How dare you claim the right to air your opinion. I say that as a true Australian you should forfeit that right when you do not speak responsibly or from a position of self awareness, consideration, fairness and a careful weighing up of the facts and evidence. We are not an illiterate population, we do not believe in witchcraft or demons, we are not ruled by superstition. We are a modern, wealthy western secular democracy who have had everything handed to us on a plate. It is our responsibility as citizens of such a country to behave in a just and carefully considered fashion.

It takes far more guts to leave everything you own and attempt to start a new life than it does to sit on your spoilt arse and trumpet your ignorance to the readership of the Daily Telegraph. What have you ever done, or had to do, that even remotely parallels that? In terms of what our country needs for the future: that bravery and perseverance and those leadership qualities will surely prove themselves more valuable than whatever you and your ignorance can offer, as far as I’m concerned you can bugger off and make room for them.

Some references/further reading if you’re interested

Murray Lee (2007). Inventing Fear of Crime: Criminology and the Politics of Anxiety. Willan Publishing.

Anthony Giddens, A. (1993) ‘The Nature of Modernity’ in P. Cassell (ed) The Giddens Reader, Stanford University Press, California

Hudson, Barbara. 2003. Justice in the Risk Society: Challenging and Re-Affirming Justice in Late Modernity. London: Sage Publications

Rose, N. (1991) ‘Governing by numbers: figuring out democracy’ Accounting organisations and Society, vol 1

P.Miller, G Burchell and C.Gordon (eds) The Foucault effect: Studies in Governmentality

Pratt, J. (1997) Governing the Dangerous, Federation Press, Annandale

Bauman, Z (2004) Wasted lives: Modernity and its Outcasts

Ulrich Beck: ‘Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity’

Mary Douglas: ‘Essays in Cultural Theory’

Pat O’Malley, Michel Foucault etc.

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