No laughing matter
(c) Melina Magdalena, 2006
Pauline Hanson ≠ Australian
Once again Pauline Hanson has raised her ugly head and opened her foul mouth to spew hatred and incite dissent on behalf of the common Australian. The ease and facility with which she links simple words into spectacularly hurtful slogans is frightening. Would that it could be put down to some linguistic malfunction on her part, but she is a native English speaker. Her words are reported with crystal clear accuracy, and they drip malevolently with the venom of the implied assent of the voiceless majority who fail to counter them.
By splashing Pauline Hanson’s hate messages around so carelessly, the media award them legitimacy they would otherwise lack. By broadcasting Pauline Hanson’s hate messages without any effort to present a balanced view, her hatred is given far more weight than it otherwise would be. Claims by other politicians that Pauline Hanson is not taken seriously constitute their collusion with her way of seeing the world. The media embrace Pauline Hanson as a celebrity and an underdog. She uses her status to deliberately undermine cultural diversity in Australia.
Pauline Hanson’s foul words constitute racial vilification. She should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law for spreading her hate messages around the globe. To continue to regard her work as harmless is to enable her white supremacist stance to insinuate itself into everyday Australian life, which is what advocates of multiculturalism have been working against for decades.
Pauline Hanson is by no means original in attacking the most vulnerable sectors of Australian society and singling them out with her vicious attacks. The connotations of dirt and disease have been collocated with Jews, Italians, Greeks, Arabs, Aboriginals, Chinese, Irish, Vietnamese and Islanders to name a few. As these groups have gained legitimacy and voice within Australian society, they have all demanded loudly that the racist attacks and verbal slurs against them cease. Why? Words hurt and cause deep damage to the psyche of the group so attacked that can take generations to mend. And until the insult has been acknowledged in a way that allows the pain to be recognised and named, no healing can even begin. Where do the African communities of Australia begin to acknowledge the assaults upon their members?
As human beings, regardless of our race or ethnicity, we come into this world with nothing and we leave this world with nothing. Whatever we achieve and create in between the time of our birth and the time of our death is incidental, except to those who continue to live in the world that through our life’s work, we have helped to create. I do not want to leave a world in which the legacy of Pauline Hanson’s hate messages overrides the work I continue to do, along with many other Australians, to create a world in which people of diverse races, religions and cultures co-exist harmoniously.
