Senator Fraser Anning stands for a lot of things which – as very broad principles – we can get behind; he advocates for drought-stricken farmers. He believes in considered immigration policies. But that’s putting it nicely.
The Queenslander, a member of the Katter’s Australia party, used his maiden speech in Parliament last night to state his purpose; and he made it clear that his purpose was to alienate as many people as he could.
The speech was essentially a rant against Muslims, and a call for the return of the White Australia Policy, which restricted non-European immigration from 1901 until it began to be dismantled in the late 1960s.
But last night, Anning wanted history to be repeated.
“We as a nation are entitled to insist that those who are allowed to come here predominantly reflect the historic European-Christian composition of Australian society,” he told the Upper House.
“Ethnocultural diversity … has been allowed to rise to dangerous levels in many suburbs. In direct response, self-segregation, including white flight from poorer inner-urban areas, has become the norm.”
Anning’s solution? Migration to be curbed, and a ban on Muslim people becoming residents, because the Muslim community has “consistently shown itself to be the least able to assimilate and integrate.”
He continued, “While all Muslims are not terrorists, certainly all terrorists these days are Muslims, so why would anyone want to bring more of them here?”
And then, most damningly, Anning used the same words – “the final solution” – that Adolf Hitler used in Nazi Germany, to explain his motivation for the Holocaust of World War II, where millions of Jewish people were slaughtered.
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What makes it even worse is his entire phrasing: "the final solution to the immigration problem" that make it even worse - as full phrasing by the Nazis was the "Final Solution to the Jewish question." It was very obviously a deliberate, disturbing and provocative choice by Senator Anning.
I agree. It was a total sh*t-stir designed for maximum offence and maximum controversy.
So this guys uses 2 words which could possibly be linked with the Holocaust, if you know your history, and the whole of our parliament/media etc loses their collective minds.
Yet the term "climate denier" is thrown at anyone who asks any questions about how we're tacking "climate change".
"Climate denier" was a description that was purposely designed by a climate scientist, to equate climate change 'skeptics' with Holocaust 'deniers', yet it is used over and over again, without anyone crying in Parliament about it, and without any criticism from the media etc.
If you claim that you don't know what the term "final solution" means, you're either being deliberately obtuse, or you are completely ignorant. Take your pick.
It was the context in which he used them. And, if he didn't know the history of the choice of words he used, he is pretty ignorant and shouldn't be in parliament. Also, the whole speech was pretty racist, it wasn't just this phrase.
I've never heard it before, it's possible that he hasn't either and/or didn't mean it in that context.
Also I didn't hear the whole speech but would suggest that wanting to have a conversation about the levels of immigration into our country doesn't automatically mean that someone is a racist.
A man Fraser Anning's age should know about the Final Solution (holocaust), but I wonder if you did a survey of 20 somethings, how many would know about the historical meaning of the term?