Andrew Bolt, the man all lefties love to hate, has really done it this time.
Bolt’s a great opinion columnist. He is well researched, eloquent, and knows exactly which buttons to push to whip up indignation and outrage. That’s his job, and he’s bloody good at it.
But his latest effort treads a dangerous line. It fuels racist thinking. Even more than usual.
In his weekly News Ltd column he lists a bunch of statistics – let’s take it on faith that he’s got them from good sources – as part of an argument about getting the “right” immigrants. He writes (and sorry for the length cut and paste here):
* Britain’s Metropolitan police this month revealed that most men charged in London for gun crime, robberies and street crime are black, even though blacks make up just 12 per cent of Londoners.
* Britain’s Centre for Social Cohesion this month said two-thirds of 124 Islamist terrorists convicted there since 1999, were of British nationality, and almost half of Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Indian heritage.
* A third of the gang members in Canada’s prisons have African ancestry, although just 2.5 per cent of population are African Canadians. Latinos make up 6 per cent of all gang members, but just 1.5 per cent of the population.
* Swedes with a Middle Eastern nationality are 6.6 more likely than Swedish citizens to be in prison. For Africans it’s 10.9 times.
Now to Australia:
* The 20 people convicted here for terrorism offences are all Muslim.
* Australians born in Tonga and Samoa are more than five times more likely than the rest of us to be jailed.
* Australians born in Romania, Vietnam, Sudan and Lebanon have jail rates much higher than the average - and Chinese and Indians much lower.
Whole lotta stats there, cherry picked from all over the place.
Now, Bolt knows he can’t just throw these figures around without qualifying them – anyone who can read should know that some people are more likely to end up in trouble because they are born into appalling socio-economic conditions; that some people are more likely to be jailed than your average Anglo for exactly the same crime; and that some people are isolated from society, which in turn makes them more likely to commit crimes.
So, now that he’s made his legions of racist fans happy, he does a little sort of embarrassed cough (Ho, ho, chaps, didn’t really mean that, but it does set the scene somewhat, eh?) and moves on to what he really wants to say.
Which is that we shouldn’t let Muslims in, because too many of them are anti-democratic terrorists (although he couches the suggestion in questions, which is odd for such a normally assertive writer).
His flaws are legion. He claims Australians are “too polite” to discuss the cultural aspects of immigration.
Bullshit. People are talking about it all the time, from Government ministers to cab drivers.
He says minorities in European countries are basically held hostage by “unassimilated” minorities. This is a wild exaggeration of the schisms that do exist, and completely overlooks the role of racism in ostracising those minorities.
He says in Australia, Muslims particularly are just not “right”. His evidence? Hizb ut-Tahrir and Sheikh Taj el-Din al Hilaly. As though they’re representative of Muslim society.
Great harm has been done in the name of Islam. From wars to inhumanly atrocious attacks to everyday subjugation of women. Evil has been done in the name of Islam. But it’s not alone, and that’s not enough to tar all Muslims.
If you want to follow Bolt’s logic, there’s a bunch of other people you want to keep out. Catholics, because of the child abuse. Christians, because of the weapon-hoarding doomsday cults. Jews, because of Gaza.
The biggest problem with Bolt’s argument is not that he blithely disregards the contribution that Muslims have made to Australia, and the world, or that he picks on them to the exclusion of all others,
it’s that he does not realise how much we need Muslims to solve the “Muslim” problems.
We have more than 350,000 Muslims in Australia. Most of them are as horrified as any non-Muslim at terrorist attacks, at the way women are treated in some Muslim countries, at the anti-democratic sentiments of Hizb ut-Tahrir.
What Bolt is doing, by sketching Islam as a monolith, is alienating those who are best placed to tackle these issues. His words widen the gap in understanding.
Yes, he’s sparking debate – that’s his job – but he’s also guilty of the same sins he accuses Muslims of – of setting one society against another.
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