Fifty Shades Of Stupidity

Sedition? Is That A Moron I See Before Me?

Ever since the recent episode of 'Q&A' aired, this government has been up on its hustings denouncing the ABC as well as the show itself. At the heart of it of course is one Zaky Mallah who was on the show and made particularly pointed comment at a Federal minister. Since then it's been a bit of a free-for-all with the commentary and it's been hard to keep track of just what it all means. At the core of it is this notion that Zaky Mallah saying what he said:

"The Liberals have just justified to many Australian Muslims in the community tonight to leave and go to Syria and join ISIL because of ministers like him,"

... was a form of sedition.

Sedition is actually relatively old term, dating back to Shakespeare's time. It's the kind of crime Kings accuse of subjects who talk defiantly of the power of the throne. In a post-modern world where we recognise Freedom of Speech as normal (and normative), it is an outdated and quaint term - just as bringing it back was sort of historically retrograde. Worse still, Kim Beazley waved it through as Opposition Leader so we're stuck with these head-scratchingly stupid laws, but hey, this too is the Australia we have wrought.

If you look at Mr. Mallah's statement, he doesn't actually incite people to go join ISIL, he says should people do so, they would have justification because of ministers like Steve Ciobo. That's a description, not an incitement. Especially in light of what Mr. Ciobo was saying about revoking people's citizenship:

Queensland Liberal and panel member Steve Ciobo was unapologetic, saying he believed the only reason Mr Mallah was acquitted of terrorism was that the terrorist offences "weren't retrospective in application", and that he would be glad to see Mr Mallah sent out of the country. 

"I'd be pleased to be part of a government that would say you're out of the country," he said.

*Ugh*. That made my head hurt.
So, not only is Mr. Ciobo's understanding of human rights somewhat faulty, he can't quite hide he's a fascist who believes in a kind of unilateral vindictive justice. It's easily argued that Mr. Mallah was provoked into saying extreme things.

Be that as it may, the Stupid expanded greatly when Alex Hawke said:

"It's almost as if the ABC is engaged in some form of sedition," he said. 

"They have utterly no regard for what they are doing on this show and the people who will suffer the most is the moderate Islamic community in Australia," he said. 

"If you're going to get someone to say the citizenship laws are questionable and invalid but why would you pick someone who has threatened to kill Commonwealth officials?"

So there we have it. The whole ABC is now seditious. Really? Or is it more sensible to understand it as these conservatives just wanting to not have to face the fringe opinions of their own society? Or as Guy Rundle put it succinctly:

As soon as right-wingers are exposed to real debate they flail, ham-fists flying all over the place. Steven Ciobo should have welcomed the opportunity to enunciate his principles in the face of real challenge to them — because a challenge is an opportunity to make your ideas clearer, better, win people over. But he would have had to be competent to do that. In reality he’s just another faceless mook who’s come up through the entrenched machine of the party, which, like Labor, is a quasi-state apparatus, embedded by compulsory preferential voting and public funding.

Of course, it would not end there; They decided to play the man as well.

Playing The Man And Not The Ball

It must be one of those moments for the Coalition to feel they're be able to say, "ha! Gotcha' when they can see that a guy wearing a gold cannabis leaf on his flat-brimmed baseball cap says things that cut against the grain of government propaganda. Not only are the racial prejudices of judging the man for being "of middle-eastern appearance" (as the cops like to say), they thought they could pigeonhole him with their own cultural prejudices about what such a man might hold as an opinion.

Thus the Liberal and National Party have basically banged the drum loudly that Zaky Mallah was a convicted terrorist. Surely anybody charged of terrorism under the Anti-Terror laws must be a jihadi right?

It turns out the man's background is much more complicated than that.

Turnbull's portrayal of Zaky Mallah and his views is profoundly misleading. "He had served a term of imprisonment for threatening to kill ASIO officers," he said. 

Well actually, he served two years in solitary in the Goulburn super-max a decade ago, awaiting trial on terrorism charges for which he was acquitted. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of threatening Commonwealth officers and was sentenced to time already served. Which is not, of course, to say that he was not at the time a seriously deluded and dangerous young man. He was 19. 

More recently, Turnbull continued, as though Mallah had not changed his spots in the least, "he had travelled to Syria in the pursuit of what he described as 'jihad' ". 

Mallah did travel to Syria in 2012. The "jihad" he was interested in joining was the fight against the tyrannical government of Bashar al-Assad, and the outfit he joined for a few days – without engaging in any combat, he insists – was the Free Syrian Army. This is the force which the United States is now training and which Australia supports.
As The Australian's Adam Shand reported at the time, the former would-be suicide bomber realised "how misguided his anger towards Australian society had been...'Go to Syria where your brothers are dying for freedom, democracy and the true Islamic way, rights guaranteed in this lucky country,' he says…. 'We Muslims have so much freedom here (in Australia) yet we are causing so much trouble'." 

Since then, Mallah has been outspoken in his condemnation of Islamic State. On Channel Ten's The Project last October he said: "I'm on this program this evening to distance myself from the actions of these individuals, these idiots, these wankers, who are giving Islam and the Muslim world and the Islamic community in Australia a bad name and for those who are considering to join ISIS I hope ASIO is onto you, I hope your passport is refused and I hope you are arrested and locked up." 

In one of numerous video blogs on YouTube, Mallah calls on Australia's Salafist imams to join the fight against extremism: "You need to condemn terrorism. You need to condemn fundamentalism. You need to condemn those who are brainwashing our youth into believing that a group like ISIS is fighting for jihad. They are not fighting for jihad. They are fighting for bulls---."

This claim that the ABC put a jihadist on TV to exhort muslims to go fight for ISIL is therefore inaccurate as it is utterly lacking in substance, let alone having any nuance. Which all goes to show how deeply stupid and unreceptive this bunch of old school closet-racist, proto-fascist dickheads are, in this Abbott Government. The most damning bit from the article is the bit here:

His final, notorious comment was not a call to arms – although it's easy to see how many viewers took it that way. It was, if you watch it again, the comment of an angry young man, a born and bred Australian with no other nationality, who has been trying for some years to counter the lure of Islamic State in his own community, and who had just been told by a member of the government that ideally he should be expelled from the country by ministerial decree.

What they didn't see was a guy who was their ally in the fight against ISIL. They saw a guy who was an enemy to them precisely because of their racial and cultural prejudices - and they then ran around screaming the man shouldn't have received the forum to say what he said. Frankly, it's really rather pathetic, and unbecoming of a government.

But did it end there? No.

Because Somebody Has To Lose A Job For The PM To Be Happy

Tony Abbott decided this was the moment to go all outing attack the ABC and its Leftist sympathies. of course, anything and everything except Hitler and Mussolini would look to the left side Tony Abbott and his anachronistic view the universe, so it's not saying much of anything to be characterised as 'The Left' by Tony Abbott.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has launched a blistering attack on the ABC's Q&A program, asking "whose side are you on?" after an Australian man convicted of threatening Commonwealth officials appeared on the program. 

In comments that reignited the debate within the Coalition government about the role and responsibilities of the national broadcaster, Mr Abbott accused the ABC of effectively giving "a platform to a convicted criminal and terrorist sympathiser - they have given this individual, this disgraceful individual, a platform and in so doing, I believe the national broadcaster has badly let us down".

"I think many, many millions of Australians would feel betrayed by our national broadcaster right now, and I think that the ABC does have to have a long, hard look at itself, and to answer a question which I have posed before - whose side are you on? Whose side are you on here?" Mr Abbott said on Tuesday. 

"We all believe in free speech, but in the end we have to make judgments and I think that the ABC made a very, very serious misjudgment last night."

Well, it might look like Tony Abbott was arguing something of substance about the 'Q&A' programme if he had his facts straight about Zaky Mallah. The fact that he doesn't makes it even worse, but here it goes any way.

Even if Zaky Mallah were convicted of terrorism, he would still have the right to free speech. As it is, he was charged and the charges didn't stick - And all this is immaterial to the fact that he still has the freedom to express his opinion.  It is an opinion that stands in sharp contrast to that of Tony Abbott, but there's no law against expressing such an opinion anywhere, on air or off, on the streets, or on radio iron internet, or for that matter a discussion show like 'Q&A'. His freedom to express his opinion in this nation is Mr. Mallah's inalienable right, especially as a citizen who was born here.

That being the case, this notion that "many Australians would feel betrayed by the national broadcaster" because Mr. Mallah was there to express his opinion as is his right, does not speak for me at all. On the contrary, many Australians should and would feel betrayed that the Prime Minister of this land would seek to close down freedom of expression - while espousing it as value (perhaps as applying only to him and his wealthy, White, Anglo, peers) - and try to punish the ABC for this perceived injustice, all on the back of his own unmitigated, undiluted racial and cultural prejudice. I feel betrayed he's our Prime Minister and nobody is calling him on this shit.

All the same, totally unreflective of how misguided his position is, Tony Abbott says "heads should roll." The only metaphorical head that should be rolling is Tony Abbott's own head. And clearly Peter Dutton's seeing that he endorses this idiocy (and nice to know these guys want to add to the unemployment queue). This is a ridiculous turn of events based on one remark on one programme. how stupid does this country look right now?

It reminds me a bit of the time Charlie Sheen was totally out of control doing stupid things every day, landing himself on the news page. When asked what he thought he was doing, he replied "Winning!"
I think this government is winning in exactly the same way - deep in delusion, mired in misunderstanding, unable escape its own racial and cultural prejudices.  "Winning!"

Oh, and then there's Christopher Pyne.

Education Minister Christopher Pyne accused Mr Scott of trying to "change the debate to something it isn't", rather than "fessing up" to the ABC's mistake.
"This is typical of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation," he told Channel Nine's Today program. 

"The ABC is trying to pretend this is something to do with free speech. It isn't. It's about what's appropriate and not appropriate at the public broadcaster. 

"They did the wrong thing, they should simply fess up to it and do the right thing next time."

How about this, Mr. Pyne, the ABC did not do the wrong thing, they did the right thing; Zaky Mallah is not who your prejudices say he is; and yes, it is a freedom of speech issue. Freedom of Speech is not an issue only when it suits you. But be my guest, keep dancing in that conga-line of Stupidity.