It doesn’t take much to make this country’s far-right bigots unhappy. It does, however, take a lot to make them happy.
They piss and moan about how Muslims can’t “assimilate” into Australian culture and thus shouldn’t be allowed in, and then, when presented with Muslims assimilating into Australian culture, shit their dacks and start making threats.
The Victorian government yesterday announced that a billboard for an Australia Day event featuring two girls in hijab was being pulled thanks to the company that owned the billboard deeming there to be too high a risk to their employees after receiving threats from incensed bigots.
The controversy was stirred up by perennial fuckwits the United Patriots Front, who shared an image of the billboard to their Facebook, whipping their followers up into a frenzy of complaining about how it doesn’t represent Australia and Muslims are trying to take over the world – either not realising that it was a rotating series of images showing all sorts of Australians, or being too racist to care.
You’d think having people of different backgrounds taking part in something as nationalistic and, at times, jingoistic as Australia Day would be a win for these people, but apparently not. The UPF celebrated the removal of the sign yesterday, as did their commenters, who seem very confused about free speech:
Classy stuff from someone who is clearly a genius.
Luckily not everyone in this country is a complete fuckhead, with a whole bunch of people banding together to get an ad with the two girls back on billboards and even into print.
The GoFundMe, organised by ad agency Campaign Edge (who say they have no stake in the campaign other than facilitating it), has already raised over $27,000 in just four hours:
“The same groups who complain ‘Muslims don’t assimilate‘, complained about the photo OF AUSTRALIAN MUSLIMS CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA DAY. And due to this pressure the billboard was removed. If you or your business thinks this is not ok, please help us fund a billboard and print campaign featuring these two girls promoting Australia Day.“The more money we raise, the more places we can run the ad. And if you’re a company or organisation willing to donate $1500 or more, your logo will appear on the ad to show your support for an inclusive Australia.“Any left over money will be donated to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.”
Obviously, Australia Day is quite contentious at the moment and might very understandably have some feelings about whether we should be celebrating it at all, but it’s still nice to see people banding together to tell bigots to get fucked – that’s Australian as shit.
You can donate here, if that’s your cup of tea – if it’s not, you can do literally anything else you like.
Source and photo: GoFundMe.
