This is now two weeks in a row that I’ve found myself — against all odds — agreeing with Pauline Hanson. Last week on Sky News she told Cory Bernardi to his face (via teleconference) that he’s not that important in Australian politics and no one cares about him. This is true. Today, in an interview with The Australian and with absolutely no self-awareness, she called Fraser Anning a big old racist.
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Hanson — who just today told ABC Radio the word ‘racist’ is “just thrown around too easily these days” and that you “can’t have an opinion or say anything without being called racist” — said that, in her opinion, Anning qualifies as a racist because he “actually” (her words) targets people by skin colour and “that means you believe your race to be superior to them“.
Hanson has made a career out of vilifying minority racial, ethnic, and ethnoreligious groups, from Asian to Indigenous to African to Muslim.
While she might be a huge hypocrite, she’s certainly not wrong. Anning has been quite upfront about his views on race, to the extent that his party put up a post on social media explicitly calling for an “end [to] all immigration from Muslim and black African nations“. This specifically seems to be what Hanson was objecting to: “That blacks should be banned — that in itself is a racist comment.”
I for one am not sure how campaigning against Asian immigration, as Hanson has, doesn’t qualify for this.
Anning was elected to parliament as a One Nation candidate, but split from the party almost immediately upon entering the building.
You can read the full interview here.
