There is a debate about Australia Day that’s very reasonable: whether or not we should celebrate the day on the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet, which could not-misleadingly be categorised as the beginning of the invasion of an already occupied landmass. That’s controversial for a reason and deserves to be discussed.
What’s not up for debate is which Australians get to celebrate being Australian. We all fucking do. Apparently, this is a difficult concept for Australia’s fuckheaded, cockeyed, far-right white nationalists to understand, as they demonstrated by pissing their pants over an Australia Day billboard featuring two girls wearing hijabs.
For a bunch of people who spend their entire lives on the internet accusing people of being “triggered” and asking them if they need a “safe space”, it seems like these far-right snowflakes can’t go 24 hours without losing their minds thanks to some completely innocuous sign that not everyone in the country shares their fucked, bigoted worldview.
The billboard, located in Melbourne, featured a rotating series of pictures of Australians (including the two girls) and was advertising the Australia Day festival in Kings Domain Gardens. It gained notoriety among the country’s fuckwits thanks primarily to a post on the United Patriots Front FB page.
As per usual with these dumbasses, the cognitive dissonance is staggering: they argue constantly that it’s absolutely fine that white Australians came here by force, but, to them, it’s the end of the bloody world that Muslims are coming here legally and peacefully.
Because complaining into their little shitty internet echo chamber wasn’t enough, they decided to have a go at threatening the advertisers, who then decided to pull the ad for safety reasons, according to Victoria‘s Multicultural Affairs Minister, Robin Scott:
“There were a series of complaints, some of which were of an abusive and threatening nature, that were made to the organisation QMS that put the billboard up.“And they’ve made a decision based on the safety of their employees and business infrastructure to temporarily remove the billboard.”
She also added that (paraphrasing here) anyone who chalks this up as a win is a huge gronk and needs to bloody sort themselves out:
“Anyone who considers this a victory needs a refresher on the true meaning of Australia Day. It is about bringing people together and celebrating the diversity which makes this state and this country great.“It’s very disappointing to see a small minority attacking proud Australians for their love of their country.”
How good is being shit scared of a group of people you’ve never met in your life because exploitative reactionary politicians are trying to play on your fear of the unknown and discomfort with new things to galvanise support for a thinly-veiled form of racism? What a pack of assholes.
Source: The Guardian / ABC.
Photo: Facebook.
