What is eating white people?? What makes them so angry?
Around the world in many white majority countries, we see & feel a growing malice and malcontent coming over us like a long black cloud.
The angry ones feel that they are being shortchanged and robbed of their heritage, sense of worth and what some call their “rightful white inheritance“.
This is magnified & perhaps even manufactured by right-wing media and disseminated by social media.
In the USA, white supremacists and Neo Nazi movements are growing exponentially especially under the Trump Presidencies.
Economic, political and cultural change have left white men in particular feel left-behind, Berkeley scholars say.
Every time a black or brown American is overtly visible it seems there is a backlash along racial lines.
Many argue that the presidency of Barack Obama was in itself a call to arms for the white race to fight back against its perceived losses in society.
The American experience trickles into the Australian consciousness via our own obsession with the American news cycle.
We seem to know a lot more about them than they know about us, and the American influence is acutely potent and omnipresent.
We also have an American-owned news network in Sky News that openly and unashamedly advocates for conservative American doctrine.
Social media does the rest.
As a result, we too have seen a similar growth of far-right ideology in Australia, although the effects have been far tamer than what we see in America; thus far.
Much of the angry rhetoric is aimed at our indigenous community.
Every discussion on any Indigenous topic, such as Closing the Gap, Reconciliation, the Uluru Statement etc is met with absolute venom online & derision from right-leaning media outlets.
Conservative politicians use the race issue as a rallying call to the faithful at election time.
Peter Dutton refused to stand in front of the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flags & criticised Welcome to Country ceremonies as part of his ill-fated campaign.
He lost the election which repudiated his ideas, but the white angry base has not accepted this as a defeat and are regrouping for more future culture wars.
They have taken courage and are emboldened by the commentary from the right, such as Peta Credlin, who is spruiking Culture War Jihad almost every night on her Sky News nightly slot, Credlin.
In fact, she has criticised Dutton’s campaign for not engaging enough in the Culture Wars, thus his defeat.
So, what are the culture wars and how do they play out on the topic of race, colour and religion?
On top of the list currently are the climate wars, which we thought we had finally jumped clear of in the last election, only to face a rear-guard action led by Murdoch Media commentators and some National Party members.
This has little to do with race on the surface, but in right wing chat world the same people who are selling us the climate lie are socialists/communists who are destroying our way of life and teaching kids to be ashamed of their Australian heritage.
Australian heritage is a euphemism for white Anglo-Australian history and this is where the race issue looms large and was tied in with Welcome to Country and Acknowledgement of Country ceremonies by Peter Dutton in the live TV debates.
Inevitably, we find ourselves back at race and in particular the Indigenous issues which plague us.
Again, the online world is rife with conspiracy and ugly vitriol.
Some common themes are:
The Stolen Generations are a lie… it never happened and if children were taken away from neglectful parents it was for the good of the children.
Massacres of Aboriginals never happened… and when conflict occurred, it was simply white farmers protecting themselves from hostile natives.
The “frontier wars” never happened… as the indigenous people never really fought for their land anyway, nothing to see here.
Aboriginal people don’t work and are supported by white handouts…even though we see successful and ‘well-paid’ Indigenous men and women on our TV sets every night in sport, politics and the arts.
The hypocrisies & inconsistencies in angry white chatter are interwoven to the point of creating such a dizzying array of clashing colours that they should come with a warning that they can trigger seizures.
Interwoven in the narrative is that our current education system (infiltrated by the nasty left) is devaluing Western achievements and thought.
There has been a war on our culture for 50 years, says Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, also citing the ‘long march of the left’ as being the main culprit.
A point he has been pushing on many platforms since he left government and assumed de facto leadership as a defender of Western ideology.
By our culture, he means and says Anglo Celtic culture and in the same breath talks about us coming together and being one as a nation.
Again, the double talk is bewildering.
Are the non-Anglo Celts of this country expected to pretend they are Anglo-Celts?
What is this war that Tony Abbott sees every day he looks out his front door?
His argument is that Anglo Celtic culture/ Western culture/ Judeo Christian culture…the Australian version of the English-speaking world (he has used all those terms) is under attack.
But the reality is that White Australians, mainly men, still dominate the halls of power, whether it be politics or the corporate world.
Most of our wealthiest citizens are white males by a long shot.
We are still an English-speaking country with rule of law and government institutions based on the Westminster system, a fact which seems very unlikely to ever be overturned.
Unlike the US we do not have large non-white communities. A large percentage (close to 70%) of our population is of Anglo-Celtic heritage and most of our immigrants are of white European background. About 85 to 90% of the population in Australia is considered white. We are in fact the whitest country in the Anglosphere & one of the whitest in the Commonwealth, let alone the whole planet. But perhaps we’re still not white enough for some.
So, with such dominant numbers, status and wealth why does this group, feel so threatened?
Can a simple Welcome to Country ceremony trigger a fear of losing one’s culture?
Does learning about the true and entire history of this country, the high points and the low points, mean you hate your country?
That is what is implied by Abbot and his culture war theories and John Howard before him, who often liked to use the term: the “black armband view” of Australian history, a phrase coined by historian Peter Blainey.
In short, concentrate on the greatness of our nation and forget the negatives.
At the centre of it all is the aggrieved white race of Australia who feel victimised by any discussion that does not sing praises of Australian greatness.
Nothing though, can illicit the sort of bother that the indigenous issues bring forth.
A protest on Australia Day, to commemorate the destruction that was to follow for the indigenous people after the First Fleet landed…a trigger.
A Welcome to Country Ceremony …a trigger.
A mention of the old white Australia policy…a trigger.
Any discussion of Indigenous disadvantage…a trigger.
The failed Voice referendum brought out the worst in black/white relations.
Sky News even launched a new channel to cover the Indigenous voice to parliament.
Called Sky News, The Voice Debate; it included prime-time hosts Andrew Bolt and Peta Credlin, who were strongly opposed to the Voice and actively campaigned against it.
A free-for-all ensued were every stereotype and racial epithet was dredged up as the battle raged from social media to prime time TV.
Not all NO voters were indeed racist, but all racists certainly voted NO.
Welcome to Country Ceremonies may well be overdone for some people, but is this the worst thing that has happened between the white and black people of Australia?
History tells us that one side was decimated and almost total wiped out by the other.
The descendants of the ‘other’ are now behaving as if they are the injured party and encouraging other newcomers to disregard and indeed disrespect the stories told by the descendants of the survivors of the massacres, displacements and 200 years of mistreatment.
There are voices that are labelling this behaviour White Fragility.
New York Times best-selling author Robin DiAngelo attempts to define the concept of white fragility.
‘White Fragility is a state in which white people find even a minimal challenge to their position intolerable. This intolerance triggers a range of defensive moves, including argumentation, invalidation, silence, withdrawal and claims of being attacked and misunderstood.’
So, how can we ask the indigenous community to simply let go of the past pain and loss as if it never happened?
Australians in general, would never be asked to forget the sacrifices of the fallen servicemen and women who fought in so many foreign conflicts.
Anzac Day as an example, is one of the most unifying days on our calendar, when all Australians, white or black or newly arrived immigrants, stand together in sombre remembrance.
Can we not also honour the fallen Indigenous warriors who fought to their last breath against insurmountable odds without the terrible angst that might accompany such a gesture?
If we can step away from the Indigenous culture wars for a second, we walk right back into another culture war against the non-Australian Australians.
They are the ones who came here as immigrants from non-English speaking (and often non-white) countries or the children and even the grandchildren of non-Anglo immigrants.
Their historical timeline lived in Australia is often deemed irrelevant when they step out of line.
Remember when Dawn Frazer suggested Nick Kyrgios go back to Greece…the land of his Grandparents.
Of course the ‘go back to your own country’ mantra is reserved for certain migrants and their offspring… but not all.
A white Caucasian Australian with immigrant parents who can blend in with the white majority and has perhaps anglicised their name is rarely told to go back home. Even if they were born overseas.
I don’t remember the immigrant children I went to school with names such as Van Rossem, Erickson, Hageman etc, ever being told to go home.
On 9 September 2022, following Queen Elizabeth II’s death, Senator Faruqi took to X (formerly Twitter) with the following post:
“Condolences to those who mourn the Queen. I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonized people. We are reminded of the urgency of Treaty with First Nations, justice & reparations for British colonies & becoming a republic.”
Senator Pauline Hanson responded with the following tweet:
“Your attitude appals and disgusts me. When you immigrated to Australia you took every advantage of this country. You took citizenship, bought multiple homes, and a job in a parliament. It’s clear you’re not happy, so pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan. – PH”
The intent was clear. Real Australians who are white like Hanson, have a right to free speech but Senator Faruqi who was born in Pakistan had to be shut down when she said something unpopular.
When they do displease Hanson’s real Australian’s they reserve the ancient right to attack them on racial grounds and tell them to leave our shores.
Senator Mehreen Faruqi subsequently launched a racial discrimination case with the Court finding that Senator Hanson had made racist, discriminatory, hateful, derogatory and Islamophobic statements,
After her shattering court loss, a teary and emotional Hanson appeared on Sky News’ Andrew Bolt segment, bemoaning what Australia has become that we can’t speak our mind like we used to.
“I just feel that the country’s changed so much in such a way that people can’t say what they think anymore … It’s not the country I grew up in,” Ms Hanson told Sy News host Andrew Bolt.
Is it abuse and slander directed at non white / non-Anglo immigrant communities that Hanson and her followers miss?
Do they pine for the good old days when you could call a spade a spade and an immigrant a wog?
Because that’s what some of the demographic in question did do, with impunity and a sense of total self-entitlement.
One of the saddest stories I ever heard is the awful racial abuse of non-white aged care workers in Australia’s aged care homes.
It seems that aggrieved white people carry their resentments and self-entitlement from the cradle to the grave.
There is not an individual or group of individuals of colour that has not felt the sting of humiliating racial attacks such as what Senator Mehreen Faruqi was subjected to.
But today it’s the tormentors not the tormented, who are angrily screaming, NO FAIR.
How did this angry demographic become the victims in the Australian story?
How do they measure their level of injury against the people that have been abused, slandered, racially vilified and in the more extreme cases of Australia’s history… murdered, kidnapped and dispossessed.
The picture would be comical if it wasn’t so serious and dangerous.
It seems that no amount of knowledge, education and goodwill can stand up to the assault of misinformation and bigotry that permeates this debate and keeps us from understanding each other.
How do we get the angry people to try and see the pain and struggle of the ‘other’ without feeling in any way diminished themselves?
I’m afraid the political parties that garner votes and the media organisations that increase their viewership from the anger may like to keep things as they are.
By Kosta Manolis
Kosta Manolis was born in Marrickville, Sydney, to Greek Immigrant parents.
He attended Marrickville West Primary School where on his first day discovered he spoke no English.
He writes about multicultural themes.