COMMENT
When former Labor MP Craig Emerson quit as a commentator for Sky News after the channel interviewed Blair Cottrell, he said giving such a person a platform was: “...another step in a journey to normalising racism & bigotry in our country”.
In my view Emerson, whose father fought against the Nazis in World War II and was interred in a German POW camp, is right. To invite Cottrell onto a mainstream platform to promote his hate-filled rhetoric is part of a repulsive trend that views people like him as valued contributors to national debate.
It was concerning that Sky News, in their original promo, described Cottrell as an "activist''.
Source: Twitter
Cottrell wants portraits of Adolf Hitler hung in Australian classrooms, and for each student to be given a copy of Mein Kampf. He has already served jail time for stalking and arson and has boasted how he uses “violence and terror” against women. He has expressed anti-Jew and anti-women statements on social media.
After the uproar that greeted his interview, Cottrell tweeted that “I might as well have raped @ljayes [Sky News political reporter Laura Jayes, a vocal critic of his] on the air, not only would she have been happier with that but the reaction would have been the same”.
The expression ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt’ may well be the most inaccurate in history.
Because words do hurt. Because words do matter.
Language is the currency that shapes our ideas, thoughts and ideals. It’s a powerful tool that can do far more damage that a bullet can. And the act of softening language when it comes to people like Cottrell allows them and their ideology to be rebranded as an acceptable alternative.
Far-right extremists want to strip humanity of certain people based on their race, religion or culture. It’s about declaring who is a person and who is not. If that is in any way an acceptable alternative, then we are faced with a very scary future.
Calling Cottrell an ‘activist’ not only gives legitimacy to his ideas, but gives them a coating that makes these ideas palatable.
It’s a method that Hitler himself used in order to launch his murderous plans against Jewish people in Europe. Before there was a single life lost, Hitler’s violence had a home in his speeches, which won him the support needed to ruthlessly hunt and gather up Jewish people and throw them into death camps.
This is not about stifling free speech and this is not about engaging in philosophical debates; we’re way past that. This is about the safety of those that people like Cottrell target, including Jewish people.
A sample of his writing about Jewish people, as documented by the 2016 report on Antisemitism, is: “The Jews are as small physically as they are degenerate in character ... Enjoy your bullying of the lesser nation of Palestine while you can, because the white races are coming for you.”
To allow such views, which are very much about declaring who is allowed to have access to human rights and who is not, will only end in tragedy.
We’ve experienced that tragedy before. We were meant to “never forget” the Holocaust - the torture and murder of six million Jewish women, men and children, plus political dissidents, gypsies, LGBTQI people, the mentally ill, disabled people and unionists - but we are forgetting.
Sugar-coating the promotion of hatred against certain people is the first step in actions following. For Jewish people such as myself, the increasing tolerance and acceptance of these views as part of mainstream debate feels like that hunt could happen again. It’s frightening, for all of us.
Sky News director Greg Byrnes has stated that is was “wrong” to interview Cottrell.
But that’s not nearly enough.
As author and academic Roxane Gay said: “Racism is not a point of view that deserve consideration or time or respect”.
And if we don’t call out racism and hatred when it’s blatantly in front us, when it’s blatantly being promoted as normal or an acceptable alternative, then we all lose.
But don’t forget that some of us have more to lose than others.
