COMPOSITE IMAGE: Daily Mail

Blaming ethnic and religious minorities for disease, starvation or hardship is a fact as old as time itself. The Jews of Europe and the Chinese of Asia (or the Ballarat goldfields) have long been lightning rods for misplaced anger over events that – for the most part – are beyond our control or comprehension.

The latest widespread ‘disease’ to befall humanity is of course COVID-19, or – as some prefer to call it – the “China Virus,” the most virulent strain of which has been dubbed the “Indian (Delta) variant”. Can you see where I’m going here?

Most recently, the “blame brown folks” kneejerk has centred around the transmission of COVID-19 in areas of Sydney with heavy concentrations of Muslims and Asians. Chatter on talkback radio about disease-carrying ‘towel heads’ has been amplified by the usual, shit-stirring suspects:

Never mind that little was done to traverse cultural and language barriers and inform minorities of the dangers of COVID-19 and the need for vaccination, or that many in Mark Latham’s own ‘live free o̶r̶ and die’ white trash constituency are known super spreaders. Blaming the brown folks has too much electoral upside for the Labor leader-turned-One Nation bottom feeder.

And now, with Victoria’s sixth lockdown kicking in on Thursday night, we see Melbourne right wingers dipping their toes in the ‘blame brown folks’ sewer:

Steve Price’s dalliance with such debasement isn’t exactly full bore, but with troopers like Andrew Bolt already weighing in on the western Sydney crackdown – and locales like heavily-Muslim Broadmeadows or Vietnamese St Albans having a history as designated hot spots – this fearmongering may well go to the next level.

Again, for those inclined to blame brown folks, take a look at these photos of Melbourne’s super spreader anti-lockdown marches from Thursday night (below right) and late July. There aren’t a lot of ethnic minorities involved, are there?


PHOTOS: Scott Barbour, AAP; Channel 9

Of the many distinguishing features of Scott Morrison’s three years as Prime Minister, two are alarmingly apt to these fraught, stressful times.

First is his almost pathological refusal to take responsibility for mistakes. Canberra’s slow-motion, “she’ll be right” approach to such matters as vaccine rollout or built-for-purpose quarantine housing has contributed mightily to our current lockdowns, but did Morrison put his hand up and proclaim “mea culpa”?

No, he didn’t. There was a vague, clenched-teeth ‘apology’, but observers are still trying to figure out what it was for.

Second is his apparent willingness to exploit, for political gain, xenophobia and the deep-seated fear of immigration from certain, non-white parts of the world among many Anglo-Saxon Australians. As shadow Immigration Minister, Morrison reportedly urged the LNP coalition to capitalise on the electorate’s growing concerns about immigration from war-torn countries like Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq and the “inability” of Muslim migrants to integrate with mainstream culture.

Morrison denies these reports, although his subsequent pride at “stopping the boats” – no matter the humanitarian cost – together with his ludicrous claim there was no slavery in Australia, his willingness to investigate the Chinese origins of COVID-19 (was it developed with malign intent in a government lab?) and other rank opportunism suggest that race is rarely far from Morrison’s political calculations.


PHOTOS: ABC, Sydney Morning Herald.

The PM’s present predicament over COVID-19 is where these two appetites converge. After trying to blame the states, the Europeans, even the vaccine advisory group ATAGI for the botched rollout, Morrison may have settled on COVID-sceptical Muslims and other minorities in western Sydney as his most electorally-advantageous scapegoat.

Crisis, meet opportunity.

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Some 300 defence personnel were deployed on the streets of Bankstown, Blacktown, Fairfield and other local government areas in western Sydney on Monday, under the command of a NSW Police Force already shown to have been more than twice as likely to issue COVID fines to western Sydney residents than more affluent (white?) Sydneysiders in Bondi or Vaucluse.

Far from stopping the spread, this heavy-handed approach could in fact alienate local communities and fuel vaccine hesitancy, local activists have warned. “There can be no doubt the military’s assistance in enforcing door-to-door isolation restrictions in south-west and western Sydney (home to many former Middle Eastern war refugees and Aboriginal people who understandably harbour innate suspicions of uniformed officials) stands to intimidate some of Australia’s most economically and socially marginalised people,” Guardian columnist Paul Daley wrote.

“But as with any act of a state or federal government, the political – which is to say, media and public – optics of the decision to put ‘boots on the ground’ can’t be overlooked”.

Ah yes, the “optics”: deploying the military to keep minorities locked down or at arm’s length has been a guaranteed winner, for successive coalition governments, with voters conditioned to idolise our khaki-clad warriors and demonise difference. Those readers who are old enough will doubtless recall these “optics” from 2001:


The Tampa standoff, Christmas Island, 2001. PHOTO: SBS; INSETS: Ballarat Courier, Mark Knight, Herald Sun

That’s right, it’s time to revisit the Tampa Affair, that egregious episode when refugees fleeing places like war-torn Afghanistan were intercepted at sea and denigrated as queue-jumping, disease-carrying would-be terrorists who must be shunted off to Nauru or Manus Island – for years, potentially – lest one undeserving sandal set foot on Australian soil. If you were an Afghan dodging Taliban snipers and other assorted threats, wouldn’t you get out and ‘queue jump’ (if you could) instead of sticking around and going through the ‘normal channels’ like a sitting duck?

Of course, the human cost of the Tampa and other attempts at wedge politics were secondary to then-PM John Howard, whose poll numbers beforehand were abysmal. Take a look at how they rebounded after his Tampa theatrics, just in time for his election win that November:

As an odd coincidence, the Morrison Government’s numbers (trailing Labor by 6 points, two-party preferred, in the July 18 Newspoll) are almost identical to those of Howard before The Tampa, his ship, came in. The PM must call an election by mid-2022.

Stay tuned, Australia: COVID-19 may have set us up for a Tampa re-run, with defence personnel this time curbing a “brown, disease-carrying threat” not at far-flung Christmas Island but in our own suburbs of Bankstown or Broadmeadows. ‘Stop the spread’ be damned; this is about staying in power.


Are we destined for more unrest – this time COVID-related – of the kind we saw at Cronulla in 2005? Much will depend on that suburb’s local member, one Scott Morrison. PHOTO: Daily Telegraph. INSETS: AFP, Facebook

Real or perceived threats of disease emanating from ethnic minorities has led to waves of prejudice and violence throughout history. A 1916 polio outbreak centring on “Pig Town”, an Italian neighbourhood in South Brooklyn, New York known for its free-roaming hogs, led newspapers to publish heartbreaking accounts of dead or paralysed infants, assigning blame which sparked a wave of anti-Italian prejudice.

In the Five Points area of Manhattan, made famous by the movie Gangs of New York, cholera ran riot among Irish immigrants in 1849. Nativist gangs used this outbreak to fuel their violence against the Irish, as did modern day Americans (and Australians) who attacked Asians after Donald Trump labelled COVID-19 the “China Virus”.

Those who recall the violence visited upon Muslims and Lebanese Australians at Cronulla in 2005 won’t have a hard time imagining the kind of unrest we could suffer if the Delta variant spirals further out of control and our government – ably assisted by its media enablers – diverts attention from their own culpability and pins the blame on “brown folks”.

Journalists and citizens of conscience must stand up to this.