The Backburner, SBS, ‘49% of Australians support banning Muslims immigrating to nation they insist isn’t racist’ 21.09.16
A new poll from Essential media has shown a troublingly high number of people support banning all Muslims from immigrating to a nation that they insist is free, welcome and accepting of all people.
Early analysis of the results show community concerns that Muslim immigrants will not abide by Australian values such as a baseless, hysterical fear of all Muslim immigrants. The poll has somehow come as a shock to the nation that recently elected multiple senators on the same fearful platform, but others have insisted that the result was obvious and predictable.
“It’s about the Australian way of life,” one respondent told The Backburner. “I mean, we have a nation here built on freedom – the freedom to deeply fear anyone who you find different and scary – the freedom to restrict their freedoms.
“Australians have always been deeply exclusionary to anyone in need. Neglecting others while insisting we’re great people is one of our proudest national traditions. I mean, what’s the point of being a city shining on a hill if you’re not using that shining light to spot and repel people trying to clamour up the hill to take refuge in your nice city?
“I’m just saying that if we want to keep this country great we have to be willing to sacrifice every last tenet of what we believe makes this country great.”
The poll reported 49% of people supported a ban on Muslim immigration with many respondents claiming that Muslims did not integrate well into the kind of free society that would never place a religious test on immigration and absolutely wouldn’t be caught dead making sweeping statements admonishing a community that makes up a significant percentage of the population.
“We’re just trying to preserve good old fashioned Australian fear-mongering. We want to make sure we keep ourselves true blue, easy-going, deeply aggressive and unbelievably bigoted and exclusionary.
“I’m sure there will be backlash against this but I’ve come up with a clever strategy: what I am going to say is that I’m not actually racist because Islam is not a race. See, I’m not a racist, I’m a completely different kind of bigot. I’m attacking a minority group on an entirely different basis. You know what? I think I’ll find this article when you put it up and make this very comment on it.”
materialism, mysticism and art 
I find those stats hard to believe! Do you think it’s an authentic representation of how your mother Country really feels on the matter
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Hi Jason,
I do believe the poll is accurate – it was taken twice to confirm the result. One of the pollsters said the number was too big to say that it is unrepresentative.
I have heard the poll discussed in the middle-class media and no-one (as much as they would like to) has claimed that the result is in any way ‘false’.
If you step back and look at the ‘big picture’: there is a rising anti-refugee sentiment across the US, Europe and Australia. Fascism and fascist parties play an increasing part in this – discussions in the Australian middle-class media about the possibility of a Trump presidency have included mention of fascism in the US.
What is fascism? Capitalism in extremis. When the GFC hit the fan, a lot of tax-payers’ money was thrown at it. That money has now gone but the GFC hasn’t. The capitalists ponder – ‘What to do?’
Blame someone, ramp up protectionism, wage war and make force and the threat of force internally more prominent.
All of this, with regard to Australia, feeds into a pre-existing cultural ‘mind’ set.
Not only has racism always been deeply ingrained in Australia (the ‘White Australia policy’ was only finally dropped in 1973) – recent instances of anti-Chinese xenophobia yet again exemplify this – this racism is representative of a broader problem in Australia – the fear of difference.
Aussies on their island continent at the arse-end of the earth (to quote a former Prime Minister) cannot comprehend difference and its necessity, wrapped otherwise than in conformist ‘decency’ (hence the comparative welcoming of the Vietnamese refugees after the defeat of the US and Australia in their war on Vietnam).
Again, what is particularly repulsive about the behaviour of the white-dominated nations (including Australia – one of the richest nations in the world) towards the present great tide of refugees is that those people are fleeing from destruction initiated either directly by capitalist nations or as a consequence of their previous behaviour – led by the number 1 capitalist power, the US.
The West fears ‘Islamic terrorism’? Think of the treachery and terrorism that the West has dished out over and again to the Islamic people, particularly in the last 100 years.
As capitalism goes deeper into crisis, within capitalist nations, the rich get richer, the poor poorer and the middle class weakens while beyond those nations, their military continue to wreak the destruction and suffering that puts further pressure on capitalism.
This is dialectics in action.
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Sounds like one hell of a spiral going on there!
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‘…the tremendous power of the negative…’
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Your ignorance of Islam is astounding. And your acceptance of the modern “narrative” is uneducated and lazy. First, there are no “Islamic people”. Islam, like all religion, is delusion. And bigotry has nothing to do with race. Look up the definition. I mean no offence to you, Phil, but please, don’t just ride bandwagons.
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Hi dimvisionary,
Islam, Christianity and Judaism are the three largest Abrahamic religions. ‘Islamic people’ are those who follow the Islamic faith.
If only the ‘modern narrative’ was that of the ‘golden rule’ which is in all three religions, as well as others.
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