Liberals’ hate speech hypocrisy after Bondi
Sussan Ley’s Liberals will back Labor’s proposed changes to hate speech laws, which would introduce a new offence for “aggravated hate speech”, targeting religious “hate preachers” who incite violence, and another offence for “serious vilification” on the basis of race. But only as long as they focus exclusively on her areas of interest.
“I want to be very clear, tackling hate speech is not a licence to go after free speech”, Ley told a press conference in Sydney. “There are clear issues that this legislation needs to address. It needs to be targeted to the threats that we face, and those threats are radical Islamic extremism and antisemitism.”
It’s a great relief to hear from Ley, Australia’s most credible oppression umpire, that Islamophobia, homophobia and anti-Indigenous racism are all sorted. Only one form of bigotry remains to be knocked out.
This fits with a well-worn pattern of selective outrage on the political right. For the last two years, the proudest racists in the country have worked double shifts, promoting hostility toward Muslims and migrants in the morning, and then mouthing concern about rising antisemitism in the evening.
Former Liberal Attorney-General George Brandis provides one of the crudest examples. He once famously defended attempts to water down the racial discrimination act by praising the “right to be a bigot”—but is now one of most vocal advocates of tougher penalties for antisemitism.
Why is antisemitism the one form of bigotry that the political right vocally opposes? The answer is simple: When they say “antisemitism”, they don't really mean antisemitism. They mean any expression of pro-Palestine sentiment or opposition to Israel’s war. When it comes to the real antisemitism, which is overwhelmingly found on the racist right, they turn a blind eye.
Look for yourself: try to find a statement from George Brandis condemning the National Socialist Network’s vile antisemitic rally outside NSW parliament last November. Try to find a Liberal who says we should cut ties with the Nazi-infested Trump administration. They couldn’t care less
This episode also exposes the free speech hypocrisy of the right. Just a few years ago, the Liberals were posing as free speech warriors, facilitating a review into a “crisis” of free speech on university campuses and threatening to penalise universities that censored students and staff. Now they advocate withdrawing funding from universities that fail to censor criticisms of Israel.
From banning marches to banning specific slogans, there’s been no area of political expression they won’t trample on when it comes to Palestine. But Sussan Ley still shamelessly cites “free speech” as a reason not to include protections for LGBT people. Who at this point takes the free speech rhetoric of the right seriously, when it so clearly only pertains to their pet concerns?
The debate also shows the limits of hate speech laws as a means to challenge bigotry. As the Albanese government announced its plans to rework hate speech laws in December, the ABC reported that just four people had been charged under the new laws across the year. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke says this shows the need to tighten the legal framework, because they’ve been unable to stop hateful speech that sits “just below the threshold” of prosecution.
But the lack of charges just reveals how ineffectual these legal frameworks are for challenging the real roots of bigotry. In our legal system, biased toward the capitalist class and the right, hate speech laws are never used to challenge the bigotry of the elite.
And there’s been no shortage of elite bigotry to confront. Last year, the Murdoch press, sections of the Liberal Party and well-funded conservative groups like Advance Australia promoted marches of thousands across the country that called for mass deportations and hosted Nazis on their speaking platforms.
In the aftermath of the Bondi shooting, Bob Katter, a sitting senator, claimed that migrants in Australia live in “radical ethnic enclaves” and warned that white people are “eradicating themselves from the gene pool”—an invocation of the fascist “great replacement” theory.
No capitalist legal framework for criminalising “hate speech” is ever going to challenge any of this, because promoting racism, scapegoating and social division are core elements of capitalist politics.
The qualified support the Liberals have given to Labor’s proposed law just shows the cynicism at the heart of the current debate about tackling antisemitism. It’s not an anti-racist campaign. It’s an operation by the political right to attack their enemies and silence legitimate criticism of Australia’s support for Israel.
