I wish there was a better character around than Milo Yiannopoulos whose rights to free expression I could defend. But that’s the way it works. It’s often those who hold views we despise that we need to go to bat for.
I say let him in.
Pauline Hanson claims both Yiannopoulos and former leader of the English Defence League, Tommy Robinson, should be allowed into the country and has written to Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, David Coleman urging a rethink so that both men can tote their wares in Australia in the name of free speech.
Free speech has its limits. Immigration even more so. All non-citizens entering Australia must meet the character requirements set out in the Migration Act. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is a convicted criminal. On that basis alone, he would not be welcome here.
Robinson’s criminal record includes convictions for violent crime, assault police, financial and immigration frauds, drug possession, public order offences, and contempt of court. That’s quite the rap sheet. Robinson has served three separate terms of imprisonment. He was not granted a visa to visit the United States late last year, which may or may not be due to the fact he has been convicted of entering the US with a false passport.
Right now, almost as we speak, Robinson and his cohorts are running a harassment campaign against an Australian history teacher-turned journalist living in England, Mike Stuchbery. The campaign includes door stepping, where Robinson and others have turned up at Stuchbery’s home banging on doors and rattling windows, ‘doxxing’ (the online publication of Stuchbery’s residential address and contact details) and various threats left at Stuchbery’s home.
Stuchbery’s offence was to promote the crowd funding of a defamation case that his been brought against Robinson for comments he made against a teenage boy who is a Muslim and a Syrian refugee.
Robinson’s conduct is precisely the sort of behaviour that is not wanted in Australia.
How Hanson can argue that Robinson should be given a platform in Australia on this basis defies human understanding. He fails the character test for entry to this country by every single measure.
But Milo Yiannopoulos has no criminal background and the show cause letter he was sent by DICMA is based on a string of unpaid bills he generated in his last tour in 2017, including a reported figure of $50,000 owed to Victoria Police, and violence caused by third parties outside some of the events he spoke at.
He has not been denied a visa as yet. He has 28 days to provide Australian immigration authorities with grounds for his admission into this country.
If he promises to behave himself, I can see no reason why he shouldn’t come to Australia.
The bigger question is why some Australians on the right would want to part with their hard-earned (tickets can run to $1000) to see his, shall we say, performative version of politics when the rest of the world has moved on. The last I heard of Yiannopoulos he was flogging Alex Jones’s liver supplements on Info-Wars.
Even back in 2017, Yiannopoulos’s tour reeked of Spinal Tap charting in Japan and getting the band back together for one last tour. Milo’s star was not just waning in the US, it had hit the deck leaving a pea-sized divot. He had been shown the door at Breitbart and the world in general had turned its back on him after a video surfaced where he came across as a pedophile apologist.
I was at a function during Milo’s last tour of Australia where I bumped into Ross Cameron. Cameron, who I know and like at a personal level, told me he was MC-ing the Milo Sydney show later that evening.
Ross and many others at the shindig were excited, like pre-teen children about to meet Santa. Or perhaps more like ageing KISS groupies without the make-up. It was, I was forced to conclude, all a bit sad.
Genuine conservatives wouldn’t give this fellow the time of day. Others on the right seem drawn to him for reasons I can’t explain other than to note some form of cultural cringe is at play.
Where are the Australian voices of ultranationalism? Why are there no rock star tours for them?
Pauline Hanson is a senator. She regularly appears on television and has every opportunity to articulate a political message. She invariable fails to do so, her remarks a garbled fact-free mess of non-sequiturs.
Recently, she was on SkyNews warning people that their houses or more particularly the solar cells on top of some of their houses were poisoning them.
Two days ago, Cory Bernardi was asked to prosecute the case that immigration was too high despite the nation’s accounts published that very day pointing to Australia being in recession if it was not for immigration. It was a fool’s errand and Bernardi could only babble about the type of people who came to Australia.
Alas, that’s what two per cent of the vote will get you.
One of the main reasons the outer reaches of right-wing politics in this country lack intellectual force is that its local spokespeople are obsessed with petty symbolism and virtue signalling. They’re also not very smart. They simply are incapable of articulating their views to some vague point of coherence. In this vacuum, their followers stare pathetically at the horizon for the arrival of a messiah that will give them heart and perspective.
So, let’s help them out and give Milo a visa. If they want to pony up a grand to see the bloke, that’s their business and their loss. His one and probably last tour of the country will only confirm the Australian hard right’s terminal decay.
This column was first published in The Australian on 8 March 2019
milo got shown the door again
unlucky milo you dikhed
Jeez Jack, so many angles on the murderous shit that went down in Christchurch yesterday. Our noble commercial news agencies decide to replay the streamed footage of the maggot entering the mosque, a video-game gun’s-eye view; the comments from Anning (can we find a way to disbar him from the Senate? I guess not.) The sickening evidence of support from some in the community and so many other aspects of a calculated, evil act. It was reported early in the piece that the Bangladeshi test side had been thereabouts, that they were taken away swiftly and that the test has been called off. I recall that it was New Zealand who were still willing to tour Pakistan when things were getting dodgier and others wouldn’t; that bombs went off down the street from their hotel over there; that after the attack on the Sri Lankan team, no-one will tour Pakistan any longer, the Pak team being condemned to playing their international cricket in front of half a dozen onlookers in the Emirates. To me, it’s profoundly ironic that a sub-continent team (any team) found themselves in similar danger in New Zealand. That, amongst everything else, is deeply saddening.
I’ve been bogged down in this since Friday afternoon and have only just started posting here. So here we are three days later. Firstly, social media can be a cesspit at times like these and Friday afternoon proved no different. Secondly, Jacinda Ardern has been magnificent, not just with her words and compelling performances at pressers but with actions e.g. the semi automatic weapon ban announced within 24 hours of the event. Thirdly, the media should concentrate on victims but I would not be comfortable with them ignoring the story of the shooter. PM Morrison said he did not want to know anything about the shooter and that was silly. he’s not an idle watcher. He’s the prime Minister and he needs to get a better understanding of what motivates people like this.
Other than that, as-salāmu alaykum. Kia kaha.
“Jacinda Ardern has been magnificent”
You can say that again. A true leader in every sense.
OI, LAY OFF STANMORE MATE!!
bblast it, this is depressing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLTqTGw5IyA
Hello All.
The blog has been ‘a bit of a donkey’ at this end, apologies for late replies.
To everyone who gave me Tasmanian advice, good news, (well for me anyway, dont know about Tassie too much), the seed has been set! He who must be obeyed is actually willing to look at having a ‘summer house’ on the isle. That’s how I did it btw, back is zee old country, his family had a holiday home by the sea, and a real home in the mountains somewhere, they flipped with the weather. So I said casually “well your mum and dad had a summer home, its hardly weird”. And it seemed to flip a switch. Now he knows how many times the flights go from Adelaide to Hobart a week, and how much they cost!! Shush, Im in.
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@ Near Death Experience
Thank you for your input there also. I have been out totalled a fair few times, lots of pretty tales, but then, not really heart stopped dead. We shall see, so will Pell.
and…. speaking of Pell… Lookout this bit is going to be pure wraith, ….
sometimes, since the operation in the belly (there’s a sentence hey JtI!), I have a bit of pain going to the loo, nothing to worry about, only sometimes I look a bit pale, shaky and perspiring a bit, like today. So the bloke looks at me and says “wow, you look like you closed the dunny door and found Pell hiding behind it”.
It is what it is folks, my man should do standup, Pell is now a convicted paedophile, and a legend.
Great week for the Looters-Big Arnie Mathias telling us it is Liberal policy to have lower wages-using the old Howard ‘flexibility’ theory/more jumping ship-Craig ‘Laundry’ next/Morrisons’s $2000 buck a minute scam to Christmas Island falling on his face/The Newspoll trouncing/Joyce’s madness that we elected him Depute Dawg/Dutts saying 57 sick refugees from the Islands will break our hospital system/Morrison’s and ‘Gus’s about face on climate change and renewable energy/Geez I expect Joyce any minute now to step up to the plate with his $100 leg of lamb and ‘the end Whyalla as we know it’-Oh and just on dat. Today’s surge in the iron ore price is a Godsend for the Looters!