Two men who yelled racial abuse at a French woman on a bus to Frankston.
November 21, 2012 7:00PM
RACISM is a problem Australia needs to eradicate if we are to have any real and worthy sense of national pride, writes Joe Hildebrand.
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ONE of the less pleasant aspects of hosting a show called Dumb, Drunk and Racist is that every time someone exhibits any of those characteristics it is immediately brought to my attention. After a while this can give you a fairly depressing world view.
Sadly, a video now doing the rounds which shows a vile and incomprehensible display of ugliness on a Melbourne bus has scored off the charts in all three categories.
If you’re reading this you have probably already seen it but in short the video shows at least two men variously screaming at a woman to “speak English or die” and threatening to “fillet these c—-s” with a fishing knife. One of the men later smashes a window near where the woman is sitting. Her crime had been to sing a song in French.
This is the sort of behaviour that we witnessed while making the show and that I struggled to explain to just about every media outlet in the country when they tried to insist that Australia didn’t have a racist problem.
I do not believe racism is institutionalised in Australia, nor that it is endemic at all levels of society and nor that it is quietly and sinisterly inherent in the human condition.
In fact I recently argued as much in a speech to the Diversity Council – a tough crowd to convince of that.
However just because something foul is only perpetrated by a minority does not mean that we should accept it or dismiss it. Only a minority of people murder or rape but nobody suggests we should tolerate that.
The truly troubling thing that in this case the analogy is no stretch. One of the thugs is caught on camera threatening to kill the woman and run a knife through her.
The incident took place on a bus route to Frankston, a bayside suburb not far from where I grew up in Dandenong. While Dandenong is possibly the most ethnically diverse place in Australia, Frankston has more of a bogan waspish quality. Both suburbs contain large socio-economically depressed areas and have a high rate of violent crime.
This means that at a guess some will seek to explain this kind of behaviour in terms of poverty or disadvantage. This insults decent poor people everywhere. Besides, I grew up on a sole parent’s pension just a few kilometres away and I didn’t end up threatening to kill women on buses.
Likewise no doubt some – perhaps the eventual defendants themselves – will blame their behaviour on the booze and/or drugs they appear to be affected by. If we’re going to swallow this argument then God help us as a civilisation.
If we’re going to tell ourselves we’re all just a few drinks away from turning into violent abusive thugs then we might as well pack up the whole operation and crawl back to the swamp.
Because that is really what’s on display here: Human beings are simply animals, it’s just that some of us have evolved further down the line than others.
When you look into the dumbly furious faces of the abusers in that video they carry no more thought or humanity than the black eyes of a reptile.
In truth these people are not even people, not by any definition we should care to employ. They are not human in either of the senses that word means. They are subhuman, they are dumb beasts.
Ironically this is the sort of blunt categorisation that would appeal to such dull creatures, who are so low-functioning they are incapable of processing any thought that goes beyond base physical appearances or the sound of one’s voice. The only difference is that this is a categorisation based purely on reason and rationality.
Perhaps the most disturbing part about any of this is that one of the men was pushing a stroller, meaning that he is at best in the regular company of children and at worst has reproduced. Pity the child, until it too becomes a monster.
These men must be found, and if Victoria Police are the remotest bit sincere when they say they take this behaviour seriously then they will leave no stone unturned until they find the one these insects live under.
Then they should be imprisoned for 20 years – maybe 25. We could invent something new called “exemplary sentencing”. Their jail term should be so heavy and so absolute that it scares the living shit out of other racist lowlifes so moronic that it’s the only message they could possibly understand. Hell, they should even release a few bank robbers if they have to to make room for this kind of scum – their brand of violence is far more toxic.
Then, just to be on the safe side, upon release they should be permanently sterilised and perhaps – just for the hell of it – chemically castrated as well, just to make sure there is no chance on God’s earth that they can ever infect a child with their subhuman regressive genes.
If these types of animals want to talk about preserving racial purity, that’s fine by me. Let’s talk about preserving the purity of the human race, and that can only be achieved by removing these primordial throwbacks from it.
It is not an insurmountable problem and it may not even be a problem any worse than other countries but it is one we need to eradicate if we are to have any real and worthy sense of national pride.
Elsewhere
Caught on camera: racist Australians abuse girl & smash bus window
you said it... 
Racism is institutionalized in Australia. One example is the mandatory English tests for many professions. Only a few countries are exempted from this.
There is a difference between racism and skill set. Is it racist to say that only people with medical degrees should be allowed to practise medicine? Is it not essential for the best interests of the patient that they speak the same language, which in Australia is currently English? The difference is that language is a skill that can be learnt, not something arbitrarily assigned due to your skin colour.
I have assessed South Africans, Filipinos, Chinese and other nationalities and many of them possess English communication skills that are far better than their Australian-born (or even UK-born, US-born, etc.) counterparts. So why give this additional stress and cost to some and not to everyone?
People don’t tolerate rape? Since when? I hear the bogan cry from Australians: It’s her fault for wearing that, drinking, being there, flirting, saying that, walking that way. Rape is taken as a joke, rape victims are told to lighten up and get over it. Since when did Australia care about rape? HA What a joke.
Only one criticism of this article, the use of the term animals. Animals do not to my knowledge, behave in this manner, they are on the whole concerned with food and reproduction, not disgusting abuse and intimidation of other animals. In fact most animals even wild animals if observed long enough are gregarious sociable creatures with behaviours and antics that are both amusing and educational, in that we could learn from the interactions to our benefit.