“Humble Australian Egalitarian offers satirical criticisms of Reclaim Australia Rally”
This video does a good job of highlighting a lot of the major problems we are seeing in the political discourse over immigration and race that is taking place in ‘Developed’ and ‘Progressive’ countries all over the world; Australia not excluded. The video has 2,575 itself, and another video titled “Top 10 Reclaim Australia Moments” has 5,189 views. From watching videos on his channel, it is clear that Humble Australian Egalitarian is trying to create political awareness around subjects in Australia that are getting swept under the rug. Instead of focusing on the massive deaths being experienced by Aboriginal people and the domestic violence issue Australia has, groups like the Reclaim Australia Rally have people fighting Islam and acting as if their country has been ‘stolen’ from them.
Reclaim Australia Rally (RAR) is a recent movement with very ignorant and racist ideals; especially considering Islam. Humble Australian Egalitarian uses the video to go to RAR’s website and go through their list of demands. One by one, we are given a critique of each demand RAR makes.
Sources like this video are important because they remind us that it is 2015 and there is still large scale xenophobia and racism going on in what the majority of the world may consider to be the most advanced countries in the world. RAR is a movement made up of white people whose ancestors moved to Australia from various European countries. They believe that their ‘ideal Australia’ is slipping away and that it must be protected from those who wish to destroy it. There are many issues with this way of thinking in such a globalized world;
- The very idea of RAR implies that Australia is their country to protect/lose; completely ignoring the existence of the Native Aboriginal people.
- The assumption that Islam seeks to take over the world or is inherently evil.
- Australia is regionally closer to Southeast Asia and the Middle East than it is Europe; which is where the majority of it Immigrants are coming from and have been coming from since the ending of Restrictive Immigration Policy in the 1960s. This is becoming increasingly more and more of an issue with an increase of refugees from the Middle East.
Catherine Dauvegne writes on the idea of how we think about refugees. Suggesting that refugees are immigrants we judge on their ‘otherness’. This is counter to ‘economic immigrants’ who we let in based on the money/capital they have or a set of skills they possess, or immigrants that are allowed in for knowing family or for educational purposes. Instead of promoting understanding and acceptance as the critiques in the video suggests, or instead of thinking from a humanitarian perspective like Dauvegne talks about; groups like RAR preach racism.
Historians could watch this video and see that just like the United States has Donald Trump and the UK has Nigel Farrage, Australia has groups like RAR and politicians they lobby for who agree with their views. They’ll be able to note that ‘White Nationalism’ was happening all over the world and not just in one place.
Dylan Brown