Uncle Ray Minniecon is an Aboriginal Elder and a veteran. As he was presiding over the Welcome to Country ceremony at the Anzac Dawn service in Sydney, a small group of people began booing. His understandable response, when interviewed on Sky News later that day, was to simply ask:
“Why do people hate us so much? What crime did we commit that brings this out from people? What did we do wrong to them?”
It was reported that a FaceBook group calling itself ‘Fight for Australia’ had decided to infiltrate instances of the dawn service all around Australia – and then boo the WTC part of the ceremony.
Despite putting up posts asking “how loud will you boo this year”, the organiser of this group of right-wing fools, Bec Freedom, disingenuously claims both that her group did not organise the booing, but nevertheless supports the activity. She was quoted as saying:
“I’d like to refute that this was a campaign organised by either myself or FightForAustralia / MarchForAustralia. We simply put a few posts up asking people if they would be booing this year due to the amount of grassroots public interest on this topic. But yes, I stand by the content I put out about it.”
She proposed that people were booing “to show we aren’t happy with woke rituals taking place at one of our most solemn days in Australia.”
So, I would like to ask; what part of the dawn service is not a ‘woke’ ritual? And more significantly: what makes you think you have any right to dictate anything to those who are running such a ceremony?
This occurrence makes me both ashamed and furious. It hit a nerve. Mr Minniecon had been invited to be a part of the ceremony because he is an honoured citizen and veteran. I am a legatee. My dad died from war wounds. Thus, both he and I – along with the vast bulk of the Australian population – are viscerally aware that the dawn service is all about the people who cannot be there. Not the petty political gripes of any group of ignorant racist fools, no matter how entitled they might believe themselves.
I therefore find it not only utterly disrespectful and rude, but also infuriating, that people like this are provided a platform to air their racist claptrap both at a dawn service, and then, subsequently, on cable tele. These individuals were promoting a pseudo-Nazi ideology at a dawn service. They are extremely lucky that we are such a tolerant society. In the sort of country that they are advocating for they would have been strapped to a pole, tarred, and feathered.
Then the reporting of all of this by many outlets seemed to be purposefully designed to disguise the reality that these sorts of odious views are restricted to just a tiny minority of embittered souls; those who seem to feel slighted by the mere fact that they are obliged to live in an inclusive and tolerant society.
I suggest that all of those who ascribe to the nonsense that is being pedalled by groups such as Fight for Australia and March for Australia would likely find a better home in the deep south of the USA. Furthermore, please refrain from hugging a flag and trying to tell everyone else what it means to be an Aussie. The repugnant ideas that you are promoting are part and parcel of the same racist claptrap that my father, and hundreds of thousands of others, were fighting against.
Lest we forget.
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We vet incomers with their knowledge and acceptance of Australian values while these racists shame us from within.
Fascist fistfondling frankfurtpolishing fartbrained frauds are quite un-Australian, many waving a rotten raggy ridiculous post-imperial flag with another nation’s one in a corner. Aussie servicemen and women fought under the union jack in W W 1 but under the red ensign usually in W W 2. This Bec Freedom garbage is mental slavery, bonded to delusion and vicious errorsoaked mentality (not much of that) when the nation needs bonding, openness, generosity, intelligent balance. Like the Xmas chook, STUFF’EM!
Uncle Minniecon was offering a WELCOME to country gesture on behalf of his kith and kin. He did not make a YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE speech as well he may have responded with. Instead he was dignified and respectful to the occasion and did not diminish his stature by offering any disparaging comment. The brainless booers simply displayed their ignorance for all present to see.. They could learn a lot from Uncle Minniecon, a man of such dignity and wisdom.
Charges? Arrests? Anything? Or are the increasingly draconian laws against “hate speech” reserved just for those of us who oppose Israel’s crimes against humanity?
Do the people who were booing have no knowledge of the fact that many, many indigenous people have served in all the wars where white Australians have served? Would they like it if their relatives’ service was insulted in this way? We’re there to honour the service and courage of all the young men and women who served and did not come home to their loved ones. That is not woke – it is love and respect which has been earned though horrendous loss of life.
The dismal deficient Angus Taylor, a skinful of excrement, has been a racist idiot for imagined political gain, insulting other people elsewhere, some, like Iranian dissidents, who actually think, behave, fight, oppose evil, seek justice. Un-Australians like Taylor should piss off, carting fellow rubbishies along, like the Fat Frau lady lardmouth, B Joyce the footpath denting drunk, Canavan the carbon captured clod and clown. As for Hanson, she has her transport, complete with shaft and millet strawed head. Clean up society now with loudmouthed festering fools GONE.
It seems that the loudest voices speaking out against the Welcome to Country are coming from the Conservative Right. Angus Taylor has said it is overused to the extent that it has become undervalued and Peta Credlin at SKY considers it woke and coming from a pandering Left wing.
Pauline Hanson and her lap-dog Barnaby Joyce have had enough of the Welcome to Country, she says “I won’t apologise for protesting so-called “Welcome to Country” performances” and Barnaby condemned Welcome to Country ceremonies on Anzac Day saying it was inappropriate and divides Australia.
Rowan Dean who has a gig at SKY also edits the Australian Spectator magazine and he considers both the Voice referendum and the Welcome to Country as being divisive. His most recent editorial reads:
A majority of Australians, as suggested by the Voice to Parliament referendum, disagree with ‘Welcome to Country’ utterances outside tourist settings.
Perhaps even more Australians find ‘Welcome to Country’ particularly abrasive, even insulting, when issued as part of an Anzac Day memorial.
Others are simply exhausted by the messaging on every flight, website, government building, corporate email, and school address…
So, if you get a coalition government with One Nation holding a balance of power in the Senate you will probably find that many things will change and not for the better : the bi-election at Farrer will be a good pointer to how regional Australians are thinking.
Even the ABC was no better than Sky with a report from an RSL person suggesting that Welcome to the Country may need to be dropped, to stop booing…..ABC did not even try to learn who was booing?
All the hallmarks of an organised astroturf and media stunt to flood the RW MSM inc ABC and social media ecosystem with more eugenics driven white Christian nationalism and MAGA……
One would like to hear from actual RSL members and veterans, rather than ageing skip managerial types, beholden to our skip RW MSM and politics informed by Advance, Koch, Tanton and Murdoch…..
There’s no excuse for ignorance whatsoever.
The Conservative Right in Victoria will, if they win the state election later this year, stick the boot into First Nations communities.
The LNP has committed to introduce legislation repealing the Aboriginal Treaty and Voice in the first 100 days of a state Coalition government being elected in November.
They will do this with the support of their mates at One Nation [of course !].