Labor Senator Nita Green says the proposal is ‘an important and timely step’.
Photo: M. Bowers

A unified approach called to ‘tackle far-right extremism’.

HATE CRIME DATABASE

There are new calls for a ‘national independent hate crime database’, as talking points say ‘far-right extremism’ is accelerating across Australia.

The matter was discussed during a Senate, Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee late-last month, while most were focused on the dystopian bills they were pushes at the time.

The committee, led by Senator Paul Scarr, say they are probing ‘right-wing extremist movements’ in Australia and ‘what can be done to counteract them’.

Among the issues raised were “toxic masculinity breeding right-wing group membership”, as well as “growing antisemitism” and “the need for a transparent hate crime database”.

In Australia, we do not have a national database at present, meaning data collection across states and territories doesn’t have similar methodologies or set definitions for ‘hate crimes’.

At the event, speakers from the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies said it was ‘important to get the community involved in identifying right-wing ideologies’.

They suggested ‘providing teachers and other educators with tools to identify alarming behaviours and other red flags to look out for’.

Australia is one of the few countries without a national system. Canada, the U.K and the United States all have existing systems that collect ‘hate-motivated crime data’.

Professor Michele Grossman said ‘far-right extremism’ had accelerated across Australia, ‘enabled by digitally based social, operational and financial economy activities’.

“Many forms of extremist groups in Australia are now more fluid and dynamic in structure than previous similar organisations,” Grossman said.

“If we are to keep pace with the risks and threats that they pose … there needs to be new thinking and adjustment of our understanding of the social impacts of far-right extremism.”

Yes, it is always the ‘big, bad bogeyman’ coming to get us all once again.

Much of the new discussion around this subject has stemmed from growing ‘antisemitism’ that’s resulted from escalations in the Israeli-Palestinian war drama.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry Chief Executive, Peter Wertheim, said his organisation supported calls for a uniform national system, while also doing their own data collection.

“At the moment, it’s different state by state, the criteria varies, and the methodology differs” he said.

In essence, this would ensure a more uniformed approach to ‘tackling hate’.

The public hearings continue, but this type of shift once again highlights the push to suppress any freedom of speech or expression in this country under the guise of ‘protection’.

For you see, the line between a hate crime and ‘hate speech’ is thinning each and every day.

As definitions continue to broaden, and a society of ‘pre-crime’ surveillance begins, the very notion of discussing so-called hate — not carrying out a physical crime — will become the crime itself.

Minority Report and Nineteen Eighty-Four meet in the middle modern day Australia.

THE THOUGHTCRIME ERA

Far too often than not, the sides are becoming more blurred when it comes to this topic.

Don’t get me wrong, there are legitimate hate crimes. Nobody is denying that.

But these are crimes that laws already exist for.

A hate crime originates because of the perpetrator’s motivation and decision to initiate a crime due to the different physical appearance or apparent status of the victim.

Hate crimes were first investigated in the 1920’s but were only recognised as established separate crimes in the 1980s and early 1990s in response to sociological studies that indicated an increase in crimes based on implicit or explicit bias, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Hate in and of itself is not a crime, and policing agencies must remain mindful of this when investigating particularly horrific crimes. Motivation is not the “intent”, that is, “mens rea” required by the law as an element for the base offense of which the perpetrator is accused.

Yet, in Australia, there has been a push to outlaw what is described as ‘hate speech’.

That is where things get shady.

We already have in Queensland, 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which makes it unlawful for someone to do an act that is reasonably likely to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” someone because of their race/ethnicity.

This state has also passed laws banning the display of the swastika, like others have banned a ‘salute’ itself.

When do things start to drift into ‘pre-crime’ levels of dystopia?

Recently, news publications have been covering a campaign that urges Australians to report ‘hate speech’ if they see it, including found online. This ‘could eventually lead to crimes’, they say.

There is a very thin line that they are crossing here.

In Oceania, the totalitarian setting of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, to meet the ideological requirements of English Socialism — or Ingsoc — the ruling Party created Newspeak, a controlled language of restricted grammar and limited vocabulary.

The ultimate aim of Newspeak was to limit the freedom of thought — personal identity, self-expression, free will — that threatens the ideology of the régime of Big Brother and the Party, who have criminalised such concepts into ‘Thoughtcrime’.

In the modern world, with PC culture, reductionist language has been designed to diminish vocabulary and amputate nuance until citizens are unable to express independent, heretical thinking.

Is PC culture the modern ‘Newspeak’?

Just like in Orwell’s novel, words are changed so that mental attitudes — and soon, intellectual, ethical, and philosophical aptitudes — change accordingly.

Similarly, at its core, political correctness is an attempt to impose ‘desirable mental attitudes’ by removing ‘undesirable’ words from our vocabulary.

The words we use, after all, frame our understanding of what we think, write, and say.

Changing our vocabulary is, thus, a matter of changing our intellectual, ethical, and philosophical perspectives, just as we find when examining George Orwell’s dystopian vision.

‘Hate speech’ laws are very close to becoming language control, and language control is thought control, period. Soft censorship. Intolerance disguised as tolerance.

But even beyond that, if allowed to get completely out of control, it can also be used to enforce more.

Think of Goldstein: He is the principal enemy of the state, according to the Party of Oceania.

He is depicted as the head of a mysterious dissident organisation in Orwell’s book. He is only seen and heard on telescreen, and was conjured by the Ministry of Truth propaganda department.

Goldstein functions as a threatening, but ill-defined symbol, that the Party uses to keep citizens in line and prevent rebellion. Key word: ill-defined.

Much like so-called ‘hate speech’ definitions that exist and will further centralise.

And, like the threat of ‘right-wing extremism’, Goldstein and ‘the resistance’ is a fabrication of the state, used as a tool by the Party to stir up emotion in the citizens.

Just like this character, so too can ‘far-right’ activists be used as scapegoats.