It’s that time of year again, Anzac Day, when mainstream media, politicians and shock jocks find a whole new expression of honesty to be outraged at.
A couple of days ago, New Matilda journalist Ben Eltham sent out this tweet:
Only seven more days before another unsuspecting Australian gets run out of town for some mild criticism of the Diggers
— Ben Eltham (@beneltham) April 17, 2018
As most will recall, we have a brief but impressive history of flogging people for expressing truthful statements that don’t align with the official Anzac myth. It all began in 2015 with the heinous anti-Australian Australian, Scott McIntyre, a former journalist with SBS who tweeted about atrocities committed by Anzacs during the war.
“Remembering the summary execution, widespread rape and theft committed by these ‘brave’ Anzacs in Egypt, Palestine and Japan,” McIntyre accurately and outrageously wrote to his Twitter followers.
And then this: “Not forgetting that the largest single-day terrorist attacks in history were committed by this nation & their allies in Hiroshima & Nagasaki.”
A nation lost its shit, and McIntyre lost his job. As an aside, he had another crack in 2016.
In 2017, we found a whole new target… ‘controversial’ journalist Yassmin Abdel-Magied, who used April 25 to tweet: “Lest. We. Forget. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine.)”
Abdel Magied wasn’t just hounded out of her job – she was hounded out of the country (and last week deported from the US for ‘having the wrong visa’).
But the woman Australia apparently most loves to hate appears not to have ‘learned her lesson’, if her response to Eltham’s tweet this week is anything to go by.
Hot tip – you don’t even need to mention the diggers. You just need to ask for people to extend their empathy to others. https://t.co/HWbvIkjDbP
— Yassmin Abdel-Magied (@yassmin_a) April 17, 2018
Abdel-Magied’s response sparked this thoroughly confusing piece from news.com.au, which sought to lay the blame entirely at the feet of Abdel-Magied. Which is obviously outrageous. Granted, Abdel-Magied is brown AND she’s a woman, thus she is an ideal target, but she’s already had a turn, and if tradition and ‘fair go’ still means anything in this country, then we need to share the hate around.
On that front, we’d like to offer up Eltham himself. He’s always been highly suspicious, in our view. Eltham has a beard, a wild crop of unkempt hair, he lives in inner city Melbourne, rumour has it he enjoys lattes, and he has repeatedly expressed leftist views.
He also appears unbowed by the national offence he’s already caused… and we’re still a week away!
Some poor bloke at News got assigned to writing a whole piece of clickbait about my tweet pic.twitter.com/uuyVuK2iAB
— Ben Eltham (@beneltham) April 18, 2018
If you agree, comment below, and share widely on social media. And obviously don’t feel the need to keep it clean or reign in your outrage – Eltham’s had this coming to him for a very long time. You can troll him on Twitter here.
Failing that, we’d like to put forward New Matilda editor Chris Graham, who last year suggested it was ‘time to move on’ from Anzac Day commemorations. Like the Stolen Generation, it ‘happened a long time ago’.
And failing that, Dr Lissa Johnson filed this piece earlier today, arguing against war. What was she thinking?
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