In the last few weeks the threat of a Khaki election has loomed large In Australia. The invasion of Ukraine and tensions in relations with China have focused attention on which party can best ensure national security. This question will surely be pressed during the election campaign.
The consequences of the polemic directed at China after the Prime Minister attacked the Labor leader on his alleged weakness towards China are much to be feared. Although some early indications suggested that the appeal to fear manifest in much of the rhetoric has not swayed voters, and some public servants and politicians have urged against politicising Australia’s relationships to China, the recourse to such demonising of nations should be condemned. It has nothing to do with politics in the proper sense. More important it is harmful because it fosters division between nations and leads to discrimination and abuse of people within the Australian community. Australians of Chinese origin are more vulnerable to local abuse than those of Russian origin because they are more visibly identifiable.
Although it is common to describe this campaign as politicising issues of national policy, it is political only in a debauched sense. Politics in its origins is about ordering the affairs of a city in a rational way that enables citizens to flourish. It is essentially ethical in its conception. Early political thinkers would have described the art of stoking resentment and dividing the city, not as politics, but as demagoguery. It appealed to base emotions and not to reason. It encouraged rule by the mob and led ultimately to autocracy and kleptocracy.
In targeting other politicians for being soft on China the campaign does not contribute to necessary political debate about how to balance the complex sets of relationships between China and Australia in a time of tension. It is not an invitation to conversation but a divisive and self-serving campaign designed to deflect anger and resentment away from the failures of politicians and political parties on to China and on to all people and things Chinese. Popular disrespect for China and Chinese people is both its goal and a means to electoral success. It is not the side effect of a necessary conversation.
In Australian slang, such use of patriotic or altruistic sounding words for selfish ends is often called bullshitting. It trades in untruth and shows an unacknowledged contempt for the persons against whom and to whom it is directed. In partisan debate about international relations the consequences of that contempt are always borne ultimately by the people whose perceived nation of origin is the focus of the campaign.
'If party political programs of targeting nations or national or religious minorities are to be effective they must promote prejudice against local people who are identified with the reviled nation.'
Harsh and dismissive rhetoric focused on nations and their people is deplorable because they are not abstractions but are gatherings of human beings, each of whom is their own centre. National leaders and governments may represent their people, but their people are not personally responsible for the policies and actions undertaken by their rulers. They may share responsibility for electing governments and be duty bound to criticise immoral conduct by their governments. But they ought not collectively be blamed for what their governments and officers do. For this reason we should avoid saying that China or the Chinese threaten Taiwan or that Russia or the Russians make war on Ukraine. Or, for that matter, that Australia or the Australians treat people who seek protection barbarously.
In the case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine responsibility is in general rightly attributed to Vladimir Putin as the leader of the nation. In China, too, the bellicosity of government policy is generally ascribed to the Chinese leader Xi Jinping. To think and speak of China or Russia as the agent makes it easier to imagine all Russians as active supporters of violence, as quite different from ourselves in character and temperament, and so as vicious and terrifying. This view of people is then expressed popularly in cartoons that represent Russians or Chinese as ape-like and malevolent. As a result if we meet Russian or Chinese persons in the street we will need to overcome our initial prejudice if we are to relate to them as human beings like us.
If party political programs of targeting nations or national or religious minorities are to be effective they must promote prejudice against local people who are identified with the reviled nation. That makes personal people’s fear and resentment and attracts them to the party that feeds these responses. Inevitably this hostility will find expression through resentful people who speak and act abusively and discriminate against people thought to belong to the targeted group. We need to think only of the experience of people of German descent in the 1914 war, and more recently of Muslim Australians and of young Sudanese Australians, after they have been targeted.
Already Australians of Chinese descent have reported being abused. If political campaigns excoriating China gain ground in coming months, anyone whom prejudiced and resentful Australians perceive to ‘look’ Chinese or to be speaking Chinese will have grounds for fear whatever their racial and national origin. It is they who stand who stand to be broken when the bull set loose by demagogic operators rampages through the China shop.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.
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