Sieg Heil is a German phrase which literally means “Hail [to] Victory.” During the Nazi era, it was a common chant at political rallies. When meeting someone, it was customary in Nazi Germany to give the Hitler salute and say the words “Heil Hitler”. “Sieg Heil” was reserved for mass meetings such as the ones at Nuremberg where “Sieg Heil” was shouted in unison by thousand, not dissimilar to the way Aussies chant Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi as they bash Aborigines, ‘Lebs” and Wogs.
This origin of the Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi chant is disputed.
According to Stephen Alomes, a professor of Australian studies at Deakin University, the chant represents “enthusiasm for the tribe” and a “celebration of ‘us'”, but at the extreme may act as a symbol of xenophobia.
During the 2005 Cronulla riots – a series of ethnically motivated mob confrontations in Sydney, New South Wales – mobs of drunken young men waving Australian flags were witnessed yelling the chant and attacking anyone suspected of having a Middle Eastern background.
Similarly, in 2007 members of a crowd which had gathered to protest about a proposal to build a Muslim school in Camden in Sydney’s far west were reported to have loudly chanted the phrase in unison.
What is next, Australia’s very own version of Kristallnacht?
Well I suspect that we are getting close. Thanks to the ten years of parochial xenophobia that were the Howard Years, followed up by the current charade we generously refer to as the Australian Federal Parliament; society is being fractured in ways that less than two decades ago would have seemed unimaginable.
Howard and his cronies, tacitly supported by a gutless opposition, have managed in the space of those short years to create two Australia’s. One Australia seems to be the exclusive domain of the descendants of the European Conquistadors who illegally wrestled Aboriginal Australia from the hands of its lawful inhabitants under the banner of the ‘rule of law’. The other, an Australia of disadvantage, oppression and fear is reserved for those Australians the Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi chanters deridingly refer to as ‘boongs’ ‘slaps’, ‘Lebs’ and ‘wogs’.
A gauge to measure how far the malady of racism has reached into the Australian psyche is the attitudes of Australia’s youth and what better example do we have than the school yard. Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph ran an article headed Racism boils over in school attacks, about an incident which occurred at Hoxton Park High School in Hinchinbrook, Sydney on Thursday 3rd March involving ethnic violence between Aussies and ‘Lebs’.
By all accounts what happened was that a 14-year-old student was “jumped” on Wednesday afternoon by “10 Australian girls” who punched, kicked, scratched and spat at her.
“They were saying, ‘f … Arabs’, ‘you bitch’, ‘you slut’ – everything. They said all Muslim mums with scarves can hang themselves with it,” the student said.
The girl understandably called her relatives for help and a large crowd of her family and friends had gathered at the front of the school to offer her support and protection.
They allegedly clashed with police who used capsicum spray to subdue the crowd and arrested six men and women, aged between 26 and 50, who were later charged with offences including affray, intimidation, assaulting police, resisting arrest and offensive language.
Who were arrested? Were they the ten Australian girls ‘who punched, kicked, scratched and spat’ at the Lebanese victim? By golly no; those arrested were the family of the victim, Australians of presumably Middle Eastern extraction to a person! How far down the path of internal chaos and conflict must a society have travelled for it to condone the storm troopers in blue (aka the police) arresting the family of the victim rather than the perpetrator of a crime?
Witness Zahra Elasmar, whose two children attend the school, said Wednesday’s fight was a spill over from the racist slurs made on students’ Facebook pages.
“What we witnessed today is not right in a multicultural country. We don’t want another Cronulla [riot] at Hoxton Park.”
Children generally pick-up habits from their parents and others in authority. What higher authority can a child imagine that the authority of parliament, a Parliament where one of its independent members Mr Andrew Wilkie described the Liberal Opposition as racist and ‘corrupted by hatred’.
Mr Wilkie used an appearance in Parliament to condemn what he called the “racism that eats at the Liberal Party”. This is the same Liberal Party that under the ‘leadership’ of Prime Minister Howard instigated the Northern Territory National Emergency Response (also referred to as “The Intervention”), which has achieved nothing more than marginalizing an already marginalized group and allowing their sacred lands to be ‘raped’ in the name of Mammon for the benefit of a few multi-national mining conglomerates.
This is also the same Liberal Party that manufactured the Children Overboard scandal to win an election on the back of racist xenophobia. It is the same Liberal Party that ‘invaded’ the Solomon Islands under the pretence of taking the ‘rule of law’ to the region. It was the same Liberal Party in government that then used the Australian Federal Police to interfere with the internal politics of the Islands to the extent of arresting and removing from office the Solomon Islands Attorney-General Mr Julian Moti QC, who was opposed to Australia exporting its corruption and racism to the Islands.
While I’m on the point of institutionalised racism in the Australian Federal Police it is worth reminding readers of their involvement in the sinking of the SEIV-X and the loss of life that came with it, as well as their involvement with Detachment 88, accused of torture and other crimes against humanity.
Can we but wonder why the Aussie students of Hoxton Park High School find it acceptable to bash ‘Lebs’ in the name of Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi.
