On Wednesday, 4 December 2019, Bakchos lost control of the BlackandBlack Twitter account. He regained some control on Friday and deactivated the account immediately due to incessant troll attacks and a number of unauthorised tweets. The following day, he reactivated the account and reset the password. A short time later it was apparent that his account was still hacked and an entire decade of tweets was deleted. Much worse however, was that the hacker changed his profile picture from the warriors to a spray-painted swastika, his background image to Hitler and his biography was altered to a racist comment about Indigenous Australians that we will not repeat here.
Bakchos is a proud Wiradjuri man, a member of the Stolen Generations and the child of a French Holocaust survivor. The attack on his Twitter account is an affront to all in which he believes and has pursued throughout his lifetime. It mocks those who must live without family because of racism and marginalization that is upon the rise within Australia.
The Young Liberals reprimanded by their party last week are a testament to the attitudes among some entitled corners of society, corners about which this blog has spoken for a decade. The defunding of the National Family Violence Prevention and Legal Services Forum on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women for the paltry sum of $244,00 per annum speaks volumes about the attitude of this leadership to Indigenous Australians.
BlakandBlack will never stop speaking out about racism, whether that racism is against First Nations Australians, “white Australians” or more recent arrivals. Intolerance against anyone is never acceptable. Differing opinions and ideas need to be discussed openly, free of ridicule and personal invective.