Don’t let the terrorists and supremacists win

Just because white supremacists say it is ok to be white does not make the statement incorrect or unusable.  We shouldn’t reject this truth just to ensure we are always disagreeing with white supremacists.  It would still be fine to say “Have a nice day” even if it had been Hitler’s favourite saying.

To do otherwise leads to poor outcomes. For example, labelling the vote of Craig Thompson, former Labor parliamentarian and Health Services Union official, as a tainted vote led other parliamentarians to cast their votes in the House of Representatives not according to principle, but according to whatever side Craig Thompson wasn’t on.

We shouldn’t spend our lives fearing spurious associations with bad people or thinking that bad people are never correct.  A broken clock is correct twice a day.

When major party politicians vote down the suggestion that it is ok to be white, they come across to a lot of Australians as weak and stupid.  This is a win for white supremacists. 

We need to stop interpreting people’s words beyond their plain meaning.  If I agree with the suggestion that it is ok to be white, this means I think it is ok to be white.  It does not mean that I believe all white people are oppressed, or that all people of different races are not.

But we also need to hold people to account for what they say.  If people slander men in general as out-of-control pigs, we shouldn’t excuse this as if they just meant ‘some’ men.

Politicians, and the rest of us, should be free to act with principle and speak truth, and to stop boxing at shadows.