Greenwash Political Action Party and Urban Grassroots Movement for the Green Party

Monday, December 18, 2006

How the Right’s annual bash gets it wrong

It is the season where the right wing commentators love to pour back over the year and selectively quote those they despise.

No doubt any day now we will have Gerard Henderson’s annual collection of quotes that purport to show how truly wicked are those not part of the right wing establishment.

Henderson regularly has two charges against Greens and those on the progressive side of politics. Either we have exaggerated the faults of our opponents or have refused to atone or appologise for the past. Mr Henderson loves to rile against those that backed communist rulers or failed to condemn their atrocities.

Such charges are inevitably about the past. What Mr Henderson will not do is analyse his own record of the present.

In particular his ongoing silence on history’s biggest ever communist regime – the current Government in China – is striking given his obsession with hunting out those who were communist fellow travelers in years gone by.

With a litany of abuses from torture and murder to religious persecution and press freedom crackdowns, surely the Chinese rulers would cop a pasting from Mr Henderson and his right wing think tank.

But like some many on the Australian right when it comes to China Mr Henderson turns a blind eye to the atrocities of the present while railing against those of the past.

But at least Henderson can normally be relied upon to get his quotes correct. Not so for the light-weight blogger, turned Daily Telegraph right wing attack dog, Tim Blair.

In his Saturday Telegraph column Mr Blair went through each month of the year selectively quoting from those the right love to attack. Mr Blair then adds his pompous commentary to each quote.

For example for his month of September contribution Mr Blair wrote:
“‘Once we were larrikins with a taste of defiance; now we are lapdogs with a thirst for conformity.’ -- Greens senator Bob Brown wishes everybody would think and act exactly as he does”

Only problem is that Bob Brown never said anything remotely similar. Seems Blair lifted the quote from an opinion column by Richard Neville in The Age.

It is the right that owes the apology, not for the past but the present.

posted by Ben Oquist # 2:21 PM