Australian PM promotes racist campaign over “African gangs”
By
Oscar Grenfell
19 July 2018
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull intervened this week to bolster a two- year racist campaign, alleging, without any evidence, that the Victorian capital of Melbourne is in the grip of an epidemic of violent crime perpetrated by “African gangs.”
Speaking on 3AW Radio on Tuesday, Turnbull claimed there was “real concern about Sudanese gangs” in Melbourne. He defended comments by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton last January, alleging that Melbourne residents were “scared to go out to restaurants of a night time.”
Turnbull echoed Dutton’s xenophobic assertion, declaring: “I’ve heard people—colleagues from Melbourne—say that there is real anxiety about crime in Melbourne. It is a real issue.”
The manufactured frenzy over supposed “African gangs” is one aspect of a broader attempt by the Liberal-National Coalition, the Labor Party and the corporate media to whip up nationalism, racism and anti-immigrant sentiment.
Turnbull’s comments were a brazen response to growing popular opposition to the “African gangs” propaganda amid further evidence of its bogus character.
On July 8, Channel Seven’s “Sunday Night” television program featured an hysterical segment, alleging a conspiracy by the police and government bodies to downplay “African crime” as a result of “political correctness.” This was in line with similar coverage in the Murdoch media’s Australian newspaper and its tabloids across the country.
The Channel Seven program provided no evidence for its claims. Instead, it focused almost exclusively on two robberies at a single jewellery store in Toorak, Melbourne’s wealthiest suburb. The most recent incident occurred a…