“HE’S a simple man with a heart of gold in a complicated land. Oh he’s a…”
Entertainment industry elite Jimmy Barnes — about as far removed from a ‘working class man’ as Chairman Mao — came out swinging at Australia last night on the ABC’s Q and A program.
The Chinese Communist Party has been hostile to Australia for some time, imposing trade barriers to significantly hurt Aussie exporters and making demands of Australian domestic policy.
In response to the independent inquiry into unproven war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, a Chinese government Twitter account yesterday published a fabricated photo luridly depicting a man in an Australian uniform slashing the throat of a child holding a lamb. Behind him is the Australian National Flag covering human bodies. The photo is captioned, “Don’t be afraid, we are coming to bring you peace!”
Shocked by murder, torture, detention, 're-education' & 'disappearance' of ethnic & religious minorities & political dissidents by Chinese soldiers & police. The world strongly condemns such acts & calls for holding them accountable.https://t.co/jxKfJzyVox pic.twitter.com/Dq0vqsQqWV
— President-Elect Dave Pellowe ?? (@DavePellowe) November 30, 2020
This attempt to embarrass Australia comes from one of the most intolerant regimes, a relic of Twentieth Century Communist extremism. The current Chinese dictatorship emerged from the ruins of the Chinese Communist Revolution in the late 1940s with 1.75 million casualties.
Eight years later Chairman Mao Zedong’s effort to impose industrialised communist social organisation on the then agricultural society, called The Great Leap Forward, resulted in an economic disaster higher officials were to fearful to report. Up to 45 million Chinese victims fell to this brutal regime in just 5 years.
True to the form of modern CCP officials, Mao refused to accept responsibility for his policy failures and blamed those opposing them. The subsequent Cultural Revolution to consolidate Mao’s lust for power, including a series of appalling massacres, further devastated the Chinese economy and traditional culture and costing another estimated 20 million lives.
Beside the genocidal death toll, tens of millions of Chinese citizens considered to be enemies of Communism by Mao — property owners, farmers, and various political dissenters — were persecuted by their own government. Constant subjection to public humiliation, incarceration, torture, labour camps, confisaction of property, and sometimes execution or harassment into suicide is how the Chinese Communist Party has historically governed.
The modern regime too has a well-documented history and ongoing pattern of human rights atrocities. Most notably in recent years, the detention of Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang region has brought great international condemnation and shame on Chinese authorities. The Chinese Communist Party refuses to honestly admit their crimes against humanity, or arrogantly tells nations concerned for Chinese residents to mind their own business, in not so many words.
The level of honest, national self-reflection demonstrated by Australia’s independent review into alarming allegations about our soldiers is something the pathologically deceitful Chinese communist regime is incapable of.
If anything, there is great disappointment across the nation that we have rushed to condemn the accused soldiers without a proper trial or the normal standards of evidence. The media & political class have crucified them, assumed their guilt, and paid compensation to their alleged victims before any charges have even been laid.
If there is any truth to Jimmy Barnes’ extraordinarily anti-Austrlaian thought bubble last night, it is that China’s outrageous insult to our Army was merely in tune with the prejudicial conclusions of Scott Morrison and those joining the chorus to shame our diggers.
But he was a simple man indeed last night, and offered no such insights.
Instead he suggested Scott Morrison calling generically for an inquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 virus was what triggered the Chinese aggressors.
“Maybe it was the way we did it. They certainly reacted badly to it. We can’t just expect — if we’re Australians and we say: this is wrong, we’re got to bloody stand up to it — that may not culturally be the same way to speak to the Chinese.”
A coalition of over 120 nations — including China, eventually — backed Scott Morrison’s call for an independent inquiry into Covid-19.
Barnes was right in the tiny detail China did react very badly to the Prime Minister’s push for an independent inquiry, suggesting economic retribution by boycotting Australian wine and beef. The Australian “working class man, working hard to make a living” has been devastated this year by the Wuhan Flu, subsequent government restrictions on trade and movement, and Chinese boycotts.
But Jimmy Barnes thinks Chinese Communist aggression is “maybe” Australia’s fault.
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Dave Pellowe is a Christian writer & commentator, founder of The Good Sauce, convener of the annual Australian Church And State Summit and host of Good Sauce's weekly The Church And State Show, also syndicated on ADH TV. Since 2016 Dave has undertaken the mission of arming Christians to influence culture through events from Perth to Auckland, videos, podcasts and articles published in multiple journals across Australia and New Zealand. [more]
