So, in the wake of the Brereton report detailing 39 murders of innocent Afghans by Australian Defence Forces, the Murdoch media machine has decided to maliciously attack @bobuqsayed, a young queer non-binary Muslim Afghan-Australian writer. They couldn't be more despicable.
It's a malicious attack for a number of reasons, not least of which is the wilful distortion of what Bobuq actually said, which was not to attack veterans accessing mental health but to point out how warped it was that there was no consideration for Afghans and Afghan-Australians
Imagine choosing this time to call them an "unAustralian" for expressing their legitimate grief and fury at the actions of our representatives in their homeland. And these soldiers are the literal representatives of Australia, so yes, we actually all do have to wear that.
Curiously, when an old white man, a soldier of 35 years, expressed the same sentiments on Q&A, saying that war crimes have been part of our military history going back to the Boer War, it's unsurprising, it didn't lead to a spate of articles attacking him. https://twitter.com/QandA/status/1330831531934322696?s=20
I don't want this man to be attacked either, to be clear—but in his question he implies what Bobuq said more explicitly, that this is a deep structural problem going back as far as Australia—I'm just pointing out how racist, queerphobic and Islamophobic this is.
They have loaded these misleading, blown out of proportion, garbage articles with as many "outrageous" (read: fabulous, stunning) photos of Bobuq as they could, to hate-bate their conservative readers, while piling on the usual rhetoric about ungrateful refugees/immigrants.
Their only hope here is to distract from the undeniable atrocities Australian forces committed in Afghanistan, by playing their usual culture war bullshit, and they (ironically, and awfully) don't care that they're doing it at a young Afghan-Australian's expense.
There have been 4 articles on this in the past 24 hours, taking a 700-word blog post and trying to squeeze as much hate and confusion out of it as possible. There is such a basic failure of literacy at work here that I'm embarrassed on their behalf.
It's basically a rite of passage now if you're brown, black, or Indigenous to be trolled by large sections of our national media. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach as I was talking Bobuq through this yesterday and today. I could coach this shit, the experience is that common.
Listen. Bobuq is a dear friend, a brilliant emerging artist, fierce thinker, and shining light on this Earth. It takes extraordinary courage to stand between two countries and cultures that hate you and defy both in demanding equality, justice, and love for you and your people.
You can follow @OmarjSakr.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: