Hawki:

Is it fair to say that I believe a combination of these things? That, no, I don't think every Australian is a racist, but combined with the rise/return of One Nation (apparently we're now being swamped by Muslims rather than Chinese), with racist slurs written on toilet room doors at uni (not the biggest issue in the world, but one I found off-putting), coupled with how about 47% of Australians want a Muslim ban according to a recent poll (despite the fact that Muslims make up around 2% of the population, and events like the Lindt Cafe siege, while tragic, are relatively minor in terms of loss of life, and very rare occurrences), coupled with Australia having a history of racism (goldfields attacks on the Chinese, White Australia Policy, Aborigines couldn't vote until 1962, etc.), then, yeah.

Pointing out racism and acknowledging it exists isn't the same as painting everyone with the same brush.

Australian bugbear isn't so much with race and religiosity as it is with otherness, which is arguably worse. For example ... most Australians have no problem with Muslims born in Australia. They predominantly have a problem with Muslims in other countries. If you asked what those 47% of people think about 2nd or 3rd generation Australians who happen to be Muslim, most of them would probably shake their head and say they don't care. Only some of them will nod and say they do have a problem with them as well.

Hence why we have openly Muslim politicians in the House of Reps despite <2% of Australians are Muslims. It's how Australian that Muslim can be, not that they're Muslims.

So it's not really racism, it's 'otherness' (which, as I said above, may be worse) ... and frankly most Australians know the White Australia policy was a failure of government that kind of coupled the worst fears of being outside the protection of Empire and being a white colony in Asia.

http://www.news.com.au/national/federal-election/why-its-perfect-timing-for-a-muslim-woman-in-parliament/news-story/05bac34ecb39edb96fda23003187c97a

Addendum_Forthcoming:
Australian bugbear isn't so much with race as it is with otherness

Do you have any evidence for that?

Nazulu:

Others go by numbers.

I see those videos and raise you:

https://debunkingdenialism.com/2015/12/12/how-anti-immigration-activists-misuse-rape-statistics/

https://contrarian.live/2016/05/

Like I said, there's contradictory interpretations. I'm in no position to make declarations on Sweeden myself, and based on everything that's come out recently, I can't make any sound conclusions in this area.

Nazulu:

It's not even being "swamped" or stats, it's the fact that this creepy ideology likes to sneak up on groups on people and explode or do other horrifying things. You just don't know when or where it will spring up, and no one wants to give it a chance. Now don't get me wrong, I believe a lot of fears hear are irrational, but a lot isn't.

Yeah, okay, but anyone can easily be exposed to extremist ideology. The Internet is a thing after all.

I'm not saying that radicalization isn't a potential issue, but so far, Australia hasn't suffered much in the way of radicalization, nor is it making its way towards a "Muslim state" (if anything, we're a predominantly secular country).

Nazulu:
As for Hanson, I haven't done anywhere near enough research on her, but I don't agree at all with that paranoid remark. However, when I saw a protestor group claiming she's racist for her concerns about Muslims, she did look like the only one there with any sense when she said they weren't a race.

Well, Hanson's right in that Muslims aren't a race. But on the other hand, Hanson's always been against multi-culturalism, immigration, Aboriginal land rights, etc. When you're against Asians in the fear of being "swamped" by them, when you're against Africans coming in because "we're bringing in people from South Africa at the moment. There's a huge amount coming into Australia, who have diseases; they've got AIDS. They are of no benefit to this country whatsoever; they'll never be able to work," or that "ethnic diversity" (among other things) "has seen our country's decline."

Is Pauline Hanson racist? In my view, yes, to an extent. It's redundant to simply paint her as one, but I find a lot of what she says to be alarmist, and without good backing.

Do you have any articles or video's to expand on this? I would really appreciate it. If you don't want to that's fine too. I've been meaning to look into that more myself.

Not off the top of my head. I mean, the issue of Aboriginal poverty and health has been around longer than I've been alive, so there's a plenthora on that. The issue of Aboriginal recognition in the constitution and whether Australia Day should be moved/abolished are more recent. I'm in favour of the former, more on the fence for the latter.

Nazulu:

Edit: Are we discussing this in the wrong thread?

Yeah, probably. I'm honestly surprised a mod hasn't come yet.

Nazulu:

Do you have any evidence for that?

Things like the citizen's test?

https://www.border.gov.au/Trav/Citi/pathways-processes/Citizenship-test

I highly encourage people to take a test run of the old one ... apparently a question concerning cricket might end your eligibility...

StatusNil:
Now this is just blatantly Australocentric reporting! What about the poor people of Iceland, who get hit with a 24% increase? What did they ever do to deserve that? If playing in bands with Bjork is such a crime, only half of them ever did!

Source: https://techraptor.net/content/steam-prices-increasing-australia-due-10-sales-tax

(Yes, another example of rampant Australocentrism there as well!)

Having recently been to Reyjavik, I feel modestly qualified to say that EVERYTHING IN ICELAND IS RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE, not just video games.

Seriously, people warned me about how expensive Japan was, but with a relatively weak Yen, it wasn't bad for an American tourist at all. But from books to clothing to souvenirs to liquor to the inevitable packs of volcanic salt that were seemingly sold in every shop that might ever see a tourist, I don't think I saw anything in Iceland that wasn't a good two and a half to four times as expensive as one would expect a comparable item to be in the U.S..

(For the record, a great many things have to be imported to Iceland, so this is at least somewhat understandable, and aside from sticker shock, it was very nice. If I ever feel compelled to pay three hundred dollars for a sweater, Iceland will be high on my list.)

StatusNil:
Now this is just blatantly Australocentric reporting! What about the poor people of Iceland, who get hit with a 24% increase? What did they ever do to deserve that? If playing in bands with Bjork is such a crime, only half of them ever did!

Source: https://techraptor.net/content/steam-prices-increasing-australia-due-10-sales-tax

(Yes, another example of rampant Australocentrism there as well!)

Yeah, I believe Iceland has had a tax loophole enabling this, not being an EU country and all that. Funny enough, on g2a.com you will select your sales tax rate from a drop down list of countries. I'm always feeling very Norwegian on that site for some reason :^)

DarthCoercis:

They got 8% of the national vote, a large chunk of that on the back of preference deals that they did with a lot of fringe groups. That's still 3% less than the Greens. Hardly what I'd call a "rise".

Rise, return, whatever, the word doesn't matter. One Nation has representation again.

DarthCoercis:
Pauline is like a cyclone. Pops up every few years, makes a lot of noise then eventually fucks off after doing a bit of damage. Her arrival is always overblown by the media, and has thus far amounted to absolutely nothing.

Actually, I'd say Hanson fell silent for a long period of time before returning. Also, the riots back in the 90s (which were actually more driven by anti-Hanson voters) probably amount to more than a "bit of damage."

DarthCoercis:

A specific uni, I'm guessing? Hardly something you can use to tar an entire nation with.

Macquarie, actually. And when did I "tar an entire nation" with it? I said "coupled." Racist slurs on toilets by themselves aren't a basis for anything.

DarthCoercis:
I saw that poll, and it got less than 900 people responding to it. That's not even remotely close to enough respondents to produce any form of usable or useful data, and any media organisation that used it to make any kind of declarative statement was... disingenuous, at best.

I'd need a source on that. Looking up what I can, I've seen statements that over 1000 recipients responded, that the same poll was released twice in the same year, and got similar results both times. 1000 isn't definitive in of itself, I'll grant you, but coupled with everything else, coupled with the repeated results, I'd still find the results disconcerting.

DarthCoercis:
Show me a country that hasn't got a history of race problems.

You do realize that's a falacious argument right? If all locations share the same problem, ergo the problem isn't worth discussing/addressing?

DarthCoercis:

Also, none of this begins to justify your statement about Australia.

The original statement was "As someone who lives in Oz, I'm not sure if Australia is that much of a "nice country" these days."

Speaking of which:

DarthCoercis:
However, your original post attempted to paint the whole nation with a very broad brush. Your claim that Australia is "not that much of a nice country" is, frankly, wrong.

So, not only are you intentionally misquoting me, but at this point it's coming off as more that I dared to say something non-positive that's the issue.

You're also technically the one making the assertion here, since my original phrase was "I'm not sure," same way I refused to make any declarations about Sweeden. But by proxy your claim that "Australia is not that much of a nice country is wrong," that does suggest that you are making the claim that it is.

You could make a reasonable argument for it being so, but talking about how great something is doesn't tend to be as productive as addressing issues. Just because the crime rate fell in King's Cross due to the lockout laws for instance doesn't mean that the police force stopped doing their job.

DarthCoercis:
Australia is not a racist country, though it does have its share of racist people. Not all of them are white, either, despite current internet beliefs.

To that, it is quite unnecessary for you to "point out racism."

Uh-huh. So, if I ever see someone being verbally abused on public transport, or we get actual tar painting of an entire race/culture, I (and by your argument, everyone else) should just do nothing. I'm tempted to throw in a certain Edmund Burke quote at this point, but you already seem a bit upset already.

Also, I've never seen any widespread belief that racism can't be anti-white despite the occasional fringe claim, and I never made the claim in this thread.

DarthCoercis:
It's pretty obvious to anyone with half a functioning brain. Even those drongos who write or say racist stuff know they're being racist. You also do not need to "acknowledge" that racism exists. Everyone knows that it exists.

Doing something bad, and knowing it's bad, doesn't change the fact that it's bad. If a criminal commits a crime in the knowledge that it's a crime, it doesn't absolve the act. If anything, it makes it worse.

I don't consider racism a crime per se, as long as it doesn't violate EEO (or similar) principles. Still, your line is just bizzare - at this point you seem upset that I've dared to say anything bad about Australia. You seem to take umbrage at the very idea of acknowledging that racism exists, when your very next line is "everyone knows it exists." So, it's okay to say a problem exists, but not okay to state that it exists. Uh-huh. Great line of thought.

DarthCoercis:
You're not "Racism Man", gods-appointed pointer-outer and acknowledger of racism.

...the hell are you on about?

I'm tempted to joke that you're not Darth Vader either, but that's not going to solve anything. I'm also tempted to point out that I never once claimed a divine mandate or moral high ground, but that's not going to help either. All I can say is if we went from phrases such as:

"As someone who lives in Oz, I'm not sure if Australia is that much of a "nice country" these days."

To:

"Pointing out racism and acknowledging it exists isn't the same as painting everyone with the same brush."

To:

"You're not "Racism Man", gods-appointed pointer-outer and acknowledger of racism."

Then, yeah. One of those statements doesn't belong with the others. But in a (possibly vain) attempt to bring you around, I'll redirect you to the second quote and rephrase it as:

"Pointing out Islam has a violent ideology doesn't mean that all Muslims are violent."

"Pointing out that crime exists in (insert city of choice here) doesn't mean that the city as a whole is crime-ridden."

"Pointing out that women suffer from domestic violence doesn't mean that all men are thugs."

It's actually quite easy to discuss an issue, acknowledge an issue, and possibly work to alleviate an issue, without asserting that everyone is complicit with the issue.

Or maybe you really are Darth Vader and it's either blowing up planets or nothing, I dunno. 0_0

Well. Guess I'm never buying another PC game from anywhere other than G2A.

pearcinator:
Makes it more worthwhile to buy off Gog.com now.

I need a reason to get away from the hellhole that is Steam and Valve's shady practices of recent years. Steam games were just...cheaper though. Gotta get the bargains. Hopefully now this will make it match Gog.com prices so I can buy from them :)

This sounds like a national tax on digital goods thing, gog might end up getting it too. While I really like gogs business practices, I doubt they will want to eat a 10% tax on everything... then again they do practice region free pricing so, I guess we shall see.

Hawki:

1) Are we in danger of being "swamped" by Muslims?

2) Has there been an upsurge of terrorist activity in Australia related to Islamic extremism?

I'd argue that the solution to both questions is "no." Again, Muslims in Australia make up about 2.2% of the population. Heck, there's more Buddhists living in the country (2.5%). I'm more worried about Islamic than Buddhist extremism (and yes, the latter does exist), but again, taking Australia in isolation, I haven't seen anything that would justify any of the extreme measures that some have called for.

Back in the 1990s, Hanson warned that Australia was at risk of being "swamped" by Asians. In the 2010s, ask yourself, has that happened?

Nazulu:
As for the past, it's the past, and times have changed a lot, and every country has some horrible events throughout their history.

Okay, but the legacy of the past is still felt. There's far too many issues with Australia's Aboriginal population, ranging from the physical (life expectancy), to legal (constitutional recognition) to cultural (the Australia Day debate) to simply say "yep, all in the past."

Okay... for starters, while racism exists in Australia, it's important to put it into context. Hate crimes in Australia are going doen, and they werrn't high to begin with. Moreover what constitutes a 'hate crime' in Australia is far more comprehrnsive, and include far more groups under its representation than most of the West.

The problem specifically in Aboriginal communities is economic. Australia is the most urbanised society on Earth. On the least densely populated country on Earth. There is very few means to economically bolster private enterprise in many of these communities and many of the kids are just flat out better to simply leave these Aboriginal communities to look for work and further education in cities.

That's the only current means to get ahead since the end of the mining boom is going to Sydney or Melbourne.

So much so people call Australia a 'two-speed economy' ... continued growth in financial sectors, growth in legal services, etc. Market contraction of other big industry. This problem isn't restrained to Aboriginal land lease communities... but even once successful small trading and transportation hub towns tht once thrived off commercial enterprise by simply being in between variou heavy manufactory and farming sectors.

There are systemic problems. Calling it racism alone won't help.

BX3:
Why does Australia's government hate fun so much?

The Australian government is concerned that video games are distracting their youth from important activities, such as going into the Outback and battling giant venomous spiders the size of cars.

I mean, it's like you WANT the giant venomous spiders to win!