The Coalition’s Newest Senator Shared Far-Right And Anti-Muslim Videos On Facebook
His representative says he's just trying to "generate debate".
The Liberal party’s newest senator has been caught repeatedly sharing far-right, anti-Muslim videos on his personal Facebook page, in a worrying and depressing start to the new parliamentary year.
When parliament resumed today, Jim Molan, a former army officer and one of the architects of Operation Sovereign Borders, was sworn in to replace dual citizen Fiona Nash. Less than six hours later, The Sydney Morning Herald broke the news that Molan has previously shared multiple videos by Britain First — the same organisation Donald Trump himself apologised for retweeting upon discovering just how racist they were.
The videos Molan shared are publicly viewable on his personal Facebook account, and feature false and deceiving information apparently designed to manipulate people into fearing Muslims.
A screenshot from Jim Molan’s Facebook page, showing him sharing a video from Britain First.
One clip features a group of young men kicking at a police vehicle with the caption “VIDEO: FRENCH POLICE ENTER MUSLIM NO GO AREA!”, apparently referencing the totally disproven far-right rumour that some areas of European cities are run by “Sharia law” with no regard for local rules.
Another video captioned “Muslim thugs beat young girl in Holland!”, shared by Molan in March 2017, has also been demonstrated to have nothing to do with Muslims. Multiple commenters pointed this out to Molan at the time, writing “this is untrue. It needs to be taken down” and “we are a bit racist assuming this is true before checking facts. Turns out to be fake. Please remove post”, but Molan did not respond.
He did, however, respond to another comments left on the post around the same time. One comment read “charming. And we’re meant to be tolerant, accepting and welcoming of this ‘breed’ in our country.” Molan replied “unbeleivable” [sic].
The Herald contacted Molan about the videos today and he had a pretty different response to Trump. A spokesperson for Molan said that “the senator often posts material in order to generate debate. The sharing of any post does not indicate endorsement”.
Even if we (generously) accept that excuse, the failure to remove these posts after multiple commenters have pointed out that they’re full of racist lies is real shit.
In an interview with the ABC this afternoon Molan said he found accusations that the videos were racist “deeply offensive”
.@Jim_Molan standing by his decision to post videos from Britain First last year. He tells @ElizaBorrello the videos are not racist – "I've put my life on the line for Islamic countries … for people to say this is racist I find deeply offensive"
— Stephen Dziedzic (@stephendziedzic) February 5, 2018
And as for the Coalition, who’ve quite literally endorsed this guy as a representative… well, all of these posts have been publicly accessible to anyone who thought to look for them for almost a year. That means our government is either seriously lacking attention to detail, or doesn’t see a problem here. Neither option is comforting.