Othering is about separating human groups into the familiar and the different, family and foreigner, migrants and locals, us and them. It’s a way of excluding, marginalising and denigrating people. Politically, othering is an ancient strategy which has been particularly useful for populist leaders seeking to distract or unite their followers.
Race is a nonsense, biologically speaking. We are all one species, humans, and this has been known for a long time now. Yes, there are cultural differences, but in the ways that matter, the flaws and positive characteristics of human beings are pretty much universal, regardless of language, skin colour or hat preference.
In recent weeks, coded or blatant attacks on migrants from the Trump Republicans have become their primary ‘policy’ position, along with economy-shredding tariffs and a wholesale attack on the rights of women. If you watch Trump’s rallies, the enthusiasm of the crowd rises tangibly when the racist insults and threats start. That’s why most of the people are there.
If in doubt, punch down
MAGA is a political movement in which the dark, bigoted, and idiotic side of humanity is allowed full rein, amplified massively by antisocial media and more old-fashioned lies and propaganda via print, television and talkback radio.
The hard right across the world is at one with this project, from France to Austria, and from India to Australia.
When your actual policies benefit no one but the ultra-rich, hatred and racism is an extremely useful, universal binder. When ordinary people are suffering as a result of the climate and economy-destroying machinations of corporations, and in the absence of any kind of ethical purity, imaginary racial purity is the go-to solution.
As Adolf Hitler wrote, ‘All who are not of a good race are chaff.’ The nonsense of ‘pure blood’ can be used to excuse anything. If in doubt, punch down. Just ask Peter Dutton.
For the unscrupulous politician, it doesn’t really matter who the ‘other’ is – Africans, Hispanics, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Muslims, Jews, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Italians, Protestants, Catholics, homosexuals, gypsies, trade unionists, Sneetches (with or without stars), leftie political commentators – the list is endlessly malleable, because the other is an imaginary construct.
In America, the last time anyone tried what Donald Trump is now proposing to do to non-pink migrants was in Georgia in 2011.
When the undocumented Hispanics were deported, most of the state’s fruit and vegetable harvest rotted on the ground, because no one else was prepared to do the work.
America has always relied on the desperate and rights-less to do the work that keeps the country running, while also profiting from their taxes. The rest of the world is no different.
Migrants have a lot to answer for
In New York Harbour, the bronze poem beneath the Statue of Liberty says, ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’
Donald Trump’s mother Mary MacLeod was a migrant to the United States, as was his grandfather and grandmother, and wives Ivana and Melania. His propagandist-in-chief Rupert Murdoch was born in Australia. Fellow traveller Elon Musk was born in South Africa, and Trump’s senior political advisor and fellow racist Stephen Miller is the descendant of people who fled to the USA from anti-Jewish pogroms in Belarus and Russia.
This is the same man who stood on the Trump stage at Madison Square Garden the other night and said, ‘America is for Americans and Americans only.’
By accident or design, these words are remarkably similar to the slogan that was plastered over many German-occupied countries during World War II: Nur für Deutsche (only for Germans). Similar signage targeting ‘others’ was used in South Africa during apartheid, and in the United Kingdom, barring Irish and blacks.
Ancient history?
As former US president and Republican messiah Ronald Reagan once put it, ‘Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction.’
In his final speech, the Gipper also said this; ‘You can go to live in France, but you will never be a Frenchman. You can live in Germany, but that won’t make you German. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become American.’
It’s now going to take a thumping victory from Reagan’s lifelong political enemies over Donald Trump to maintain this reality, and prevent a return to the dark ages.
Unfortunately the rest of the world doesn’t get a vote.
‘Othering and exclusionary’
Here in Australia, there has just been a small but notable victory against othering, with a Federal Court decision on Friday going firmly against Pauline Hanson in her case with fellow senator Mehreen Faruqi, following a 2022 tweet telling Faruqi to ‘piss off back to Pakistan’.
Justice Angus Stewart traced the origins of this statement and decades of similar remarks from Hanson to the racist, anti-immigrant and nativist White Australia Policy, once championed by Labor.
Wounded from her party’s drubbing in the recent Queensland state election, Pauline Hanson is appealing the decision.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning film-maker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
