I’m not a huge fan of Tasmanian Liberal senator Eric Abetz, but he is one of the few Australian politicians to clearly see and publicly speak out against the the Chinese communist regime.
Having myself several times called Xi Xinping’s regime the 21st century’s Nazi Germany, it’s somewhat gratifying to see a fellow Tasmanian in high places come to the same conclusion.
A veteran government backbencher has warned of parallels between modern day China and the rise of Nazi Germany.
Beijing is set to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games amid a growing outcry over its treatment of its Uyghur population, and crackdowns on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
“The similarities with the 1936 Olympics and the emerging 2022 (Winter) Olympics are too big (to ignore),” conservative Liberal Senator Eric Abetz told NCA NewsWire.
“People were very happy with Germany rebuilding their economy, and as a result turned a blind eye to ‘alleged’ concentration camps and persecutions.”
The 1936 Games were a propaganda coup for the Nazi regime. Not only did the Nazis get to parade their “master race” ideology on the world stage, they were able to parlay the international community’s attendance – despite a ban on Jewish athletes – as a tacit endorsement.
Independent Senator Rex Patrick is calling on Australia to boycott the games to avoid repeating that mistake.
“We should not repeat the experience of 1936 the Olympics, which showcased a totalitarian regime already on the path of territorial aggression. Our athletes, and our Australian flag, should not be used as stage props for a regime that in the shadow of the Olympic stadium commits genocide,” he told NCA NewsWire.
“It would be morally wrong for Australia to participate in an event that will be used to legitimise the Chinese Government’s gross violations of human rights,” he said.
Another Liberal MP, former soldier and history graduate Andrew Hastie, last year likewise drew the comparison between appeasement of China today and Germany in the 1930s. Hastie was subsequently banned from China. At the same time, China is summarily detaining Australian citizens as well as launching a trade war widely seen as punishment for criticism of the regime, especially for its lies and cover-ups over the Wuhan virus.
Senator Abetz accuses China of “seeking to tell the rest of the world: you stand up to our brutality, you expose our human rights breaches, and we will make you pay economically”[…]If an international coalition was formed to counter China, it “would have nowhere to go”, Senator Abetz argues.
But, just as Germany and Soviet Russia had their useful idiots, China has no shortage of apologist Quislings, especially in the ranks of academia.
Sam Roggeveen from the Lowy Institute says “China is so big and important to the global community that it is almost impossible to see any kind of global coalition coming together to contain it”.
“But China doesn’t have ambitions for global conquest. And in any case, nuclear weapons would always constrain such ambitions,” he said.
Except for their slogan, “Without Haste. Without Fear. We Conquer the World.”
Which the communist dictatorship is increasingly backing with action. From soft diplomacy – buying influence around the world with Xi’s “Belt and Road Initiative” – to naked aggression in the South China Sea.
Claiming that China has no global ambitions is the sort of idea that, as Orwell said, is so blindly stupid that only the intelligentsia could believe it.
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