Neo-Nazi threats against Lidia Thorpe reveal ugly side of politics

The longstanding treatment of Lidia Thorpe by the political and media class exposes the difficulty of being an Indigenous woman with strong and articulated views, writes Dr Jennifer Wilson.

THIS WEEK Independent Victorian Senator Lidia Thorpe was threatened by a self-styled neo-Nazi in a video posted on X (formerly Twitter).

The masked man made racist statements, burned the Aboriginal flag and performed a Nazi salute.

Senator Thorpe says she has been unable to live in her home for four months because of earlier threats and claims that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants her silenced because of her strong opposition to the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. The Senator says she cannot rely on the police protection ordered for her because police kill her people.

The Senator is a vigorous campaigner against the Voice, which she believes will result in her people ceding sovereignty, something Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have never done. Thorpe also considers the Constitution to be a racist document that has brought only misery and pain to her people.

Support for Lidia Thorpe in the wake of Nazi abuse

Following violent threats online, Senator Lidia Thorpe has now received vitriol on social media after standing up for herself.

Thorpe says:

“The Parliament is supreme over an Indigenous Voice. And I think that’s the crux of it right there. We want a treaty so that we can have real power.”

It’s Thorpe's position that the proposed Voice is “an easy way to fake progress” without making any real changes and that the referendum itself has provided a platform for the unfettered expression of racism, encouraging attacks on First Nations people and causing escalating harm and division.

Thorpe is not alone in her assessment, as ABC journalist Patricia Karvelas observed:

“Indigenous Australians have been dragged through the mud by the very nature of the debate. It has been horrifying and a far cry from the nationally unifying moment some had hoped for. That there are negative impacts of colonisation is not contestable — the way forward to repair the damage is.”

Thorpe has for some time now been subjected to ongoing and intense criticism over what many see as her “inappropriate” behaviour, as I noted earlier this year after the Senator blocked the progress of a Mardi Gras float in protest at police participation in the parade.

I wrote:

The criticisms of Thorpe are not original. They have been used against women who in some way challenge the status quo for decades. Her protest was attention-seeking, entirely personal, selfish, inappropriate, untimely, in the wrong place, destructive to others, pointless, the actions of a child, a symptom of her allegedly dodgy mental health, out of control, dangerous, damaging to her cause, damaging to her people — the sickeningly familiar litany of trivialisation, infantilisation and abuse that stifles the message by discrediting the messenger, with the added slings and arrows of racism.

Mr Albanese has more than once offered his own interpretation of the Senator’s behaviour. In April 2023, Thorpe was involved in an altercation outside a Melbourne strip club with a man who called her a “racist dog". Albanese attributed her vigorous response to alleged “health issues” that caused her to behave, in his terms, “unacceptably".

Leave Lidia alone: Outrage over protest has gone too far

No matter what one's opinion is of Senator Lidia Thorpe, the public condemnation of her Mardi Gras protest is unjustified and out of control.

“These are not the actions of anyone who should be participating in society in a normal way, let alone a senator,” Albanese said.

Strong and condemnatory words indeed from the PM but surprisingly, he made no similar judgement of the men hurling racist insults.

However, he did go on to warn that:

“Lidia needs to be very conscious of the way in which this behaviour has been seen. They are repeat exercises now.”

Men with power (and unfortunately some women) have long shamed women for what they consider to be “inappropriate behaviour” regardless of circumstances. Shame is a powerful tool of control. It positions the shamer as virtuous and belonging while excluding the shamed as an outsider who either doesn’t know the rules or is incapable of observing them.

It is imprudent of Albanese as a male white leader to impugn the mental stability of the Senator, a leading member of the Blak Sovereign Movement which holds the following position on the Voice:

We, the Blak Sovereign Movement, have been consistent in our opposition to constitutional recognition and the Voice to Parliament. We are First Nations Elders, activists, academics and community workers that have been united by our work on the frontlines of the battle against colonisation, our commitment to Truth-telling and the value we place in our Sovereignty over this land.

However, his criticisms of the Senator feed well into bourgeois values of decorous behaviour that demand propriety no matter what the circumstances, especially from women. Men are far more likely to get away with transgressing this code of manners, and their transgression is tolerantly regarded as nothing worse than a spot of larrikinism.

It isn’t difficult to see how Thorpe has come to hold Albanese responsible for the latest attack on her. While I doubt she believes he actually organised it, she does hold him responsible for creating and exacerbating a climate in which ongoing attacks on a prominent Blak woman can be perpetrated without much consequence, other than the woman involved being impugned and admonished for her allegedly ill-mannered and intemperate response.

Thorpe has little if no faith in white institutions. To be honest, I don’t have that much myself.