Normalising Islamophobia: Constructing “permission to hate” through mainstreaming of Islamophobic far-right political discourse

Abstract

The Islamophobia Register Australia and NSW Police Bias Crime Unit show a disturbing amount of Islamophobia and a noticeable increase in hate crimes against Muslims over recent years. This thesis argues that politicians as state actors can enable a climate of hate against the minority group of Muslims through a discourse that is underpinned with Islamophobia, which can lead to racialised and/or Islamophobic hate crimes. I employed Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to investigate political speeches, press releases and interviews of the far-right Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party as an example of extreme politics and the discourse of the Liberal party of Australia as an example of a mainstream political party. This study therefore observed a mainstream-extreme nexus through analysis of the discourse of various Liberal politicians, which resembles Pauline Hanson’s Islamophobic and anti-Muslim rhetoric and policy, showing the mainstreaming of extreme discourse. This research identified four major discursive political strategies (re)producing Islamophobia in ways that shape the social fabric of society and contribute to the normalisation of Islamophobia and thus the rise of anti-Muslim hate crimes. This study observed a mainstream-extreme nexus through the analysis of the discourse of some Liberal politicians, which resembles Pauline Hanson’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and policy proposals, thus showing the mainstreaming of extreme discourse. Such representations of Islam and Muslims contribute to the prevalence and normalisation of Islamophobia in Australia and thus provide a context for anti-Muslim hate crimes. Consequently, the present study highlights a correlation between negative representation of Muslims in Australian political discourse and the rising hate crimes against Muslims in Australia.