Who put that racist lout of a mouth Kate Hopkins on Australian TV

July 19, 2021 â€" 7.30pm

The connection between the just-banished Katie Hopkins and the late, great, Muhammad Ali is not â€" I grant you â€" an obvious one.

After all, while Hopkins is an infamous British blowhard who has risen to notoriety for saying appallingly racist things and doing outrageous things â€" and has just had her visa cancelled for her trouble â€" Ali was an American boxer who fought racism and won in inspirational fashion.

Katie Hopkins mocking the safety rules upon her arrival in Australia. Credit:Instagram: @_katie_hopkins_

But here’s the link. Ali was one of the first international public figures to work out the market value of unpopularity, when â€" at the age of 19 â€" he came across the professional wrestler Gorgeous George, a flamboyant showman whose schtick was to have the mob hate him by emphasising his effeminacy while making outrageous predictions. Ali was in a Las Vegas radio station in 1961 when Gorgeous George told the announcer that if he lost to Classy Freddie Blassie the next night, “I’ll crawl across the ring and cut my hair off! But that’s not gonna happen because I’m the greatest wrestler in the world!”

Ali turned up the next night.

“I saw 15,000 people comin’ to see this man get beat,” he would recount. “And his talking did it. I said, ‘This is a gooood idea!’” Later, in the locker room, the old wrestler gave Ali life-altering advice. “A lot of people will pay to see someone shut your mouth. So keep on bragging, keep on sassing and always be outrageous.”

Ali was away. He could particularly bait white racists, and they would pay huge money in the hope of seeing him beaten and knocked out. He rarely was. He became an international black hero and inspired other black people to speak up against racists. Bravo.

Katie Hopkins? Not so much. Phillip Adams once said of Pauline Hanson that she is “little more than a fart from the deep colon of the Australian psyche”, and Hopkins is a rough British equivalent, giving expression to Britain’s worst thoughts, from sneering at the obese and those with disabilities to likening migrants crossing the Mediterranean to “cockroaches” and “feral humans”, to talking about the virtues of â€" and I am not making this up â€" the “final solution” for Muslims. On and on. With her controversy, so grew her fame and pulling power, to the point that it was worth big bucks to her and the network to put her on a reality show like Big Brother â€" as she would bring those who loved her extreme views, and those who wanted to see her humiliated.

Mercifully, Hopkins’ behaviour was so appalling on arrival in Australia â€" criticising our lockdown laws, and openly flouting them, placing in danger the lives of the staff in the hotel she was quarantined in â€" that public outrage grew to the extent that the federal government has cancelled her visa.

Great. But that doesn’t alter the questions that still need to be asked.

1. With some 30,000 Australians desperate to get home for the past year, and only limited plane seats available, how the hell did a woman with a track-record like hers get to the front of the queue? In announcing the cancellation of her visa, Minister Karen Andrews said on Sunday: “It is despicable that anyone would behave in such a way that puts our health officials and community at risk.” Minister, her behaviour since arriving is entirely consistent with her modus operandi for the past 15 years. How is this a surprise to you and those who allowed her in, in the first place?

2. What is it about us, as a people, that while we have overcome our cultural cringe in so many areas â€" now not automatically believing that foreign fashions, actors, writers, architects, entertainers et al, are automatically better than our own â€" we still have an enduring cultural cringe at the very top, and the very bottom? We Australians still think we must have a foreign Head of State, because we can’t do it ourselves; and we still think we have to send out for racist nutters to put on television when we already breed our own by the bucketful.

3. Surely the Australian networks themselves have a public duty not to provide people like Hopkins with a platform? While she has been chased off every major platform in Britain and elsewhere in the world â€" including Twitter â€" how is it that she can still get regular gigs in this country? For it is not just Channel Seven that wanted to give a slot to someone advocating genocide for Muslims. She has recently appeared on S.A.D. Sky News After Dark, and on Channel Nine â€" owners of this masthead, blah, blah â€" where she has appeared on the Today Show and been puffily profiled on 60 Minutes.

Ali showed that the model of saying outrageous things and collecting a tithe as the mob (of lovers and haters) gathers, works. He clearly harnessed the hate to make the world a better place. In the case of Hopkins, it has been quite the reverse, and the networks know that. When, in the future, they can’t help themselves and try to harness hate for profit, they need to be called out early and strongly. We are watching you bastards.

But we will refuse to watch any further when you cross that line.

Twitter: @Peter_Fitz

Peter FitzSimons is a journalist and columnist with The Sydney Morning Herald.

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