In a world where craziness seems to compete for attention, it’s easy to focus on the immediate and become complacent about the dormant.
The media rushes from a three month obsession with Chinese meddling, to blanket coverage of coronavirus and then on to the perpetual fake news associated with Donald Trump.
It’s as if they think you can only concentrate on one thing at a time.
That one thing of course, being what they want you to focus on.
We now know the media will ignore ( or censor) what they don’t want you to know more about.
Perhaps you recall back in January 2015, some Islamic fanatics stormed the HQ of a French satirical magazine and slaughtered 12 people.
The victims crime was working for an outlet that dared publish images of Mohammed.
Apparently we were all Charlie Hebdo back then, marching for freedom of speech, expression and tolerance.
Why that particular event triggered millions to stand up and be counted is unknown.
We’d previously seen hundreds of atrocities committed by fundamentalists in the name of Islam and many of the newly minted Charlie Hebdo’s were happy to rationalise them all away.
Some blamed the West for foreign policy, some parroted the scripted lines about ‘the religion of peace’ (while knowing next to nothing about Islamic history).
Still others called for a form of Islamic appeasement as some sort of cultural tactic to ‘build understanding’.
It was all BS - because you cannot negotiate or rationalise with a terrorist prepared to commit the most heinous brutality in the name of their religion.
Then it all got too hard for anyone to deal with so the government stopped talking about the problem, the media pretty much stopped covering the problem and the punters presumed the problem had all gone away.
Unfortunately the problem off Islamic fundamentalism and the fanatics behind it haven’t gone away.
They haven’t even gone dormant.
Since Charlie Hebdo, there has been an average of one terrorist attack, attributed to Islamic fundamentalists every single week.
They have taken place in every corner of the world, including here in Australia.
Just last week, a French school teacher was beheaded because he dared to discuss the concept of free speech and expression, His crime was to use a picture of Mohammed as an example, even though he gave every Muslim student the opportunity to leave.
There was little outcry over the killing, no global march of solidarity….just another victim of the forgotten fundamentalism taking root across the world.
A couple of months ago, a jihadi video, urging sneak arson attacks to create bushfires in Australia was uncovered.
The aim was to strike fear in the populace and cripple ‘disbelieving governments’
While the world is distracted by the endless pressing demands of today, the forgotten fundamentalists continue their plans to destroy us and our way of life.
Cory Bernardi is the author of seven books and has been a member of the Australian rowing team, a publican, an investment portfolio manager and spent nearly 14 years as an Australian Senator.
Australia is being let down by a government that doesn't know what to do or how to do it. The pressure of underperformance is starting to show and we are all paying the price.
The Prime Minister has a delicate balancing act ahead of him. He needs to muscle up to China while re-establishing important trade markets for our products.
