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What sort of government is too cowardly to stand up to naked fascism? Ours

Turnbull's transformation from cosmopolitan forward thinking leader to craven coward making nice with the bullies is now complete.

Andrew P Street

Here's a statement that seems weird to have to explicitly outline in 2017, but here we are: fascism is a bad thing that leads to horrible consequences for human lives.

While Allied countries like Britain and Australia and the United States take every opportunity to paint their involvement in World War II as a righteous battle between good and evil, one thing that everyone likes to quietly brush over is how much everyone was falling over themselves to not do anything to annoy Hitler in the years leading up to the invasion of Poland.

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Turnbull soft on Trump

While other world leaders take a strong stand against Donald Trump's anti-immigration policy, our PM has tried to skirt the issue.

After all, he simply wanted to rid Germany of Jews and acquire bits of Czechoslovakia. He had the right to run his country as he wanted, right? 

As the German war machine ramped up in the late 1930s both Britain and the US were perfectly content in refusing to take Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi regime, even when it was clear that those forced to return to Germany had some unspecified horror awaiting them.

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Australia's PM Joseph Lyons, meanwhile, was hanging out with his good pal Benito Mussolini and talking him up to the British government. 

Now, you'd think with the horror of Hitler's Final Solution still in the living memory of people all over the world, that when a populist leader makes a sweeping edict regarding an entire community of his own citizens based upon their religion and ethnicity then it wouldn't be the least bit controversial to say that this is not OK.

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In fact, you might correctly think it was literally the very, very least that any responsible international leader could do.

Currently no one from the Muslim majority countries of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen can enter the US for at least three months, thanks to a sudden new law enacted by President Donald Trump. Quartz have published the entire press release – complete with its many, many amendments – if you're curious about how vague, paranoid hatreds can be effectively and rapidly transformed into dangerous policy. 

Several observers have noted that this list doesn't include certain Muslim majority countries – most notably Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates – with whom Trump still does business, despite their links to terrorist activity and in spite of the fact that presidents are supposed to divest themselves of their business holdings lest there be exactly these sorts of conflicts of interest. 

US residents are reportedly being held at American airports and still more have been refused entry onto planes back to their homeland, where they have houses and businesses and pets and responsibilities. 

World leaders, including US allies, have not been backward in coming forward to suggest this is a terrible idea.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel responded to the edict by literally explaining the Geneva Convention to Trump. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau tweeted that refugees would be welcome in his country. Scotland's first minister Nicola Sturgeon has called for Trump's upcoming diplomatic visit to the UK to be cancelled, and even British Prime Minister Teresa May, being slammed locally as "Teresa the Appeaser", has suggested that Trump suspend the law to help quell the current chaos.

And Australia's leader? Oh, he didn't want to make a fuss. "It's not my job as Prime Minister of Australia to run a commentary on the domestic policies of other countries," he bravely sulked to Sky News. 

So that must have been a different Malcolm Turnbull who seemed pretty damn eager to run commentary on the domestic policies of other countries last March when he hectored Europe over having "allowed their security measures to slip" in the wake of the Brussels attacks, presumably. 

In fact, Malc went further by suggesting that the Trump ban was some sort of backhanded compliment to his own government. "We have here in Australia, border security arrangements which are the envy of the world," he declared. "If others wish to emulate what we're doing, they're welcome to do so."

Treasurer Scott Morrison was similarly full of praise for the policy, comparing it favourably to our own treatment of refugees in complete defiance of international law, such as the 1951 Convention on the Rights of the Refugee, for example, which he and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton have merrily discarded in pursuit of the government's border protection policies.

In other words, in the past 36 hours our government didn't just refuse to criticise the Trump administration for its racist new policies and open dereliction of the rule of law: it has sided with them.

Turnbull's silence is doubtlessly connected with his very reasonable fears that maybe Trump won't honour the US's commitment to take our unwanted refugees held on Manus Island and Nauru – which, given that a lot of said detainees are Muslims from Syria, Iran and other banned countries, seems destined to collapse regardless. 

And sure, Turnbull desperately needs a win on this humiliating matter – but let's be very, very clear about what has just happened. He had an opportunity to unambiguously declare that it's not OK for a nation to institute bans of people based on their religion, and he did not do so.

That this is beyond the ability of our nation's leader is important, because it makes crystal clear to all Australians – particularly those of the Islamic faith, and those who've come across the seas – exactly how strongly Malcolm Turnbull, and the Australian government generally, would be willing to stand up for them.

This isn't shrewd political caution. This is pure cowardice.

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