Senator Lidia Thorpe is no stranger to attention-seeking behavior, but threatening to burn down Parliament House in support of the Palestinian cause isn’t just attention-seeking.

In my view, it’s incitement. And I would know because I’ve been arrested and charged with incitement for doing far less. Let’s have a listen to what she said.

[From video]

We stand with you every day and we will fight every day and we will turn up every day. And if I have to burn down Parliament House to make a point, I am not there to make friends. I am there to get justice for our people. And I am there to free Palestine from the river to the sea. [End video]

Senator Thorpe has released a statement claiming that her incendiary speech to that gleeful mob of Palestinian

supporters, protesters who appear to be outraged that the killing in Gaza has now stopped. Outraged that the Palestinians are now returning from their refugee camps to begin the arduous process of rebuilding their homes and lives after the war between Israel and Hamas has left Gaza in ruins. And outraged that the handful of surviving hostages who have been held by Hamas for more than 2 years might finally be about to be freed.

She stood in front of that crowd and said what she said. But she claims that her threat to burn down Parliament House was just a figure of speech and not the literal threat that it really did sound like. Well, let’s test that claim by putting her comments into the context of her own political history, the things that she has previously said and done, which should inform how we view the threat that she just made.

And keep in mind also that Senator Thorpe did not make those comments in parliament with the protections of parliamentary privileged. She said what she said at a public protest. So the laws that apply to me and you are also supposed to apply to her in that context, which makes the comparison between what she’s done and what I was charged for saying very, very relevant. Parliamentary privilege does not apply when she’s speaking outside of Parliament.

So the question is, are we about to see yet another double standard with the book being thrown at people like me when I urged others to peacefully stand up against human rights abuses happening here at home in Australia, whilst the authorities tread softly when someone else makes actual violent threats because of things that are happening literally on the other side of the planet.

This isn’t just a gotcha moment against a politician whose views I find objectionable. This is a question of whether we’re going to uphold the expectation that here in this country, our battle of ideas is just that, a battle of ideas expressed in words and in nonviolent forms of protest and yes, including nonviolent forms of civil disobedience, which I do advocate for, or whether we’re going to allow our civilization to devolve at the highest levels of government, no less, into a violent confrontation where all options are on the table.

My name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher project and I help busy people like you to make sense of the nonsense that surrounds us. Now, I am 100% viewer supported. So, if you appreciate what I do here at the Topher project, then please help me to keep going by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. When it comes to protest and even to civil disobedience, well, I did kind of write the book on it in the Australian context. My first book, Good People Break Bad Laws. It’s about law, power, government, human rights, and civil disobedience, and how they interact, or more correctly, how they should interact in the modern age. You’ll find that book, plus my second book, Good Christians Break Bad Laws. This is all about the theology of civil disobedience and the responsibility that Christians have to stand up to the government when it exceeds its legitimate authority.

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All right. Senator Thorpe’s comments have to be taken seriously in light of both her own personal history of inflammatory behavior and also in light of the expelling of the Iranian ambassador because of state-sponsored violence which has been directed against Jews in Australia. Not to mention the targeting of the families of the victims of the October 7th attacks, including blockading a hotel that the families of some of the deceased and captured victims of that attack were staying at in Melbourne.

Rarely does an issue inflame as much violence, threats, and intimidation on Australian soil as what this war in the Middle East has done.

Now, let me be quick to add that the vast majority of pro-Palestine protesters and supporters would not support the use of violence for their cause. But the fact that there are a few, they’re there and they’re looking for excuses for their behavior. That’s one of the reasons why protest organizers, speakers, and especially members of parliament have a responsibility to act and speak in a way that doesn’t give license to those few. For Senator Thorpe to get up in front of a crowd in Melbourne, among whom are going to be people who have previously committed acts of violence or intimidation in the name of the pro-Palestine cause and for her to say, “We stand with you every day and we will fight every day and we will turn up every day and if I have to, I’ll burn down Parliament House to make a point.” She knows who she said that to. She knows what crowd she was in front of.

And this isn’t the first time she’s chosen to use violent imagery in her protests. When she was sworn into the Senate in October 2020, she took that opportunity to raise a black power fist in the Senate and has done so on other occasions as well. This is not an innocent gesture. This stems from the civil rights movement in the US in general, but also the Black Panther Party more specifically, a violent, expressly Marxist political party that sought out violent confrontation, including multiple firefights with police that resulted in casualties on both sides.

Now, it must be said that, as is so often the case, the Black Panthers were also used as an excuse for the government to escalate their own violence as well. This is one of the numerous reasons why I say over and over again that resorting to violence usually means that you’ve instantly lost, at least if you’re the one initiating escalating that violence. In the case of the Black Panthers, the US FBI and LAPD especially targeted them at multiple levels, ultimately including assassinations of some of their key members. And I reject and condemn that use of violence also.

But when a modern-day senator repeatedly raises that black power fist inside Parliament House and speaks of a black sovereignty movement, that’s not an innocent gesture. And Senator Thorpe’s decision to use that gesture must be viewed in much the same way as when the National Socialist Network kitties have their pajama parties and raise their Hitler salute. It means something. It speaks of their ideology and the methods that they view as legitimate ways of pursuing their ideology. And when Senator Thorpe raises that fist, she’s telling everyone that she views violence as an accepted method of struggle. That’s what that salute means.

And while we’re here, can I just make the point that there is no real world difference between black supremacists, white supremacists, Marxists, and Islamists. They’re all exactly the same self-supremacists ideology with different wrappings. If you take a speech by the Ayatollah of Iran and swap the word Islam for the word white, it sounds exactly like something Thomas Sowell would say. If a Marxist were to swap bourgeoisie for immigrants, blame the immigrants, that sound exactly like the pajama party boys. And again, the rhetoric of the black power movement, it was identical to the rhetoric of the white power movement. All you have to do is just swap the terms.

The adherence of all of these ideologies are indistinguishable from each other. The bottom line is they’re all based on a hatred for and a desire to subjugate and oppress some other group of people. Who the other is changes depending on who the believer is. But the hate that doesn’t change. The adherence to all of these ideologies, well, they have way more in common with each other than differences. They are united by their hatred of others and their love of self above all else.

If you think I’m drawing a long bow, Senator Thorpe resigned from the Greens Party because they weren’t extreme enough for her. She resigned because she didn’t believe the voice to Parliament, which the Australian population roundly rejected, went far enough. She advocated and still advocates for a black sovereignty movement, very much in the vein of the Black Panthers of the 1960s and ’70s, which in my view confirms that she sees the world entirely through a racial lens.

And of course, who can forget Senator Lidia Thorpe and her utterly graceless behavior when King Charles and Queen Camila visited Australia?

She was swearing and accusing King Charles of committing a genocide for things that happened long before he was born. She had to be removed by security. Now, given that her comments in the context in which they were made were, in my opinion, an endorsement of violence, the question becomes, what should be done about it? Well, I’m a free speech absolutist, so I don’t think that anything should be done from a law enforcement point of view. Rather, I think that we should mock her, as I’m doing my best to do in this video.

We should call her out for her hateful ideology and let her destroy her own reputation, or what’s left of it, as more and more people come to the conclusion that she is not playing with a full deck of cards inside her head. But the Australian and federal state and federal governments are not free speech absolutists. And the Victorian government, to cite just one random example, saw fit to arrest and pursue me for more than two years with criminal incitement charges because I wrote posts on Facebook encouraging people to peacefully attend anti-lockdown protests. I was explicitly non-violent. The police admitted that in their own prosecution, but I was arrested for Facebook posts because they incited people to peacefully breach the orders of the chief chief health officer in Victoria at the time.

Interestingly, the Victoria Police continued to prosecute me all the way up until Daniel Andrews announced his resignation. After that resignation, at the very next court appearance, Victoria Police dropped the criminal charges against me. Hm. That’s the standard they’ve set. Politically motivated criminal incitement charges for calling upon people to engage in peaceful protest. In that context, what should be the punishment for people who threaten actual violence whilst at a protest?

Again, I’m not calling for a punishment. I’m a free speech absolutist. I’m just calling out the double standard. As of this moment, neither the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, nor the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Penny Wong, have condemned Senator Thorpe’s comments. Instead, a spokeswoman for the government said, “Protest is an important part of our democracy, but it also must be respectful of others. There is no place for violence, hatred, or abuse.” After more than 2 years of conflict, hostages held, and a devastating loss of civilian life, the Australian government welcomes the first phase of the plan to bring peace to Gaza. And I agree. Sure. But the double standard remains.

To be fair, other members of the Labour Party have been more explicit in calling Senator Thorpe out, with the Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke saying the comments were not acceptable and that the concept of wanting to inflame, push the temperature up, is not what anyone should be doing least of all a member of parliament. Again, I agree, but I don’t think he goes nearly far enough. A member of parliament just used a violent black supremacist salute and spoke of burning down the parliament in front of a group that she knows contains at least a handful of people who are willing to engage in at the very least intimidation, and probably violence.

That sounds an awful lot like incitement to me. And again, I don’t think her words should be punishable, but under the current laws, they are in my opinion because what she said in the context of who she is and who she was talking to, well, that was, in my opinion, incitement to violence.

Okay, sure. Perhaps I’m being petty, but you’ll have to forgive me for that. Because until I get an apology for the stress that my family were put through, maybe a refund for the legal costs that my family had to bear after I was charged with criminal incitement for my words urging peaceful protest against lockdowns until that happens, I’m going to view with deep cynicism the silence of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Senator Penny Wong, and the mealy-mouthed responses of other Labor Party members.

If there’s going to be a law, it should be applied equally to us all. And if it’s not applied equally to all, then the question can rightly be asked: why isn’t the law being applied to her? Well, maybe it will be, but as of this moment, it hasn’t been. I could speculate about what the answer to that question might be why not but if I were to do that in this free country of Australia, I’m afraid my words might get me into more legal trouble that I can’t afford. So, I think it might be best to leave this topic here.

My name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher Project, and I help busy people like you to make sense of the nonsense that surrounds us. I am 100% viewer supported. So, please help me to keep the Topher Project going by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And if you appreciate my no-nonsense videos, then you’ll love my no-nonsense books about government, law, human rights, and civil disobedience, which you’ll find along with my DVD of Battleground Melbourne, and my t-shirts and hoodies at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com.

Thank you for watching to the end. Please like, subscribe, comment. Do you think Senator Thorpe is ever likely to be held accountable to the laws that apply to little people like you and I?

And as always, think free.