Prove that climate change is a farce (failing). Prove that COVID-19 is a conspiracy (failed). Discredit Bruce Pascoe's identity and historical information.
No system that forces us to use more expensive green power, and less reliable, will save us money. The only answer is to stop this whole madness now.
„
~ Andrew Bolt, 2016
Andrew Bolt (September 26, 1959) is an Australian alt-right political commentator. He has worked at the Herald Sun and Sky News Australia as well as serving as the host of The Bolt Report. Bolt has received criticisms for racist views, historical revisionism, and COVID denialism.
He has downplayed the effects of the Stolen Generations, stating that the removal policy was not racially motivated and was not performed with genocidal intent.[1] He has also ignored any historical evidence by professor Robert Manne contradicting his narrative.[2]
In 2002, he tried to defame a magistrate named Jelena Popovic for allegedly hugging two drug traffickers and letting them walk free. Bolt lost the case and Popovic was awarded $246,000 damages for defamation after suing Bolt. Bolt's reporting was described by a judge as "at worst, dishonest and misleading and at best, grossly careless".[3]
The federal court case Eatock v Bolt saw a court rule that Bolt had violated the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 by publishing a series of articles claiming that certain left-wing Aboriginal figures were not really Aboriginal.[4]
Bolt has argued against Australian immigration laws, claiming that immigration is changing Australian culture and referring to it as "colonization".[5] This aligns with the far-right conspiracy theory known as the "Great Replacement".
Bolt has shown to display signs of ableism and climate change denialism as well.[6] In one such example from 2019, Bolt mocked Swedish activist Greta Thunberg for her autism and argued that her views should not be taken seriously because of it.[7]
Bolt tried to discredit professor Bruce Pascoe's claims of aboriginal identity and dismissed his book, Dark Emu as Australia's "greatest literary hoax" based on information provided by Dark Emu Exposed in order to prove that Pascoe is a fraud who has rewritten the history of Aboriginal Australian lifestyles.[8]
In February 2020 Bolt was accused of downplaying child sexual grooming after commenting that a convicted groomer had "hit on" his victim.[9]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bolt argued that the pandemic was "wildly exaggerated"[10] and argued that lockdown restrictions should be restricted because they were only "to save aged-care residents from dying a few months earlier", which he argued was less important than the Australian economy.[11]
Bolt responded negatively to the 2002 historical film Rabbit-Proof Fence, stating that its portrayal of the assimilation policies against the Stolen Generations was inaccurate, to which his claims were refuted by the filmmakers and Doris Pilkington Garimara.[12]
Andrew Bolt is of Dutch descent and was born to Dutch immigrants in South Australia.
