Terror incognito : black flags, plastic swords and other weapons of mass disruption in Australia

It is the Islamophobia of today's Australia that is the subject of this chapter. Regretfully, this could fill several books. So we present in this chapter a series of recent case-study snapshots of state and media Islamophobia in Australia, which we believe build up a bigger picture of the current situation faced by Muslims in the 'War on Terror' downunder. For the most part, the multifarious and complex connections between contemporary Islamophobia and the Australian state, its coercive apparatus (military, police, courts) and the consent-constructive apparatus of hegemony (notably the media), the common sense of folk wisdom found in civil society and informing its movements, and counter-hegemonic movementswill need to be merely gestured at here. Following Morgan and Poynting (2012), we assert that Islamophobia is now as thoroughly globalised as the world's media, and is sustained with stock images, circulated transnationally. If we are right, then readers from other continents will readily recognise similar tropes and indeed the same ideology. De te fabula narratur.