What keeps attorney general George Brandis up at night is the noble cause of freedom. “Fundamental human rights”, according to Brandis, are being trampled, and he won’t stand for it.

He’s not talking about the 153 Tamil asylum seekers who have been disappeared by the Australian Navy, presumably held somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Nor the thousands who are wasting away behind razor wire for attempting to exercise some of those basic human rights – freedom from persecution.

No, what motivates Brandis is the struggle to protect the right of racist bigots to offend, insult, humiliate and intimidate at liberty.

At the top of his crusading agenda has been removing or watering down section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, aka “the Bolt laws” ever since Herald Sun journalist Andrew Bolt, notorious for his crazy racist diatribes and general hatred for workers and the poor, was found guilty of racial vilification after he accused 15 prominent Indigenous people of opportunistically identifying as Aboriginal to promote their careers. The courts merely confirmed what we all already knew.

Brandis’s concern for freedom of speech extends only to those who back up the Liberals’ right wing agenda. Without blushing, he has called on leaders in the Muslim community to tackle “extremism”. After all, what is the point of multiculturalism if it’s not to cultivate a layer of collaborating Uncle Toms who will keep migrants and religious minorities in line?

By extremism, he’s not talking about support for Israel’s bombing of civilian homes in the densely populated Gaza Strip, wiping out entire families, a practice that has bipartisan support, or its 66 years of ethnically cleansing and terrorising the indigenous Palestinian population.

Rather, the ideas that are to be proscribed are political Islamism. So Australian Zionists can enlist in the barbaric Israeli army, but join the Islamists in Iraq, and you’ll have your citizenship revoked.

But it’s not just consistency that’s at stake.

The portrayal of Muslims and Arabs as a shadowy terrorist threat in our midst by successive governments and their mouthpieces in the mainstream press has been the ideological justification for decades of bloody Western military interventions that have torn apart the Middle East. It’s also been the essential ingredient for creating an atmosphere at home conducive to winding back the civil liberties of all.

Indeed, Brandis is now proposing expanding the surveillance powers of ASIO.

The orchestrated campaign of racial vilification from the top of society means escalating violence – with women’s hijabs being torn in public places, people being spat on and mosques opposed or vandalised. It means racist riots such as that in Cronulla in 2005, when gangs of white supremacists draped in Australian flags bashed anyone of Middle Eastern appearance.

For 12 Muslim men from Melbourne’s suburbs, it has meant years spent in the maximum security Barwon Prison.

In 2009 they were convicted of belonging to a terrorist organisation whose membership consisted solely of those accused. They weren’t convicted of making any preparations for or carrying out an actual terrorist act. They were merely accused of radical talk among themselves – thought crimes. Abdul Benbrika, the alleged spiritual leader of the group, received a 15-year sentence; others were jailed for up to 10 years.

They aren’t Australia’s only political prisoners. Australia has detained more than 50 Tamil refugees due to negative ASIO security assessments. The evidence against them is secret. They have no right to appeal the decision. Nor have they been charged or convicted of breaking any law – so much for basic liberal democratic values.

In fact, they’re being denied freedom because of their enduring sympathy for the struggle for an independent Tamil homeland – for holding to an idea.

An outcry from Coalition backbenchers, the ALP and community groups has forced a retreat on 18C. Brandis is now delaying the introduction of his legislation.

While setbacks for the Liberals are welcome, the battle against racism doesn’t lie in defending the Racial Discrimination Act or extending the reach of the state over workers’ lives.

Making advances against racism requires building the collective struggles of all those who have no interest in the politics of divide and rule. It means developing movements from below that take on and weaken the forces in our society most responsible for fomenting racist ideas and implementing policies that systematically oppress racial minorities.