There is hate speech and then there is hate speech. It depends a lot on who does the speaking.

Chanting “from the river to the sea” with a crowd could lead to criminal charges in Queensland, while down the road Pauline Hanson can say there are “no good Muslims” and be rewarded with headlines, airtime and rising support.

What is the more hateful? A political slogan with a contested meaning? Or a personal statement that makes your neighbour feel nervous, their kids fearful and encourages nutters to make death threats or indulge in “freedom restricting harassment” online or in person?

Many Australians who happen to be born into Muslim or Jewish families and once considered their faith a private matter, have experienced the personal consequences of hate speech – from slights and abusive language to physical threats – mosques, synagogues and schools guarded yet still graffitied, cars torched, pig’s heads left at their doors, jobs lost, opportunities denied.

It has left many feeling that their place in this proudly multicultural country is “conditional”, able to be withdrawn at a moment no matter what they do, depending on how well they play the game.

Speech, unlike action, is by its nature more nuanced. Often what you hear does not just depend on the words spoken, but the superstructure of meaning you bring to what you hear.

But there is some speech that isn’t open to interpretation. Pauline Hanson’s mealy-mouthed apology for offending Muslims is a prime example.

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For years the radical right has been pushing the limits of acceptable speech in pluralistic, diverse democracies. They were motivated by a desire to hold on to power, by undermining women, refugees, gays, first peoples, immigrants – those who might present a challenge to the prevailing established order which had served them so well for so long.

I am old enough to remember being perplexed by the campaign against what was called “political correctness”. In the 1990s it seemed to be about targeting those who preferred to use respectful inclusive language, especially when talking with and about those with less power. But for years opinion columns were filled with vitriol from those who no longer felt constrained by what was once simply politeness – do unto others as you would have them do unto you, as most religions teach.

Over the following decades the constraints of tolerance and politeness broke; sensational outrageous claims became the new normal, hot button issues that drew a heated reaction demonstrated to the shrinking mainstream media that they were still in the game, and then online anonymity and the like button changed the terrain. The boundaries were broken and hate speech was out in the open, not confined to crude handwritten notes dropped in letterboxes or loud drunken talk in pubs and sports stadiums.

In the process, the moderating attachment to pluralism and tolerance as a virtue were weakened, absolutes became the norm, nuance disappeared and, thanks to social media, the mob could enjoy inflicting life-changing trauma.

Now hateful, demonstrably wrong things can be said without qualification, threat of legal action or contradiction, by the most powerful people in the world.

For them it’s a bit of sport – like chucking chips at seagulls and watching them fight. A distraction, even an entertainment. But for vulnerable people – those targeted by the hateful words, and those angry, aggrieved folk looking for permission to do and say hideous things out loud – there are dire personal consequences.

Pauline Hanson has been at the epicentre of this fringe movement in Australia for decades – now thanks to the US president effectively normalising this world view she and her ragtag bunch have moved to the mainstream.

Nothing seems to have been learned. If power is the aim, pandering to the mob, rather than challenging it is the preferred response by those with power.

In some ways it was not surprising that the person who spoke most powerfully against Pauline Hanson’s latest attention-seeking outburst was not the prime minister, but her fellow Queensland senator, Matt Canavan.

For him and his Liberal National party colleagues, One Nation is an existential threat – as it has always been. The memory of how they were wiped out in the 1998 Queensland election has not been forgotten.

By sheer instinct Hanson perfected the dark art of turning economic disadvantage into a political tool, by tapping into fear and envy. As prime minister, John Howard aided her cause when he defended her right to say what we would now describe as hateful things. Elements of the Liberal party have, as Angus Taylor is now exploring with his unqualified descriptions of good and bad migrants, demonstrated time and again a willingness to encourage division based on ethnicity.

In this he is adapting the Howard approach. The long-serving prime minister, who is now regarded as an unimpeachable party hero, made Aboriginal and Asian people political targets when he judged it opportune.

It is worth remembering that the gateway drug for Hanson’s poison to enter the national bloodstream was to target Aboriginal people in her hometown of Ipswich. Well before she moved her focus to people of Asian or Middle Eastern heritage, First Peoples were in her sights. Forget that they were the most impoverished people in the state, people who had only been allowed to vote and move off missions and reserves a couple of decades earlier. They were, Hanson baited her audience, getting too much.

The economic dimension was always underestimated in the national commentary about One Nation’s supporters. It was easier to point to red-neck racism, rather than acknowledge that more needed to be done for the struggling folk in a town that had rapidly deindustrialised. Labor governments in Queensland later took the lesson and invested in the city – so that its demographics and economics now are quite different. But inequality has not been solved, it has just changed shape, and with it the search for someone to blame.

Liberal senator Andrew McLachlan put it well on Four Corners this week, talking about the growing support for Advance which found its power by organising the hate-fuelled case against the voice referendum and its plea for meaningful recognition of Australia’s First Peoples. He said that by politicising “mass migration”, the rightwing lobby group’s aim was to foster anxiety and turn that into fear. Fear is their business model, he said.

When Australia federated 125 years ago, the slogan declared “Ours is not a federation of fear”. It’s still a worthy ambition, but it means “wise and solemn” people and those on Tik Tok must call out the fearmongers before they take hold.

Julianne Schultz is the author of The Idea of Australia

© The Guardian