WATCH: Sam Dastyari targeted in race hate attack by 'patriots' in pub
Labor senator Sam Dastyari has been racially abused at a university pub in Melbourne.
A group of men, calling themselves working class patriots, heckled the Iranian-born senator with "You terrorist. You little monkey" and demanded to know if he was a Muslim on Wednesday night.
The men from the right wing group Patriot Blue filmed the incident and posted it on their Facebook page.
When he called them racists, they replied with: "What race is Islam?"
The far-right group, Patriot Blue, filmed the exchange at Victoria University on a mobile phone.
Mr Dastyari was at the university to promote his new book, One Halal of a Story, when the group approached him at the bar.
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They pushed the phone camera in the senator's face before following him back to his table.
In a Q&A session with fellow Labor MP Tim Watts, Senator Dastyari said he was regularly subjected to similar incidents because he was a Muslim.
"All of this is the rise of the radical right in this country, it is the rise of One Nation right," Senator Dastyari said.
"These are people who feel incredibly empowered because of what Pauline Hanson has done for them.
"You dance so far to the right that it gives those a little bit further out a sense of entitlement."
He said he regularly got "horrible" stuff in the mail and at his home, and did not normally comment publicly but made an exception this time.
"Tonight will always be the night that we got harassed by cowardly white nationalists & (at)TimWattsMP yelled "what race is d***head" hashtag strayamate," Senator Dastyari tweeted.
The True Blue group later posted on Facebook: "An Iranian born Senator calls me a Racist I'm gonna call him a Terrorist - Fairs Fair."
On Thursday morning, Opposition leader Bill Shorten said he was disgusted by the "ugly" incident.
"What is this country coming to you cannot go out for a meal without being abused by racist idiots," he said.
"I congratulate Sam for keeping his cool."
Senator Dastyari confirmed he has not reported the incident to police and is "considering his options."
"I have not had a chance to properly talk to my wife Helen and see what she thinks about this and what she thinks we should be doing," he said.
