Sounds of silence and suggestion sow the seeds of unrest
Before we focus our analysis on the people at the protests, we must consider the messaging that got them there and the silence that gave it a voice to speak.
Never in living memory have we seen gallows, Nazi paraphernalia and prayers to remove the Premier of an Australian state, a few days after a bow and arrow standoff outside parliament, not too long after Brett Sutton and Jerome Weimar were protected by police as a viscerally outraged and encroaching mob howled 'scumbags' and 'rat dogs' while they were hurriedly removed from the scene. As politicians delay and the media misinforms and encourages these victims of manipulation, rapidly poisoning our society, can we as Australians afford to stand back and watch?
The results of an anti-government media blitz are now manifest as the bedrock for the beliefs of the angry throngs of people, a vital and legitimising factor across a fringe spectrum of contradictory and incoherent demands. Among them are malevolent groups looking for fresh recruits, relishing their new mainstream safe space they inhabit in the crowd, free to tie their slipknots in the springtime sunshine amongst the plane trees of Melbourne, something they could never have done before the blitz.
For many at these rallies, this is a political awakening, an introduction to the power of protest for a group of people that have not been able to feel the power of human assembly for two years. But alongside them, if we look closely, there are people that are present for an entirely different agenda, for beliefs that ASIO deem to be pertinent concerns. With no coherent message of condemnation from the leaders of society, and a media apparatus that seeks to hyper-accelerate the incomprehensible darkness, at the mercy of dark ideologies filling the vacuum, impressionable minds are like lambs to the slaughter.
There are many families and friends concerned for the people who are caught up on this spectrum. Worried families that have seen their loved ones radicalised, parents noticing children adopting dark and misleading ideologies while the public that have watched their beloved journalists and politicians slip down the rabbit hole of populism and blinded self interest.
Choosing to play politics in a pandemic, in fervent opposition to all things Andrews government, the incessant Murdoch led media barrage has provided the connective tissue between the mainstream and the fringe, flirting with the misinformation, and validating its acolytes, giving politicians an option to stir the cauldron, and enamouring the conspiracy theorists, legitimising their views by allowing it a wink and a nod on prime time. The incredible gravity of this consolidated misinformation, the way it sits like a solid foundation for the fanciful to dream big on Qanon related conspiracy, trickles down through our society down into the little spaceships in our hands, on our laps, nebulising our brains into endless individual streams.
Our national leader who noted protesters at the march for justice last year were not “met with bullets”, who has supported a tailored political narrative against the Andrews government, has offered little to quell this fracturing environment. Josh Frydenberg, Victoria's preeminent liberal, and blokes like David Davis and Bernie Finn, instead of totally distancing themselves, couch their condemnation behind cheap shots and mingle with the punters on the steps.
Week by week the short memory of a short-sighted pack is accepting new norms, allowing for rapid shifts in the perception and adoption of what is tolerable and what was once unthinkable in this country. Floating at the bottom of a geographical reality, with diminishing regional and strategic importance, without a national identity defined by our leaders, we are at the mercy of more developed and complex problems from more developed and complex nations. True to the encroaching Americanisation of our collective psyche and absence of creativity and big ideas from Canberra, we apathetically take on the burdens of the American experience, with all its scars and slavery and extremes, its zealotry and political over-excitement – we choose to forget our own unique destiny.
Under the watch of his selector, the renegade “captains pick”, Craig Kelly was allowed to start crypto-fascist-conspiratorial spot fires in our national parliament, bringing the unhinged to the national debate. Now, after bulk texting the nation, and interrupting our YouTube viewing with 20 min long Demtel-esque presidential-style addresses, Kelly now takes his anti-democratic propaganda to the foot of Victoria’s parliament, a long way from Hughes, playing the pantomime with a retinue of neo-Nazis beside him.
If we don’t act, eventually these dark forces will fool us all. Even Murdoch. With many of these groups now sliding into the cultured and isolated petri dishes on Telegram and Discord, the damage is mounting in a new compartmentalised environment, away from common society, at the mercy of a new breed of miscreant that has not yet been witnessed in this country. A multi-headed hydra of conspiracy now greets decision makers on both sides of politics, seeking to fracture our democracy for reasons many of them could not articulate. For every successful incision, two more will return in its place.
Across the spectrum of the political divide, the fundamental pillars of governance have been abandoned by a group of charlatans. People who run large debt without building schools or hospitals, people who mismanage tax payer funds for political gain, people who cultivate and divvy out short straws from pools of money meant for emergency recoveries and underservice vital pillars of our society without providing transparency to the voting public. The same people who wilfully stoke the fires of hatred and chaos, threatening the unity of Australia, are turning us against each other so they can run away with the chocolates. There is no deep state, just a bunch of self interested buffoons.
Sometime soon, with a jump in ASIO major caseloads for homegrown far-right violent extremists moving from 40 percent to 50 percent in just a year, the major parties have yet to take a unified stance against this encroaching threat to our national integrity. We must recognise the political capital that elected officials see in allowing this to continue. While the trailers are hooning down the roadside and violent activity broils in the street, the Prime Minister, who once broke bread and employed QAnon believers, has not yet shown the will, belief or the courage to take a definitive stance to condemn this slight on our democracy.
As we thought we could grasp at a glimmer of hope as we re-emerge after lock-down, we are greeted with blind anger spilling out onto our tentative city, we are concerned, and we should be. Now it lays in front of us, clear for most of us to see, with no meaningful words from the PM, it becomes apparent: the corporate media and politicians seem to have no intention of quelling this unrest. In the weeks and months ahead taking us to a federal election, it is imperative for these leaders to convey a message of national unity in condemning this activity, if they can’t, they are unfit for office. If our politicians cannot unite against homegrown extremism, Australians will have to deal with homegrown terrorism. We have an opportunity to condemn this irresponsible leadership, this wilful damage to our society, because we have just seen public calls for public executions and death threats to people we have elected — this has never happened before.
So very eloquent.
But how did anti-vaxxer Craig Kelly even get into Victoria?
What was Victoria Police doing?
It's reported that Peta Credlin was there too.
Sadly, a beautiful and eloquently expressed piece of writing... Sadly because it sums up the state of our nation, our leaders and the Australia we are losing. I just want a leader who is passionate about Australia, his fellow Australians, his Ideas and the future for us all AND believes in themselves.