The Australian has made itself the newspaper of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. This reflects the fact that Australia’s Right is part of a transnational network of networkers. It also conveys that these figures aim to shape the thinking of Australia’s “conservative” leaders in troubling directions. (more…)
Lucy Hamilton
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Alex Carey: a century of business taking the risk out of democracy
Jeff Bezos recently announced that the Washington Post would henceforth dedicate its op/ed pages to “free markets and personal liberties”. His Whole Foods business also asked the National Labor Relations Board to “set aside the results of a union election” that endorsed collective bargaining. The Australian social psychologist Alex Carey explained these interrelated events in the 1970s and 80s. We owe a debt to former Tasmanian Speaker Andrew Lohrey for making Carey’s explanation available after his premature death. (more…)
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‘Activist judges’: in the US and Australia, the Right intends to make the law its slave
One of the key strategies used by the transnational authoritarian Right to subvert democratic projects is “playing the refs.” Their strategists work to discredit journalists and media platforms that hold them to account. They tarnish academics, civil servants, agencies and charities that are expert in their inconvenient fields. Fact-checkers are made to look partisan, so nobody is left to call out lies. One target in America and Australia is the judiciary which they disparage with the label “activist judges”. (more…)
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The Trumpist junktanks that turned the insurrection into a successful coup
In assessing which Trump appointment is more dangerous, Russell Vought freshly confirmed to helm the Office of Management and Budget is a contender for the worst. Vought wrote one of the chapters from Project 2025 (an “authoritarian incubator”), but his other revelations expand on the threat. (more…)
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The Liberal party, Moira Deeming and political Christianity
In Australian politics at federal and state level, it is desirable and appropriate that politicians with a religious commitment are elected to office, while also at times keeping separate their professional roles from private convictions for the sake of constituents and members of the community who do not belong to that faith. (more…)
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The ABC in Hungary: why “Christianity” and “woke” are weapons of war
Some of the most dangerous people in the world right now are those normalising and sanitising fascistic politics. It was not just in the banal media discussion that preceded Donald Trump’s re-election; it can also be found at the ABC, including on Radio National lifestyle programming. One of the tropes to look for is the placing of the concept “woke” in counterpoint to “traditional” and “Christian” values. (more…)
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Orban and Netanyahu: the transnational Right’s pervasive Islamophobia
Viktor Orbán’s obsequious letter to Benjamin Netanyahu offering him sanctuary from the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Hungary is not a surprise. It is another red flag in the Islamophobic world of the transnational Right. The mass and prolonged slaughter of Palestinian Muslims (and Christians) cannot be seen as a crime committed against other humans in this worldview. The bloodshed must be revered as a form of “moral courage” in defence of the West. (more…)
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Sado-populism: the political trap that could end human civilisation
Every time a fascist-flirting regime is defeated in an election, more column inches and podcast minutes are devoted to the sense that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. When Trump, Bolsonaro, Sunak’s Tories or the Law and Justice Party in Poland lose elections, the centrist commentariat breathes a sigh of relief, believing its priors to be confirmed. Their vision, however, is too short term: these are likely not to be fascistic deviations from a liberal democratic trajectory. Instead the electoral defeats promise to be temporary relief from the existential threat to “civilisation.” (more…)
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Australian politicians are playing NatCon politics
Peter Dutton’s campaign to make Palestinian refugees into figures of fear mirrors the provocations to the recent UK Islamophobic riots. These were inspired by politicians such as Nigel Farage as much as by far-right influencers. Both examples are connected to Donald Trump’s debate amplification of the far-right American lie that Haitian immigrants are eating the pets of people in Springfield, Ohio. (more…)
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The Atlas Network’s transnational revolution
Twice in a fortnight, the president of the Heritage Foundation has declared that America is experiencing its second revolution. The revolution would remain bloodless (because their side is “winning”) “if the left allows it to be.” The two bodies whose acts provoked the announcements are leading Atlas Network partners. They are also spending millions of dollars in Europe to roll back rights for women and LGBTQIA people. (more…)
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The Right’s war to control education
The corporate world is afraid of youth demanding change, particularly as rapacious business practices look set to drive us over the climate cliff into a frightening future. One solution the Right has implemented is the Christian Classical Education movement. (more…)
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Australian Libertarians and Theocrats unite in Albury
The Triple Conference took place in Albury in March. Conspiracists and hustlers appeared alongside the well-meaning and self-important to inform a small audience of largely white-haired elders about the North Korean conditions overtaking Australia. We are dark in politics and spirit. (more…)
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Dutton’s petrostate and the global far right
It is very difficult to predict the future fortunes of the global populist nativism that has been threatening democratic projects around the world. Far-right parties continued to gain ground in the European Parliament elections. Trump is overtly embracing the authoritarian themes set out in the Project 2025 roadmap, while his Republican allies pursue extreme policy outcomes. Whether voters notice or care remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that Peter Dutton’s recent posturing exposes his deep transnational connection with that movement. (more…)
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Corporations far right machine is busy
The radicalised right has been very active in Australia and internationally recently. With corporate money backing the movement at every turn, the networking is amplifying. If democratic projects can be made more illiberal, and international bodies crippled, the liberal tradition can be replaced with an authoritarian reimposition of “order” and corporations will have an easier route to profit. (more…)
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“Hungary is our Israel”: Tony Abbott and Orbán’s Danube Institute
It was announced in late in 2023 that Tony Abbott was to be a “visiting fellow” for Viktor Orbán’s Danube Institute, a hub of ultra reactionary thought that gathers anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQIA+ speakers who celebrate the Christian Nationalist project. Or, as Abbott describes it, “a point of light to Conservatives around the world.” (more…)
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Poisonous immigration debate treats women like grazing cattle
What kind of population does Australia need? Jim Chalmers recently informed us that Australian citizens ought to have more babies. Commentators on various blogs and fora have returned to dwelling on Australia’s “carrying capacity” as though this is a farm and we are grazing cattle. Peter Dutton, in his Budget Reply, stated his intent to cut immigration. (more…)
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Corporatocracy
It’s time we reckoned with what it means to become a corporatocracy. Our governments exist to enact the desires of their corporate masters. Some of these politicians, like Madeleine King, appear to do so with alacrity, while others appear lost in the perceived demands of party and pressure groups. The end result will be an uninhabitable world. (more…)
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Silencing resistance
Those with a dedicated interest in maintaining the status quo fear education in the wrong hands. America’s current moment illuminates trends in Australia’s education: from the draconian repression of US student protests against the probable genocide taking place in Gaza to the Republican campaign to destroy public education, we must take note. (more…)
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Do we suppress authoritarians’ speech before they suppress us?
The global movement towards authoritarianism took a step forward this week, and faced an experiment in checking its infiltration. (more…)
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The Bishop
We must always condemn violence. There must be no tolerance for brutality, and we must take action to diminish violence whether it is tied to family violence, a chronic lack of support for crucial mental health work or to sectarianism. The stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel on the weekend during his church service, days after the Bondi stabbing, demands Australia focuses on solving the causes. (more…)
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The Voice and Australia’s democracy crisis
The dire state of truth in Australia’s civic space crystallised in 2023. We had seen the waning influence of News Corp’s impact on our elections and assumed it meant that enough of us were becoming inoculated against the propaganda. The defeat of the notoriously mendacious Coalition government might have signalled a ceasefire, a moment for the “conservative” parties to rediscover their integrity. We had underestimated, however, the strategising of vested interests. (more…)
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Fossil fuel’s war on protest
Madeleine King, Minister for Resources in the Albanese government, recently announced that she will curtail the ability of Australians to challenge resource corporation projects in court (The West Australian 26/3/24). This attack on democratic rights is built on decades of disinformation shaping the global discussion on fossil fuels and climate change. (more…)
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A Republican victory in 2024 will be a climate disaster
After the Super Tuesday results signalled Trump would become the Republican presidential candidate in November, a first promise was that “We’re going to drill baby drill.” One of the most important reasons to watch American politics this year is that a Trump victory will push the world faster towards catastrophic climate heating. (more…)
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Illiberalism ascendant: The Dunkley by-election and the cost of doing business
The liberal international order has been responsible for a great many deaths. If the “anti-liberal internationale” becomes ascendant, however, we will see those numbers multiplied exponentially. It is not a stretch to say that the Liberal Party’s campaign in the Dunkley by-election places them firmly in the illiberal category. This is hardly surprising since several Liberal Party grandees and other strategists are firmly ensconced in the Hungarian President Viktor Orbán’s propaganda network, and he is the leader of that illiberal faction. (more…)
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A little support instead of billions on toxic cruelty
We must speak to people who require assistance and listen to their needs instead of speaking over them. In the case of Australia’s refugee policy, we wasted billions on toxic cruelty when we could have done much better by cooperating internationally and supporting people humanely. (more…)
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A grim atlas guides NZ’s right-wing politics
The coalition that took power in New Zealand late in 2023, after a campaign centred on attacking the country’s founding Waitangi Treaty, has been exposed as hosting considerable Atlas Network infiltration. (more…)
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Lessons for Survival Day from America
As Australia approaches that time in January again, we see the unedifying picture of Peter Dutton’s team driving his post-referendum Base into a flag-waving orgy of aggrieved patriotism. Similarly in the USA, compulsory patriotism is part of the Atlas Network’s plan to control the future of America through directing the next administration. (more…)
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Secrecy and the climate disinformation industry
The Atlas Network’s main goal has been to spot and train global talent in the ultra free-market libertarian field and connect it to the free-flowing money that the alliance functions to assist. They now have at least 515 partner organisations in over 100 nations. Secrecy is key for the corporations and plutocrats funding this model, structuring replicating “think” tanks and funding academics and spin doctors to sell what the backers can’t say. Atlas and partners hate attention. We must not let them hide. (more…)
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Christian nationalists versus the rest
Spiritual and cultural Christians – indeed such people of all faiths – need to consider allying together with those who identify as belonging to “no religion.” It is the fundamentalist authoritarians who would divide and constrain us all that need exposing as the small minority they truly are. We must make them as powerless as their numbers, goals and hypocrisies merit. (more…)
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Coalition politicians are embracing far right Orbanist ideology
Tony Abbott added two new posts to his resume this month, debuting as Fox director and announced to be “joining the Danube Institute team as a guest lecturer.” Add these to the October news that Abbott is now an Advisory Board member of the far-right Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). Australians should be watching. (more…)