Blocking charities from lobbying on “political” issues such as climate change is a blow to a liberal democracy and to our children’s futures.
Lucy Hamilton
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Culture war over religious freedom normalises fascist politics
Australian conservatives’ obsession with religious freedom is just another US import, and part of a worldwide surge in fascist identity politics.
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Speak without fear, as long as you’re a white, male, Christian conservative
Who can and cannot express their truth is defined by the people who have always held power, and patrolled in the digital age by online shock troops.
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Think tanks’ call for ‘freedom’ really promises authoritarianism
Ideological think tanks campaigning for ‘freedom’ are really pushing us further into a competitive authoritarianism regime.
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Australia must beware racist dog whistling in next election
A number of columns in these pages have observed that the AUKUS agreement seems a timely gambit to create a “khaki election” campaign for a floundering Coalition government. It is also potentially a dog whistle effort to deploy racism to maintain power. (more…)
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How the conservatives grew to reject experts and science
Anti-vaccine rioters on Melbourne’s streets were part of QAnon’s radicalisation of ordinary citizens around the world in this Covid era. They are the local eruption of an aggrieved demographic which resents a system it struggles to comprehend.
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Australia has proved fertile ground for US anti-intellectual propaganda
Cynical conservative strategies in US politics have well and truly made their way into Australian discourse — just look at the demands of the rioters in Melbourne for Ivermectin.
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Think tanks have put British democracy at risk. We have the same problem.
It’s arguable that Britain’s path to this point — where it is at risk of decaying into a ‘competitive authoritarian’ regime — can be traced back to the first of the ‘conservative’ think tanks.
