The Australian newspaper’s foreign affairs editor Greg Sheridan epitomises the capacity columnists have to promote ideological agendas – even ones that are seemingly at odds with their professed values and beliefs. They are hardly conservative.
Having access to a soapbox, even the modestly proportioned variety, is a privilege. Having a guaranteed audience of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people, many of whom are amongst the most influential in the land, is an even greater opportunity to speak truth to power and help to shape the debates that determine our collective fate.
We might hope that those who enjoy such opportunities would take their roles and responsibilities seriously. And yet it is emblematic of the times that even to make such a claim can invite ridicule and accusations of hopeless naivety. It is hardly controversial to suggest that the majority of the opinion writers who work for the Murdoch papers, for example, seem happy to align their views with those of the owner. The rise of Donald Trump and his poisonous legacy is the direct consequence of such ideological rigidity and intellectual pusillanimity.
To be fair, many of Murdoch’s writers – and their readers, for that matter – may actually share and enthusiastically endorse their boss’s well-known views about climate change, the role of the United States in global politics, the dangers posed by leftists, woke politics and much else. Indeed, it would be surprising if there wasn’t a meeting of minds between Murdoch’s minions and the people who read his papers. After all, we know all too well what to expect from his ubiquitous publications and the people who write for them.
What we don’t really know, though, is how some of his most prominent pundits manage to reconcile their words with their consciences, especially when they claim to be conservatives bent on preserving order, morality and traditional values.
Greg Sheridan is a quintessential example. Although I’m reluctant to personalise such things, I’ve felt compelled to read his work for decades, to get a sense of what passes for ‘sensible’ mainstream opinion. There is a numbing and depressing predictability to his views, even though they are usually thoughtful, well informed and even persuasive at times. That’s part of the problem: say something often enough, convincingly, and in a supposedly authoritative outlet, and many people will think it’s true.
Over the years we may have become accustomed to Sheridan’s partisan support for the likes of his friend Tony Abbott, or his spiritual hero Cardinal Pell. Yet such politicking and favoritism isn’t a good look for any responsible journalist.
It is interesting just how many cultural and political warriors on the right of Australian politics were prepared to make Faustian bargains with Donald Trump while he was in power.
With Sheridan, what is remarkable and increasingly implausible is his claim to be a champion of conservatism.
Sheridan takes his faith seriously, and yet was happy to offer his support to, not merely overlook, the manifold personal failings of Trump, one of the most morally bankrupt, dishonest, and psychologically damaged individuals in public life.
Just before the recent election that Trump refused to accept with such devastating consequences for American democracy, Sheridan suggested that:
“A Donald Trump victory would be better for Australia than a Joe Biden presidency. This counterintuitive view is widely, if semi-secretly, held in Australian national security circles, and it is almost certainly right.”
I fear he may be correct about one thing, at least: the enduring appeal of Republican presidents to many in the Canberra security bubble. One might have thought we would have learned lessons from the epic folly of our participation in the invasion of Iraq, not to mention the increasingly controversial role in Afghanistan.
We might also have hoped that Trump’s disdain for multilateralism, without which the fabled ‘rules based international order’ cannot function, would have encouraged some self-criticism: nothing more corrosive of international stability and the prospect for international cooperation than the Trump administration can be imagined.
The most urgent task for multilateralism, to which the preemptively disparaged Biden administration seems committed, is doing something about climate change. Even to mention the environment will, of course, induce apoplexy among ‘conservatives’ like Sheridan who view climate change as a niche interest confined to ‘upper-income, service-industry, limousine liberals’.
And yet environmentalists are arguably the real conservatives. What, after all, could be more conservative than trying to ensure the planet upon which we all depend for our survival doesn’t become quite unlivable?
I’m not sure what Sheridan tells his sons about their future prospects or those of any children they may have, but perhaps he has some soothing words to trot out for them, too. Yet, anyone who has been paying attention must realise that we have wasted four precious and unaffordable years while Trump was in power.
Sheridan may not be personally responsible for Trump’s dismemberment of environmental regulations in the United States, but the media empire he works for certainly did its bit. Even one of Murdoch’s own sons can no longer stomach the destructive and dangerous impact of his father’s views.
Global warming really isn’t just a leftwing conspiracy. More’s the pity; it might be a good deal easier to fix if it were. I don’t think allowing powerful and/or misguided interests to trash the planet in the meantime is a good advertisement for ‘the Word becoming flesh among us’ either way.
For an intelligent and apparently principled man to support someone like Donald Trump takes some explaining. Sheridan is far from alone, of course, but not everyone claims to be answering to a higher authority or makes quite such a display of their religiosity. Might be time to take the proverbial long hard look in the mirror, Greg. I’m sure God would approve.
Mark Beeson is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Technology Sydney and Griffith University. His latest book is Environmental Anarchy? International Relations Theory and Practice in the Anthropocene, (Bristol University Press: 2021) He has also written Environmental Populism: The Politics of Survival; in the Anthropocene Palgrave 2019
Comments
16 responses to “Greg Sheridan: Principles, privilege and punditry”
Yet Sheridan’s voice for oppressive war criminal regimes, violent wars of aggression by Anglo American states, and the grose economic injustice of tax evading exploitative and corrupt liberal economics remain unquestioned when he appears regularly on the ABC. The Australian deep state muzzles both the public and private media to preserve the Canberra consensus. Sheridan is a classic case in point.
Sheridan is an a modern day echo of Santamaria’s hysterical “reds under the bed” cold war propaganda and he deserves to be given as little credence as the old cold warrior is now accorded. Given that many of Greg’s ideas hail from way back in memory lane, maybe Costello’s new Channel 9 could revive the old “Point of View” programme that Frank Packer’s Channel 9 provided free of charge for Bob all those years ago. Then Greg could also spend 10 minutes on a Sunday (after mass) terrifying viewers with his earnest, down the barrel, exposing of the latest elaborate Chinese/communist/feminist/greenie/moslem/unionist/Dan Andrews plots to enslave us whilst all the while sapping and impurifying our precious bodily fluids.
Sir,
I have only read one book titled “Asian Values” by Greg Sheridan and a few media articles by him. It is indeed difficult to pin down what motivates such an influential writer. The cognitive search for an explanation brings me back to what I commented earlier elsewhere that the belief in Donald Trump appeals to highly religious people because both require a huge leap of faith. Once that leap is made, everything that Trump does or says is accepted unquestioningly as if it is divine edict. This is in contrast with scientific thinking in which a person argues a case premised on statistical data and other empirical evidence to a logical conclusion. This explanation appears to fit like a glove to your final statement:
“For an intelligent and apparently principled man to support someone like Donald Trump takes some explaining. Sheridan is far from alone, of course, but not everyone claims to be answering to a higher authority or makes quite such a display of their religiosity. ”
If this explains Greg Sheridan’s actions, then his behaviour is no longer enigmatic. His “faith” in Trump allows him to remain faithful to his principles. It also explains why even as a consistent conservative his choice of causes seems so eclectic.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
Greg has a good brain and he writes in clear prose. I prefer his written work to his television appearances. Like other columnists, he speaks to the converted. A more interesting intellectual who makes the case for Trump is Californian classics scholar Victor Davis-Hanson. My favourite writer on The Australian is Henry Ergas and I try to buy the Friday paper for his sharp and honest criticism.
As we sort the wheat from the chaff, Trump’s major sin appears to be his proximity to Israel but he has plenty of mates in Washington and New York on that score. The big worry with Biden and the Democrats is the attempt to brand Trump supporters as domestic terrorists. This needs to get into the courts quickly and be taken up to the Supreme Court for a strong statement on freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. If the American legal system is as far gone as the politics, the land of the free and the home of the brave really is in trouble.
“Trump’s major sin appears to be his proximity to Israel”. I don’t think so. Trump’s major sin is his pathological lying and immorality.
Interesting point, Hans. Among Australian politicians Trump reminds me most of Bob Hawke who never pretended to be a saint. Most criticism of Trump relates to personality rather than policy. Paul Frijters on the Club Troppo blog this morning comments on Biden following Trump policy on Covid . The arrogance of Trump’s comfortable Australian critics on this page worries me. They assume that they know more about America than half the American electorate who voted for Trump. They are patronising. Trump eats hamburgers and fries instead of kale salad and mung beans. That will never do. The Democrats appear to be easing away from the impeachment trial. They are afraid that Trump’s lawyers may use the trial to produce evidence of election fraud.. Trump meanwhile is not saying much, which is a pleasant change.
It amazes me how authoratively Australian commentators talk about American politics when they really know little about it. They tell us what a horrible person Trump is, and by implication, how much more superior we in Australia are. At the same time they let Trump lite Morrison get off ‘Scott’ free.
Jerry, I have little doubt that Greg Sheridan is a talented writer. I introduced the idea of scientific thinking because I believe that anyone thinking in that manner is unlikely to be a Trump supporter or a climate change denier. Even Margaret Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister of the UK was a strong supporter of climate science. She only rejected the Al Gore’s gloomy view of impending climate disaster after she retired because it was economically and politically expedient to do so. Even then, she did not reject the science but the economic cost required to address the problem.
The Americans do have a lot of religion in politics, Teow. The present Australian federal government made a tentative effort to do the same here. The Attorney General does not appear to be enthusiastic and I hope the Prime Minister leaves the legislation in the too-hard basket. Science does not appear to know much about Covid 19, which is a worry. At least we are not hearing the official story about people eating pangolins. I am not interested in politics as personalities. For me it is Hayek and Friedman versus Keynes and Polanyi but I am watching one personality in the USA and her name is Tulsi Gabbard. She is keeping her options open. I think she would be wasting her time with the Democrat machine, as did Bernie Sanders. The Democrats and Republicans are too compromised by big money. A third force is needed and she looks the most likely figurehead.
I also wanted to say, but forgot, that the US is showing signs of decline because it is beginning to abandon the type of thinking that was founded on the Enlightenment – a culture that made the Western nations leaders in science and technology and thus of the world. Many who support Trump find this mode of thinking too hard, too inconvenient, because in the end, it does not accord with what they want to believe. It is easier and a lot more enjoyable just to follow the glitzy and glamorous style of a TV star who says exactly what they want to hear. When under stress, people prefer fantasy to reality. It is no surprise that the US is presently under stress. Electing Biden into office gives them at least an iota of hope. They can still climb out of the madness.
Mr Teow, a very interesting, and I think terrifying, thesis. If it is true it might explain why seriously religious people could be attracted to extreme ideas that require “a leap of faith”.
It is not difficult to think of some relevant current examples (apart from Sheridan).
Yes I certainly agree that faith is a big factor. Sheridan, since Sydney University days when he was an Abbott acolyte in student politics, former contemporary at Riverview and in the Seminary, has also shared that deep NCC obsession with the Left which is visceral and overrides any inclination to objectivity. It would be interesting to know how many employed in the security agencies are bourgeois catholic school products.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1486818-conservatives-are-not-necessarily-stupid-but-most-stupid-people-are
“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives…”. I have never fathomed why we keep voting in people who, shall we say, are not exactly bright.
Could John Stuart Mill be right? “Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party…”
Well said Mark. Yours is an article long overdue. Sheridan is an individual sheltered by Murdoch, no where else would he get away with the shallow ‘analysis’ that he passes off as considered thought. He is an unoriginal, intellectual light weight. His nonsense goes back a long way.
In 2001 in ‘The Great Australian Blight’, I said on p 106, ‘Kelly and Sheridan have been ‘The Australian’s’ star scribes on foreign policy issues. They were consistent in defending the Indonesian regime’s human rights record. They attacked those who disagreed. Sheridan was fond of labelling anyone who called the Indonesian military to justice as ‘left-wing’ and ‘hysterical’. Sheridan’s use of the word hysterical seemed to underline a fear of change, a fear of establishing the truth of the matter and an aversion to the world of ideas…
His attacks on opponents of the Javanese military regime have included ‘good policy on East Timor is handicapped by the anti-Indonesia claque in Australia’ and ‘hysterical debate within Australia limits rather than helps the Government’s effectiveness’.’
With the collapse of the MSM he has gained increased status with the IPA/LNP, RW.
“Apparently Principled” is quite a stretch for Mr Sheridan…..I see him as a totally unprincipled individual who is comfortable accepting cash to peddle lies.
Not only have we wasted four years under the orange one’s reign, Australia has wasted a decade under the reign of three totally incompetent prime ministers.
Unfortunately, it would appear that Australia may well see yet another three years of Trump lite if Morrison gets re-elected.