John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
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12 responses to “The Murdoch-Trump love affair”
The ByLine Times (UK) has an article about Trump, recent events and the enablers titled ‘‘AMERICAN CARNAGE’ – Trump’s Promise Fulfilled – Other Democracies Beware’; with a clear warning to the UK and Australia…..
‘In a 4 January article titled ‘Ugliest Spectacle of Trump Era Looms’,
‘The Australian, a Rupert Murdoch-owned national broadsheet which has given slavish and almost Sean Hannity levels of sycophantic praise to the current US President during the past four years, slammed Trump for continuing to spread false claims about his election loss…… Hundreds of presumably Australian Facebook users slammed the newspaper and article for criticising Trump’s corrupt and anti-democratic behaviour.‘
Ditto the UK’s Daily Telegraph and further on Australia
‘These comments are representative of hundreds and thousands more found on Facebook pages belonging to the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Daily Herald (Telegraph?), The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.’
Then we see the unhinged commentary coming from LNP MPs and nothing from the PM….
‘Budding and would-be right-wing populists in both countries will interpret widespread support and belief of Trump’s lies to be a future road-map for their own political ambitions, knowing that a significant portion of their fellow citizens are vulnerable to the kind of self-evident lies and conspiracies that have seduced and radicalised tens of millions of American voters.
This realisation calls upon the leaders of all major Australian and UK political parties to make a clear and unambiguous condemnatory statement of Trump’s baseless and dangerous claims of election fraud, stating a commitment that such antics will never be tolerated, indulged or enabled.‘
Clear our PM and related prefer staying mute?
“You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists who,
when they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the
community with the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time they
pretend to make them the depositories of all power.”
―
Edmund Burke,
“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”
―
Edmund Burke
Murdoch has played a significant roll in electing many undesirable people!
However the election of Trump has many other elements that associated with the coughing up of these types of people . we need to also focus on the economic neoliberal mantra that we have had a love affair with for 4+ decades.
Unchecked corporate power and a massive commodification, infantilization, and depoliticization of the polity have become the totalitarian benchmarks defining American society. In part, this is due to the emergence of a brutal modern-day capitalism, or what some might call neoliberalism. This form of neoliberal capitalism is a particularly savage, cruel, and exploitative regime of oppression in which not only are the social contract, the rupturing of social bonds ,civil liberties and the commons under siege, but also the very notion of the political, if not the planet itself.
We have all sufficiently embraced that over the 4+ decades with the media generally feeding us a daily diet of the neoliberal dogma. market place dominance and the government stepping back and allowing it all to happen.
No democracy has been present for 4+ decades from both administrations, the rule of big money, the rule of big military, a predatory capitalist society which has commodified everything so people have very little sense of who they are any more on the back of continued social misery ; a culture of shattered dreams and a landscape filled with “Broken highways, bankrupt cities, collapsing bridges, failed schools, the unemployed, the underpaid and the uninsured: all suggest a collective failure of will.
These shortcomings are so endemic that we no longer know how to talk about what is wrong, much less set about repairing it helped by a parroting media dealing almost exclusively in the neoliberal narrative!
If you put the following into your browser you will find an Article by respected Journalist Paul Sheehan that explains how Morrison got to where he is with the Murdoch medias help :
“Nasty saga you nearly missed”
The Article is 11 years old but well worth reading to see just how devious Morrison really is.
ps …… do not attempt to post a Link to this Article on Guardian Australia because informing other Australians, who may not have read the Article, is strictly verboten !
But you can post it everywhere else.
important article, about murdoch and morrison….and their lack of principle.
I love the Gosford Church photo, but is that it? Is there no article, or am I being paranoid in wondering if Rupert’s minions have removed it? Neither my iPad, nor my phone can get more.
The rot goes a lot deeper than that. Trump is just a symptom of the shrinking middle class as financialisation of everything takes over the economy and creates the 1% and the rest. Unless this issue is addressed, expect Trump MkII, MkIII etc. With the current political system, there really is no incentive to address any of this while the media will keep on fanning class division and social media create alt realities to suit each individual.
The problem is there are a lot more of the 99% than the 1% so a significant proportion of the 99% will be fed an alt reality that will increase social division and instability.
The real test to a political system is how to resolve problems. Any political system works when the times are good but when the times are bad, that’s the real test and so far, the US gets an F.
Democracy is a beautiful idea, but in most instances sooner or later it breeds oligarchy, either through military force or the power of money. Where “every dollar has one vote” money is more than economic power but translates directly into political power. Where the freedom exists for speculators to make open-ended profits, they, their agents and mouthpieces in the media eventually prevail. Where a real estate speculator can make hundreds of $millions, buy newspapers and TV stations, he/she would gain greater political power than 10,000 miners or steel workers, as has happened throughout the western world, including Australia.
The societies of the 3 main Anglo countries- US, UK and Australia, supposedly at the top of the world’s pecking order, have been most unfortunately diminished by the corruptive media influence of one Rupert Murdoch. Perhaps not as powerful anymore in the US with the political demise of Trump, but matters are still the same in the UK and Australia. No one politician can afford not to have Murdoch on side if he/she wants to be PM of the UK or Australia. So much for our great Australian democracy!
Sir, likewise, without Murdoch there would be no Scott Morrison.
Agree wholeheartedly…Perhaps we would not hear from Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt, and Peta Credlin either.