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.
Peter Dutton’s energy declaration makes clear that Australia is a petrostate and that the fossil fuel sector operates the Coalition as its political arm. While Labor is making progress on decarbonising, Dutton’s declaration on targets and nuclear energy are both policies made by the fossil fuel sector.
Nuclear energy in Australia is a delaying tactic: slow and costly. Reneging on climate targets sets us away from the empirical-world trajectory and firmly in the alliance of authoritarian petrostates. Even such talk will drive away international renewable projects, pleasing the fossil fuel sector. Further strain on our energy grid will drive demand for more gas. The continued high cost of energy (created by the devil’s bargain where Australia’s east coast pays international prices for our own resource) and strain on energy supply will continue to be speciously blamed on “renewables.”
The fact that this boom in gas consumption comes with minimal benefit, and great cost, for Australians matters not to the fossil fuel sector that governs our fate. If it did, they’d pay tax or allow a true resources rent tax as a tiny percent of their massive profits. They were resentful recently at being called leeches: that is fair. Leeches are too small to convey the parasitical nature of the industry.
Dutton’s advisors are drawing on the two strains of tension in the move towards the illiberal right globally: the cost-of-living crisis, which the right deploys as a weapon on climate action, sometimes called greenlash, and the resentment at immigrants.
In India, Modi’s fascistic politicking demonising Muslims in code worked less well, likely countered by dire inequality demoralising those outside the flourishing cities. His Hindutva bigotry with the refrain that Muslims are “infiltrators,” outbreeding the Hindu population, is dangerous.
The outcome of the European election is unnerving. There are now roughly 160 “extreme right” MEPs. This makes them the second largest bloc in the parliament if they are able to forge a cooperative arrangement. The European far right is interconnected with fossil fuel; it places climate science and action in the loathed category of “socialism” and “woke” that must be defeated for “sovereignty.”
The right in Europe is most strongly driven by anti-immigrant sentiment, although this is compounded by cost-of-living pressures, making the region ripe for “greenlash.” Similar motives are steering America, where rightwing politics is even more overtly powered by the fossil fuel dollar. Australians must watch the trajectory and strategies at work.
Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is openly extreme, and AfD has, for now, been expelled by their far-right European partners. AfD met with neo-Nazis to discuss deportation plans. It has courted scandal by its connections with Russia and China. A further furore erupted over a candidate’s call to reclaim pride in Nazi-era military. It is primarily an “aggressive opponent” of the government on climate and energy.
AfD polled strongly in the former East Germany, making it the second strongest party in Germany, and is predicted to poll well in forthcoming German state elections in that region. One commentator declared that the party “mirrored people’s emotional reality” and thus the shambolic campaign was largely irrelevant. Indeed a good TikTok game helped the AfD to poll well amongst the under-30s.
Italy’s Giorgia Meloni has shown a dangerous path. As a woman, her persona softens the cruelty of her messaging. Her own civic success tempers her call for “traditional” feminine worth; from a male Prime Minister it would blare misogyny. She did not rush towards banning abortion or criminalising homosexuality. Her first step was to remove lesbian mothers from birth certificates. If the birth-parent dies, her children are technically orphaned. The other mother’s parenting rights are dead alongside her beloved. Ultra-reactionary goals are concealed by this slow trajectory. Our fractured attention spans cannot encompass the incremental arithmetic of “This act plus that act equals something frightening.”
Meloni speaks of her pride in being a woman, not as a wholesome message but as code to declare that LGBTQIA+ people are a threat. She poses as though motherhood was endangered globally by Queerness, even though the only Western step taken has been to allow a loosening of language available, like offering “mother” and “birth parent” both.
France’s Marine Le Pen will have another shot at winning power after Macron’s election declaration. In recent years, she has gained substantial sway over the women’s vote by coding her ethnonationalist struggle for France in the language of French values. Equality and liberty are only available to women, in her narrative, in a nation free from a threat defined as “Muslim men.” Softening her stance on other bigotries such as that against LGBTQIA+ rights has helped Le Pen look more mainstream for now.
Meanwhile genuinely centre-right parties in Europe continue to find common ground with the far-right. The leader of the French conservative party, the Republicans, announced he would like an alliance with Le Pen. He declared, “We say the same things so let’s stop making up imagined opposition.” The Netherlands has just established its furthest right government, with liberals and conservatives entering a 4-party coalition government with extremist Geert Wilders.
The complicated connection of all these parties with Vladimir Putin should come as no surprise. He was fostering Neo Nazism in East Germany from his early career. Succeeding in the 2024 European election, they have immediately begun repaying Putin for his long-term assistance by steering Europe against Ukraine. Both directly and through Putin‘s deputy, Viktor Orbán, these forces work for fossil fuel and against democratic projects. Putin’s support for fossil fuel dominance and his efforts to propel displaced people towards Europe, plus his inflationary war on Ukraine, all grow the European right’s support base.
These parties all share in Putin’s “traditionalism:” an existential battle to eliminate any perceived threat to a white, “Christian,” heterosexual, patriarchal ethnostate.
In America, the right continues to pursue the most extremist steps. Around the nation, reproductive rights continue to be under attack with the Supreme Court’s men enthusiastically debating quite how close to death the pregnant have to be to deserve emergency treatment. Contraception, women’s access to divorce or even to vote are on the table.
Meanwhile LGBTQIA+ Americans watch Pride Month once again met with Neo Nazi violence. At the same time, the Republican establishment has promised the rolling back of their rights. Marriage equality will have been a short-lived triumph if Trump wins in November.
Trump is also promising to deport up to 11 million non-White people with limited process.
He is characterising immigrants as “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood of our nation” in echo of Nazi rhetoric. He is outright declaring his fascistic goals of vengeance on his political enemies.
The theocratic Project 2025 that is likely to be implemented with a Trump victory is written by a coalition of Trump’s allies brought together by a fossil fuel-funded junktank and driven by fossil fuel money. Indeed the fossil fuel sector is crafting executive orders to be handed to Trump for his first day in office in case other fascistic projects distract him.
And yet the election appears to hang in the balance.
Dutton has given up dogwhistles for bullhorns on the subject of immigration. His announcement of a fossil fuel-crafted energy policy is equally consonant with the global right.
The danger for the rest of us is that this forges a feedback loop. The right, fossil fuel-funded and connected, will increase the impact of the climate crisis. That rolling catastrophe provokes price pain and more displacement, which meat the right can feed upon.
The fact-based world needs to work out how we prevent the apocalypse the right is creating.
This essay is an extension of that first published in Pearls and Irritations
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Lucy Hamilton -
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Return to home page3….2…1… extended musings on “why the international far right is not, in part, a creation of the centre’s failure but actually the centre truly revealed…” Sigh. Any hope he is sick of reading my essays and won’t bother to lecture me again?
Not much chance of that Lucy, he’s probably busy spreading his “wisdom” on other sites and hasn’t gotten to The AIMN yet.
Something about Dutton’s prostate?
I know, nothing is much real at mo apart from black things.
Hey fellas, who are we talkin’ about? C’mon let me in on it! 🙂
I never dreamed I would one day have to defend the unspeakable Dutton, but such is life.
A case can certainly be made that Dutton’s views on energy are influenced by the fossil fuel lobby, but although the article made much of appalling attitudes in Europe to the rights of minorities, no evidence was given that Dutton is reflecting that. I believe his own party would revolt if he did. Fear of the Teals is very real in liberal circles.
An attempt was made to link Dutton’s immigration stance to the European Right, but we’ve had a long and inglorious independent history here of intolerance and racism aimed at migrants. A history shared by both sides of politics, so it’s unreasonable to single out Dutton on that particular issue.
Now I’ll go and have a shower.
It took nearly three hours, Lucy, and the lecture was remarkably brief. We can but be grateful for small mercies.
I’m surprised at some of the comments…I didn’t imagine that this was a site where you have to agree with all the comments.No matter how challenging it might be to understand the arguments. This is not letters to the Australian,for example.We need to be careful lest we fall into the same bullshit.
Let’s not make this personal, rather stick to the topic, in this case, the rise of the right, increasing intolerance and climate change issues.
There are currently around 130million people who are stateless, refugees, on the move because their homelands are not feasible for them, not safe for them either through wars, of which there are many, but we only hear about two or maybe sometimes a third, but those people who cannot go home for fear of their lives through political or religious reasons are in a state of helplessness, and the countries, regions where there is a semblance of peace and economic conditions which could give them safe haven, and religious tolerance, although looking at some of the stuff a friend harangues me with that is questionable.
And what happens in this bastion f freedom called Australia, should some of that number appear unannounced on our doorsteps? Off to Nauru where their lives are again put on hold, the only certainty offered is that they will never settle in Australia.
The Labor government is afraid to reverse the edict that ‘illegal’ immigrants will ever get to live here, will ever be welcome her if they arrive by leaky boats, but arrive by aircraft and overstay the visa, that’s tolerable.
The protection of profits for the already wealthiest is of paramount importance. We have gas being sold internationally and the Australian power generators and gas distributors have to compete with the international buyers, pay those inflated prices to use ‘our’ gas. In every state except WA, the price of power and gas fluctuates. Power generators are privately owned, sold of years ago to ‘balance budgets’, and now supply and demand sets the prices which are controlled by ‘smart meters’ to maximise profits, bugger the long suffering consumer. It’s hot, so every one turns up the air-conditioner and the price of power soars!
In WA, the electricity grid remains in government hands and a proportion of gas is guaranteed for local consumption at an agreed price. Pressure is being put on the government to change that last agreement. Woodside apparently are not rich enough.
The only ‘fair’ the right will accept is the ‘fair’ they define, as increasing profits for the already rich and that only people ‘just like me’ are allowed to live where I live.
Let’s work on redefining ‘fair’ to look a bit more like accepting the rights enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
Let’s not lower the level of debate here to become personal invective, but truly work to make this place a better, safer, fairer place for all who need a safe, fair place to live.
Thankyou so much to the Lying Rodent and the smirking Treasurer who sold everything out to buy successive elections. We are still reaping the rewards of those utter arseholes,and that fucking imbecile Dutton is bent on doing the same…why wouldn’t we vote for him?
Steve Davis, yes, the one thing that united Labor, Protectionists and Free Traders at the time of Federation was the shameful White Australia Policy. George Reid wanted to exempt the Japanese from it.
It’s worthy of remembering that Arthur Calwell carried on like Pauline Hanson when the High Court ruled that Annie O’Keefe could stay in Australia as she was a British subject through marriage. Lorenzo Gamboa, who married an Australian woman, was deported, and his wife left with him, but in 1954, they were permitted to re-enter Australia. Harold Holt, two years earlier, allowed the Japanese wives of Australian ex-servicemen to enter with an exemption to the Dictation Test.
Potty Boy Dutton is an ethnonationalist arsewipe.
Yes, Dutton is drawing on permanent trend in Australian politics of white supremacy and anglosphere chauvinism. Yes, he is also drawing on a more recent tradition of LNP spoiling of fact-based climate debate. My base essays are firmly restricted to roughly 1,000 words, although I often go over. Sometimes I expand them when bringing them to AIMN. I am trying to bring together a number of international and local trends because the movement is transnational; it has been since at least the 1930s when US fascists adopted Black Shirts over White Hoods. This makes for a really difficult task in choosing what to include and what can be assumed as understood. Explanatory journalism is difficult to fit within the parameters of short-form constraints. I do not have the scope to contextualise this within the complete history of Australian politics with those restrictions. Can we please make a good faith assumption that I understand the basics?
I am not saying Dutton is necessarily the far right. I’m not saying Australia is at risk in the same way that America is now. I’m not saying that he only gets his ideas from the global right.
What I am saying is that the radicalising of Australian politics and a chunk of society towards global trends is a risk, particularly when combined with christofascist and conspiracy-groups’ efforts to colonise formerly conservative branches and party structures. Success there would mean a “conservative” vote in Australia could grant power to a radicalised minority. We have protective electoral policies. We haven’t protected our main “conservative” parties. The internet has supercharged the 1930s-onwards transnational movement into something much more integrated. This is important.
Yes, we need to remain impersonal. No we don’t have to accept a barrage each time we post an essay that doesn’t really engage with the points made in a productive fashion nor listen to alternative viewpoints. These are all complex debates and nuance is important. The poster in question said a few essays back something along the lines of needing to take a deep breath every time he saw I had a new essay because he had to come straighten me out in my foolish misconception that it isn’t philosophical liberals at the heart of most of what’s wrong in the world. (And maybe that comment makes me hear every one of his replies composed in a patronising tone.) The right is my territory of research. If someone is antagonistic to that fact, they don’t have to keep reading.
If You want a festering fanny or a pustular penis, vote for such as Farage, Mad Morrison, Turdy Trump, Peter Duckwit-Futton, just for fun.., and laugh. They’d promise you anything, just to get up and pose in ignorance, egofixation, selfite limelight. As for this site and the bursts of pseudo authority and unbending retorts, poo. No-one here is god, even made of shitty wood. There’s been rubbish but someone might think that of anyone’s works or comments here. It all depresses and restricts the drive to offer positive contributions.., if one can. People who can’t choose a wine for lunch or a necktie imply they can solve all problems, cure all ills. But, money and power driven selfishness has always prevailed. So, how can we get the real needs staring at us, peace, good government and management, honesty, sincerity, decency? Hmmnn.
Chomsky’s Lesser Evil Voter (LEV) tactics might well be a viable pathway towards preserving the remnants of Australian democracy under siege from the global Right – at least the LEs might be pressured into preserving the separation of powers crucial to the integrity of government and politics.
The Slate has posted recent commentary on the influence upon and corruption of members of the US Supreme Court.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/leonard-leo-ignoring-senate-subpoena.html?sid=651118659de38fc222022021&email=7e5b03c42e8ce19c7675801c17859620a7c0d07ceb2615c00cb72534501bbb78&email2=87722d954ac42a7fc0de2ab021ec9611&email3=01f47ca0f79766651176d268258d5fe708322659&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=traffic&utm_source=newsletter&utm_content=TheSlatest
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/06/supreme-court-opinions-clarence-thomas-bump-stocks-gun-fetishist.html?sid=651118659de38fc222022021&email=7e5b03c42e8ce19c7675801c17859620a7c0d07ceb2615c00cb72534501bbb78&email2=87722d954ac42a7fc0de2ab021ec9611&email3=01f47ca0f79766651176d268258d5fe708322659&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=traffic&utm_source=newsletter&utm_content=TheSlatest
The New York Review of Books has been reviewing various legal/academic writings on recent Supreme Court judgments:
https://slate.com/originalism
How safe are our Federal Courts from similar onslaughts?
Yes, Lucy Ham, but the day is coming..
Lucy, you said, “Sometimes I expand them when bringing them to AIMN. I am trying to bring together a number of international and local trends… This makes for a really difficult task in choosing what to include and what can be assumed as understood. Explanatory journalism is difficult to fit within the parameters of short-form constraints.”
At the risk of sounding patronising, I’ll make a suggestion. Stop expanding them. Too many targets. You know you’re working within the parameters of short term constraints, so design the articles to suit. Working outside the parameters makes no sense.
“I am not saying Dutton is necessarily the far right.” That’s easy to say now, and it was easy to say in the article. But you did not. Even the headline implied otherwise. You connected the European far right to fossil fuel and Dutton to fossil fuel. You linked Dutton to the global right, and throughout the article the global right was described as “openly extreme”, “far right”, “extreme right”. Too many targets Lucy. Too many targets leads to confusion.
“The poster in question…” What’s happened Lucy? A few days ago we were on first name terms!
As for me saying I want to straighten you out in your foolish misconception, as you put it, that was a friendly dig. Just like your friendly “3. 2. 1” dig at me yesterday. Well, I assumed it was friendly, and I responded in kind. I even got a chuckle out of leefe’s little dig. I didn’t get huffy. But perhaps it wasn’t friendly. In fact, looking back, I was surprised at a couple of comments that suggested that everyone calm down. Clearly, they saw what was happening better than me.
“The right is my territory of research. If someone is antagonistic to that fact, they don’t have to keep reading.”
But you keep throwing me bones Lucy, so what’s a cute puppy to do?
And you always have the Binoy Kampmark option of silence. At the moment you’re opting in and opting out. That gives the impression that an unanswered objection is a successful objection. Is that really what you want?
When you say that there are aspects of liberalism that should be retained, but don’t list them when asked, you invite speculation as to your motives.
“We haven’t protected our main “conservative” parties.” Excellent! Now that should be the theme of an article!
Sorry to sound so patronising.
Hmmm.
Yes, PP. Much better than throwing coconuts or hand grenades.
When I’m off track, I’d welcome being redirected by reason with good intention, or even a discernibly friendly jibe. Just like most folk I guess.
I first read your headline as “Dutton’s prostate”….
Don’t frighten me like that – I need another glass of red now…
Just for the record.
Lucy stated that I “said a few essays back something along the lines of needing to take a deep breath every time he saw I had a new essay because he had to come straighten me out in my foolish misconception that it isn’t philosophical liberals at the heart of most of what’s wrong in the world. (And maybe that comment makes me hear every one of his replies composed in a patronising tone.)”
We should never put too much trust in our memory.
Here’s the full comment from me, a reply to Phil from the article on corporatocracy.
“Phil, it’s a huge subject, so I apologize for such a lengthy comment, but it was necessary to get around all the background. You refer to “more reading and revision here…” Sounds like me. Every time Lucy presents an article I groan. I know I’ve got days of study ahead of me. 🙂 ”
Patronising? More like a compliment. I get enjoyment out of study, and I appreciate being stimulated into study. I’m afflicted with a yearning for learning.
The key to the light-hearted nature of the comment of course, was the smiley face at the end.
Big Fossil Fuel has immense influence seemingly everywhere — and a disproportionately large quantity up here. In Canada, even the media are formally bedded with industry interests.
Notably, Postmedia, which among many other Canadian publications also owns both of our national daily newspapers, is on record allying itself with not only the planet’s second most polluting forms of carbon-based ‘energy’ but also THE MOST polluting/dirtiest crude oil, bitumen.
During a presentation, it was stated: “Postmedia and [Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers] will bring energy to the forefront of our national conversation. Together, we will engage executives, the business community and the Canadian public to underscore the ways in which the energy sector powers Canada.”
Additionally, a few years ago, Postmedia had acquired a lobbying firm with close ties to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney in order to participate in his government’s $30 million PR “war room” in promoting the industry’s interests.
And in May of 2021, the newspaper giant refused to run paid ads by Leadnow, a social and environmental justice organization, that exposed the Royal Bank of Canada as the largest financer of the nation’s fossil fuel extraction.
Also noteworthy is that the creator and former [now retired] owner of Black Press, David Black, is/was an aspiring oil-refiner. In B.C. alone, Black Press owns 67 community newspapers.
[Cont.] Meantime, many of Donald Trump’s faithful followers claim he’s a genius robbed of full presidential glory who also challenges the Deep State.
As for “the swamp” he claimed to be draining, he himself was a part of it.
A revelatory review (by Geoff Olson, 01/10/2018) of the book The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil and the Attack on U.S. Democracy notes that the book’s author describes big oil CEOs and lobbyists in the U.S. as being a notably large part of the American Deep State.
Therefore, it would be a large part of the national Capitol’s swamp that Trump claims has corrupted DC and, ergo, was supposedly seeking to destroy him and his presidency.
However, considering the Trump administration’s kowtowing to big fossil fuel, mostly via the recklessly significant loosening of environmental protections, he, far from genuinely trying to “drain the swamp”, actually wallowed in it.
“This notion of a supranational deep state does not seem to be far-fetched to me, though I remain agnostic about rumors involving the [Trump administration’s] Offal Office. I certainly don’t buy the alt-right notion that Trump is playing ‘four-dimensional chess’ against the deep state. The six-time bankruptee would probably lose at checkers to a nine-year old and tweet that he whipped Garry Kasparov.”
—Geoff Olson, “A Deep State of Confusion”
It appears that the human race is in a fight to the death with big money,whether it be the Fossil fuel industry,large corporations corrupting governments,or the propaganda of media and advertising.It’s not reassuring to learn that Canada also has huge problems.Meanwhile in our own backyard we have another political puppet trying to screw the push towards renewables on behalf of the fossil fuel criminals here,especially his mentor and hero,who happens to reside in Singapore…how’s that for patriotism?
Apparently our current climate nemesis,he of the unfortunate visage and presentation,is set to announce his answer to all our woes,his nuclear brain fart.We know it’s been discredited by every expert in the field,but that won’t deter boofhead,because he knows better.How this has been allowed to run this far is risible.
Dutton,Ley,Littleproud…let that sink in,with an aggregate IQ in the mid 20’s,not to mention the other stinkers who somehow managed to survive the last electoral massacre.Credibility zero.
I very much value Lucy Hamilton’s scholarly commitment to informing us of the great perils of the organised Right in all its local and international forms, mutations, and interrelations.
Thanks Lucy.