Illiberalism: 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.
In December 2023, Donald Trump said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” It echoes similar sentiments from the illiberal leader of the aspiring autocrats, Viktor Orbán: “We [Hungarians] are not a mixed race … and we do not want to become a mixed race.” The eugenicist messaging is reminiscent of the Third Reich, and Hitler used the metaphor of outsiders poisoning the nation’s blood in Mein Kampf. Orban has visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago this week as though the latter was running a parallel illiberal state.
The ideology that links the anti-liberal internationale can be defined as “traditionalism.” There is a philosophical version that inspires many of the leading actors and the White supremacist militants. The populist version creates a mythical past where a virtuous ethnostate functioned in unity and purpose. It is patriarchal: women knew their subordinate place, submissively breeding for the family and the nation. There is no room for Queer people in a world where the superior ethnic group must reproduce for national strength. There is little room for aberrant women who won’t be domesticated. And there must be no room for women breeding with men who aren’t of the privileged race.
The messaging deployed in Dunkley falls into this category. The Liberal Party’s leaders had chosen to dwell on borders and the dormant story of the High Court’s release of people indefinitely detained. Advance, an Atlas Network–connected body, that exists to foster community discord thus helping the Coalition return to government on the wave of grievance voting had paid to have lurid advertisements published on the issue (relishing its cashed up status including payments for “working” for its charity-status-affiliate).
Surprisingly, two days before the by-election, Victoria Police made a mistake by publicising the arrest on sexual assault charges of one of that category of detainee before, some hours later, admitting that they had mistaken his identity.
The Liberal leadership pounced on this timely error by Victoria Police and spent the hours and days following sensationalising the mistaken arrest and the threat to women in the electorate. Some of the wording demands the label fascistic politicking.
The Liberal Party and Advance did not succeed this time, even with the convenient mistake made by Victoria Police. The goal of the Atlas Network and philosophical Traditionalists has been the slow destruction of the modern, diverse, democratic project. The goal of the more extreme traditionalists has been Accelerationist. This demands shoving crowbars into the cracks in the democratic project and propelling it towards immediate destruction. The damage done in any one campaign must not be assessed on its own merits but in the steps taken to imminent or longterm collapse.
The Atlas Network’s goal has been to damage civil society around the world to make welcome ground for (American) corporations. Some of the donors and strategists see deploying anti-immigrant and anti-refugee messaging as a useful distraction from the ultra-free market goals. Promoting the hatred of Queer people, ensuring they are bashed or murdered or driven to suicide, is a small price to pay for people who think pay-outs to the families of the dead are cheaper than maintenance work on expensive infrastructure, the “cost of doing business.”
Other donors and strategists are firmly in the traditionalism sphere where they despise “woke.” For them this denotes societies that are inclusive of “race” and race-mixing, sexuality and gender diversity. The “unity” of their nostalgic imagined past is fractured by liberal tolerance of difference. This is central to Vladimir Putin and his ally Orban. It is Trump MAGA and, apparently, the Coalition’s Australia.
For these traditionalists, there is a “visceral disgust” felt at bodies that defy their straitjacketed definitions of acceptable. Queer and Brown people or non-feminine women, even the fat, are disgusting. And their bigotry-infused morality allows them to confuse that feeling of disgust for a “moral abhorrence” of the target.
The Liberal Party and Atlas-connected Advance both needed the imaginary crime of the refugee to be sexual in nature because the safety and purity of White women is one of their primary weapons against the rest of us.
Traditionalism is also entrenched in an early 2000s clash of civilisations where the “Muslim world” replaced the “Iron Curtain” as the implacable foe. Any implied Muslim (which includes Christian Palestinians as well as refugees) is utterly disposable in the existential battle they wage in their crusade.
Thus Israel’s “Jewish Nationalists” and India’s Hindutva are allies against the selected “Muslim enemy.” China is characterised as a global threat, so sometimes these figures care for the Uighur population suffering ethnic cleansing by China, but they are just as likely to share China’s characterisation of (Muslim) resistance to oppression as “terror.”
Benjamin Netanyahu and Putin are both eagerly awaiting Trump’s reinstatement, indeed probably shaping their own military goals to help him win in November. If Trump wins, these ethnic cleansers will be even freer to kill the inconvenient populations on the land they want for their empires.
Meanwhile, for free market devotees, the chaos will elicit plentiful disaster capitalism windfalls. And traditionalism’s disdain for empirical knowledge has been their friend in fighting climate science. Trump will roll back Biden’s crucial transition bill and free the illiberal petrostates from the despised limping towards some kind of international consensus on climate action.
When Liberal Party figures play Orbanist games to win by-elections, they further their last decade’s efforts to push Australia’s democratic project towards illiberalism.
All the people harmed – or killed – in the process are just the cost of doing business.
This was first published in Pearls and Irritations as Illiberalism ascendant: the Dunkley by-election and the cost of doing business
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Return to home pageI’m not a politician or a lawyer of any description, but I do wonder if at some time in the future:
a) it will be possible for some person or group to sue a group that exists today – eg the LNP/Republicans/oil companies – for something like climate denial and subsequent inactivity that causes a catastrophe (sea level rise anyone?).
b) if anyone will ever take something like this up.
Or will their legacy be so interwoven with what will exist then, that nothing can be done to seek recourse.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll repeat it. The language used by Ley was reminiscent of the anti-China rhetoric not just of Potty Boy Dutton, but of the 1850s and 60s. One of the greatest pieces of karma I ever saw was when a white supremacist Australian man (he made some exceptions when and where it suited him, such as eating Chinese food, even attending a dinner paid for by a Vietnamese client of the firm his wife worked for, driving a Japanese vehicle, and inviting a First Nations man who was a country and western singer to his caravan for afternoon tea) was told by his non-racist sister that their great-grandfather was Chinese! Okay, there was a stereotype at the time, that rebellious Irishwomen were influenced by Chinese men, and yes, some married or co-habited with them.
I still remember the idiocy of hanson when she farted that Australians yearned for a leader like Putin! Well, hanson’s vote didn’t reach double figures in 2022, so that flew like a lead balloon!
If the idiots of the Liberal Party believe that being illiberal will help them return to government, they can keep going and watch their support FALL!
LLLeeeyyy, with a brain small enough to test the finest microscopes, has been easing her constipated soul with squirts of totally irrelevant and misleading, but perhaps coached, propaganda, of the most deficient, idiotic, primitive, savagerysoaked type of evil. She seems to believe (hah) that talk is automatically correct, propaganda is honest, wilful stupidity is genuine, lies are lovely. We get Merde Dog Maggoty Mischief and Misinformation, Costello centred crappy crawling criminality, Stokes’s S S jackbootery, Lying low level, lacenous, farcical, idiotic, bullying, brainless shockyjocky junk, and as a result, a Citizen level of stupidity and unawareness. Far Canal.
To think that there is a major political party in Australia that proudly holds the belief that it is fine to keep people indefinitely locked up when there is not an adequate process to put them either into the Justice system if they are criminals, or to release them into the community with a correct immigration status.
The Liberal/National parties have been the creators of, and defenders of, an immigration system that is not serving Australia’s need, and obligation, to have an orderly and fair intake of refugees and asylum seekers.
Yet there is little effort to call them out on their clearly stated attitude that certain human beings can be left in a legal black hole.
Soossaann, a Tardis skull in which a brain can be lost forever.
Since the coming of ‘civilization’, notions of alignment have been shifted from the clan to the will of gods as construed and delivered by the guile of power-seekers.
As alignment was achieved, inevitably there was the ‘with us or agin us’ mantra. And by this, upon meeting with ‘others’, because of the hypnotic power of the invisible gods and words, differences could not be resolved through tangible evidence-based natural reason, alignment could only be achieved by faith or bribery and coercion. So failure left only the alternative of hatred and hostility – as ambivalence was not permitted.
Over millennia, through monarchies and empires, much destruction, death, dislocation and thievery has been wrought by this m.o.
Even through the rise up of the sciences and evidence-based natural reason, the olde ‘will of gods’ m.o. has by rote persisted as a convenience to the workings of bribery and coercion.
The democratic project, and its essential ‘separation of powers’ is anathema to the power-seekers. Corruptibility being available either through ignorance or choice, it is obvious that the power-seekers will attack using the old m.o. of manipulation of faith, attacking sciences and evidence-based reason, bribery, coercion and the engendering of hostility and hatred.
And for those not swayed, it appears the power-seekers of today believe ambivalence will suffice.
It is notable, however, that in Oz now, the power-seekers and their reps have resorted to screeching, and one seldom hears in public, “She’ll be right.” – more like; much noise from the demolition of trust, from the carers, and the loaded silence of the dubious.
As thieves invade Oz with the impossible mortgage, does Oz remain conned, or stop building castles in the air and on the ground?
Seems by the endless onslaught of the corrupted and feckless mainstream media, Oz doesn’t know yet.
What’s with this Western hatred of Victor Orban?
One of the reasons Orban is hated in the West is that when he began his political activism he was an anti-Soviet dissident, living in a Warsaw Pact country, seen as a rising star by the West, but who now refuses to conform to liberal perceptions and ideals. There are none so bitter as a scorned lover.
It follows from this bitterness that many of the criticisms of Orban will not stand up to criticism, and so it is.
For example the Twittersphere went into meltdown in 2019 when Tucker Carlsen visited Hungary to make a documentary and attend a conference. For liberals, free speech is sacred, as long as you don’t say anything they disagree with.
Lucy seems to be painting Orban as an extremist by stating shortly after a reference to him “There is no room for Queer people in a world where the superior ethnic group must reproduce for national strength.”
In fact, same-sex couples in Hungary can have civil unions, but they can’t call it marriage. That’s not exactly extremism.
Orban has been criticised for controlling 90% of the news media, but is that so vastly different to the US where a similar percentage is controlled by a right-wing oligarchy? Or Australia, where all free to air TV channels are owned by right-wingers, except for the ABC and SBS which are increasingly influenced by the corporate sector? Our news media is controlled also.
Laszlo Magas, a retired professor who, like Orban, helped bring an end to communism in Hungary, chalks up his country’s political isolation to one thing: Western liberal bias. “Hungary is not the West’s colony,” says Magas, an Orbán supporter who echoes many of the prime minister’s views.
“The whole world is being misled about us. The mainstream media is full of fake news about us. The liberals want you to think Hungary doesn’t know what democracy is because we don’t share their beliefs.”
Let’s be frank. The liberal West only raises democracy as an issue when their candidate loses. They don’t care how authoritarian a regime is, as long as it’s a compliant vassal.
Are all of Orban’s policies appropriate elsewhere? Of course not. Such a suggestion would be ridiculous. But liberals refuse to see that recognition of that truth also requires recognition of Hungary’s right to adopt only those policies and principles from the West that it deems appropriate for Hungary. If we can refuse Orban’s policies, he can refuse ours.
Or is that not the case? Do we actually see ourselves as superior? That we have the right to dictate policies to others? That others should bow before us? Because it looks as though that belief is at the bottom of this.
Lucy refers to a “liberal tolerance of difference.”
Liberal tolerance of difference is a myth.
Difference at the level of the individual is fine under liberalism. Differing views on sexuality, gender, etc are protected as part of the liberal cult of individualism. But watch out if you want to differ on how you manage your economy. That’s when you find out the true liberal position on difference and diversity.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi summed up liberal hypocrisy on economic diversity beautifully, just a few days ago.
“It is not permissible that those with the biggest fist have the final say, and it is definitely unacceptable that certain countries must be at the table while others can only be on the menu.” What a wonderful snapshot of liberal economics and liberal thinking in general.
Wowzers, Steve, you do like your tyrants, don’t you?
You also seem to have missed the vast number of commennters and comments railing against NewsCorpse and the rest of the RRWNJ-controlled media in the west. Or ignored them because they don’t fit your world view.
leefe, I think most people have been able to work out my political leanings over the last 12 months or so, and it’s pretty clear, I ain’t no Orbanista ! 🙂
SD wrong; Orban took PR advantage of Russians leaving Hungary to tell the Russians to leave…. while nowadays it’s also working age Hungarians leaving in droves; well done?
He started more liberal and allegedly had a nervous breakdown when losing power the first time in 2004, then came back as an illiberal attacking norms, nullifying institutions and disrupting processes, while corruption for <1% and gerrymandering flourished.
Of course he is attractive to Carlson, Fox/Murdoch, GOP, Trump, LNP, Kochs, Anglo conservatives, Erdogan, Xi and Putin vs. EU, minimum regulatory standards, civil society, liberal democracy and open society.
Of late, no wonder he wants to buddy up with Trump due to problems at home: his President and former Justice Minister resigned due to pardoning a pedophile and replaced by a President whose father was allegedly a Nazi; while the Justice Minister’s former husband has been spilling the beans on corruption etc. within the regime.
Like Joh’s QLD of the 1970-80s, he relies upon regional voters, ‘Christianism’, nationalism, gerrymandering, ‘owning’ the media and institutions for proto-authoritarianism, that seems to be getting backed into a corner…..
More nit-picking negativity from Andrew Smith.
We could pick any administration out of a hat, from anywhere in the world, and find problems, scandals to drool over. That’s the nature of bureaucracies; they breed corruption no matter what position on the political spectrum they originate from.
Andrew has highlighted all this lovely negativity to avoid dealing with the substance of my comment about Victor Orban — the West is in no position to tell Hungary or any other country how to manage its affairs. To do do so is to reveal an inconvenient truth — we still follow our old colonial mind-set that has caused so much suffering to so many people in the past, and continues to do so today.
We still believe we are superior.
Lucy intended with this article to bring to our attention the nature and problems of illiberalism, but has inadvertently brought to the fore the true nature of liberalism itself.
Liberalism, because of its foundation principles, (in reality, false Hobbesian assumptions) does not have, and cannot have an ethical base. Ethics are the agreed upon standards, the glue, that holds society together.
But liberalism is based on the incorrect assumption that society is an artificial collection of fearful, disparate individuals, competing with each other as rivals, grouped together for protection from each other by protection provided by an authority figure.
It is assumed that for such a society, only rules, laws, can provide stability. Hence the closest liberals can come to an ethical base is their oft repeated mantra of “property rights and the rule of law.” And as Lucy has noted elsewhere, the powerful draft the laws.
The liberal system therefore, because it has no ethical base to provide a harmonious stability, meets the need for stability by way of rules. Detailed rules. An endless procession of newly legislated rules. How did this come about? Because liberals fear democratic processes. They fear the thought of people resolving issues for themselves through negotiation and cooperation. To a liberal, such a process is pure anarchy. Because there’s no controlling the outcomes. For liberals, resolving issues is the exclusive domain of the authorities.
One outcome of the liberal belief that society is comprised of competing individuals is that there is no room in such a scenario for tradition. Tradition implies consensus, an agreed upon history and an agreed upon way of going about things. But that involves mutual understanding. It involves a view of society as an organic whole. Society as a unit. Traditions expose the liberal lie of the disconnected individual.
Society as a unit is the antithesis of liberalism. And for good reason. Liberalism, by putting the individual at the apex of society, actually condones using others for personal enrichment, an activity that would be restricted in a unified society.
And so we see attacks by liberals on any influences that unify society. Traditions. Unionism. The only traditions upheld by liberalism are those that conduce to their own greater power. That stabilise the liberal order. The rule of law. The Westminster System. The fictional tradition of the “rules-based order” where the rules are made by the powerful and changed or ignored on the whim of the powerful.
So the criticism of “traditionalism” that we see in this article is troubling.
Is tradition distinct from traditionalism? It’s not altogether clear from the article, given that there is no reference to “tradition” itself.
From what I can gather Lucy says the Right is weaponising tradition on the basis of tradition being sacred.
Is tradition sacred? Of course not. Tradition can be stifling and counter-productive. But in a healthy, unified society, new traditions evolve to replace the negatives.
Should tradition be weaponised? Of course not. That could result in weaponising myths and redundant traditions.
But the greater danger to society, greater than traditionalism, is the ongoing attacks on traditions and social unity that emanate from the false assumptions of liberalism, because behind such attacks there’s someone trying to take advantage.
The danger from traditionalism will wane. The danger from liberalism will persist because our entire system of trade, exchange and finance is a liberal instrument in which economic pressure can be used to ensure conformity.
Can someone enlighten me: is Steve Davis fulminating against liberalism or libertarianism?
ZSG, take your pick.
There’s not a lot of difference between the two.
Both put the individual at the apex of society.
Most of our social ills stem from that.
And yes, fulminating sounds about right.
Excellent anlysis thsnk you.
One last attempt at explaination:
Libertarianism puts the individual at t he apex full stop.
Liberalism puts the individual at the apex only in regard to that individual’s personal matters.
In other words, liberalism allows me to decide for myself; libertarianism allows anyone with the power/strength to do so to decide for me. That’s a big difference.
leefe,
you talkin’ like “define your terms” is a reasonable expectation.
Here’s a funny one;
“Is tradition sacred? Of course not.”
*excepting, of course, ‘religious tradition’, including the >60% of the global human population societally indoctrinated from infancy into Abrahamic derived scriptures (male anthropomorphic mono-deity)
Scriptural/faith based ‘traditionalists’ often put forth religious petition for exclusion from legislation or imposition of preference as political reality, even here on the relatively ‘secularl’ & ‘liberal’ soil of terra straya.
Pax terra.
The crawling, brown nosing, G. Dubya anal sphincter kissing vile little sycophant that is Howard:
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/staying-the-course-howard-rolled-defence-plan-to-cut-iraq-presence-20240313-p5fc65.html
There seems to be some confusion among commenters as to the nature of liberalism, and that’s not surprising. Anyone reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on liberalism will conclude that liberalism is anything a particular liberal wants it to be.
But here’s a couple of explanations that clarify my view.
From The Ethics Centre: “Liberalism is, at its heart, the belief that each individual person has moral priority over their community or society when it comes to determining the course of their life. This primacy of individual freedom and self-determination might seem self-evident to people living in modern liberal democracies, but it is actually a relatively recent innovation.”
Hence the liberal disregard for tradition. Although it must be noted that as they cannot help lying, and knowing that people have a regard for tradition, they pretend that liberalism is the natural order.
From Political Science: “Robert Eccleshall in his noted article ‘Liberalism’ has stated that liberalism, in ultimate analysis, is a political ideology intimately associated with the birth and evolution of the capitalist world. So we can say that as a political ideology liberalism means to pursue policies of freedom in political and economic spheres and clear restrictions on the activities of state authority… Liberalism, strictly speaking, is an offshoot of capitalism since it was believed that the meteoric growth of capitalism could be possible only through an adoption of liberal policies which contain an allowance of maximum freedom to investors and producers. Thus, liberalism is an economic and political doctrine.”
For a brief period liberalism actually a regard for ethical (social) values.
L.T. Hobhouse was a leading liberal in the tradition of Mill, but he sounded more like a Proudhonian than a liberal on the subject when he wrote in 1911;
“That there are rights to property we all admit. Is there not (as well) a general right TO property? Is there not something radically wrong with an economic system under which….vast inequalities are perpetuated? Ought we to acquiesce in a condition in which the great majority are born to nothing except what they can earn, while some are born to more than the social value of any individual of whatever merit?”
Hobhouse deflated another favourite liberal claim, a claim still circulating today — the right of entrepreneurs to the exclusive enjoyment of profits.
“The prosperous businessman who thinks he has made his fortune entirely by self-help does not pause to consider what single step he could have taken on the road to success but for the ordered tranquillity which has made commercial development possible, the security by road, rail and sea, the masses of skilled labour, and the sum of intelligence which civilisation has placed at his disposal, the very demand for goods which he produces that the progress of the world has created, the inventions he uses as a matter of course that have been built up by the collective effort of generations…as it is society that maintains and guarantees his possessions, so also it is society that is an indispensable partner in its original creation.”
He concluded; “The basis of property is social.” Not exactly a popular view among today’s liberals.
“Liberalism is, at its heart, the belief that each individual person has moral priority over their community or society when it comes to determining the course of their life.”
Yes, that’s what I said. Personal matters – religion, sexuality, gender, presentation, pastimes, lifestyle etc – are for me to determine; society does not get a say in it until society is directly and negatively affected by it and even then there are limits.
Quite so leefe, but can you not see the serious problem that flows from this?
Liberalism, by disconnecting individuals from society, isolates them. Makes them vulnerable.
Divide and rule has been the means by which liberalism has exerted so much influence and gained so much power.
Those that accept that must also accept their loss of influence as members of a healthy society, but at least they can console themselves with the thought that “Well, at least I’m free to dye my hair purple and have a tattoo on my butt.”
Allow me to assist.
Liberalism is a moveable feast depending on who’s doing the cooking and whose kitchen it is : just ask Peter Dutton.
Libertarianism also known as “Going commando” is a way of saying that you’re not wearing any underwear and that is your right. The term originated with elite soldiers trained to be ready to fight at a moment’s notice. So when you’re not wearing any underwear, you’re, well, ready to go at any moment — without pesky undies in the way.
leefe, I should acknowledge that there are some personal matters over which the individual should have control.
And with that personal right, liberals are even happy to tolerate the right to dissent, but within limits.
As soon as your dissent begins to have an impact, begins to exert influence, suddenly tolerance and the revered status of freedom of expression take a back seat.
In other words, liberals are more than happy with the freedoms you enjoy until your freedom begins to interfere with their control of economic matters.
Steve:
I count myself in the liberal camp – purely on social/personal issues. Economics is a different matter – there I would be considered fairly hard left-wing by most people. This is not hard; all that is required is the ability to distinguish between things that directly affect only you and those that directly affect others. Nor, from my discussions elsewhere, am I unusual in this. It’s almost as though many people are capable of critical thought.
Hard left-wing leefe?
I’m starting to like you more and more. 🙂
But back to business. Any decent system that gives primacy to social values should also protect individual primacy on certain personal matters. As I’ve noted previously, in evolutionary history, the successful groups (not restricted to humans) are those that enforce social cohesion while allowing for individual diversity.
You would be a good example of that in practice, but that is not compatible with liberalism, because, as noted on the Political Science site, “liberalism is an economic and political doctrine.” The social doctrine of liberalism comes a distant third. So distant as to be for the most part irrelevant.
According to a recent report by Oxfam, the world’s richest 1% own 43% of global financial assets, and the wealth of the top five billionaires has doubled since 2020, while 60% of humanity – nearly 5 billion people – collectively got poorer.
Oxfam published the study, “Inequality Inc.”, to coincide with the World Economic Forum meeting of corporate oligarchs and Western government officials in Davos, Switzerland this January.
Oxfam warned that the world capitalist economic system, (for “capitalist” read “liberal”) “has created a new type of colonialism… Many of the world’s super-rich are concentrated in countries that were once colonial superpowers. Neocolonial relationships persist, perpetuating economic imbalances and rigging the economic rules in favor of rich nations”
The report stated that the wealthiest 1% of the world population emit as much carbon pollution as the poorest two-thirds of the entire human population. But liberalism is also responsible for for a perpetual war economy into which Australia is being drawn, for species extinction, for cultural genocide, for cultural homogenization…the list goes on.
So the threat from right-wing ratbags is minuscule compared to the threat liberalism poses on many fronts.
Let’s get focused on the real threat. Liberalism.
So what’s stopping us?
Clearly we’ve grown attached to our comfortable lifestyle. Attached to the point of addiction. We know deep inside that the world is out of balance, that we enjoy an enormous unfair advantage, but we push that thought to the back of our minds. We do not allow that thought to develop, because we know where it will lead.
So we give to charities to make ourselves feel better, knowing full well that charities cannot change the status quo. We console ourselves, we lie to ourselves, with the Thatcher lie — “There is no alternative.”
We cannot continue like this. We must look for alternatives.
SD & Leefe,
‘Freedom of Speech’ (and or expression) … that’s an olde concept striven for, but since being writ to law it’s become a novel game of charades encumbered by countless and ongoing exceptions driven by political convenience and the manipulations of ‘common morality’. With penalties of death, incarceration, or social / intellectual obliteration, it has unsurprisingly become a multi-functional tool for obscurantism and oppression.
Take the current USA Tik Tok bill, where it wants Bytedance to sell-off, as Bytedance is subject to Chinese laws where it must provide data to the Chinese govt. Oh, the hypocrisy; the US government also maintains such laws. And on that and other kindred ‘culture war’ and ‘ballistic war’ and ‘security’ matters, today on ABC’s ‘Insiders’, Oz shadow minister for home affairs unleashed a didactic stream of rhetorical blather that circumvented truth and bypassed facts and laws extant, opting for scaremongering in a bid to score points against his political opponents. He went on virtually unchallenged by the journalists.
As for capitalism, in its purity, as an efficient means of financial transfer, I have no problems with it …. provided Marx’ warnings about ‘class’ are heeded via regulation. Needless to say, mainstream divisiveness persists via a combination of religious hocus-pokus, promises of convenience, strength and wealth, the propensities of the madding crowd and the ‘elite’, and the aspiration and corruptibility of all humans. Matters of ‘class’ continue to be reinvented and nuanced for political convenience in both autocracies, and the race for political differentiation in democracies. So affected, I call it ‘suicide capitalism’.
The same matters of ‘class’ and convenient differentiation continue to be the hallmark of all politics, diplomacy, wars, laws and lore, jurisdictional and other boundaries, treaties, truth and philosophy. Suffice it to say, they continue to pile up in a complexity of whispers, screams, intrigues and cognitive bias of history and precedent providing fuel for discourse, artistic and linguistic liquidity and paradoxical discombobulation. Apparently the calculus of binaries and the spin of yin and yang cannot be assured.
Even in the advance of science and scientific process, there’s a persistence of buy-outs that sees its outcomes defrayed to the conveniences of the day.
It seems that stillness, whilst desired by many, does not exist. Existence is being in the presence of change, and perhaps the only option we have is the rate by which we avail ourselves to ponder alternatives and make our choices.
I guess that rather than pursue food for thought and decision making, there’s an onrush for food for the belly, and the perceived nature’s imperative for multiplication.
Perhaps the guile of realizing the growth paradigm gives rise to us eating ourselves out of house and home.
The angst and wrangling is likely from a deep-down understanding there’s nowhere else to go.
Clakka,
Your comments about capiitalism remind me of that line in the US Constitution: ” … a well regulated militia … ” Good luck with that.
We actualy had that – not just here in Australia, but in the UK and many other nations – but the capitalists weren’t satisfied and, as they had the money, they had the power to change it. And here we are. Greed wins.
Leefe,
Yep, in ‘suicide capitalism’, greed prevails.
Rather than it winning, I’d have said greed destroys via the death cult it pays for.
Steve: “And with that personal right, liberals are even happy to tolerate the right to dissent, but within limits.
As soon as your dissent begins to have an impact, begins to exert influence, suddenly tolerance and the revered status of freedom of expression take a back seat.”
While I’m totally on board with this for, say, Nazis. Stop and think for a minute though. Women not wanting to be confined to the home or wanting a say on when we breed can be seen as a dissent that has an “impact” depending on the majority’s views. This is the case in large swathes of the US right now. The power-toting majority is worried about “race suicide”. For similar reasons, the right to be Queer in any form is being erased across the Red states because they describe it as harming society. Can you see why I want a much more nuanced discussion on this.
You also don’t get to erase a range of definitions of “liberal” because they don’t suit your preferred definition. They are there for others to use in the way that they have been broadly defined. “Floating signifiers” are annoying but they exist. Look at the debate over “gender” and its definition being provoked by Judith Butler’s new book where a crop of feminists are mad that a) they don’t define it concretely and/or b) they refuse to use the definition that the feminists think is helpful.
Lucy, in regard to me erasing a range of definitions of “liberal” because they don’t suit my preferred definition, words must have a degree of certainty about them or we just talk in circles. Which is exactly what’s happening with “liberal” I believe. If people want to give a label to a progressive social outlook that’s fine, but don’t call it liberal.
“Liberal” as it pertains to “liberalism” has a coherent meaning associated with the economic system that was developed to support capitalism. That’s not my opinion, it’s the opinion of Britannica, Stanford and so on, so to associate it with a progressive outlook generates unnecessary confusion. And to what end? I can see no good reason. “Progressive” would be far more apt.
Progressives who use “liberal” for “progressive” are serving the interests of the parasitical class by diverting attention away from the relentless weakening of society that is a consequence of our liberal economic system. Progressives need to differentiate themselves from liberals instead of pretending that they’re all in the same camp.
You want a more nuanced discussion of progressive issues, and that’s fine, but you cannot speak of “liberal tolerance of difference” as you did, and then be “ totally on board with” intolerance of Nazis. I hope I read you correctly on that.
If I read you correctly, I agree. Nazi thought should not be tolerated. But to speak of liberal tolerance of difference is misleading anyway. It implies that liberals came up with the concept, which is nonsense. Tolerance has been a factor in human evolution to such an extent that it pre-dates humans.
Even if it’s use is not intended to imply a liberalism origin, the phrase is without meaning because it has limits, as discussed. However, it’s use by liberals does betray a degree of assumed moral superiority that is groundless. There is no moral superiority that I can think of that is associated with liberalism in its current form. There cannot be a moral aspect to a system based on the individual. (see note)
There was a time when liberalism could claim some high moral ground as I indicated with the case of LT Hobhouse, but that aspect of liberalism has been ruthlessly eradicated by the “property rights and rule of law” faction who put the individual at the apex of society, where she remains.
Lucy, the attack on hard-won rights coming out of the US that concerns you, has its origins in liberalism.
For two generations now we’ve been taught that our opinions are equal in weight or value to any other opinion, no matter how little thought or consideration we give them. When you teach people that they are special as individuals (which is true) but neglect to teach them that it is society that nurtures and protects their uniqueness, (also true) you create a population of narcissists who believe they can impose their views on others.
So what has liberalism actually given us? Most of the “civilised” benefits of modern life that we enjoy did not come from liberalism, they did not come from capitalism; they came at great cost to working people who fought and died for decency, respect, and fair dealing. We will lose all they fought for if we take our eyes off the biggest threat to civilised life, and to life on this planet — a liberal economic system that is out of control.
Note. From Britannica — “Morality – the moral beliefs and practices of a culture, community, or religion… Empirical studies show that all societies have moral rules that prescribe or forbid certain classes of action and that these rules are accompanied by sanctions to ensure their enforcement.”
More evidence in the Guardian today of the dangers inherent in liberal thinking. An inability to learn from history. A built-in compulsion/preoccupation with aggression rather than cooperation. The following did not come from the illiberal Right, but from the liberal mainstream.
Headline — Australia needs a plan for war to ‘focus the national mind’, Michael Pezzullo says.
“In a speech to an invitation-only security seminar last week, Pezzullo said Australian leaders needed to resurrect a practice adopted in the 1930s and prepare “a war book” which clearly allocated roles and responsibilities in the event of a conflict.”
A practice from the 1930s? We all know how that turned out.
How about a plan for peace?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/18/michael-pezzullo-australia-war-plan-book-former-secretary-home-affairs
S Davis mentions the recent burble of our own bonsai Mussolini, a certain Pezzullo, the political pervert of the back areas of public service manipulations, chicanery, subterfuge, gross impertinent deliberate error and of course, duty to deviate. Lower than a cockroach’s clakka, Pezzullo has natural twisted form, and a predilection for filling all the wrong gaps with cerebral malnutrition. He was such a good fit for Peter Duckwit-Futton, knowing so little mutually. They may have actually felt each was outdoing the other, but only in error. And, we hear that the fraudite fascist M Canavan has said that coal is still big, holy perhaps. What a deadly deluded dope.