Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
So long, suckers.
I'm almost sorry to bump this sad sack of a thread now that Australian politics is back on ice, nothing changed and nothing resolved (someone may emerge at this point to yell at me about One Nation but fuck that, they are a symptom, not a cause)...
Not strictly 'Strayan' but since it's unlikely to get discussed in FYM; what happens if Jeremy Corbyn actually wins this re-do of the British Labour leadership contest? Because he very well could. It certainly isn't any of the interchangeable cast of Blairites who have seen the party's membership top half a million.
I will confess, however, that my knowledge of UK politics - at least of the present day - is not nearly as good as that of the US.
I will confess that I am in the same boat. I guess it stands to reason, since the empire is in Washington now and not in London.
Congrats to Triple J for giving platforms to fascists now.
Trump appeared on Hack?
Is that for the discussion on "Aussie patriots" they've been advertising?
I was quite deliberately avoiding that.
I too hate the 50/50, "A says/B says" journalism that gives everything equal time, but I would have thought that for a discussion on "Aussie patriots", at least what I saw billed, it is only reasonable to at least let a so-called patriot speak for themselves rather than have a whole bunch of people attack a strawman? Give him enough rope, even.
Also, to judge from call-ins back in the day when I used to have Hack on, a surprising proportion (or maybe it isn't surprising, eh?) of young strayans are very very rightwing.
All that talk of demographic salvation (see also the coming Democratic majority in America) is a mite shortsighted I think.
Replace "strayans" with "people" and you have today's unfortunate FYM episode.
Entirely. With regards to the Democrats specifically, whatever majority they have will prove illusory within a couple of electoral cycles. People do not stay clustered behind one party forever, especially not now. The Republicans as we knew them are at death's door, and Trump at the moment has the pillow a millimetre from their face, but there is no reason why the Republicans won't take on another guise that appeals to whatever demographics exist in a decade.
The alarming part is that an extremist tack, whether it be in the direction of a Trump or something else, is perhaps most likely. The one prediction I will make is that politics across the Western world will get more extreme in the next couple of decades. This is unlikely to be a good thing (I say as somebody whose views are far from the centre).
Also, to judge from call-ins back in the day when I used to have Hack on, a surprising proportion (or maybe it isn't surprising, eh?) of young strayans are very very rightwing. All that talk of demographic salvation (see also the coming Democratic majority in America) is a mite shortsighted I think.
What happened in FYM today? I am afraid I was busy, you know, working.
I'm horrified how many of my relatives on Facebook (generally distant ones, fortunately) who you would identify as traditional working-class left and who never voted for Abbott take much pleasure in sharing anti-refugee and anti-Islam memes. I'm always seeing shit shared from pages with idiotic names like "stop the mosque in Bendigo" and "we stand with Sonia Kruger".
Anybody who thinks that these "Aussie patriots" are just an element of the far-right is sorely mistaken. I have a colleague who loves pointing out that strict limits on immigration, including race-based limits, are a longstanding ALP tradition premised precisely on working-class solidarity. Many of the arguments these people articulate are straight out of the playbook of the union movement of a century ago, especially those who are not in any way affiliated with the religious right (hell, sometimes they hate "god botherers" almost as much as they hate "muzzies").
Oh, the Trumpkins got straight-up sexist, brazenly and unapologetically, essentially blaming a woman for her (soon to be ex-)husband's infidelities with an underage girl. It was vile.
I'm not that surprised, although predictably I see very little of that within my own friend circles. Every now and then you do get exposed to it, partly because of the university environment you're unlikely to hear too much in the way of reactionary views. In my experience, people do reveal themselves in Facebook statuses that they don't necessarily show in person.
You don't have to scratch the surface too hard before it gets ugly, I've noticed. FYM I mean.
As for the anti-immigrants, anti-muslims memes, that stuff is just, just barely under the surface. it may not be tolerated at an Australia Day official event or a government citizenship day or other such 'official' moments, but it's certainly not restricted to the radical fringe, unfortunately that's true. That some of it has deep roots in Labor tradition is probably part of it, sure.
Just look at any comment thread on a Guardian article. I've made clear in the past that I have issues with The Guardian, but many readers have other issues of their own that seem to boil down to the paper not prosecuting the clash-of-civilisations with enough vigour (shit, Natalie Nougayrede is banging the drum to bomb the shit out of Syria again, what more do folks want?).
Nobody I know voted for Nixon.