Fascism - What is the likelihood of it really taking hold in Australia?

[SBD Gonzalez]

Does this guy have a point? A US expert on fascism, who has actually emigrated to Canada to escape MAGA America, says there is a worldwide wave of fascism and Australia is kidding itself if we think we're exempt.

I HOPE he's wrong. For starters, I think (possibly by accident more than design), our excellent voting system makes the chances of US-style fascism far less likely here.

I know none of it is constitutionally protected, so we always have to guard against any attempts to weaken it (watch the Libs and Murdoch wage a campaign against compulsory voting any moment now) but at least for the next term of government and potentially the one after, I think the likelihood of any drastic changes to our voting laws are very slim indeed.

Albo has a huge majority, and though I'm no great fan of him, I don't think he's deranged, and he's an extremely experienced politician who has seen everything when it comes to political maneuverings.

So could it happen here? What would have to happen for a fascist movement to take hold here? What do we need to guard against?

A US fascism expert warns: Australia is not immune and undoing the damage is ‘very, very hard’

The US’s slide towards authoritarianism is part of a global trend, says professor and fascism expert Jason Stanley

www.theguardian.com

 

[Northalives]

Does this guy have a point? A US expert on fascism, who has actually emigrated to Canada to escape MAGA America, says there is a worldwide wave of fascism and Australia is kidding itself if we think we're exempt.

I HOPE he's wrong. For starters, I think (possibly by accident more than design), our excellent voting system makes the chances of US-style fascism far less likely here.

I know none of it is constitutionally protected, so we always have to guard against any attempts to weaken it (watch the Libs and Murdoch wage a campaign against compulsory voting any moment now) but at least for the next term of government and potentially the one after, I think the likelihood of any drastic changes to our voting laws are very slim indeed.

Albo has a huge majority, and though I'm no great fan of him, I don't think he's deranged, and he's an extremely experienced politician who has seen everything when it comes to political maneuverings.

So could it happen here? What would have to happen for a fascist movement to take hold here? What do we need to guard against?

A US fascism expert warns: Australia is not immune and undoing the damage is ‘very, very hard’

The US’s slide towards authoritarianism is part of a global trend, says professor and fascism expert Jason Stanley

www.theguardian.com

Compulsory voting must be defended.

 

[Fire]

Australia is less suseptible than other counties because of the system, however there are forces growing that will only become stronger with foreign influences. The core with populism is that it's born out of something, usually boiling down to anger over wealth or power inequality, which is definitely present.

So, IMO Australia is in a good place, but no, it's not immune.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

Compulsory voting must be defended.

Absolutely. For the time being, even though I can easily see a sustained Murdoch campaign against it, I think it’s safe (though it’d be so much safer were it written in to the Constitution, and we all know how hard it is to get referenda up.)

I do think compulsory voting is supported by enough Australians that in the immediate future there’s little chance of its abolition. But maybe a strong campaign against it, though unsuccessful per se, would be intended to sow the seeds of doubt and render vulnerable other democratic bulwarks we enjoy. The right are pretty crafty like that. Their shamelessness allows them to vigorously pursue seemingly lost causes, with the ulterior motive of shifting the terms of debate.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

Australia is less suseptible than other counties because of the system, however there are forces growing that will only become stronger with foreign influences. The core with populism is that it's born out of something, usually boiling down to anger over wealth or power inequality, which is definitely present.

So, IMO Australia is in a good place, but no, it's not immune.

Yep, my fear is that when the outside forces are so strong, and enjoy such eye-watering, historically unprecedented resources, Australia’s comparatively puny defences against authoritarianism, (not to mention the endless raft of anti-democratic legislation introduced at both the federal and state levels since September 11) might prove little defence.

FMD the richest man in history (who’s probably raking in close to a billion a month - 30 or 40 million A DAY! if he’s at all sensible with his money, and who appears to have no moral compass whatsoever), was just the other day proclaiming the current UK parliament should be dissolved.

Now you can say that’s just empty words, but having a limitless tap of money gives you access to an awful lot of covert undermining. It would be nothing for Musk to plough millions and millions of dollars, month after month, into a covert campaign against a sovereign government that displeases him, without making the slightest dent in his total wealth.

 

[Cyg1992]

With the already high levels of misinformation online, and the oncoming onslaught of much worse versions of it, through AI it will be a real test to see just how gullible our population is.

I personally think we're resilient enough to withstand it though a lot of big money will be poured in to promote it here via the usual suspects like Rinehart, Stokes and News corp and perhaps additionally by pieces of shit like musk and Thiel.

Roughly 10% or so of our population has their brains cooked beyond recognition and as boomers continue to kick the bucket that number won't really get any bigger IMO.

We're also becoming less and less religious with each generation which is good.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

With the already high levels of misinformation online, and the oncoming onslaught of much worse versions of it, through AI it will be a real test to see just how gullible our population is.

I personally think we're resilient enough to withstand it though a lot of big money will be poured in to promote it here via the usual suspects like Rinehart, Stokes and News corp and perhaps additionally by pieces of shit like musk and Thiel.

Roughly 10% or so of our population has their brains cooked beyond recognition and as boomers continue to kick the bucket that number won't really get any bigger IMO.

We're also becoming less and less religious with each generation which is good.

Yes the automated disinformation is really scary. This recent article by Ronni Salt is really good on that (too wordy and too concerned with being witty, but still, really nails where we're at in Oz).

You’re being played – your part in the culture wars - The Shot

When Zack de la Rocha told you to rage against the machine, he didn’t mean take it literally. Agitprop. Fury bait. Yes, you feed it too.

theshot.net.au

Not sure it's just boomers that have the cooked brains (says this boomer!) Online radicalisation of impressionable, disconnected young men is a huge problem.

Agree on the religion, another aspect that thankfully sets us well apart from the US, which, let's face it, is almost a de facto theocracy. One reason why I think the Hasties and the Bernardis will always struggle for wider acceptance.

 

[Cyg1992]

Yes the automated disinformation is really scary. This recent article by Ronni Salt is really good on that (too wordy and too concerned with being witty, but still, really nails where we're at in Oz).

You’re being played – your part in the culture wars - The Shot

When Zack de la Rocha told you to rage against the machine, he didn’t mean take it literally. Agitprop. Fury bait. Yes, you feed it too.

theshot.net.au

The AI boom is going to really crank up the misinformation to a new level.
If you remember how much the man babies were howling when Hilary Clinton stumbled into a van a decade ago, there's going to be a good few heart attacks with what's to come.

Not sure it's just boomers that have the cooked brains (says this boomer!) Online radicalisation of impressionable, disconnected young men is a huge problem.

Agree on the religion, another aspect that thankfully sets us well apart from the US, which, let's face it, is almost a de facto theocracy. One reason why I think the Hasties and the Bernardis will always struggle for wider acceptance.

Not meaning to generalise all boomers, my parents are boomers after all.
What I'm saying is aimed more at the Alan Jones/2GB crowd who were basically keeping the coalition buoyant for several decades.

There are young (mostly men) people going down the cooker rabbit holes but they aren't a great number.
Some of the mates I grew up with ended up falling into those holes but overall most of the young people I know, have realised conservative/right wing politics have evaporated their futures and definitely want no part in the trump/maga disease.

 

[Gethelred]

Does this guy have a point? A US expert on fascism, who has actually emigrated to Canada to escape MAGA America, says there is a worldwide wave of fascism and Australia is kidding itself if we think we're exempt.

I HOPE he's wrong. For starters, I think (possibly by accident more than design), our excellent voting system makes the chances of US-style fascism far less likely here.

I know none of it is constitutionally protected, so we always have to guard against any attempts to weaken it (watch the Libs and Murdoch wage a campaign against compulsory voting any moment now) but at least for the next term of government and potentially the one after, I think the likelihood of any drastic changes to our voting laws are very slim indeed.

Albo has a huge majority, and though I'm no great fan of him, I don't think he's deranged, and he's an extremely experienced politician who has seen everything when it comes to political maneuverings.

So could it happen here? What would have to happen for a fascist movement to take hold here? What do we need to guard against?

A US fascism expert warns: Australia is not immune and undoing the damage is ‘very, very hard’

The US’s slide towards authoritarianism is part of a global trend, says professor and fascism expert Jason Stanley

www.theguardian.com

I've said it elsewhere on the forum, but I don't find his opinions on Australia terribly compelling. He's merely pointed to the presence of a right wing racist element in our past, as though that alone was enough to make Australia uniquely vulnerable.

I also question how much of that article is interview and how much is pretext for something the journalist in question wanted to say anyway.

 

[Gough]

I've said it elsewhere on the forum, but I don't find his opinions on Australia terribly compelling. He's merely pointed to the presence of a right wing racist element in our past, as though that alone was enough to make Australia uniquely vulnerable.

I also question how much of that article is interview and how much is pretext for something the journalist in question wanted to say anyway.

I think we would need a significant event for the far right to become palatable in Australia which is I guess where actions of external players remain the unknown in all of this.

 

[Gough]

The AI boom is going to really crank up the misinformation to a new level.
If you remember how much the man babies were howling when Hilary Clinton stumbled into a van a decade ago, there's going to be a good few heart attacks with what's to come.



Not meaning to generalise all boomers, my parents are boomers after all.
What I'm saying is aimed more at the Alan Jones/2GB crowd who were basically keeping the coalition buoyant for several decades.

There are young (mostly men) people going down the cooker rabbit holes but they aren't a great number.
Some of the mates I grew up with ended up falling into those holes but overall most of the young people I know, have realised conservative/right wing politics have evaporated their futures and definitely want no part in the trump/maga disease.

These boomers who've radicalised themselves online are the same ones that said listening to Led Zeppelin and playing video games would rot your mind. They were always likely to be the one's being conned but the internet has just accelerated their idiocy.

 

[spinynorman]

Australia is comparatively stable compared to the US and most of Europe, but I wouldn’t say we’re immune. We’ve had some degree of luck - we should probably count our blessings for Pauline Hanson, so that while other countries might have savvy, charismatic far right leaders, we have a moronic sourpuss who carries enormous baggage and falls out with everyone associated with her (aside the insane, even stupider sovereign citizen guy with her in the Senate from Queensland).

It’s also worth noting that one of the key fascist signifiers in Europe and the US (the indefinite incarceration of people attempting to enter the country without authorisation) has been bipartisan policy in Australia for over a decade, so I’m not sure we should praise our system for safeguarding against extremism (compulsory voting didn’t stop Brazil electing Bolsonaro, the Westminster system won’t stop Farage). What is safeguarding us is that we’ve a better quality of life than most of the other countries that have seen huge backwards steps in that area and that allow people to point the finger at immigrants etc. That said, if the issues that everybody knows are issues - housing, the deterioration of health services etc are ones that governments are ideologically unable to address, eventually people will turn to a he demagogues offering a new solution.

 

[Cyg1992]

These boomers who've radicalised themselves online are the same ones that said listening to Led Zeppelin and playing video games would rot your mind. They were always likely to be the one's being conned but the internet has just accelerated their idiocy.

It's almost like a satanic panic all over again but instead of heavy metal bands, the target this time are drag queens.

The same diversionary tactic used to distract the gullible from all the free money they're giving away to the already very wealthy and powerful.

 

[Gough]

It's almost like a satanic panic all over again but instead of heavy metal bands, the target this time are drag queens.

The same diversionary tactic used to distract the gullible from all the free money they're giving away to the already very wealthy and powerful.

Just Say No was another. It had the opposite effect on me, as far as I was concerned anything Nancy Reagan was so vehemently opposed to had to be worth closer inspection on an ideological basis alone.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

I've said it elsewhere on the forum, but I don't find his opinions on Australia terribly compelling. He's merely pointed to the presence of a right wing racist element in our past, as though that alone was enough to make Australia uniquely vulnerable.

I also question how much of that article is interview and how much is pretext for something the journalist in question wanted to say anyway.

Yes I found a certain glibness in the reaching of his conclusion.

And yet, regardless, I think we all need to understand that with the awesome global reach that nasty right wing forces now corral - through SM and the internet in general - no nation will be untouched, and if there are pre-existing vulnerabilities in a country (as he identifies in Australia's case), it may well be quite vulnerable.

I too am reasonably reassured that Australia will not go down the path of fascism. But I'm also troubled by the simple fact that the hard right have no other goal than power. And by the fact that history shows (with monotonous regularity) the way that anti-democratic forces cunningly use democracy to get into power, so that they can then shut down democracy. Over and over again, people of one nation or another wake up one day and suddenly find they're living in an authoritarian state.

I think it's important that we try to "war game" ways that this could happen in Australia, and what we can do to prevent it happening. That is what I hope this thread can be about.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

I'm also encouraged by this tweet from Kos Samaras which was posted by Festerz in the Liberal Party thread when it strayed into a similar discussion (with my assistance!).



Does he have a point? Does Australia's metropolitanism immunise us to a large extent against the excesses of fascism seen overseas? Will it be that Australian RWNJs never go away, but will forever be just an annoyance on the fringe of politics?

This is what I hope, but the billionaires behind Advance surely aren't going to settle for fringe status. (But are they just idiots, with more dollars than cents?)

 

[Gethelred]

Yes I found a certain glibness in the reaching of his conclusion.

And yet, regardless, I think we all need to understand that with the awesome global reach that nasty right wing forces now corral - through SM and the internet in general - no nation will be untouched, and if there are pre-existing vulnerabilities in a country (as he identifies in Australia's case), it may well be quite vulnerable.

I too am reasonably reassured that Australia will not go down the path of fascism. But I'm also troubled by the simple fact that the hard right have no other goal than power. And by the fact that history shows (with monotonous regularity) the way that anti-democratic forces cunningly use democracy to get into power, so that they can then shut down democracy. Over and over again, people of one nation or another wake up one day and suddenly find they're living in an authoritarian state.

I think it's important that we try to "war game" ways that this could happen in Australia, and what we can do to prevent it happening. That is what I hope this thread can be about.

The most interesting quirk about the Australian federation isn't preferential voting but that the shortest path to power has a hard ceiling, because it's through a preference deal to a senate seat. Fraser Annig and Pauline Hanson both got for themselves a senate seat and found themselves stymied purely because once achieved you cannot actually do anything with it without the support of those around you. Fascism is, above all else, a path of and for incompetence. They will keep trying that short path and will keep finding that once there there's simply nothing for them to claim from there.

The other path is to attempt a takeover of a major/minor party, and that'd be near impossible to do through Labor and while the Libs are nutcases they're equally too invested in their own enrichment that doing so would require copious amounts of bribes. And even then, the Libs require the Nats help, and are woefully unpopular within urban spaces without the Teals.

And then, say they were successful. Say, everything went they way they wanted. The Governor-General on the advice of the King dissolves a fascist government, because Charles has his faults but he's not a fascist.

I dunno. It's not just a matter of a single safeguard here as there being checks at every level coupled with a weird false path to power that should suck them in.

 

[Gough]

Scummo secretly swearing himself into five ministries shows the flaws in the system though.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

The most interesting quirk about the Australian federation isn't preferential voting but that the shortest path to power has a hard ceiling, because it's through a preference deal to a senate seat. Fraser Annig and Pauline Hanson both got for themselves a senate seat and found themselves stymied purely because once achieved you cannot actually do anything with it. Fascism is, above all else, a path of and for incompetence. They will keep trying that short path and will keep finding that once there there's simply nothing for them to claim from there.

The other path is to attempt a takeover of a major/minor party, and that'd be near impossible to do through Labor and while the Libs are nutcases they're equally too invested in their own enrichment that doing so would require copious amounts of bribes. And even then, the Libs require the Nats help, and are woefully unpopular within urban spaces without the Teals.

And then, say they were successful. Say, everything went they way they wanted. The Governor-General on the advice of the King dissolves a fascist government, because Charles has his faults but he's not a fascist.

I dunno. It's not just a matter of a single safeguard here as there being checks at every level coupled with a weird false path to power that should suck them in.

All goods points, thanks.

Charles seems a sane, decent monarch, but he won't be around forever. What if, say King William V turned out to be a Nazi sympathising monarch more like his great-great uncle Edward VIII?

 

[Gethelred]

Scummo secretly swearing himself into five ministries shows the flaws in the system though.

Absolutely, as does the complete lack of consequence for him doing so.

Thank you for reminding me. I might write a letter to my local member, asking them to push for a referendum on ministry appointments and transparency.

 

[Gethelred]

All goods points, thanks.

Charles seems a sane, decent monarch, but he won't be around forever. What if, say King William V turned out to be a Nazi sympathising monarch more like his great-great uncle Edward VIII?

... then you still have to get past everything else.

Like I said, I dunno. I'm not one for catastophising, because reality is dour enough for me.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

Australia is comparatively stable compared to the US and most of Europe, but I wouldn’t say we’re immune. We’ve had some degree of luck - we should probably count our blessings for Pauline Hanson, so that while other countries might have savvy, charismatic far right leaders, we have a moronic sourpuss who carries enormous baggage and falls out with everyone associated with her (aside the insane, even stupider sovereign citizen guy with her in the Senate from Queensland).

It’s also worth noting that one of the key fascist signifiers in Europe and the US (the indefinite incarceration of people attempting to enter the country without authorisation) has been bipartisan policy in Australia for over a decade, so I’m not sure we should praise our system for safeguarding against extremism (compulsory voting didn’t stop Brazil electing Bolsonaro, the Westminster system won’t stop Farage). What is safeguarding us is that we’ve a better quality of life than most of the other countries that have seen huge backwards steps in that area and that allow people to point the finger at immigrants etc. That said, if the issues that everybody knows are issues - housing, the deterioration of health services etc are ones that governments are ideologically unable to address, eventually people will turn to a he demagogues offering a new solution.

Yes, aPauline is the diametric opposite of charismatic, thank ****.

Re your second para, I'm a little out of my knowledge zone, but isn't it the case that Sweden historically has great public housing, healthcare etc, and yet is still turning quite xenophobic?

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

Absolutely, as does the complete lack of consequence for him doing so.

Thank you for reminding me. I might write a letter to my local member, asking them to push for a referendum on ministry appointments and transparency.

Malcolm Knox wrote a searing indictment of the Libs and Robodebt in the Nine papers on the weekend. Well worth the read.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

... then you still have to get past everything else.

Like I said, I dunno. I'm not one for catastophising, because reality is dour enough for me.

I don't want to catastrophise either, but I think war-gaming dire potential futures for Oz is well worth doing. The right is on the march in so many countries and we're in a globalised world.

Having said that, I really hope you're right. The Lucky Country indeed.

But even there - if, by a quirk of history, Australia has accidentally put in place several mechanisms that obviate a fascist takeover (I really don't think a convincing case can be made that any of the bulwarks we enjoy were specifically introduced as a guard against fascism - we actually had a very strong and popular fascist movement here in the 20s and 30s, with the secret armies and so on) - what can we do to embed those bulwarks and prevent their remioval or weakening?

And what can we learn from those happy accidents of our history that can be applied to future, as yet unanticipated threats from fascism?

 

[Saint]

Albo and the ALP aren't exactly resisting it. Steps like online ID/age verification will only make it easier.

I think the consolidation of Australian media happened so long ago that younger groups are less trusting of the corporate media.

But online media is going the same way and I'm not sure how they will navigate that.

I think things will trend more local-focused where there's less corporate interference.

Fascism isn't just right-wingers, it's corporate interests and they're well infiltrated into the ALP as much as the LNP.