Quietblog seems overconfident in the face of the threat that right wing extremism poses to Australia. Your recent piece on Bernardi’s threatened split showed little concern for the possibility that there may be many people who are attracted to his divisive politics. There may well be less inequality in Australia than England and the USA [Quietblog comment- indigenous Australians might disagree on this], but there is plenty of anger at our political system. This is the anger Trump and Farage both used so successfully and this is the anger Hanson relies on. Hanson’s support is on the rise and the major parties’ support is falling, especially in wake of the expenses scandal that will not be forgotten quickly. As voters look away from those parties who do they look to?
After decades of being told the Greens don’t care about job losses if it benefits their environmental agenda (regardless of the truth), many voters who are turning away from major parties will never vote Green. They also don’t get their information from blogs like this one. So that leaves a smattering of independents who are far less prominent than the rising One Nation Party and the possibility of Bernardi’s new conservative alliance which would court the religious extremists and by dint of being a new party may avoid the taint of the expenses scandals. Even if it doesn’t win power immediately, an increasingly powerful ultra-right faction in Australian politics, still protected and supported by commercial interests in mining and media, shifts the political landscape, making extremist positions seem more reasonable. Not taking the threat of right wing extremism seriously is a mistake that has been made in Europe and America. Don’t do the same in Australia. From Sarah
3 Comments
quietblog
1/16/2017 09:16:35 pm
Hi Sarah, thanks for you essay.
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Will
1/18/2017 02:20:16 am
If you think it's the all powerful media driving this than I can only assume you have no right wing friends in the us. The right is coming, and hard. They have had enough. I'll give you am example. In the us it's now legal for transgender people to use their bathroom of choice. You may support that. But for an old school country American who whether said gay marriage was the start of a downhill slide into moral oblivion everyone from the left laughed about them being concerned about marriage to animals. But that was never it. Now if they send their 5yo girl to the toilet a 30 yo person with male genitals can go to, because they feel female. How do you think a country person will react? They are angry and the left mock them rather than debate. The right are coming and with vengeance. Result: trump
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quietblog
1/19/2017 03:30:15 pm
Thanks for your comment Will, You are right I have few right wing American friends and you raise some interesting points.
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