Only last week we endured with horror Trump’s re-election to the U.S. presidency. Now we must face the inescapable fact that his return has emboldened fascists everywhere.
Certainly, it should be a wake-up call for us all down under, where the Trump fan club includes Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and many of his colleagues, and the absolute devotion of minor parties, such as One Nation and UAP.
Even so-called “small l” Liberals, like Senator Simon Birmingham, consider Trump’s return to be a perfectly natural occurrence. Indeed, Birmingham maintains that there is no reason to “catastrophise”, especially since the 'Turnbull and Morrison governments worked “so well” with Trump in the past'.
Said Birmingham: ‘Trump is "proudly a disrupter, who is prone to pursuing less conventional policies and making bolder pronouncements".'
Well, that’s one way to put it. We would probably put it more like this: Trump is proudly racist, bigoted, misogynistic, and also a sexual predator, convicted criminal and unabashed Fascist with a capital F, now leading a failed state.
As Dr Tim Dunlop put it:
Whether we like it or not, we are now witnesses and messengers to an unfolding catastrophe... In short, we can’t resist Trump if we are going to hide behind euphemisms.
Call it fascism.
But rather than waking up to the disastrous consequences of Trump's win, Australia’s media cartel — led by Far-Right oligarch Rupert Murdoch and his cronies – has been predominantly in lock-step with Team Trump from the beginning.
Certainly, there are few incidences of fascism being called out. Far from making attempts to properly inform Australians, our media has already begun further normalising his actions and threats, and overlooking the vile behaviour of his Australian disciples.
Such as UAP Senator Ralph Babet, who again proudly shared another choice video clip from another of his pin-up boys, infamous misogynist Andrew Tate, with the following caption:
'My nigger nailed this one. One hundred per cent.'
Followed by:
'...In my house we say phaggot [sic], retard and nigger. We are sick of you woke ass clowns. Cry more. Write an article. Tweet about me. No one cares what you think.'
Well in our house, we say Babet, Tate and co are racist, bigoted, misogynistic and Fascist.
Admittedly, there has been some media interest. After all, racists and bigots don’t usually openly admit to being racist and bigoted. There would of course have been even less media attention had Babet contained his fascism in a more Trump-like manner. For example, if he'd just called immigrants animals who eat everyone’s pets and declared he would control women's bodies whether they liked it or not. That would have been fine, obviously.
A couple of weeks ago, Senator Lidia Thorpe dared to stand up to Prince Charles. No, she did not call him an animal, or use racial or otherwise hateful slurs. However, she did yell "Fuck the monarchy!" and questioned his imposed position as colonial ruler of the land on which her ancestors stood for an odd 60,000 odd years prior, given it was never ceded.
The calls for her to resign, for her head to roll or both were deafening.
Babet’s openly racist and bigoted comments? They will no doubt be quickly forgotten by our fascist-loving media.
But Thorpe is not on Team Fascist. She is also a First Nations person and a woman, so, you know, the negative coverage will likely never die down.
Less shocking than Babet, perhaps, but still completely vile, is Matt Canavan’s latest ramblings on ABC's Q+A on Monday night. The Nationals Senator claimed Trump was a hero and role model for his sons and other young men because “masculinity [is] being 'demonised'".
Of course, Canavan has also referred to the Gender Pay Gap Report as "useless" and claimed it would“encourage men to support men’s rights activists like Andrew Tate”. But no matter. He will still be invited on every mainstream media talk show to tell us all why Trump and Tate are really good blokes.
And we had the usual Team Trump cacophony demanding the former PM Kevin Rudd be sacked from his position as ambassador to the U.S.. This is because Rudd, one of the few politicians who wasn't afraid to call it out, warned people of the dangers of another Trump presidency from the beginning.
In this Trump 2.0 world, apparently, calling a fascist a Fascist is worse than being a Fascist.
These things all tell us that just like in the United States, where the Republican Party put forward a convicted criminal and crazed despot as their preferred candidate for president, fascism has also already taken root in this country. It has gone well beyond a few crazed extremists like the Proud Boys.
It is upheld by our major conservative party, currently in opposition, which put forward Trump-supporter Peter Dutton as its best candidate to lead this nation.
And Trump’s brand of blatant fascism is casually accepted as reasonable and further legitimised by the media, who are also propelling Dutton as a credible leader.
After failing to do so prior to his election, what the Australian media could be doing now is presenting the likely consequences of another Trump presidency, not only for the United States but for the rest of the world, including its subservient allies, like Australia.
It could step up, take responsibility for its sycophantic actions to date and wake itself up before fascism becomes so accepted we get our very own media-sanctioned Fascist, Peter Dutton, as our overlord.
Subscribe NOW to receive editorials like this one (usually only available to subscribers) directly to your inbox and access all our work.
Follow managing editor Michelle Pini on Twitter @vmp9 and Independent Australia on Twitter/X @independentaus and Facebook HERE.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
Support independent journalism Subscribe to IA.
