It’s opposites day again in the media this morning. It will be for quite some time. Left is right, up is down, black is white, etc. On the front page of Fairfax, new polls show a large majority of Australians want the country to produce the things it consumes and have a manufacturing base. By “large majority”, I mean huge, a more one-sided majority than on any other issue. Close to 90% of those polled are in favour of emphasising local production, an opinion that stretched across left and right, city and country, liberal and conservative on social matters.
Whatever one thinks of the economics of that, the politics of it can’t be ignored. On the front page of the Oz, the first Newspoll of the year shows minor parties scarfing up 20% of the primary vote, largely at the expense of the Coalition, with Xenophon taking just about all of that in SA, and One Nation taking large chunks of it in Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales. Given that the latest iteration of One Nation has proved to be more shambolic than we could possibly have hoped for, that’s a significant result. Presumably the new conservative movement to be announced by the about-to-resign Cory Bernardi will take a chunk too (unless it is foolish enough to be free market).
[Feral Bernardi makes Turnbull’s rotten 2017 a lot worse]
Simultaneously, in the US, we have a minor but very significant moment in an interview between FOX News Big Daddy Bill O’Reilly and President Donald Trump, to be screened during the Super Bowl, O’Reilly challenges Trump on cosying up to Putin. Here’s the initial part of the exchange, which circulated:
O’Reilly: But he’s a killer though. Putin’s a killer.
Trump: Lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?
Remember, this is being aired during the Super Bowl, just about the single most celebratory American even there is, a fusion of state and sport. Initial excitement that Trump was acknowledging decades of US-run Latin American deaths squads etc was a little misplaced. Here’s the rest of the exchange:
O’Reilly: I don’t know any government leaders that are killers.
Trump: Well, take a look at what we’ve done too. We’ve made a lot of mistakes. I’ve been against the Iraq war from the beginning.
O’Reilly: Mistakes are different than …
This is hilarious. It’s frikkin’ hilarious. Super Bowl kick off is at 10.30am AEDST, so the interview will have already aired by the time you read this. Sitting here waiting for it, I’m wondering if Trump will actually be booed by sections of the crowd.
Yes, Putin is an autocrat, whose government almost certainly has journalists and whistle-blowers murdered quite often, and the US government most likely does not do that to its own citizens (unless they happen to be alleged jihadis, underneath a drone). Yes, Trump’s remarks are all over the shop. But it is a blow that lands on the notion of American exceptionalism, right at the centre of an exceptionalist spectacle.
Even funnier is the reaction of the traditional social conservative Republicans around Trump. Poor old Mike Pence. I actually feel sorry for that geeky little Jesus-freak. After a back and forth on CBS, this exchange:
John Dickerson (journalist): “But America morally superior to Russia? Yes or no?”
Pence: “I believe that the ideals that America has stood for throughout our history represent the highest ideals.”
This is from a man who would unquestionably believe that the United States is ordained by God as the “last, best hope of man”. When Obama tried to reformulate exceptionalism in 2008, saying that the US was great at being the US in the same way France was great at being France, etc, he was howled down. Exceptionalism has been a test-case for American pollies, most insistently for about 15 years now. Trump has blown a hole in that in one exchange.
Interestingly, though, the impact may be as great on the US left as it is on the US right. For now, there are liberals from the centrist tradition, many of whom lined up unfailingly behind Hillary, who are defending US exceptionalism and attacking Trump for denigrating it. This is nothing new; US imperialism, from the 1890s invasion of Spanish Cuba onwards, has been a liberal adventure, and much of its most brutal Cold War politics was powered by liberals. From Vietnam onwards, there was something of a rapprochement between the left and liberals, the latter becoming critics of US foreign policy.
But the split re-opened after the Cold War, with liberals enthusiastically backing global neoliberalism, slanted to US hegemony. Some sort of dialogue was possible. But with the 2008 crash that largely went. Liberals are determined to push global free trade and fuse it with a social liberal agenda around matters of gender, sexuality, etc. They have more or less abandoned the last remnants of social democratic conscience they once possessed. Now their chosen representatives have ascended to the heights of power, many are happy to take over the Reaganite mantle, and give it a liberal form. The left, as a distinct formation, becomes entirely separate from liberals, and must forge a distinct new politics.
Here, as well as there, the headlines show the Keating era is well and truly over. The Coalition is suffering at the moment because of the failure of Turnbull’s leadership, and the degree to which the Australian public tend to turn very quickly (far quicker than elsewhere) on leaders they regard as duds.
But that disguises the danger for Labor, which has to become a left nationalist party — far more so than in the half-in, half-out version of Shorten’s recent National Press Club speech — lest it be eaten away from all directions, One Nation, The Greens, Xenophon, and forces yet to appear (the Greens have a tricky path, but they can still forge communalist politics even if their support base is rapidly becoming more globalised and anti-border). Labo(u)r and related social democratic parties across the world are in sudden danger of very sharp plunges — witness Scottish Labour, which is now the third, and maybe the fourth party in Scotland, behind a left nationalist SNP, and a Conservative party led by the UK’s first “out” LGBT leader, repositioning itself as a centre-right economic, centre-left social party.
[Old hard hat: Shorten channels Gillard in anti-457, pro-tradie lecture]
The same could happen in South Australia, bizarre as it may seem, given Labor’s long dominance there. But it’s often in places where the dominance has been assured for so long that the sudden collapse occurred. If Xenophon can turn NXT into Next — a centrist party dedicated to a mix of social democratic, social liberal, left nationalist, and state development policies — then it could hopscotch over Labor in a few moves.
These “surprises” — that Australia is, and has been, economically nationalist, that liberal progressives, even with their impeccable gender, sexuality, etc, politics, are heading objectively towards the right — are going to happen every day for quite some time, until political affiliations are sorted out. If you’re on the liberal left you better do some hard thinking about where you’d like to end up and what you believe. It doesn’t make you more “left” than others to hate everything likely to be done under Trump, and to turn a blind eye to the right-wing neoliberalism of a figure like Hillary Clinton. It doesn’t make you more left to care about, say, LGBT rights, and be indifferent to minimum wage, education inequality, unaffordable housing, and all the other things that were once central to a left-liberal agenda.
Had Hillary won — which I would have preferred, mostly — those of us on the left know what we would have been facing: the Bernie Sanders left being told to piss off, and a full-court press to get a modified form of the TPP through Congress. In Australia, we’d be fighting it tooth and nail, and with the usual gut-wrenching knowledge that we’d been taken for a ride again, knew we were being taken for a ride, and that they — liberals — knew that we knew. My stomach lining is going to be a lot less troubled by acid, not having that to deal with.
Strange days, opposites days, going to get stranger. Now let’s watch the Super Bowl ads, the sole, remaining distilled remnant of Western culture!
“Putin is an autocrat, whose government almost certainly has journalists and whistle-blowers murdered quite often”. And the evidence for this assertion is? It is disappointing that you join in this careless character assassination so typical of the western media, happy to pass off slurs without a shred of evidence in support. One might have thought that you would have learned from the recent US election just how grubby those fact free assertions have become.
As for the “US government most likely does not do that to its own citizens” one has to ask, what parallel universe do you occupy? The latest estimate of the body count of people associated with the Clintons but had inconvenient knowledge or crossed them in some way (the latest being the email leaker) is now around 80.
And has the killing of Kennedy and King not persuaded you that it is not just the expendable ordinary citizens (3000 on 9/11) that get killed by the State.
Look at the world as it really is Guy.
What is your evidence for this rubbish besides Breitbart? Everyone who is in opposition to Putin at the jouranlist level gets shut down, imprisoned or murdered. Jesus the FSB is little different to the NKVD. The US did not commit the twin towers Saudi Arabians, the world’s exporters of terrorism did. They fund ISIS, the invented the bloody Taliban along with Pakistan, but oh no they aren’t on the list. Trump has towers there. The killing of King which I remember well, shows the rtacist underpinning of the US. The death of Kennedy shows that you shouldn’t cross the mafia who got you nominated. I am not saying the US is not crooked, just not the way you think it is. Putin is a narcissistic neo Stalinist, Trump is a narcissistic neo fascist. Lot in common.
James: O’Neill., the living soul; you have overlooked the thousands killed by chemtrails.
And the estimated 500,000 Iraqi children (WHO & Lancet UK) who’s death was orchestrated by Wild Bill Clinton and was dismissed by Madelaine Albright as ‘collateral damage’. ‘We came, we saw, we killed’ from the above’s spouse displaying the family’s penchant for random death and destruction. Jeez….. We are told how bad Putin is without a scintilla of evidence but refuse to see the beam in our own eye even when the facts are staring one in the face. Trump may be an obnoxious and odious human being but at least he doesn’t display the sociopathic tendencies of the so called ‘liberal left’ as evidenced in the Clintons and our old mate, Obama.
What? The Clintons have knocked off an estimated 80 people who ‘knew too much’ about them, and “the State” (being the US, evidently) took out 3000 of its own citizens on 9/11? And this information exposes the “world as it is”?
Do you have any idea at all how completely insane you sound, James?
If not, you’d probably relate to the documentary with Mel Gibson called “Conspiracy Theory”, oh! and the other one with Will Smith in it called “Men In Black” (you know, with the UFO-sighting ‘fact sheets’).
“The left, as a distinct formation, becomes entirely separate from liberals, and must forge a distinct new politics.”
This seems a bit optimistic, the separation from liberals, I mean. Are we really there, yet?
Some of us are, Draco. I bought a nasty ferret to toss in the trousers of any progressive who talks about the need for LGBTQI marriage legislation as soon as I say the word “inequality.” And a hard cover copy of Das Kapital to hit them on the head with.
Really good article, Guy. I know some leftist folk who have seen through the smoke and mirrors of identity politics, but I also know others who can’t yet. Some get pretty shirty when you suggest the whole purpose of liberal identity politics is to keep up appearances while shutting down any real debate on inequality.
I’m not sure about other people who would prefer us to consume locally made stuff, but my version has to do with self-sustaining local communities and comes from the perspective of relocalisation. Does that make me a right-leaning social leftie? Polls ask such unsubtle questions.
Guy, this us-and-them squaring-off of ‘the left’ against ‘the liberals’ is too simplistic and plays directly into Trump’s anti-liberal authoritarian hands. Hillary did campaign for a minimum wage, and did change her position on the TPP, and to speculate on what she would have done is idle. To say that the liberal left ‘abandoned whatever social conscience they once possessed’ is an unhelpful exaggeration, in comparison with the Republicans or Trump. For example, Clinton did her best to introduce socially equitable health care under Bill’s presidency; Obama eventually achieved something; the Republicans and Trump are now hell-bent on tearing it to shreds. As for ‘the left’ abandoning ‘the liberal social agenda’ when it comes to ‘gender, sexuality, etc’ (presumably race is included here too)…what ‘agenda’ are you suggesting instead? Best, Humphrey
Hi Humphrey. What you’re totally missing is that in a number of critical areas Trumpism is actually far closer to the left than liberal Clintonism is.
Certainly, Trump has an autocrat’s disdain for democratic process and constitutional limits, and that places him far to the right of Clinton. But Trump also echoes the left’s dismay with self-serving political elites, the economic abandonment of middle America, and liberals’ disrespect for the ‘small mindedness’ of ordinary folk. Clinton offers ‘progress’ everywhere except where ordinary folk actually wanted it. And, it turns out, they vote.
If you didn’t see that Trump just drove a trailer truck between the liberals and the left in the US election then you’ll only ever understand why he’s so repellent, but never understand why he so appealing to so many.
The masses – that is, the left’s entire purpose for being – love him. Or perhaps, more accurately, the masses hate the moralistic cosmopolitan liberalism and its identity politics that Clinton stands for.
The takeaway? It’s not enough to be on the morally righteous side of every argument (in the rainbow coalition of the ‘liberal left’). It’s equally important to be prepared to politically prioritise those arguments and say, for instance, that right now creating entry-level jobs matters more – politically – than creating transgender toilets. Or, that creating transgender toilets in today’s world is actually a mindbogglingly suicidal political idea. This is no time for the left the abandon the pursuit of social justice for cultural re-engineering. Until the left jettisons its liberal predilections and gets back to addressing social injustices head on and with furious determination, it will be gifting the field to autocratic demagogues. And just read their websites: they know it. Best, Will.
” right now creating entry-level jobs matters more – politically – than creating transgender toilets. Or, that creating transgender toilets in today’s world is actually a mindbogglingly suicidal political idea. This is no time for the left the abandon the pursuit of social justice for cultural re-engineering.”
Will, you’ll be the first I’ll call when I set up a new political left party, or better still, you call me when you set up the party. I too have had quite enough of the bull. I’m even happy for the social identity progressives to get shafted, even though I agree with them on most if not all issues, only because I don’t hear the slightest peep from them about getting jobs for young people (that are mostly being done by 457 visa holders).
Priorities – you’re exactly right. Let’s get this thing started.
Just a comment on the SA situation which I think you mis-characterise as ‘Labor domination’. Labor has mostly won because of the incompetence of the opposition and, even then, by canny local politics and tricky deals with independents. But I guess your point about it changing quickly is true even if a moderately competent opposition let’s a normal political cycle do its job.
But things could quickly change for the small parties too. Xenophon and Hanson are THE brands. Hanson is only just holding it together now and there’s no reason to think that it will get any better if she has more elected members. Xenophon doesn’t seem to have a plan to make the party less dependent on his personal energy and presence. That’s a recipe for disaster sooner or later.
So, yes, everything could change very quickly in SA. The Liberals could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (again) and Labor could manage a transition to a new, younger leadership (see Malinauskas, Koutsantonis, Close, Mullighan, etc) and find a way to win.
As a South Australian, I largely agree with your comments.
But…according to the Poll Bludger, One Nation is only polling 2.8% here. Hardly worth worrying about Poorlean then!
NXT is a bit more of a problem, with up to 20% of the vote recorded in some polls, but anecdotally, I think that support is waning. Xenaphon doesn’t seem to have a coherent set of policies…mostly just ‘look at moi, look at moi’ behaviour.
As for the Libs…they are just a bunch of deadbeats in this state. Going nowhere, unless the electoral boundaries redistribution hands government to them on a plate. I await the outcome of the Labor govt challenge on this issue with some interest!!