“Ride the tiger,” the esoteric right-wing philosopher Julius Evola advised his followers. The tiger in this case is both the surging modernity that threatens to annihilate a traditional worldview, but also the dark forces one conjures up to contest them.
There’s only one thing that happens, tiger-wise, should you slip off. It would appear to be happening to the right, across the Anglosphere at the moment, but in a manner distinctive to each polity.
In Australia, the official centre-right is coming apart before our eyes, aided by our distinctive political system, from both sides; in the United States, the tiger is roaring from the hard right; in the UK, a genuine decadence has set in. There is common cause beneath the three manifestations, but they are each taking on their distinctive cultural character.
To the British first, because it’s the most fun in a dark sort of way. You couldn’t make it up, as the tabloids say there, with UK PM Boris Johnson facing so many crises and leaks that they are starting to occlude each other. Johnson is facing the outbreak of the Omicron variant in the UK, with the knowledge that his credibility on COVID has long since been shredded after it was leaked, months ago, that he had said he was willing to see “the bodies pile up” rather than extend a new lockdown.
He had to anyway, and the remark was leaked around the time his sacked Rasputin Dominic Cummings began dishing the dirt on No. 10. The attempt to avoid lockdown had been an expression of his Manchester liberalism, a distinct British freedom-loving response to the disease, etc, which nevertheless yielded to the brute facts of epidemiology (also a British invention).
With the trio of a lockdown, a cancelled 2020 Christmas and bodies in piles, Johnson’s hapless bluster act — appealing to that British preference for amateurism, where professionalism is required — started to come apart. But this was just a prelude to Partygate, the scandal in which No. 10 staff were caught on camera in a practice press conference, joking about how they would spin against leaks about a 2020 Christmas party.
“It was just a business meeting,” No. 10 press flak Allegra Stratton is shown saying from the briefing lectern, to guffaws. Then: “Come on… This is being recorded.” More guffaws. At the time it was being recorded, 500 Brits a day were dying, and several newspapers have op-eds from people whose aged parent died on the day the alleged party took place. Heads rolled, most visibly that of Stratton — who sounds like she got the job by knowing someone named Tristan at Cambridge, despite being a distinguished correspondent, which you become by knowing someone named Tristan at Cambridge — giving a teary doorstop resignation, as BoJo gave the Commons a grovelling non-apology.
Labour leader Keir Starmer, a former prosecutor, hammered home the message of the Queen mourning Prince Philip in isolation while the Tories partied. The scandal has allowed Starmer to reposition Labour as the party of patriotism and the nation, while the Tories look like the gang from the Beano.
Amazingly, Partygate swept over another scandal, involving several leaks about the UK’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan — disastrous and actively negligent, as it turns out. Worst and most bizarre (and typical) of all — if that be possible — are suggestions that UK staff helped wacky former soldier and dog botherer Paul “Pen” Farthing evacuate a shelter full of Afghan street dogs in a military transport. This has been a scandal for months — now it is suggested Boris ordered official assistance after animal charities got in the ear of his young wife, Carrie, who is, inevitably, a known animal enthusiast.
The British passion for animals, and their animality towards humans, is well-established, but even so this has twinned with Partygate to paint a picture of real decadence, a real cakes-n-ponies ruling elite with an active hatred for the public whose bodies pile up.
It is of course a product of Brexit, which offered a fantasy future presided over by Johnson, a posh but one of the lads, showing the speccie technocrats that it wasn’t that difficult. This has essentially caved in on itself now. If the Tories can run to a full term, it may not be with Boris at the helm — despite the fact that they really have no one else.
In Australia, the tiger has taken a bite out of ScoMo’s leg, with the simultaneous fraying towards the right by the well-named Senator Alex Antic and co, the defection of Craig Kelly, the spoiler money of Clive Palmer’s UAP, and the final self-immolation of George Christensen (quite a task — he would burn for days like a tyre fire, but less appealing). For years, the Coalition has been playing to these extreme elements, secure in the knowledge that the preference system brings it back to the big party in the end, and that, in the last analysis, economics trumps culture.
Now it no longer does, and that shift has sneaked up on the Australian right. For a quarter-century, from John Howard’s turn towards “political correctness” (man, memories: grunge, happy pants and PC), they have played this, and now it is finally getting up and walking around. The right’s disorganised flare-up is a response to an organised break-off at the centre, with the rise of the “Voices of” movement in dozens of electorates — a durable, rational recombination of centrist and community politics, with centre-right elements in some regions.
Paradoxically, it’s been ScoMo and Barnaby Joyce’s inability to hold off these challenges to the centre-right monolith that has prompted harder-right breakaways. Morrison has more political skills than he is given credit for, but the paradoxical nature of the preference system — it prevents breakaways, until a point where it actively encourages them — may turn a nip into a devouring.
It’s in the US where the tiger’s mouth yawns wide, as the Trump-inspired wing of the Republican Party devours what was once a party of government. Now it’s a party of pure power, its positions in key states flooded by Trumpers driving out remnant “civic” Republicans, putting themselves into key roles to refuse to certify election results they don’t like in 2024 — or 2022 for that matter.
Trump is still their figurehead, but that movement has gone far beyond him, with figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert fomenting a movement to frame the Democrats as “communists”, publish fantasy animations of left-wing congresspersons being murdered and, now, do Christmas photos with the whole family loaded up with guns — after a school shooting.
This is a cult that has always been there — but with the passing of the Reagan formula of social conservatism and economic neoliberalism, the Republican “centre” has no means to resist its internal spread. The Republicans, as a party, have shrunk more than any in the Anglosphere — from being a quasi state-apparatus, they have become a fanatic rump as the Democrats have expanded and diversified. Yet the US system gives them parity, big-upping GOP fanaticism by the state-authorised two-party system.
This may well give the Democrats a 2024 victory, that they can then not get legitimated, plunging the US into chaos. This is the king tiger in the parade, as we trail behind. None of these forces can offer stable government, and they may well be serving as a finale to an era, which in turn serves as prelude to a period of boring technocracy. But what a roar there will be first!
And what do the three nations have in common, above all else bar the English language? Rupert Effing Murdoch.
Precisely. Murdoch aided & abetted Trump, realised his mistaken experiment too late during the presidency but Frankenstein was by then well & truly at large. Now Murdoch couldn’t undo what he’s helped fester in the US even if he wanted to.
Murdoch realised his mistake? Don’t see any sign of it…
I’m also looking. Please advise any sightings.
Moloch doesn’t make mistakes – MySpace, which remains a useful portal! – but events sometimes fail to meet his requirements.
His support has a single aim – power & profit, the latter is secondary.
(The continued existence of the decades long loss making OZ show that.)
Being secondary means that it must support the primary objective, expense no object but a return must be at least prospective.
He has never been slow in abandoning a weak horse.
Whether he’d weakened the poor nag for ulterior motives is another subject.
Whitlam here, Blair in the UK and Trump in the Benighted States all had use-by dates on their foreheads for easy ID.
Zut Alors may have been referring to the incident described in Michael Wolff’s book about the 2020 election. Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO of Fox Corporation, was told at about 2300 hrs on election night the channel was ready to declare Arizona for Biden. This would be damaging for Trump. Wolff wrote,
“Lachlan got his father on the phone to ask if he wanted to make the early call. His father, with signature grunt, assented, adding, ‘F— him,’”
Perhaps the most important thing the three nations have in common is the lack of proportional representation in their lower houses of parliament / congress.
Although I dearly wish for a full on D’Hondt, or even a Tazzy Hare-Clark, the Reps. do have a 2nd/3rd best (unlike the 43rd FPtP) mechanism in the Single Transferable Vote.
It is ideal for an intelligent electorate to make the exact wishes known – which unfortunately precludes this country’s boofheads.
The reason most of our elections are held in the warmer months is so that the voters don’t have to take off their shoes to fill out the ballot in the evil days of Keating’s anti-democratic LINE in the Senate.
As it has now been, effectively, abolished there will be no excuse in 2022 – except pig ignorant arrogant stupidity – for failing to be rid of this abomination of an administration.
What appears to me in the case of all three examples you have explored is the increasing degree to which they have become unhinged from what we might think of as the real world – and importantly, real world consequences of stupid actions. The worst and most pressing is their insane desire for a war.
Or maybe just their willingness to talk about war as if it’s just another line in the spinner’s handbook.
Gosh Guy, please bring on technocratic government. As a survivor of the original populist Berlusconi, compare to the adults in charge with Mario Draghi in Italy. Boring is beautiful!
I think what we’re seeing now is the inevitable evolution of a system that has been based historically on two dominant centrist parties, one left of centre and the other right, in a world that is becoming increasingly atomised and focused on the individual rather than the tribe.
Both sides have taken their core constituencies for granted for many years and have sought electoral success by appealing to their respective fringes. The Left started it, with the various liberation movements beginning in the latter half of last century and, in this, they have always had a natural advantage over the Right. The fundamental aim of the Left is increasing distribution of wealth and power more widely through society. Different subgroups within the Left may have a different focus for where this redistribution occurs: unions want more wealth and power for workers, while feminist Leftists seek more wealth and power for women; but there is sufficient commonality that these otherwise disparate groups can unite under a common banner.
The Right doesn’t have this luxury. The core aim of the Right is to consolidate ever-increasing wealth and power into the hands of the ruling elite. Unless you happen to be a member of this elite, furthering the aims of the Right therefore doesn’t offer a lot of motivation to any potential new member of the Right constituency. In the absence of a common banner, then, the Right has thrown the door open to the obsessives: those with a pathological focus on single issues like guns, or abortion, or vaccines. The Right is therefore no longer a ‘broad church’ (although there might still be quite a few traditionalists hiding in the pews inside) so much as a rabble gathering on the church steps, shaking their pitchforks and baying for blood.
I don’t believe this situation is sustainable, because the obsessives are just too obsessive, and too likely to descend into violence if their demands aren’t met. One possible outcome – especially in the US – is social disintegration, but I think what is more likely is that another grouping will emerge on the Right to meet the needs of its less extreme, more rational members. I think we are seeing the start of that now, at least in Australia, with the emergence of so many centre Right independents. All we need is for them to unite as the “Really-Fair-Dinkum-Liberals-as-Menzies-Conceived-Us” Party and we’ll see a rebalancing of the overall political landscape into something more closely resembling historical equilibrium.
I hope so, at least.
“All we need is for them to unite as the “Really-Fair-Dinkum-Liberals-as-Menzies-Conceived-Us” – So roughly the Liberals before 1996 and without Johnny.
I would add with a John Hewson type as leader would be good.
Ever notice that the further WW2, and the national cooperative efforts and sacrifice that fighting it entailed, recedes further into the past, the greater the atomisation of our societies. Unsure if it is causation or correlation but I reckon there is likely to be a connection.
That was worth reading.
Thank you.
Republicans “a fanatic rump”?
Yet they control state after state, by getting elected, staying elected, and organizing gerrymanders. They also have a lock on the Supreme Court. These things have taken some doing over some decades..
In the other corner, the “expanded, diversified” Democrats turn out for presidential elections, sometimes, and that’s about it.
When Steve Bannon is said, “We have the power in this country, let’s act as though we do,” he wasn’t talking for or about a big, diverse majority of voters.
That’s about right. I described the result of the last presidential election as a dead cat bounce for the Democrats, and all that’s happened since confirms it. Despite having the presidency and just about being in control of Congress the Democrats are either doing nothing significant to defend the republic or else going backwards, and the mid-term elections next year will end any chance of them recovering. The Republicans and the whole spectrum of right-wing crazies will remove any possibility of breaking their hold by anything as quaint as voting or using the law. And it’s going to get much more violent. Right now the civilian population of the USA is equipped with a range of weapons far in excess of anything seen before and they are getting more angry and frightened of each other daily. The behaviour and loyalties of bodies such as militias (official or not) and various police forces is also threatening the rule of law. There have of course been periods of violence in the USA before, and it always begins with a few isolated events, like spot fires, that can be dealt with. Then it gets more serious. Maybe this time it will stop short of actual civil war but a period of violent insurgency seems to have begun already.