Quite possibly we’ll be able to date a new era in Australian politics from the time when Senator Lidia Thorpe lay down in front of a float at the 2023 Sydney Mardi Gras, and was yelled at by the crowd who cheered on the police trying to remove her.
The float that Thorpe lay in front of was initially said to be the Australian Federal Police (AFP) float, but was later reported to be a trans-support youth services float that was in front of the AFP one. Presumably the police float was the target and it wasn’t possible to get in front of it directly, or something. But the point was well made, and the conservative media helped. They were so keen to make it a confrontation between the cops and a radical Blak activist that they were happy to report that it was a cop shop on wheels.
That someone was booed by the Mardi Gras crowd for protesting; that it occurred in the first Mardi Gras to have a serving prime minister marching; that the people who then condemned Thorpe for her protest included Nationals Leader David Littleproud, just shows you, shows you, um, well, what? The event has so many angles that had it not occurred, politics tutors would have had to invent it as a teaching aid.
First off, it was magnificent, gutsy and audacious. Perhaps there was some pre-planning with the actual stopped vehicle, I dunno, but it’s not nothing to lie in front of a vehicle, even one moving at 4km/h and done up like a giant slice of fairy bread. Second, protesting solo takes a fair bit of oomph; sometimes such protests teeter so close to silliness that you’d rather be run over to end the embarrassment.
But the point was absolutely spot on. Mardi Gras organisers have given float space to private corporations including American Express but denied groups such as the NSW Teachers Federation — even though it’s a sure bet that left-wing, unionised teachers would have been a fairly significant presence in the original 1978 protest party.
Sure, Mardi Gras had to change as it went from illegality to inner-city popularity to global, nation-branding phenomenon, but the embrace of platform and finance capital and the exclusion of actual community groups is a pretty sad place to get to. The event was long ago taken over by fairly apolitical types, and they haven’t had much resistance in recent years.
Claims by the LGBTQIA+ left that queer is inevitably radical are utterly bogus. First, from the 1980s onwards, gay lib was smoothly integrated into the mainstream, following legalisation. Queer’s initially transgressive, disruptive impact has modulated as its advocates have become a major proportion of Australia’s cultural producers. Queer is now the house ideology of middlebrow, knowledge-class culture, as tediously rote and moralistic as was once the Christianity it went up against.
Even so, the inclusion of the AFP is next level. The organisation of many of the people who got their heads cracked don’t get a look-in; the head-crackers do.
The AFP is a sinister, politicised, self-serving force, casual about doing damage in the pursuit of its goals, often self-serving. Mardi Gras may have become a semi-publicly owned event, but it’s got to be something a bit more than Homo Moomba, otherwise its meaning dissolves altogether. No police force should have a role in it. I’d say exclude the fire service as well, but I suspect that would not fly.
So Thorpe joined her political resistance capital as a Blak representative to the “no pride” cause because, as she noted, they’re not merely linked but two expressions of the same thing. The co-option of Mardi Gras, to the point where it is indistinguishable from state tourism and national branding, is the same as the soft totalitarian process governing the politics of the Voice, and the attempt to remove the former from the latter.
The latest episode of this was Professor Megan Davis telling a Universities Australia conference that the organisation — representing the places whose core role is unrestrained and unguided free inquiry and thought — should adopt a pro-Yes position on the Voice. She’s quoted by The Australian as saying:
Universities say they don’t want to be political but the decision not to take a stance for Uluru and the referendum and the Voice to Parliament is a political decision.
We have strong positions on freedom of speech, which is political. We withdraw from investing in some industries, which is political.
This is bad analysis, deliberately or otherwise. Universities have to choose where they invest, if they invest. But that investment body is the enabling corporation attached to the university, not the thing itself. And free speech and free inquiry is a meta-value, one which makes a reflexive politics possible. What is the status of an academic arguing for the No case in an organisation whose official policy is Yes? Not great I would have said. Universities shouldn’t have an official position on any public issue, save for that universities as places of free inquiry are a good thing.
Davis’ call was in response to the vice-chancellors association’s correct call (and that’s a rare thing) that it would have no official position on the Voice. In response to Davis’ speech, the report says, the Universities Australia 1000-strong conference gave a standing ovation.
Well if that counts as an endorsement of Davis’ position that being pro-free-speech is a political position on the same plane as having a position that speech X — on the Voice, fluoride, the Schleswig-Holstein question — explicitly supports, then that’s a shame, and a further sign that universities have become so instrumentalised that many of their staff, academics or otherwise, no longer understand the unique critical and reflexive role they must exercise in a modern society.
Meanwhile, out of the cloisters, Thorpe’s striking act represents, gasp, the return of actual politics to a country whose institutions now form a unified force acting against it. Imagine, an actual politics, making the state react, rather than trying to get it onside to exclude your proximate enemies (before it turns around, its dragon’s neck flexing, and burns you again).
Imagine responding to the Blak gulag by occupying a magistrate’s court that’s acting as little more than a prison mill. Imagine responding to the grievous healthcare crisis in remote areas by occupying the Health Department, the foyer of a private hospital, anything. It’s going to have to be more than one senator doing it, and one wonders where the other warriors are in this.
But as far as the rest of us are concerned, in regard to the above issues, and as long as it’s even minimally organised, just tell me where to come to, and what to lie down in front of, and I’m there. I reckon I’m not the only one. Anything that will turn a bit of heat back on the state that is doing all the killing, or letting it happen through inaction and underfunding, or both, and stop, even for a moment, this ghastly carnival of coerced consent to what are, and have always been, utterly political questions. Maybe a new period has commenced, or maybe the giant fairy bread will roll over us all.
Was Lidia Thorpe “magnificent, gutsy and audacious” or just attention-seeking? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
People have the right to protest and Senator Thorpe is no exception. The problem is that what ever she was protesting about has been subjugated to insignificance by her obvious attempt at self aggrandizement.
Guy writes his usual eloquent prose on the protest, with his own equally smart spin that seems to paint the Senator as a latter day Joan D’Arc leading her people to a better place (on behalf of the then Monarchy) but the sad reality remains this was all about Lydia.
Agreed.
I suspect Lydia also used The Greens to her own ends…
I voted Green in the last Fed election and she was elected. She remains in the Senate but no longer represents me!
If you “voted below the line” – that is you voted for the party slate – then you got what you deserved! I can never understand why people throw their votes away.
I think you mean “above the line”.
She’s a celebrity, don’t get her out of there.
Well said. Lidia Thorpe seems to be the left wing version of Pauline Hanson….a whole lot of anger in search of a cause. And now as an independent we can expect more publicity seeking from her.
A whole lot of anger struggling to stay relevant
Her anger is relevant. Spend some time in Aboriginal communities
Whether or not she represents her own peoples is for them to say, but no doubt she is sewing seeds of division there. I saw her on Q&A and she seemed to lack an understanding of the voice, was corrected by her own peoples and didn’t take the point, but just wanted to hammer home her rage. That rage to me is justifiable, but others want to move on and find it embarrassing, from direct conversations. It doesn’t necessarily make her a good negotiator or politician. Being written into the constitution is a different matter to treaty. Many clans have already negotiated a treaty with their state. I think that process is ongoing. And I do think her celebrity status brand is going to her head a bit.
This is philosophy 101. Morally, you don’t assess whether the intent was selfish or selfless, you assess whether the act was. Quite a lot of war-zone surgeons are arrogant, boastful jerks. Has nothing to do with, or diminish, the meaning of their act. Judge the act.
It was dumb
it was material. you haven’t even got the human agency to say your own name out loud in public. who’s is the dumber dumb act? in every sense.
whose gah
Hi there Jack. I just wanted to give some support to shells for the comment that was made by that person. However, I would go further, Lidia Thorpe’s action was not only dumb, but it was also stupid and unwarranted. Notice too Jack that I have the agency to use my own name out loud in public too. How’s that?!
yeah respect, good on you Robert. So: what material political action do you engage in, beyond commenting here? Member of a party? Active issue campaigner? Run for office? Volunteer, to manifest in the real world the abstract ideas you advocate here?
When was the last time you humiliated yourself for an abstract belief? That is, set yourself bodily against a status quo you want to change while recognising that it is overwhelmingly beyond your indiviudual capacity to change? But did it anyway.
When was the last time you joined a political fight you knew you would lose? But….joined it anyway? Chrs. And again, respect. I see you.
Thank you for your reply Jack.
Your inquiries caused me to reflect upon my history of involvement in politics (which I might add I have kept to modest levels since the defeat of Gough Whitlam for the second time in 1977). I do not allow myself to become too involved in politics, as for a socialist like myself, life can be quite depressing. Also, thankfully, politics is not my main interest/hobby. I have made a conscious decision to only dabble in it from the sidelines.
I more or less ‘came out of retirement’ for the last election when I supported my local Teal candidate. I live in a seat that had (until the last election) never been held by a non-conservative candidate. I played a very modest role in helping to defeat the local Liberal member.
I also belong to a very small party called Sustainable Australia. I joined this party as I am firmly opposed to high levels of immigration. This party also campaigns strongly in favor of stopping corruption and over-development.
I don’t run for office as I am too old and as I said, politics is not my main interest. Also when I see what politicians have to put up with when in office I thank my lucky stars that politics is not my main interest. I am content to advocate for the things that I believe in ‘from the sidelines’. I do this mainly by doing the odd bit of ‘keyboard warrioring’ as is the case here at Crikey.
The scenario that you describe in your second paragraph, while theoretically possible, is more like the story from some Hollywood ‘feelgood’ film, than reality.
The last time that I joined a political fight that I had a pretty good idea was not going to be successful was at the last state election when I helped to campaign (letterboxing and handing out pamphlets and setting up a corflute) for the local Sustainable Australia candidate.
And as far as the ‘respect’ thing goes Jack, when people show me some of it, I will almost invariably give some back in return. But as I am sure you will be aware, respect is a commodity which is in short supply in politics.
I thank you for your interest Jack. I would also be keen to hear what your history is in terms of political involvement.
Thanks, Robert. Have done – Not sure it’ll slip through, It’s very long! If not, email me and I’ll happily send it to you direct. My email is jackrobertson-‘at’-ozemail.com.au
same applies to any other interested crikerians too, just btw. looks like – thankfully! – the Mods have wisely chosen to spare you my self-indulgent grandstanding going fully public..! 🙂
Too complex for most of the readership, Guy!
She is somewhat like a black, female, left Bob Katter – mad, unhinged and unpredictable, but at least shaking things up.
That said, and regardless of the status of the act, her moronic take on history – black and brown trans people were the leaders of the Mardi Gras movement at its beginning – does call into question her sense of reality.
if the war-zone surgeon’s arrogance results in the death of a patient because they are focused on grandstanding, or refusing to take advice, then surely it matters. Because what is the act? is the act the surgery, or is the act “look at how great a surgeon i am” ?
if i give money to a homeless person and don’t tell anyone, i’d argue that that is a different act from me giving the money to a homeless person while filming it so i can post it on social media. The act goes from sincere charity, to “look at what a good person i am, everyone!”.
Was Donald Trump diminishing the act of aid when he lobbed paper towels at the Puerto Rican hurrican victims? Hey, they got their paper towel, regardless of the method of delivery, and according to Philosophy 101, that’s all that should be take into account.
Even in court, intent is taken into account when sentencing, because divorcing the act from intent often doesn’t show the whole picture.
That aside, regardless whether or not you liked Thorpe’s protest, i really reckon you’re overegging it massively. You’d think it was up there with the tank guy in Tiananmen Square, or the fighters of the French Resistance! “Magnificent” and “Heralding a new era in politics”? Really??? I enjoy reading your stuff, and i enjoyed reading this one too, but it struck me as being like one of those Tony Abbott pot-stirring “think piece” speeches he loves to make – only coming from the other end of the political spectrum of course.
That is In Utilitarian ethics, Guy. Critics of Utilitarianism regard this feature as one of its faults. Philosophy 101 covers Utilitarianism but it also covers Virtue Ethics and Deontological Ethics.
To illustrate virtue ethics, Guy, try Aristotle on Courage. In certain situations, you should act courageously. For Aristotle, to act courageously is to risk one’s life or harm to oneself, for the right reasons eg to save a person from drowning, in the right circumstances, eg you are a strong swimmer and have training in life saving. Here the reason behind your action is important. You show aggression if your reason for risking your life or harm to yourself is to rob or kill another person. The circumstances are also important. Your attempt to save a person from drowning is foolhardy if you are not a strong swimmer or have no idea how to cope with the desperation of a drowning person.
Boom ?
I meant BOOM clap emoji didn’t work 😉
yeah i hate it when it does that. and crikey, you need an edit button too!
The act was pathetic and put a lot of people present off side.
Considering she’s pushing the No ‘case’, I don’t think it helped at all.
It was a stupid act and in the wrong place. Hahaha!
War zone surgeons are often psychopaths. They sort of have to be to handle it, but also in that environment they would florish, be revered, get away with a lot, probably enjoy surgery without anaethesia etc. So the intent has a lot to do with the act. Not sure about the 101, but saying that is patronising.
Well said Pedantic.
Agree, compares with the ‘cosplay’ of the Kochian ‘Freedom Rallies’ esp. in Victoria, seeking attention via media to try nobble sensible legislation and intimidate centrist government.
If you want to see people being ‘magnificent, gutsy and audacious’ see climate protesters detained &/or locked up for inordinate lengths of time, but fly under the media radar.
Everyone keeps saying that, yet whenever I see LT has attention she deliberately and purposefully draws it to the issues of her people.
The very nature of activism is attention-seeking, the fact that this is the major criticism of LT and the fact that LT cops an absolute barrage from all sides all the time make me wonder why there is such a strong effort to paint her as ineffective/selfish – seems to me the major issue everyone has is that LT refuses to conform herself into a nonentity.
Lydia also gives me the impression that her “protests” are all about Lydia. I also sometimes find that Guy’s prose falls well short of “eloquent”. All much ado about pretty close to nothing.
The day after her narcissistic exercise at this year’s Mardi Gras, Lydia Thorpe wrote this on Twitter – “Black and brown trans women started the first pride march as a protest against police violence. Today, we still face violence from police.”
In fact, no black, brown or trans people were participants in the first pride protest march in 1978 – this is simply a rewriting of history to suit her own purposes. And in writing “we”, she is implying that she is part of the queer community, which is also not true, unless she has chosen up to now not to reveal this for the public record.
Lydia has many reasons to be angry with the police, but most of these relate to First Nations issues and not those of the queer community. Relations between the police and the queer community have improved dramatically over the years, and if they (we) choose to celebrate that positive change by inviting them to participate in the annual Mardi Gras march, then surely it is their (our) right to do so, and Lydia should respect that decision. It’s hardly the first time – the police have participated in queer pride marches all over the country for years.
The nature of the Mardi Gras has changed over the years as lives of queer people have changed, along with changes in the law and social attitudes. If the queer community would like to focus more on celebrating those positive changes rather than on political protest, who is Lydia Thorpe to crash the party for her own attention-seeking ends – there are plenty of more relevant protest parades she could join to further her fight for First Nations rights.
Actually, she was right in that regard:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2021/06/29/the-black-and-brown-activists-who-started-pride/
However, I am surprised Mr Rundle so admires the good Senator’s action, the complete lack of support in the crowd says it all. If the queer community via the Mardi Gras committee wants to go mainstream and corporate, that’s their business. Given the amount of money and support provided by government and the corporate world, to pretend that Pride Week is anything much more political than Vivid or the Sydney Festival and a valid place for unrelated protest is silly, or do we now think Fred Nile had every right to carry on?
Twitter has put up a note pointing to context on her tweet and a link. She attempted to take something that had a broad base and claim it for one section of the lgbtqia community. Didn’t go down with some in the community who didn’t like her writing them out of the history. I was a supporter. I’ve been completely turned off by her. This is just one more thing, and I suspect that whole show will keep on blundering on.
Ahhh … I was thinking of the first pride march in Australia and not in the whole world.
Broad again I think 🙂 Celebrating all the diversity is a good thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/78ers
That’s because you’re not retroactively looking for a way to justify your antics the night before.
No, it’s because Senator Thorpe was trying to make that connection.
She was corrected multiple times on a variety of platforms and ignored all comments.
I’m also not sure that going ‘mainstream and corporate’ has to be seen in negative terms (not that I’m suggesting that you are doing that, but others certainly are). There are a variety of ways to achieve one’s goals for positive change, not just through aggressive protest.
In the ’80s I was the only openly gay person working in the Perth office of the ATO, a large office of many hundreds of employees. At the time, I argued that the only way to make progress with gay rights was to stand up and be counted – that being seen was the key – that once people realised that they all knew gay friends, relatives, work colleagues, attitudes would have to change. I think this is the positive strength of the Mardi Gras in its current form – its sheer size and general popularity (going mainstream), the huge number of gay people and their supporters out there in public having a fabulous good time, must be such a wonderfully encouraging and reassuring thing for queer youth observers. What joy to know you are not alone, and that so many people don’t judge you negatively.
There is still work to be done, but the positive power of a ‘mainstream’ Mardi Gras should not be underestimated. Protest and work towards further change continues, but perhaps in a different time and place. I think Lydia misjudged this.
It’s the Mardi Gras in 2023. Most of the crowd ‘s queerness is unknown to us. The event is a tourist adjunct to Sydney branding.
Its not their business , going corporate, if theyre claiming allyship with blak movements, in order to keep their radical edge, for marketing purposes.
And even if that wasnt the case, protest is about stopping process. Green activists lying in front of cars on the harbour bridge arent against people going to Manly, per se
She’s no longer a green activist…
she is to me mate. i’ll take them in any colour they’re avails at this ultra late stage thnx.
I meant to type Green with a capital G.
gotcha…will still brag reel the cool line though 🙂
Yeah, nah …
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000006322550/stonewall-lgbt-pride-anniversary.html
I think you are writing your own history here! Is 2021 article is nothing to do with the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in 1978.
Ms Thorpe did not specifically mention 78, she’s a natural politician.
Interesting link but the poster was talking about Australia. Ironic two of those mentioned in the article started an organisation “to provide safety and shelter to homeless LGBTQ+ youth”: work done in Sydney by Twenty10 – the float Thorpe blocked. I don’t believe she has apologised.
There is a little about it here https://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/590976/History-of-First-Peoples-entries-in-the-Sydney-Mardi-Gras-Parade/#vars!panel=6171563! but it doesn’t exactly equate to “black and brown trans women…”. Black community certainly supported as they were well versed in police violence. This violence was part of this years Mardi Gras with police walking along lines with sniffer dogs, dragging people out for searches and going into pubs to intimidate
The inclusion of services floats and marchers be they AFP or ADF or any other is meant to show that LGBTQIA people are involved and contributing to all aspects of our lives. Wasn’t inclusion the very point of the protest of the 78ers? To whinge that is no longer “of the left” seems a little silly. Btw so was Lidia Thorpe’s tarmac callisthenics. Courageous and gutsy is the people who confront gun or knife-wielding mad men on a daily basis and who have to study the dead bodies often of young women and children in crime scenes. That’s real courage and fortitude. I wish Senator Thorpe could do something effective about curbing deaths and maltreatment in custody and to reduce Indigenous representation in our prisons. This gesture was comic attention-seeking and nothing more.
The police are structurally racist, and often simply just racist, however many individual police officers may be decent people, of various backgrounds. If the LGBTQ movement truly is an ally of black and POC movements, there’s no place for the AFP in a rally. If individual LGBTQ cops wanna march – tho not in uniform – fine. If Mardi Gras organisers want to be a subsidiary arm of the state – subsidised, touristic, pinkwashing cops – fine. But they should stop claiming allyship with a blak movement, in a place like Australia
Only a minority of police are racists and misogynists. The rest are largely protectors and enablers of racists and misogynists.
On the other hand, that doesn’t stop them from being LGBTIQ+ enablers of racists and misogynists, perfectly entitled to march with the rest of the parade.
I don’t think you understand what structural racism is.
And, as Guy said, no-one’s suggesting stopping people who are police from marching – just not as police.
We live in a structurally racist society. Does that mean by extension we should all sit at home congratulating ourselves on how progressive we are? I’d rather not, thanks. The chant was “out of the bars and into the streets” not “out of the bars some of you who pass my arbitrary test of which organisations are left enough and all the rest of you should continue to be ashamed of yourself”.
Guy I fear that your brittle grasp on the meaning behind the parade is not going to last the rise of intersectionality with there being more gay police and likely more black, gay police in time. It will happen and they will have every right to march tall and proud in the Mardi Gras parade. In Sydney a police unit dedicated to historic homicides of gay men has just successfully secured a prosecution. When the left has enabled progression there is often little thanks and little retrospective acknowledgement of the almighty effort it took to get where we are and what it will take to get to where we need to be.
It kind of seems odd that lgbtiq+ police can only be allowed to march if they hide their identity ….as police. There is no recognition of the work we have been doing for years to improve the treatment and engagement with our community. Yes not perfect yet but we have come a long way which should be recognised. I am out and proud in my organisation and absolutely do not look the other way when inappropriate behaviour occurs. I always wonder what people think is the so called solution to ‘structural racist police organisations’….abolish them? In all reality tell me how you do that and still have an organised response to protect all of the community the next day….will you tap your heels and just create a new organisation with new shiny people? Because I can tell you from over 35 years of experience that it’s a very tough job dealing with the unsavoury aspecs of life that most choose not to see. It’s not perfect but we are working hard to change it from within.
Thankyou! My thoughts went straight to the LGBTQI police members when i heard of her protest, must have been absolutely gutting for them to finally not have to hide their identity and immediately be vilified and dehumanised like this. Police are gay people too, they should be able to march as such – these cishet gatekeepers are way out of line. Grundle and Lthorpe are prime examples.
Have you completely overlooked the presence of LGBTQI members in the police force? Can they not get to participate without being further marginalised by cishet commentators like yourself.
They may well be “structurally racist”, but they are not inherently hetero so cishet people should butt out of the discourse imo.
Agree with Lidia’s position on police participation in the march. However, there is some discomfort in watching a non-queer woman stopping a float on the LGBTIQ+ Pride March. While she may be an ally to queer people, an ally should stand beside or behind those who identify as queer, but she has gone it alone.
Yes, same here, I agree with the sentiment but it’s is poor form to appropriate some else’s march and it’s explicitly discouraged by most groups. A climate group I’m involved with went to various BLM marches, and deliberately do not prosthelytize there. We know how much work goes into those things, the media planning, contingency planning etc. One ill conceived or selfish act can throw off the whole media message.
Agree. If she had joined a bunch of queer activists/protestors to stop a float to make their point, I would have possibly cheered in front of my TV.
I suppose your climate group shop at Coles or maybe next year Woolworths? Each company does a fine line in plastic bullshit. But hey they spend a lot of time and effort in putting the Coles float for broadcast on the ABC so they must be a wonderful ally of gay business pride.
the LGBTQ movement appears to have joined itself to blak struggles – the black and brown chevrons in the enlarged rainbow flag suggest that. So they can be held to account for having the AFP in the parade on those grounds.
But also, protest is protest. The pride march is a celebration, which has fused with the state, not a protest march itself. Fair game imo
The LGBTQ movement has members from all walks of life, including the dispossessed, the corporate world, and everyone in between, including no doubt people who work for American Express. The Mardi Gras is a celebration of community diversity; I can still remember when queers were routinely bashed, sometimes murdered. It’s got nothing to do per se with black politics. Whether or not Lidia Thorpe is a narcissist is irrelevant; what she achieved was to damage Blak struggles and herself.
which one?
Mmm. I reckon she has generated more political thought in this creative considered action than the dull gate keepers . She has spoken directly to her people and her allies….. probably not to you. They understand her because they are the ones been locked up disproportionately in Australian prisons. I can hear the cheers for her clarity and representation. She and her team are top shelf !
You must have pretty good hearing Dave. And if ‘she and her team are top shelf’, then I would hate to see what occupies the ‘bottom shelf’!
Interesting to note that black and brown chevrons have been added, but nothing to suggest solidarity with women
I agree that Mardi Gras has become largely a giant Pinkwashing party and money-spinner for Tourism NSW.
I also strongly agree that more needs to be done to shake Australia out of its collective political torpor and demand meaningful action on a range of issues from indigenous recognition, the acute and surging crises in aged care, homelessness, worker exploitation, obscene wealth inequality and climate action.
I admit that I have my suspicions that Lidia Thorpe is a rampant narcissist. But she has an absolute right to protest and god knows we need more direct action, so on balance this is a good thing.
Agree she has a right to protest, but also suspect she is a narcissist.
What is it with accusations of narcissism against those with whom we disagree these days? Its users seem to feel it’s a necessary precondition to any consideration of Julian Assange, too.
I’ll take so-called narcissists trying to expose those obsequious to power over kiss-arses and yes wo/men any day, and twice on Sundays.
I don’t disagree with her but I do suspect she’s a narcissist based on her behavior.
Including the likes of Donald Trump, I presume?
Enough with “the narcissist” please. She is a valued authentic voice unlike the Coles parade float ffs. Don’t follow the Murdoch tropes .
seeing as how she already got into a pickle as an onion.. you would have thought dykes on bikes was more of fit..
Yes, she clearly delights in attention, which doesn’t necessarily undermine her legitimacy in making a point. But the tactic? Thousands of parents who delighted in their child’s participation in climate action (the Parliament House sit-down a triumph) must have been cringing, and making a note to have a ‘not-like-that’ conversation with their sprouts. ASAP.
Protest action needs to be clever, preferably with wit and attention-grabbing humour, to bring public opinion along with the cause. (As Rundle notes, the MG has brought the fringe into mainstream through this process). It also needs to be calculated in who it targets and who it disadvantages.
Finding more extreme avenues is not good strategy. Auto-cremation has a long history but lost favour (the Arab Spring was a the last i recall) because the extremeness repulses so many people, and is therefore counterproductive. Thorpe has given too many people cause to agree with the SkyAD loonies, and that is not a win.
I’m not sure whether Thorpe especially delights in attention. Even if she does, she has some stiff competition in Parliament. But she gets crucified every time she appears in the media, and I think this is less to do with her personal or professional faults and a lot more to do with the way power operates in this country.
I’m confident that the way the media frames her – as distinct from her message – is the strategy to ensure her message never cuts through. Not only did the crowd boo Thorpe on the night, the majority of social media coverage consisted of nasty ad-hominem borderline to beyond racist attacks. They were often sexist and mostly nothing to do with the message she articulated to the Pride in Protest group she addressed at the muster point before the parade even started. Not that the media presented those facts. That’s because they will do whatever it takes to prevent her being presented in an objective way.
I didn’t think Thorpe’s comments on her decision to progress the ‘no’ vote to the Voice were especially terrible. If you are aware of the reasons she gave you would be in the minority, because the media routinely buries her story or buries Lidia Thorpe the person. What was so interesting about Thorpe’s position was that she expressed her desire to represent her constituency, on this matter, Aboriginal Elders. Labor and the Coalition claim to represent their constituency as well, but these consist chiefly of donors.
Patricia Karvelas was very friendly and positive when she interviewed Linda Burney (who I like) and then switched her tone and her line of questioning to something much more pointed and nasty when speaking to Thorpe. Thorpe told her to quit the tactic of trying to play Black women off against one another.
We saw a similar thing in the UK with the way the media there went after – and failed to get – Mick Lynch. Thorpe probably has it harder here than Lynch did there, because she is Aboriginal and female. The thing both people have in common is they are progressives and their message terrifies the powerful. They are to be shut down at all costs, and sadly, in the case of Thorpe, it’s working.
You think Thorpe is being shut down? Really? She’s totally overshadowing Pauline and Jacqui and Dave, gimme a break.
I think her ascent is thanks to some brilliant tactics by the Blak Sovereignty movement and she has five years to do as she pleases thanks to those machinations: only time will tell if she makes or breaks.
Totally agree with Guy re. the preferencing of Amex and the AFP over the Teachers’ Federation, the organisers of Mardi Gras need to reflect on this.
You seem to be misinterpreting my point – she is either misreported or misrepresented so as to make her look unreasonable, crazy, intemperate, dangerous, awful, a biker’s moll, you name it. Then it doesn’t matter what she says or does, as nobody’s listening anymore. Whatever treatment Pauline, Jacqui or Dave get, it usually doesn’t come with that degree of distortion. Instead, they generally get ignored or assigned flap-all time, which is just another well-documented media tactic.
I largely agree with you, but:
a) her constituency is not Aboriginal Elders. Her constituency are the Greens voters who voted for a set of policies, not a particular person / personality
b) part of her message was the utterly ahistorical and laughable incorrect assertion that black and brown trans people were the major force behind the original Mardi Gras
Nobody knows better than me how easy it is to confuse our own arguments, but one problem with rushing to condemn a person is we can overlook recent, easily checked facts.
You’re right though about her going in as a Greens candidate and now representing something outside that body. But Thorpe also spoke from the outset of responding to her Elders. It seemed that, for her, she was unable to do that and stay in the Greens. I can’t see how splitting from a party makes her any more or less bad than any other politician: Lambie did it to Clive; everyone does it to Hanson; Corgi Bernardi did it; the ALP did it several times last century. Lots of pollies either have no scruples or they are selective with their use.
I’m simply saying that in Thorpe’s case, most of us are deeply biased against her. Many politicians are loathsome, but she’s the one that everybody has a special hatred for. I don’t think it’s entirely attributable to her – I think we should examine what lead us to feel that strongly, and whether we really had all the facts before we reached our conclusion.
led, not lead. Sorry!
Lidia Thrope’s elders are not all of the elders in the Indigenous community not even in Victoria. That is a rhetorical trick that Thorpe uses to give her legitimacy. She has presented as the leader and spokesperson for black Australia and she certainly isn’t. Hanson does the same thing when she speaks for all Australians which is plainly laughable.
I have heard Thorpe use statements to the effect of “the Elders I spoke to said this,” and yes, she gets out in public a lot, but personally I haven’t heard or read Thorpe suggesting she is the leader and spokesperson for Black Australia – or even Black Victoria. Given Aboriginal people are the ones with greatest insight into the world they live in I imagine even a mad egotist – Thorpe *could* be one, but who could believe anything reported about her without a lot of corroboration – would know there are Aboriginal people who vote National and like the Royal Family. Has she said she sees herself as the self-appointed leader, or is it a conclusion the reader has to reach by reading between the lines?
We do seem to demand a far higher standard of accountability and integrity of a lippy female Aboriginal politician than we do of all the other jerks and seat-warmers in Parliament. Nobody wants to admit they’re applying a double standard here. If we scrutinised every other politician in depth and dug out the footage of them farting in a lift in 1989 and trawled over who’ve they shagged or consorted with and who’s got appointments to lobby them and parsed over everything they said for the past decade, then we’d have a much better polity. When it comes to everyone bar Thorpe we seem to just let it slide; when Thorpe so much as speaks we all act as though she’s pushed a defenceless senior citizen into the path of an approaching train. Why is everyone doing this? It’s so racist.
There are a number of Indigenous leaders both left AND right who I support. My resentment towards Lidia Thorpe has nothing to do with racism or sexism. It is squarely to do with her attempts to undermine what has been a long process towards recognition and reconciliation on the basis of truth, treaty and voice. I wholeheartedly reject her victimhood which is a carbon copy of Pauline Hanson’s early work. That is so ironic but some of us have seen all of this populism before.
You are factually incorrect on both accounts. Please retract.
Her constituency is largely the Green voter and not the few thousand who voted for personally.
Agree. And to others here, Lidia Thorpe could have mustered numbers in shutting the parade down. Rundle is correct in that many would join her next year…. And more the next. Police and defence should not march. Period. Personally l hate the Coles float.
Thorpe has a deep sense of political history that is felt, something that pink washing is diluting in a non political gossamer haze, while black deaths in custody goes on and on. It is a disgrace.
I don’t care too much for media reports but her actions, associations, lack of respect for Aboriginal elders, disloyalty to voters and the Greens are strong actions. Her actions don’t speak louder than her words but are part and parcel of a person who claims to represent and be the Voice for Aboriginal Australia while disrespecting elders and all of those who signed the Uluṟu statement. Trashing and disrespecting her own Aboriginal culture in this way, she shows us who and what she is. The veneration by Rundle is an amazingly poor take on a matter where so much attention is paid to someone so negative.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/leaked-email-reveals-greens-staffer-scared-and-in-shock-after-lidia-thorpe-s-truly-awful-outburst-20220905-p5bfdn.html
Her constituency is Aboriginal Elders? Try again, shes a wrecking ball who will invoke any justification for her actions that are required at the time, with no concerns about her assertions being truthful.
She disrespects her Elders, and hijacked the celebration of another vulnerable communities survival, and dumped the Greens after swiping the senatorship. Poor choices, all of them.
“Protest action needs to be clever, preferably with wit and attention-grabbing humour, to bring public opinion along with the cause”
What evidence do you have for this statement?
There are lots of examples of non-confronting, creative protest achieving bugger all and unpopular, inconvenient protest achieving lots.
Yeah. Shorter Dave Y: ‘Protest needs not to make me feel…uncomfy, unsettled, confronted, maybe inclined to quietly rethink my worldview, and perhaps even…moved to get out into the material political world myself, deploy my individual human agency to some real better political end, too.’
Heaven forbid!
Agree entirely.
There was certainly very little humour to be found in the treatment meted out to the original 78ers, was there? Not much wit, either. But by god, it certainly captured public attention and empathy – and here we are all these years later, with a pink washed mainstreamed corporatised Mardi Gras.
Think back to the Thatcher years in Britain. Striking miners and metal workers, flogged by police. That’s when we all learned to hate and fear economic rationalism (neoliberalism) for the first time, remember? Wasn’t much wit or humour in those brutal beatings either. Bugger all creativity, unless you count the appearance of SWAT like uniforms on the police for the first time to confront picket lines. Just blood and broken heads. Not unlike the first Mardi Gras in 78, actually.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say history tells us our most productive protests have involved blood and tears and battles. Sometimes short, sharp battles. More often long drawn out trench warfare, but I certainly don’t recall a lot of laughs from our side along the way either, Bob. I do recall feeling we were being laughed AT. I’m experiencing it all over again, watching the Robodebt RC. How about you?
Even if that criticism of Mardi Gras is valid, that’s an issue for the LGBT community to debate and solve. It doesn’t mean it’s open season for straight activists like Thorpe to hijack a queer rights event for their own promotional ends.
This is just group-think. We make our communities through our struggles. Thorpe was in the minority simply because she reminded us of this.
Hmmmm. I agree with your point that activists should not interfere with each others platforms and events.
But 1. You presume my orientation and my right to participate in legitimate debate and 2. When the Mardi Gras has become so enmeshed with the state and corporates such as QANTAS (to name but one) who engage in state-sponsored greed I think it no longer qualifies as some kind of sanctified entity that may only be commented on by a select few.
I wasn’t questioning your orientation or right to debate any topic. My point was Thorpe hijacked an event she was invited to by members of that community.
Did the Pride In Protest group invite her to participate with an agreement that she alone would stage that protest/stunt, hence giving them the cover of plausible denialibity? I doubt the MG will entertain PID’s request to enter their group in next year’s parade if Thorpe’s going to be on their invited guest list.
“ I agree with your point that activists should not interfere with each others platforms and events“
But doesn’t that just leave us all safely separated in our silos, Mal? And make any talk of intersectionality just that – talk? An abstract, meaningless intellectual exercise?
I’m starting to wonder if we should accept the accepted wisdom.
Well said. Lidia Thorpe seems to be the left wing version of Pauline Hanson….a whole lot of anger in search of a cause. And now as an independent we can expect more publicity seeking from her.
How does Martin Luther King emerge when we run the ‘narcissism’ ruler over leaders? ‘I have a dream’? The actual doing of the protest makes the internal psychology of the leader irrelevant for outsiders. That’s for their fellow movement members to consider
Oh good grief. Calling MLK a narcissist for talking in the first person during a rousing gospel inspired human rights speech. That’s quite a hot take.
parse the diff for us then, mate. you can’t. becoz every usefully disruptive protestor in history was by definition a narcissist. it’s the second tier/wave opportunists who are the real narcissists (and historical creeps), becoz they care more about slyly ‘curating’ their legacy than the genuine in-the-moment disruption.
that ‘disruption’ wasn’t mlk’s speech, btw. it was the quarter million yanks who gathered there to hear him give the fkng thing. each individual performing their version of thorpe’s
Well who decide what’s rousing, and what’s narcissistic? Why is that so self evident? Because MLK is safely dead? Leadership involves audacity, which is, in part, backing yourself
MLK was indeed a narcissist, a womanising preacher and yes a charismatic leader. Donald Trump also shares some of those characteristics and here we can see that leaders can sometimes approach a delusional self belief also not uncommon in psych wards. Never mind. For her supporters Lidia Thorpe had a grand time sticking it up to the man (the police) hooray for her. As it happens the police were very reluctant to approach her and take her off the road and they did not charge her. Ho hum.
Exactly. I would label the self congratulations over gay marriage in federal parliament as true late stage narcissistic behaviour. The true activists were in the front line 50 years ago getting bashed all over Australia by the police. But Gay history didn’t stop parliamentary members being delusional about their importance, much less their leadership.
It’s not their internal psychology that matters, it’s whether they act effectively for their cause, or merely seem to want the spotlight. I don’t think you could accuse MLK of the latter….
Sorry Guy, I posted this (it was a “nonce is invalid” workaround) before seing that you had said virtually the same thing in an earlier reply. Now I’m just confused.
The media prefers to reframe the debate. If it can’t reframe the debate, it ignores it. If it can’t ignore it, it discredits the person. We are at the personal stage with Thorpe. She can’t say or do anything without the media telling everyone she is to be beheaded. Seems many of the commenters here would be happy to oblige if they could.
yes. so resist it. don’t play to the media’s songbook. judge the act.
thorpe’s is a version of the old italian (?) adage about making sure you assassinate a decent, uncorrupt judge, if one at all. compel your natural allies to make a choice, etc
Great point – however to not play to the media’s songbook means you have to be much less susceptible to bad faith arguments or other ways of being manipulated than most of us are. It happens to us all to some extent. Myself included. People have a tendency to group-think, even if we’re ashamed to admit it.
aye, that’s why being personally obnoxious is such a political asset. if peeps agree with you anyway it means you’re prolly onto an idea worth believing.
This is a good point. Lidia may well be an obnoxious narcissist who played the Greens for chumps. That wouldn’t invalidate her message, and might well make her a more effective activist.
Adam Bandt has shown he is not a chump but a true loyal supporter of the Blak community ! He has shown maturity . He trusts they will determine their deeply felt thoughts. Can we all agree to create the same space, and can we agree to many voices, especially like Lidia Thorpe , to be heard and not be abused and trivialised? I mean is her treatment an example of how the Voice will be received.
I’ll agree to that! But it does seem like whenever Lidia says anything everyone suddenly becomes very interested in electoral integrity or tone policing.
But they’re never sexist or racist!
Yes, but it can be that while also being something more to the people marching. Her disruption of the Pride march, regardless of how many tourists may have been watching it, was the equivalent of somebody stopping a Black Deaths in Custody protest march to complain about koala habitat destruction.
Except Mardi Gras is no longer a protest march.
Yes, its a celebration of survival. So imagine an ultra well known white gay rights activist stopped a First Nations Survival day event to draw attention to the struggle for survival experienced by the LGBTQI community.. i would think that in poor taste too.
Its just not okay to hijack other vulnerable communities events to promote your own causes. Proof is in the fact the MG organisers asked for lidia to be removed *as she had breached the agreed conditions of her participation”
MG organisers felt it unacceptable. I feel (as a member of the LGBTQI community) it was disrespectful to a) the people whos float she stopped
b) the LGBTQI members of the police force who deserve to be represented finally
c) the entire LGBTQI community many of whom are sick of confrontation and marginalisation and fighting for justice and inclusion and just want to celebrate and be celebrated for one night in the year – is it really so much to ask of cishet people to not disrupt our celebration of survival?
If you’d written this 45 years ago I would agree with you, Jessica – disrupting a vulnerable and violated group’s protest march for the sake of another vulnerable and violated group would be morally unacceptable.
But this is not the MG of 1978, and Thorpe did not disrupt the float of a marginalised group in a protest march by a marginalised group. She disrupted the float of a politically compromised police institution in a corporatised tourist event for the sake of a still marginalised and violated group.
If we expect protest actions to never be ‘in poor taste’ or inconvenience someone, then we are arguing against the legitimacy of all protest action.
She lay down in front of the homeless youth float….the reporting is not correct….so yes she did disrupt a marginalised group. This was grandstanding of the highest degree. And where is your evidence of a politically compromised police organisation? Simply because Guy says it’s so….as an lgbtiq police member I’m getting sick and tired of the generalisations of those who have no idea.
I stand corrected on Thorpe getting the wrong float, which is a shame. But I stand by my comments on the changed, corporatised and sanitised nature of the MG. I understand your anger at Thorpe – you have your cause and she has hers, and good protest action always upsets someone.
As to the AFP, while there are many good cops who individually deserve (and I give them) thanks and respect for doing a hard job well (I have such cop friends), the AFP is just another politicised bureaucracy. For starters:
https://uat.crikey.com.au/2016/06/20/nbn-police-raids-justification-blocked/
https://uat.crikey.com.au/2016/08/24/australian-federal-police-nbn-raid-on-parliament-house-over-leaks/
https://uat.crikey.com.au/2017/04/28/australian-federal-police-admits-to-data-breach-with-journalists-phone-records/
https://uat.crikey.com.au/2017/05/01/afp-metadata-breach-shows-just-how-trustworthy-the-agency-is/
spot on
Ah … really. An equivalent…. I see .