If you think Australia’s copycat culture war against the Voice to Parliament — with all its fake news and casual racism — is as bad as it gets, then just wait. It looks set to be just another step in the global right’s war on empathy.
It’s no longer enough to say “no” to social change. Now, the culture warriors on the right, here and abroad, are demanding something far more insidious: that we stop caring.
It’s already shaping the No campaign. The Uluru Statement from the Heart calls all Australians to “walk together” based on an empathetic understanding of the “torment of [First Nations’] powerlessness”, and the conservative right responds: “Nah, don’t wanna. Can’t make me.”
In the post-Trump US, or post-Brexit UK, we see clues in what to expect if the Liberal/News Corp No camp wins the Voice referendum in Australia — the weaponisation of a surprise political win into a rejection of the politics of empathy.
In the US, the “anti-woke” right is fighting empathy on two fronts: on one, they’re trying to pull it out by its roots, banning books that help us imagine lives other than our own and rewriting educational syllabuses to legitimate the violence of slavery.
On the other, in both the US and the UK, they’re fighting against “woke capitalism”, specifically targeting “DEI” — all those corporate and governmental programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.
Corporate diversity programs exploded as a response to what Americans call the “racial reckoning” — the 2020 protests against police killings of Black people. In the US, between June and August that year, demand for people to fill DEI roles grew 55%. But the war on woke is starting to bite. Last year, according to LinkedIn, “chief diversity officer” was the only senior management role to see recruitment decline.
Diversity programs have their flaws, but they recognise that someone should pay for what that popular anthropologist of the world of work, David Graeber, calls the “interpretive labour” involved in managing up across gender, culture and class — in understanding just WTF the usually white, male superiors want. (As Graeber acknowledges, feminists have been pointing this out for years.)
Traditionally, this work of cross-cultural interpretation is highly lopsided, almost all of it bottom-up rather than top-down. It’s usually unpaid and unacknowledged, as is much of the related concept of reconciliation work for Indigenous Australians, writes IndigenousX’s Luke Pearson.
Now by making the Voice a matter of a referendum, all of us are being asked to do some of the heavy lifting of that interpretive labour. The right is instead trading on a sullen truculence to defeat it. As our own political anthropologist of settler Australia, John Howard, bleated to fellow culture warrior Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian last week: “Why are we doing this to ourselves?”
It was a reminder that back when Howard was busy embedding the culture war into Australian politics, it was with a King Canute-style promise to stop the tide of social change largely with gesture politics — like outlawing same-sex marriage or refusing to apologise for the Stolen Generations.
Now that’s not enough, to win either elections or culture wars. As The New York Times’ Ezra Klein has noted, demographics lag politics. Almost 20 years on from Howard’s final electoral win, the constituency for his politics is diminished by a rising generation — more educated, more diverse, influenced by a more empathetic culture. The challenge is how to embed that culture in our civic identity.
Then-prime minister Paul Keating had a go with the 1992 Redfern Park speech in a call to imagine ourselves as others to launch the reconciliation project. Fifteen years later, then-prime minister Kevin Rudd had a go with the apology and embraced the Closing the Gap strategy.
The right has grasped the threat. Inspired by alt-right Breitbart founder Andrew Breitbart’s maxim that politics is downstream from culture, they have convinced themselves that they need to use politics to strip kindness and understanding — the joy of a diverse national identity — out of our countries’ cultures.
In his Platformer Substack last week, Casey Newton saw a similar imperative driving Elon Musk’s “cultural vandalism” of what we once called Twitter: the cruelty really is the point, as The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer noted at the height of Trump-mania in 2018.
It’s in that spirit that our local right — through both its political and media wings — are campaigning to refuse the offering of the Voice, confident that a successful No will empower it with a social license to continue its war against empathy.
Hey, great article. Key terms for me were ‘a rejection of the politics of empathy’, ‘interpretative labour’, and of course ‘war against empathy.’ And I like how Christopher calls, licitly, for nothing less than a culture of ‘kindness and understanding.’ Let’s drive the grubs who are selfish, egotistical and, with their faux censoriousness out of our political environment by voting YES.
These terms can also be associated with a modern astroturfed eugenics for application to not just ‘other types’, but those Australians down the pecking order…..
There is very simple and clever messaging by conservatives on how the Voice will undermine our legal system.
“This is going to create massive problems.” B Joyce Q and A (very dystopian).
The High Court will be challenged, they say, by applications from the Voice. These challenges will compromise our law – the foundation of our freedoms. Our liberty could be at risk. We don’t know what will happen. “UNKNOWN – no details have been provided. Say NO.”
Now I’m anxious.
This simple circular argument, designed to trigger our anxieties, helps conservatives enforce conformity to re-establish themselves as the dominant culture.
If the Ref fails, the Cons can use that failure as a springboard for a subsequent election win.
Notice how they stay away from any talk about left or right. That will change.
As soon as the Ref fails, they will say it was an experiment from the radical and progressive left, and most Australians saw through their folly. These are the “common sense” Aussies; Cons will leach from the left, in the same way, Howard leached votes from Keating to undermine Keatiing’s attempt at an ongoing progressive agenda.
They have form.
Don’t let ’em.
SAY YES.
I think “the right” have worked out that “the old left” was a breeding ground for racial prejudice and its former members will vote racist whenever the opportunity presents. This achieves a kind of generation split, where “the left” are divided between the racists and the “woke”. The rallying cry of our times is “everything was better in the old days”.
To clarify, this is not to say that all “no” voters are racist. But I can’t think of a more pointless clarification.
Now that left/right now means little of import, the point you appear to have missed is that Wokeys are very much in favour of strong authority enforcing whatever folie du jour is in fashion.
Once upon a Time, both Right & Left once knew that an overpowerful state was not a “good thing” from entirely opposite positions but for the same reason – it has long been recognised that any government strong enough to give what is ‘demanded’ is more than strong enough to take anything it chooses.
Starting with freedom of speech – when that is curtailed only official lies remain.
You choose to define “woke” as being “… in favour of strong authority enforcing whatever folie du jour is in fashion”. This one of the great advantages of the word, it carries no definition other than “stuff I don’t like”. As you demonstrate.
Are you not keeping up with the news?
Since the boomers came to power, they have become increasingly intolerant, often of things they previously practiced, advocated & applauded, and now have the power to enforce.
The woke are their benighted offspring, useless specimens given everything they ever demanded and every growed-up knows where that leads.
Be afraid, be very afraid when that cohort eventually get their hands on the reins.
I’ve tried twice to respond but the madBot drools.
Try replacing your tinfoil hat one – in good repair will mask unwelcome thoughts.
You’ve been away recently and quite unmissed.
Presumably being reprogrammed in the SussexSt basement whence you were spawned.
The new chip is no improvement.
Since the postWWII generation came to power, they have become increasingly intolerant, often of things they previously practiced, advocated & applauded, and now have the power to enforce.
The woke are their children, given everything they ever demanded and every adult knows where that leads.
You bet – the Boomers. We live in a heterogeneous society. Unfortunately, I worry some Boomers have not internalised this.
stop the ageist bull labels a bernie sanders is a 80 something progressive “young people” are young liberals too … the sale of assets is done by you too by the fake assessments re economic unfaiirness – wake up get out of your own way – age and boomer is meaningless – its a dictatorships dteam to set us against each other – respect wisdom and experience and look to how China used to dignify age and experience – they are walking all over us in results and power and hood luck but Power is sovereign or democracy is gone and sgency is gone and choice is gone and the koalas habitat is gone
I’m among the oldest of the Boomers, and few of my cohort are to blame for that which you ascribe to them. We were the ones who fought and overcame the stifling conventions of our parents controls.
“Come senators, countrymen, throughout the land
And don’t criticise what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
The old order is rapidly changin’….
I’m getting on, and I know how to play this song. But I’m still worried our age group won’t vote as strongly for the Voice as our younger voters.
I Hope public sentiment is with you Bill.
Might be, ah, pulling the bow back a bit there, depending on what you mean by “the old left”.
Not really “pulling the bow”. The current Tory junta in the UK consolidated power in 2019 in large part because significant numbers of “red wall” (longstanding Labour) seats voted Tory. Attracted principally by the faragist anti-immigration and anti-frog slogans on offer. Red wall Tory MPs fear nothing more than a dilution of anti-migrant vitriol.
A scare campaign – they’re taking your jobs. It worked – until they ran out of key workers!
what a bunch of generalizations have ya seen the racism across the world – its a numbers game – less millionaire here to fight an open house fire sale – selling off our sovereign assets to muktinational keeping profit shares in other countries or caymans whikst they advocate to send jobs off shore or tell us we beed skilled workers – lies lies lies and if one says no to over development ya a nimby and a racist ? wow propaganda 101
I concur, a friend who is a Labor Party member a decade ago (then in her mid 50s), almost walked out of an informal Branch meeting at an inner city Melbourne pub, why? The casual verbal racism, dog whistling and worse…..amongst too many older members….
while labor play good cop and suffet the fail – die on his sword would be our current leaders best hope – voters will not vote libs in whilst they fsil environment rubbish and with the increase of immigration that will be a fail too – not enough healthcare not enough housrs unless tgey indenture which is what jobs providers do they indenture abd raid social security fir profitshttps://michaelwest.com.au/jobactive-report-who-profited-from-it/
I’m waiting for the argument that justifies the cons in legislating it, when they say it will cause all those problems if legislated after the principle is OKed by referendum ?
It is remarkable just how easy it is to otherwise sensible and decent people anxious, and then to manipulate that anxiety into fear and selfishness.
Seems to work every time, and no obvious cure in sight with the present media landscape.
If you really want to understand why everyone should be voting ‘Yes’ in the referendum, just do a quick cross-check of prominent ‘No’ vote supporters and the lineup for the CPAC Conference in Sydney later this year.
In case you don’t know, CPAC stands for Conservative Political Action Conference and is the talkfest run by the American Conservative Union (ACU), a highly Conservative US organisation supported by (among others) Koch Industries and the NRA. It is just another instance of the pushing of radical and highly divisive US Right-Wing policies into Australia.
The local speakers at this Conference of the Radical Right-Wing (read Fascists) are almost a perfect match with those pushing the ‘No’ vote; that alone should scare the shite out of anyone with any level of support for Social Justice and Human Rights.
One subscribes to the Koch Network’s Heritage Foundation email newsletter i.e. ‘The Daily Signal’, not to be confused with the magazine ‘The Signal’ of 1930s Germany, but seemingly similar issues or obsessions; what’s this all about? 🙂
Well of course. Empathy and understanding lead to conversation, leads to cooperation and perhaps even organization, and bingo: communism. Only frightened, atomized non-societies as declared by Thatcher and Reagan can hold back the red scurge. An appealing, utopian vision, no?
John Howard: “Why are we doing this to ourselves?”
This insinuates that ‘we’ are the victim rather than those who are being left behind. I thought Scott Morrison held the copyright on that.