The threat to Australia’s democracy from a damaged right is growing with the Coalition government mired in deceit, corruption and ideological extremism.

Sir Robert Menzies might well choke on a martini watching what has become of his Liberal Party over the past few years. Too many shameless grifters and buffoons are strewn through his party and its Coalition partner; they are harming the nation, not building it.

At state level their fate is mixed. The NSW Liberal government has moved from being led by a centrist to an aggressive libertarian; its future will be worth watching. The Victorian Opposition, by contrast, is a Trumpian nightmare. The federal party is in chaos: most of its quality parliamentarians have left in despair, with little to admire in the rump.

Chicanery and cynicism make up the international trajectory for right-wing parties. Obviously Donald Trump’s Republican Party is filled with unspeakably awful congressmen and women deploying all kinds of performative stupidity to shock the progressive audience they live to make cry. The lowest point of that might have been when two of the worst congressmen joked about arm-wrestling “to get dibs” on Kyle Rittenhouse, underage shooter of protesters, as an intern. It’s hard to judge the lowest point when asserting that “Jewish space lasers” started wildfires and posting anime videos of themselves murdering Biden are contenders for that prize.

The Republicans are still trying to work out how to deal with a former president who attempted a coup to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, the cornerstone of a democracy. Those few Republicans who tried to call “enough” to the Trumpian games were quickly terrified back into the “big lie” by death threats from the radicalised base. Meanwhile their state-level colleagues undo the checks and balances that kept the coup from succeeding.

Boris Johnson is probably the archetype of the conservative buffoon. His manoeuvring has led Britain into harsh times following the harder Brexit arrangements, with projections that the process might lead to the failure of the British state.

In countries run by right-wing governments, death rates from the COVID-19 pandemic have tended to be disproportionately large. The US, the UK, Brazil and India all fumbled the measures that might have limited the spread, with harmful partisan messaging countering the public health information that would have saved lives.

Meanwhile their centre/left opposition parties try to work within the normal bounds of democratic government. With monumental crises to address — the climate emergency is more frightening than the pandemic — they are playing the political game as it has been played for decades. Some boast better actors than others. They are beholden to donors to be able to afford to compete with the “conservative” politicians more attractive to billionaires; this limits their ability to implement the policies they desire. At least they seem to aim to govern with seriousness.

The problem is that they’re battling “conservative” parties that don’t believe in the contest for government. Some seem to believe that the centre/left has no right to govern at all. This right has abandoned the sense that facts matter, or that any effort to be truthful or accept the repercussions of actions is necessary. They are deeply cynical and ready to adopt any spin that will lift them over a momentary glitch.

The PR efforts of right-wing governments are amplified by corporate media, dependent for funding on advertising dollars or operated by organisations that share their interests. These platforms assist the right by repeating the talking points and not truly contrasting the stakes in this conflict between “flawed normal” and democratic decline. In increasingly authoritarian states like India, the media is terrified into supporting the government and brave journalists literally fear for their lives. The internet has helped shatter the sense that there is a shared fact base from which we operate, and helped to divide us further into tribes. The authoritarian governments intervene there too to suppress dissent.

In Australia, the threat to democracy from a damaged right is growing and enough Australians need to display civic seriousness to prevent further decay. Becoming a corporatocracy is a tricky path for the Coalition to negotiate: the demands of donors and their own ideological agenda have made for unpopular policy. When pressed to explain such decisions to the electorate, these third-rate Barnums prevaricate, bluster and deceive.

Brazen corruption is rampant as the Coalition tries to win over the voters its policies deter. The billions wasted in vote-buying grant programs alone demand resignations, but instead revelations are faced down with smirks and empty rhetoric. The Accountability Round Table rorts register estimates $4 billion has been deployed this way in the past few years while pre-Christmas reporting showed that the government has billions set aside for potential vote-buying corruption in the 2022 campaign.

They are assisted by barely contained fringe politicians like George Christensen and Craig Kelly who are mostly allowed to spout the crank theories and ugly dog whistling that is intended to arouse the Trumpy base. Kelly is now operating with Craig Palmer who pretends to stand in opposition to all parties but actually funnels his millions towards Liberal Party success with anti-Labor advertising and preference deals.

They prevaricate on climate science and ignore research that shows their decisions bring long-term harm. Instead of acting with integrity, they impose more penalties for whistleblowers and journalists who would expose their misdeeds.

They botched their roles in handling the pandemic while executing partisan warfare on state leaders during a global crisis.

They lie to, and about interactions with, foreign leaders, breaking the sense that we are a serious nation, and one to be trusted. They carry out bullhorn “diplomacy”, wrecking relationships with key trade partners for culture war games.

The old Liberals became a new right under John Howard. They abandoned their sense that a market and government could work in tandem in order to emulate the ultra free market spruikers in the US. In this process they moved from being a truly Australian party to a pitiful shadow of the rotting Republican Party in the US.

Their growing disdain for the role of government has left them without a real policy platform. Successful government action would undermine their mantra that government is the problem not the solution. We need more “can-do capitalism” apparently. Their time in government therefore seems to be dedicated to gaining the donor support needed to gain the power to reward the donors.

And to gain the votes they need to continue that little equation, until they’re ready to cash out with a handy post-politics directorship. Apparently it’s mainly about “messaging.” When Scott Morrison became immigration minister intending to terrify asylum seekers away from choosing our shores to seek refuge, his departments spentover $8-9 million a year on salaries alone for 95 communications staff and spin doctors. When policies proved unpopular, the Coalition response was “we just need to improve our messaging”.

The identity crisis that has beset the international right is central to the problem. A cavalcade of extremes drives the movement from Buckley’s fusion conservatism to an increasingly unhappy sack of cats. The Burkean conservatives have been chased out of the limelight by those with radical plans. Extreme libertarians have called for the dismantling of the structures that underpinned the old society. The religious right has substituted its own authoritarian dreams for the conservative values of a free society.

Part of the problem is that a libertarian agenda of lower taxes resulting in fewer government services has led to a widening chasm between rich and poor. The closer that ideologues come to achieving their nominal goals, the more disruption they face from the eviscerated middle class and the abandoned poor. At the same time, key “conservative” thought leaders tell them the right has been defeated in the West. The creative arts and academia have long provided a platform for the speaking of subversive messages.

While most of the seats of power in our society are filled with people who still look like conservatives, the fact that corporations are willing to post a Black Lives Matter square or rainbow flag on their social media is read as meaning that commerce has fallen to the woke.

When government also allows marriage to be equally open to queer as well as straight citizens, suddenly the message is clear: the conservatives have lost the battle for society and must fight with every weapon to take back their own pre-eminence. In America in particular, this is leading to frighteningly extreme rhetoric preparing the ground for violence.

In Australia and America, conservatives also battle with the fact of their nations being settler colonial states. Their manly narratives — of masculine men battling hardship, natives and nature for survival, then striding off in a blokey way to battle on foreign fields with their mates — are embraced tightly. Some entwine themselves around Britishness and royalty as an unbroken lineage from Magna Carta. Others grew up with the post-war shining success of American industry, economy and culture. Either way their Anglo-ness pervades their identity.

If the prior inhabitants of these British outpost nations seek recognition, conservatives must crush the disruptions to their polished tale of enterprise and courage. There is a physical repulsion at the idea that another narrative might also be also true — or truer than the heroic quest tale they retell every Australia Day or Fourth of July. There is little room in these accounts for the people enslaved as possessions in America or blackbirded to Australia.

As the Western liberal project has chipped away at prejudice to allow others to weave new motifs into the tale alongside that heroic narrative, the conservative identity struggles to cope. It wants a monotonal pole on which to hang the flag, not a complex tapestry of story.

So now the “conservative” sphere is filled with trollish extremists, the edgelords who aim to shock. The groypers and Proud Boys and neo-Nazis who would create an ethnostate to “save” white Western civilisation. The rad trad Catholics and Evangelicals who aim for a theocracy. The capitalist anarchists who would destroy all systems except the means to protect the market.

The National Party seems broken beyond saving. The Liberal Party has a choice. It can continue on the trajectory of unmaking democracy to shore up its own unpopular ideological choices, playing the games of the international right, as contagious as any pandemic, to disguise the funnelling of funds to the rich. Or it can return closer to its origins as a part of the social democrat debate so much more at home in Australia than the clownish American simp it has become.

Read more: 

https://johnmenadue.com/liberals-now-a-pitiful-shadow-of-the-party-founded-by-menzies/

THE LIBS HAVE GONE CRAP...  they always were but they've gone more so...

See also Pepe ScoMo the Clown: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/42747

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