George: I have just sent a response to a far right cousin in the US who is right behind Trump's treatment of what they call illegals in the US (did they catch that word from Tony Abbott - I would not be surprised) - how dare those people get into his country - effectively - my kinsman's argument. And it's up to me (!!) to tell him where or why or how it is not the right of the US to deport them. In so many words. And he lives in Dallas - in a community (still remarkably Mexican Hispanic) and territory stolen in one of the US-generated wars of conquest against Mexico right across the southern and western US - etc etc. That no human being is "illegal" - that the US has a deep scar of almost but not quite forgotten conscience over how the (south) west was won (not at all dissimilar to the British establishment of colonial and then Federated Australia) and in its wars and CIA-created conflict in the lands to the south which have made so many flee to safety thinking they will find it IN the US. And then I find your argument from Eric Blair's 1984 - an almost forensic definition of the Trumpian way... Brilliant.
It's a horrible word, isn't it? Even if you allow that a country can strictly control borders, it is part of dehumanising process that seems to go hand in hand with these sorts of policies.
George: I have just sent a response to a far right cousin in the US who is right behind Trump's treatment of what they call illegals in the US (did they catch that word from Tony Abbott - I would not be surprised) - how dare those people get into his country - effectively - my kinsman's argument. And it's up to me (!!) to tell him where or why or how it is not the right of the US to deport them. In so many words. And he lives in Dallas - in a community (still remarkably Mexican Hispanic) and territory stolen in one of the US-generated wars of conquest against Mexico right across the southern and western US - etc etc. That no human being is "illegal" - that the US has a deep scar of almost but not quite forgotten conscience over how the (south) west was won (not at all dissimilar to the British establishment of colonial and then Federated Australia) and in its wars and CIA-created conflict in the lands to the south which have made so many flee to safety thinking they will find it IN the US. And then I find your argument from Eric Blair's 1984 - an almost forensic definition of the Trumpian way... Brilliant.
pation (with acknowledgements to Rocky Horror PS etc)
'Our federal election was allegedly a rejection of such exhaustion, of Trumpism, and I hope that is true'.
Much emphasis on the 'allegedly'. I read an article in the SMH by Crowe & Sakkal just before with headline: 'After three years, Albanese has a new slogan. Here’s what ‘progressive patriotism’ means'.
I thought 'WT*, 'patriot', why use that term, it smacks so much of the US. A guick google revealed in The Conversation ''Nationalism is not patriotism: 3 insights from Orwell about Trump and the 2024 election
Published: October 30, 2024 11.38pm AEDT"
Even Billy Bragg (2021) writes that: 'People sometimes ask me what it means to be a progressive patriot, how the concept differs from traditional patriotism. I explain that the progressive patriot cares deeply about their country's values and whether they are upheld, rather than national symbols and how they are displayed. They take pride in how we conduct ourselves today and going forward, rather than relying on past glories'.
Google AI posits: 'Billy Bragg's concept of patriotism is a progressive one, focusing on positive aspects of a country and its values rather than a narrow nationalist view. He believes in celebrating a rich history of British radicalism and challenging the right's monopolization of patriotism. Bragg's patriotism is rooted in love for his country and a desire for it to be a force for good, not just to be proud of.'
OK - I get what Billy B is trying to say, but just even using the term patriot is just so.... 'unAustralian', that is one term which I loathe.
As I am contending now: 'Australia: still a duopoly until there's minority'.
The thing that gets me about the PM's announcement is, since when do we have slogans for terms of government? Did anyone else think it was an odd announcement?
Thanks for the Bragg quotes. I think the left does concede this ground too much, so his is an interesting approach.
To the pessimists who fear that the Albanese government will not be progressive (enough), and had wished for a minority Labor government, I say that the only way to get a progressive government after the next election is for progressives to preference the Liberal Party.
To fall to minority the government must lose about 20 seats. If, in some of the seats where the progressive vote was what got the Labor candidate over the line, the progressives instead preferenced the community independent or the Liberal candidate, the Labor candidate may not win. If the progressive campaign were properly targeted, in the appropriate number of seats, it could work to produce a minority Labor government.
Of course it would not work.
One, not enough progressives would preference the Liberal Party. Two, the Labor Party would go berserk - call a fresh election, form a coalition with the Liberals, declare martial law... Anything other then work with Teal Green extremists who brought the government undone!
Let's hope that the optimists are right and the new government is aiming for the 19th century socialist view "from each according to his ability,to each according to his need". Albo's "no one left behind, no one held back" allows too much leeway - no one held back by burdensome taxes! by repressive regulation!
Sorry Joe, I don't think that playing the political game by the old cynical rules is the way. While progressives need to compete within the electoral system that we have, we're probably better off helping communities to find better alternatives to the major parties. This needs to follow the ideas of positivity and "joy" that Tim has talked about before in order to appeal to people who are disenfranchised with politics as usual.
And one of the big issues from this election (I hope Tim is thinking about this too) is whether the anti-progressive negative campaigns by Advance and others might have been at least somewhat successful in reducing the flow of preference votes from minor parties to community independents? If so, perhaps a lesson is that we need to do more to build favour with the broader public that independence is more than "Teals", and that independence should be preferable choice for everyone's second preference if it's not their first.
I'm not sure tactical voting is the answer, just as I'm not sure that this election tells us anything lasting. In many ways, I'm glad to see Labor win convincingingly--though I would prefer minority government--but I think as time goes on, the Dutton factor will be seen as sui generous. People were genuinely concerned about him being in charge. Anyway, this all within the realm of the dust-settling I was talking about.
Here am I extrapolating my own fluid ideas for what happens next, and yet the calmness of your acknowledging the fluidity of the situation without yet drawing solid conclusions is strangely comforting. I'll look forward to reading your comments whenever you'd like to untangle them.
In the meantime, Neolaborism (or whatever it'll be called) will surely be a very important study.
Labor does seem to be standing at the crossroads at the moment, torn between flashing Medicare cards at every opportunity while also contemplating a massive and entirely flawed deregulation of the planning system* in the interests of private developer profits.
*We should note the importance of planning practice as an everyday mechanism for negotiating the politics of public and private spaces. Perhaps it would be better to genuinely engage with communities to discuss how we can deal with the competing interests of individual housing and collective quality of life, rather than to tear apart planning systems in order to let the private market decide what kind of profitable dwelling "product" it wishes to sell to us?
Not sure yet if Future Made In Australia could be good or yet another politically partisan porking? What about a Green New Deal?
Labor also seem to be vulnerable in attempting to maintain the tradition of being 'the party of the worker' whole failing to consider how to ensure viable futures for workers in unsustainable jobs in cutting down trees, digging up coal and gas, polluting waterways with fish excrement, and gambling the food off the table at the Workers Club.
And Labor supporters also make extraordinary claims that independents are anti-workers rights because the independents had the temerity to ask for Labor's huge IR bill to be split into manageable parts. Labor shows an entitlement there that is reminiscent of the Liberals' attitudes to economic policy.
And in the same way that the Liberals have been deifying the individual and forgetting society, Labor seem to be risking deifying the worker and forgetting the community.
So no matter what happens with the Liberals from here, there does seem to be a risk for Labor to continue to be too conservative, and to leave people's desire for substantial public-interest reforms unsatisfied. Any whiff of excessive privatisation could be as deadly for Labor as it was to the NSW LNP Government in 2023.
I used to use AI--I had no real access to decent images and certainly no graphic design skills. Plus I used to have fun coming up with the images. But since discovering this archive of old images and art, I've been really pleased. I love searching through them, using weird search strings, and finding something appropriate.
Oh and the other concern about neolaborism is the lack of attention to improving public education. Australia's rapid shift from public schooling to private schooling (a 3.2% swing in NSW in 2023 for example) is huge, so this segregation that sits at the root of Australia's increasing social inequality is worsening rapidly*. I'm very surprised that this wasn't a hot topic of the recent election, but of course the more parents that go private, the harder it is to address the problem.
Education and housing both seem like issues that need serious discussion about what we want, and if and how we're prepared to significantly untangle rampant privatisation as a long-term public project.
*And this is my measure for the next term of parliament - is it making significant enough reforms to improve things faster than status-quo effects continue to make them worse?
Great piece, Tim. You’re absolutely right: politics is a river, not a dam wall. And anyone selling you permanence - whether in the name of order, stability or nationhood - is usually angling for a private jet and a surveillance state.
To your point about the need to contain democratic fluidity before “madness lies,” I can’t help but reach for Theodor Adorno, who warned us that “the splinter in your eye is the best magnifying glass.” In other words, discomfort, contradiction, mess. These aren’t symptoms to be cured, they’re the very conditions of democratic consciousness. The itch reminds us we’re alive.
Social media feeds and right-wing strongmen alike offer the anaesthetic of clarity: the soothing illusion that someone else, somewhere, knows what’s best. That’s the horror Orwell understood, and what we risk when the citizen becomes just another passive content consumer.
So yes, think like a citizen. But also like a critic. And maybe, when necessary, like a saboteur with a very sharp magnifying glass.
I've listened to a few of his talks (in translation) and read some interviews. He's always struck me as a truly original thinker (a great rarity) and generally pretty sensible.
What he says here challenges most conventional, and not so conventional, wisdom. Nevertheless, much of it seems on the right track to me, or at least worthy of serious consideration.
If you've already seen it, apologies. If not, given your intense interest in what's driving the profound changes that seem to surround us just now, I thought you might find it interesting.
George: I have just sent a response to a far right cousin in the US who is right behind Trump's treatment of what they call illegals in the US (did they catch that word from Tony Abbott - I would not be surprised) - how dare those people get into his country - effectively - my kinsman's argument. And it's up to me (!!) to tell him where or why or how it is not the right of the US to deport them. In so many words. And he lives in Dallas - in a community (still remarkably Mexican Hispanic) and territory stolen in one of the US-generated wars of conquest against Mexico right across the southern and western US - etc etc. That no human being is "illegal" - that the US has a deep scar of almost but not quite forgotten conscience over how the (south) west was won (not at all dissimilar to the British establishment of colonial and then Federated Australia) and in its wars and CIA-created conflict in the lands to the south which have made so many flee to safety thinking they will find it IN the US. And then I find your argument from Eric Blair's 1984 - an almost forensic definition of the Trumpian way... Brilliant.
It's a horrible word, isn't it? Even if you allow that a country can strictly control borders, it is part of dehumanising process that seems to go hand in hand with these sorts of policies.
George: I have just sent a response to a far right cousin in the US who is right behind Trump's treatment of what they call illegals in the US (did they catch that word from Tony Abbott - I would not be surprised) - how dare those people get into his country - effectively - my kinsman's argument. And it's up to me (!!) to tell him where or why or how it is not the right of the US to deport them. In so many words. And he lives in Dallas - in a community (still remarkably Mexican Hispanic) and territory stolen in one of the US-generated wars of conquest against Mexico right across the southern and western US - etc etc. That no human being is "illegal" - that the US has a deep scar of almost but not quite forgotten conscience over how the (south) west was won (not at all dissimilar to the British establishment of colonial and then Federated Australia) and in its wars and CIA-created conflict in the lands to the south which have made so many flee to safety thinking they will find it IN the US. And then I find your argument from Eric Blair's 1984 - an almost forensic definition of the Trumpian way... Brilliant.
TD: An eager readership waits with much antici
pation (with acknowledgements to Rocky Horror PS etc)
'Our federal election was allegedly a rejection of such exhaustion, of Trumpism, and I hope that is true'.
Much emphasis on the 'allegedly'. I read an article in the SMH by Crowe & Sakkal just before with headline: 'After three years, Albanese has a new slogan. Here’s what ‘progressive patriotism’ means'.
I thought 'WT*, 'patriot', why use that term, it smacks so much of the US. A guick google revealed in The Conversation ''Nationalism is not patriotism: 3 insights from Orwell about Trump and the 2024 election
Published: October 30, 2024 11.38pm AEDT"
Even Billy Bragg (2021) writes that: 'People sometimes ask me what it means to be a progressive patriot, how the concept differs from traditional patriotism. I explain that the progressive patriot cares deeply about their country's values and whether they are upheld, rather than national symbols and how they are displayed. They take pride in how we conduct ourselves today and going forward, rather than relying on past glories'.
Google AI posits: 'Billy Bragg's concept of patriotism is a progressive one, focusing on positive aspects of a country and its values rather than a narrow nationalist view. He believes in celebrating a rich history of British radicalism and challenging the right's monopolization of patriotism. Bragg's patriotism is rooted in love for his country and a desire for it to be a force for good, not just to be proud of.'
OK - I get what Billy B is trying to say, but just even using the term patriot is just so.... 'unAustralian', that is one term which I loathe.
As I am contending now: 'Australia: still a duopoly until there's minority'.
Looking forward to your next article. Cheers
The thing that gets me about the PM's announcement is, since when do we have slogans for terms of government? Did anyone else think it was an odd announcement?
Thanks for the Bragg quotes. I think the left does concede this ground too much, so his is an interesting approach.
A prediction. This govt will not be a progressive dream.
Ha!
To the pessimists who fear that the Albanese government will not be progressive (enough), and had wished for a minority Labor government, I say that the only way to get a progressive government after the next election is for progressives to preference the Liberal Party.
To fall to minority the government must lose about 20 seats. If, in some of the seats where the progressive vote was what got the Labor candidate over the line, the progressives instead preferenced the community independent or the Liberal candidate, the Labor candidate may not win. If the progressive campaign were properly targeted, in the appropriate number of seats, it could work to produce a minority Labor government.
Of course it would not work.
One, not enough progressives would preference the Liberal Party. Two, the Labor Party would go berserk - call a fresh election, form a coalition with the Liberals, declare martial law... Anything other then work with Teal Green extremists who brought the government undone!
Let's hope that the optimists are right and the new government is aiming for the 19th century socialist view "from each according to his ability,to each according to his need". Albo's "no one left behind, no one held back" allows too much leeway - no one held back by burdensome taxes! by repressive regulation!
Sorry Joe, I don't think that playing the political game by the old cynical rules is the way. While progressives need to compete within the electoral system that we have, we're probably better off helping communities to find better alternatives to the major parties. This needs to follow the ideas of positivity and "joy" that Tim has talked about before in order to appeal to people who are disenfranchised with politics as usual.
And one of the big issues from this election (I hope Tim is thinking about this too) is whether the anti-progressive negative campaigns by Advance and others might have been at least somewhat successful in reducing the flow of preference votes from minor parties to community independents? If so, perhaps a lesson is that we need to do more to build favour with the broader public that independence is more than "Teals", and that independence should be preferable choice for everyone's second preference if it's not their first.
I'm not sure tactical voting is the answer, just as I'm not sure that this election tells us anything lasting. In many ways, I'm glad to see Labor win convincingingly--though I would prefer minority government--but I think as time goes on, the Dutton factor will be seen as sui generous. People were genuinely concerned about him being in charge. Anyway, this all within the realm of the dust-settling I was talking about.
"Think like a citizen"
What a perfectly captivating headline, Tim.
Here am I extrapolating my own fluid ideas for what happens next, and yet the calmness of your acknowledging the fluidity of the situation without yet drawing solid conclusions is strangely comforting. I'll look forward to reading your comments whenever you'd like to untangle them.
In the meantime, Neolaborism (or whatever it'll be called) will surely be a very important study.
Labor does seem to be standing at the crossroads at the moment, torn between flashing Medicare cards at every opportunity while also contemplating a massive and entirely flawed deregulation of the planning system* in the interests of private developer profits.
*We should note the importance of planning practice as an everyday mechanism for negotiating the politics of public and private spaces. Perhaps it would be better to genuinely engage with communities to discuss how we can deal with the competing interests of individual housing and collective quality of life, rather than to tear apart planning systems in order to let the private market decide what kind of profitable dwelling "product" it wishes to sell to us?
Not sure yet if Future Made In Australia could be good or yet another politically partisan porking? What about a Green New Deal?
Labor also seem to be vulnerable in attempting to maintain the tradition of being 'the party of the worker' whole failing to consider how to ensure viable futures for workers in unsustainable jobs in cutting down trees, digging up coal and gas, polluting waterways with fish excrement, and gambling the food off the table at the Workers Club.
And Labor supporters also make extraordinary claims that independents are anti-workers rights because the independents had the temerity to ask for Labor's huge IR bill to be split into manageable parts. Labor shows an entitlement there that is reminiscent of the Liberals' attitudes to economic policy.
And in the same way that the Liberals have been deifying the individual and forgetting society, Labor seem to be risking deifying the worker and forgetting the community.
So no matter what happens with the Liberals from here, there does seem to be a risk for Labor to continue to be too conservative, and to leave people's desire for substantial public-interest reforms unsatisfied. Any whiff of excessive privatisation could be as deadly for Labor as it was to the NSW LNP Government in 2023.
Agree. Perfect headline. And perfect illustration. Thanks, Tim, for using a product of human, not artificial, intelligence.
I used to use AI--I had no real access to decent images and certainly no graphic design skills. Plus I used to have fun coming up with the images. But since discovering this archive of old images and art, I've been really pleased. I love searching through them, using weird search strings, and finding something appropriate.
Thanks, DD. I was actually, in part, rehearsing the title: thinking of doing a new book called the same thing. Glad people like it.
I thought that it could well be a book title.
Oh and the other concern about neolaborism is the lack of attention to improving public education. Australia's rapid shift from public schooling to private schooling (a 3.2% swing in NSW in 2023 for example) is huge, so this segregation that sits at the root of Australia's increasing social inequality is worsening rapidly*. I'm very surprised that this wasn't a hot topic of the recent election, but of course the more parents that go private, the harder it is to address the problem.
Education and housing both seem like issues that need serious discussion about what we want, and if and how we're prepared to significantly untangle rampant privatisation as a long-term public project.
*And this is my measure for the next term of parliament - is it making significant enough reforms to improve things faster than status-quo effects continue to make them worse?
Great piece, Tim. You’re absolutely right: politics is a river, not a dam wall. And anyone selling you permanence - whether in the name of order, stability or nationhood - is usually angling for a private jet and a surveillance state.
To your point about the need to contain democratic fluidity before “madness lies,” I can’t help but reach for Theodor Adorno, who warned us that “the splinter in your eye is the best magnifying glass.” In other words, discomfort, contradiction, mess. These aren’t symptoms to be cured, they’re the very conditions of democratic consciousness. The itch reminds us we’re alive.
Social media feeds and right-wing strongmen alike offer the anaesthetic of clarity: the soothing illusion that someone else, somewhere, knows what’s best. That’s the horror Orwell understood, and what we risk when the citizen becomes just another passive content consumer.
So yes, think like a citizen. But also like a critic. And maybe, when necessary, like a saboteur with a very sharp magnifying glass.
Tim, this is a bit off topic.
You're probably aware of Emanuel Todd.
I've listened to a few of his talks (in translation) and read some interviews. He's always struck me as a truly original thinker (a great rarity) and generally pretty sensible.
What he says here challenges most conventional, and not so conventional, wisdom. Nevertheless, much of it seems on the right track to me, or at least worthy of serious consideration.
If you've already seen it, apologies. If not, given your intense interest in what's driving the profound changes that seem to surround us just now, I thought you might find it interesting.
https://open.substack.com/pub/emmanueltodd/p/diverging-populisms?r=1emdt&utm_medium=ios
I haven't seen and will have a look. Thanks for passing it on.