|
October 25, 2006
In the 'Fear of the Other' chapter of her excellent Fear and Politics Carmen Lawrence makes the following remark:
Inflamatory remarks by federal ministers who have demanded that migrants who do not accept Australian values should leave or face deportation have contributed to this climate of fear. At a time when our leaders should be calming fears, they are playing on them. When they should be doing all they can to to help us to see events from the other's perspective, they are inviting us to retreat into our own narrow identities. When they should be assisting us to recognize how our own actions and words can cause fear in others they are giving signals that such sensitivities are unimportant. They are in my view, playing with fire. p.37
Yes the ministers in the Howard Government are playing with fire. But the conservative strategy is not to calm fears. It is designed to divide the nation through activating fears in the electorate. It is divide and rulestrategy that repudiates the notion of a poltical centre. The strategy is designed to ensure the re-election fo the Howard government because the conservative mood of the Australian electorate in an anarchic, globalised world will ensure that the Coalition is continually re-elected by a small majority. Retaining power is the name of the game. Conservatives appeal to the "values voters."
While Australia is safer, we are not yet safe" (and the strategy is to ensure that we never will be.) Hence we have the global war on terrorism/long war/war against violent extremism/war to save civilization from the Islamofascist menace etc etc. It an Australian version of Karl Rove's strategy of one-party rule through building a right-wing dynasty that could dominate American politics for decades; the assertion of a long-term Republican hegemony and the complete dismantling of the Democratic Party to ensure that Republicans control U.S. politics and policy for at least the next 30 years. So we have wedge politics, the use of the Christian right and mega churches as useful idiots; using whatever means necessary to divide the enemy, usurp their message, convince supporters that the enemy was an agent of satanic forces; to manipulate and mobilize "the base," so as to allow a candidate to forget about "the middle."
|
The ALP is just as bad when it comes to 'scare campaigns' of course. In 1993 and 1998 they ran almost totally on fear campaigns against the GST, and I suspect they want to try the same in 2007 with industrial relations.
Then there's Green politics, which has a lot of 'end of the world' fear-mongering and God-bothering door-knocking Jehovahs Witnesses that knock on my door and annoy me.
Worst of the lot though, I reckon, are the slimebags from the 'wellness' industries and the fat pharmacueticals, doctors lobbies and the rest of the nanny-state ninnies. Don't eat this, don't drink that, dont have fun, stand up, sit down, BE CAREFUL!!!!
They are all after your dollar or your vote, and they make me vomit.