The third in the series: Oz chameleons cheer Trump
AND now the last of our three-part series entitled “Trump? WTF?” Today we look at the Australian reaction, specifically the glee within a group usually described as the hard right.
These included federal politicians, high profile media figures and other notables who were not only genuinely pleased to see the Klan’s candidate get up, but were eager to celebrate it publicly.
Parliamentarians Cory Bernardi and George Christensen were particularly effusive in their support for Trump, before and after the election.
Which is weird, unless these people value Trump’s affront to civil society more than the substance of his platform and personality.
OK, there was the “listen to the people” lesson, that the “little guy” had been screwed and wasn’t gonna take it anymore.
But the broad consensus is that trend had been a side effect of the free market neoliberal policies held dear by the party of both Bernadi and Christensen: globalisation, workforce casualisation, less unionism, smaller government and privatisation.
So the political wing of the business lobby in Australia is now anti-free trade? Shouldn’t we have received a newsletter or something?
How is Trump a win for Australian conservatives, when he is loathed by US conservatism?
And what about the fact that the Trump coup was so loaded with offensive bigotry and cruelty – he mocked a disabled journalist, for Christ’s sake. Think that’s funny?
Even if you were a Trump supporter for whatever reason, as an elected official it might be prudent to just have a stubbie under the stairs rather than parade enthusiasm for a figure whose rise to power has polarised and frightened much of the world.
As Cornel West wrote in The Guardian this week: “The neoliberal era in the United States just ended with a neofascist bang.”
This is a guy who encouraged violence at his rallies and at which events a number of minority protesters were attacked – and at least two of our elected representatives seem to think that’s funny at best, and admirable at worst.
We’ve got Christensen showcasing Trump’s book around the parliamentary chamber and Bernadi whipping up a celebratory storm on twitter as the Trump victory drew near.
Don’t they want minority votes anymore?
And consider: Trump was an outsider paying service to the disenfranchised on a platform of an anti-establishment mantra of “drain the swamp.”
That’s “the swamp’ as in the seat of government.
This whole madness was the inevitable conclusion to the cynical manipulation of government bashing by figures on the right US politics.
We saw the same phenomenon here in the Republican referendum: pollies harnessing anti-government resentment to win votes.
In the US this “small government” cult bred the Tea Party and saw entrenched political figures distancing themselves from government, as if they could simultaneously be repulsed by politics on the one hand and be a successful career politician on the other.
In barracking for Trump political figures from the hard right here would seemingly also have us believe their journey through the pre-selection process, election campaign and time spent in parliament is not inconsistent with their loathing for a government machine in which they are entrenched. Talk about having a tiger by the tail. Equally the fifth estate, from Miranda Devine to Andrew Bolt, where the tone has been one of gloating as if they too have also long held that the conventional economic theory of the last four decades was unfair at its core.
Maybe Trump’s Australian cheer squad just enjoyed sticking a finger in the eye of political correctness.
But the identities proposed for the Trump administration senior positions already are an extreme cabal that makes George W Bush’s coterie of oil lobbyists and neo-con warmongers look positively banal.
That the US returned to torture, secret jails and imprisoning terror suspects without trial tells us safeguards and standards we thought were permanent are instead fleeting and vulnerable to being rolled back with ease. Trump was endorsed by the Klan. This isn’t funny.
Even if you were a Trump supporter for whatever reason, as an elected official it might be prudent to just have a stubbie under the stairs rather than parade enthusiasm for a figure whose rise to power has polarised and frightened much of the world.