Extract from The Guardian
As members of a wealthy, western government, the sharing of mistruths about American politics or those elsewhere is wilful choice
Washington’s Capitol building is a mess of shattered glass and sharp recrimination. A violent pro-Trump mob overran the physical seat of American government, and Australians watched it play out on Thursday on TV, with horror.
The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, condemned the violence in the American capital as “extremely distressing”. So why did so many Australians consider his consternation so jejune?
The American mob demanded Trump’s reinstallation as president despite his convincing loss in a free and fair election. They carried American flags, and bedecked themselves with the iconography of mass-market Americana – from eagles to trucker caps – and they claimed “patriotism”.
Alas, for all their self-conscious stars-and-stripes, the mob represents an international problem, not merely an American one. It’s a growing awareness of that problem’s tentacle reach that has Australians concerned at a conspicuous division between Morrison’s words and his actions.
The immediate context for America’s failed coup attempt was two months of false, repeatedly disproven insistences that the Republican Trump re-election was stolen. These have been pushed by the candidate himself, activist members of his party and a pro-Trump media infrastructure unbound to old-school press traditions of truth-telling. Networks like Fox News, OAN and Newsmax speak to and of rumours and conspiracies generated on social media whose users then rebroadcast their announcements.
Edited out are any uncomfortable truths, fair criticism and doubt. Instead, what’s offered are simple, good-guys/bad-guys narratives that explain politics and the world with substantially less complexity than a Netflix drama. So emotionally potent are these invented partisan stories – Trump’s “stolen” election, antifa under the beds, Pizzagate, the QAnon mythos – that they can persuade thousands of ordinary people to catch planes across continents to commit federal crimes and treasonable offences in a confected belief that they’re really performing acts of heroism.
It’s a refined, effective political/media model that’s been used by American politicians to manipulate a critical mass of people to do things and buy things. It’s arrived in Australia, and it’s being used by members of Morrison’s own government.
It was noteworthy on Thursday that Morrison refused to explicitly condemn Trump as the instigator of the Capitol chaos – despite Trump’s exhortations at the pre-riot rally for his supporters to “show strength” and march on the building, despite him tweeting “We love you! You’re very special!” to the mob after the violence had started, despite his years of violent rhetoric.
Even more significant was Morrison refusing to condemn, specifically, his own MP George Christensen, the member for Dawson, who’s been sharing Trump’s own election falsehoods on his social media properties since November, and Trump-style conspiracy theories long before that. Christensen has spent years engaging the conspiracy-sphere – from appearing on podcasts with the far right The Dingoes white supremacist community (although he later said he regretted his decision to appear on the show), to speaking at the fash-friendly “Reclaim Australia” rallies.
Then there is Craig Kelly, the Liberal member for Hughes, whose wildly popular Facebook page – alongside Christensen’s – was pushing Trumpist conspiracy theories even as violence erupted in Washington and a police officer and four rioters died.
“Australia’s a free country, there’s such a thing as freedom of speech in this country. And that will continue,” said the prime minister on Thursday of his own party members spreading disinformation and lies from the same propaganda framework that inspired Americans in the Capitol to kill and to die.
As members of a wealthy, western government with the resources of briefings and information infrastructure, the sharing of mistruths about American politics or those elsewhere is wilful choice. The lure for politicians – painfully demonstrated in the willingness of American legislators to excuse Trump’s lies and attach themselves to his election conspiracies – is that the intense communities created by the propaganda model are activist, and generous. Whether it’s fronting for preselection votes, riots or fundraisers, they show up. The appeal of solid numbers and reliable donations tempts any power-building politician.
Australia also has the media infrastructure to foment the creation of these communities. It’s not only the shared English language that allows American propaganda to go global; there are Australian media sources themselves direct marketing to the American audience, “laundering” spurious mythologies into international news under theoretically reputable mastheads. The cosiness of relationships with media sources – however compromised – also has great appeal for politicians.
The experience of America’s Republicans has demonstrated the risks of playing to the propagandised mob. Mike Pence, the American vice-president, spent four years loyally facilitating Trumpism only to find himself this week the subject of the Twitter trending topic “Judas” and accusations of treason when he could not meet the mob’s demands for an impossible reversal of the US election. The collection of states such as Georgia and Arizona in the recent Democratic election haul represents an equal and opposite risk – that brand association with the believers of lies and fanatics is damaging on a broader electoral scale.
Australia, of course, is not America. Our electoral systems are not comparable, and the precise risks or opportunities to Morrison’s own political interests posed by the behaviour of Christensen, Kelly or others is not clear.
What is clear is that thousands of Americans have recently been politically manipulated into doing dangerous, treasonous things that have smashed up their Capitol and battered their nation’s democracy.
Morrison should show leadership and shut down Kelly, Christensen and any other MP willing to dance with disinformation propaganda, merely because it is right.
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