Establishment losing grip grabs for MAD power

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Lead Editorial

25 September 2024
Vol. 26 No. 39

The origins of the agenda behind Albanese’s mis- and disinformation (MAD) bill (p. 3) start with Donald Trump’s election in 2016, when the Anglo-American establishment were terrified Trump’s campaign promises could undermine their Wall Street-London system and the “rules-based order”. Although Trump’s election was surprising, filmmaker and Democrat supporter Michael Moore had warned weeks earlier why angry, blue collar Democrat voters would support him to send a message to the elites:

“Donald Trump came to the Detroit Economic Club and stood there in front of Ford Motor executives and said, ‘If you close these factories as you’re planning to do in Detroit and build them in Mexico, I’m going to put a 35 per cent tariff on those cars when you send them back and nobody’s going to buy them.’ It was an amazing thing to see. No politician, Republican or Democrat, had ever said anything like that to these executives, and it was music to the ears of people in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—the ‘Brexit states.’ … Trump’s election is going to be the biggest ‘f-you’ ever recorded in human history—and it will feel good. Whether Trump means it or not is kind of irrelevant because he’s saying the things to people who are hurting, and that’s why every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump. He is the human Molotov cocktail that they’ve been waiting for, the human hand grenade that they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from them.”

Moore proved correct, but instead of soul-searching about how their neoliberal consensus had so badly betrayed the American worker that they were willing to vote for Trump, both Democrats and establishment Republicans, in league with the British elite, leapt to the defence of the Wall Street-London system, and the regime-change wars against Syria and Russia that Trump had also criticised. They manufactured the “Russia hacked the election” narrative to deny the legitimacy of Trump’s election so they could deflect from the reality of what it meant for their failing system. In doing so, they didn’t just organise one of the biggest disinformation campaigns in history—since thoroughly and officially debunked—but they invented the faux “social media mis- and disinformation” concern they would use as a pretext for suppressing information on the 21st century technology platforms that they blame for the loss of public trust, because they make it possible to mass-disseminate information outside of government and mainstream corporate media control.

Eight years on—with this operation having largely succeeded in derailing any potential for Trump to follow through on his interest in achieving peaceful relations with Russia—the world is far more dangerous, teetering on the brink of nuclear war, with potential Ukraine and Gaza-Lebanon sparks; the “approved” genocide in Gaza has exposed the claimed moral superiority of the “rules-based order” as a sham; Wall Street-London-dominated economies are in deep crisis for everyday people; and the general public in those countries, including Australia, are fed up and turning against establishment parties. So now governments are rushing to implement the crackdown on social media they have been building towards for eight years. Led by Australia, seemingly: visiting in 2023, former US NSA Director Mike Rogers said of this MAD bill—which would be illegal under the US Constitution—that “Australia can be a really powerful engine for cybersecurity and the fight against disinformation and misinformation … a really powerful global example”.

This agenda is overtly fascist, straight out of Hitler’s Notverordnung (Emergency Decree) playbook (p. 16). Of course that fits with US-UK-Australian-NATO support for actual Nazis in Ukraine, and their Centre for Countering Disinformation which advocates assassinating accused propagators of “disinformation” (p. 9, 13). Informed citizens are the reason the neoliberal regime is losing its grip, however, proving we can stop this MAD desperation power-grab.

In this week's issue: 

• Sterling First tenants evicted due to shameful government inaction
• Say no to Albanese’s Orwellian ‘disapproved information’ censorship Bill
• Did the banks advise the censorship bill?
• Greens nail the coffin on RBA Reforms
• Veterans suicide royal commission avoids the main question: Why does Australia go to war?
• Halt the slide into nuclear ‘madness’
• What if Corbyn were UK PM?
• Will Israel be labelled a ‘rogue state’?
• On war crimes and Western hypocrisy
• Has Trump made the Ukraine hit list?
• Defend free speech: Make a submission today!
• Return Government to the People
• The Nazi precedent for Albo’s misinformation-disinformation laws
• ALMANAC: To end wars and austerity, defeat the oligarchy! Part 2

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