Another Australian election has come and gone. I will be upfront about my disappointment at the reversals the Greens suffered. Of course I was delighted to see the back of Dutton. He is a right-wing reactionary and that he lost his own seat was a cause for much celebration by your correspondent.
There is a lot to think about, though, on the role of Trump in the election. He was not mentioned much, if at all, by any party but when the results were announced the “experts” suddenly were able to speak his name. So, they must have had pre-polling data which showed Trump was a factor.
In a way it demonstrates that people have agency independent of the “persuasion apparatuses” of the major parties.
Some questions remain though. Why the increased visibility of Richard Marles? He was kept out of the way in the 1st Albanese campaign. What was the signal that was being sent by letting him appear in public? Who was this signal aimed at? Marles of course is a veteran of the Labor Right.
Could Albanese have done a Carney? I certainly wanted him to because I thought that was the path to a landslide. But Albanese got the landslide without mentioning Trump. What does that say about Australians?
I have been tracking the reconstruction of Australian conservatism along Trumpist lines by the IPA, Quadrant, the Spectator, & the Daily Mail. Much of it is now behind a paywall, and so I have no access to their recent thinking. I will not give the bastards a penny if I can help it. What they will make of this electoral disaster is an intriguing question. My own opinion is that the reconstruction of conservative thought along Trump lines peaked with their victory in the Voice Referendum. But the Right over read this victory and set about widening the attack on the First Nations people. The heckling of the Welcome to Country speaker at the Melbourne Anzac Day Dawn Service was a strategic disaster for the Right.
One of the key elements of Trumpism is the demand to “protect our borders”. But in Australia how can you protect our borders from the people who were here first, as in 60 thousand years ago?
Other big questions & problems remain as well:
- Moral leadership continues to be an absence in all the major parties with the exception of the Greens. That the word “genocide” remains a taboo is a scandal that will echo down the years.
- Australia will still have to choose between China and the US and that will put Albanese’s camp under a lot of pressure especially in its relationship with the American Embassy.
- The struggle between the ideologies and camps of social liberalism, labourism, and social democracy will continue within Labour. As a Hegelian (influenced) Marxist I support social democracy, of course, but I suspect that we will see a revival of the influence of social liberalism. Labourism or the fight for the wages and conditions of the working class will continue to be on life support within Labour, but it will not be directly attacked IMO
For old sake’s sake I am recycling a post that appeared on Lou Proyect’s Marxism list. It was on the 1st Trump Presidency
Yesterday, piqued by my increasing (from a low base, mind you) interest in the US presidential elections, I decided to break a deep sworn vow and went on YouTube in search of Trump in his Reality TV mode. I loathe reality tv and have sworn to go to my grave with the boast that I have never watched a Big Brother Show, Master Chef, Australia’s Got Talent or a 60 Minutes episode.
But I yielded to temptation and searched for Trump and “you’re fired”. I came across a 7 minute compilation of the “best” of Donald Trump. Alas, words fail me here like they did when I tried so hard as a young man to become a poet and a novelist.
I had always imagined that Narcissus would be a pretty boy like in those old classical paintings, kneeling by the water side and languidly contemplating his own beauty. But no, here he was – ugly, red faced, bug eyed and it all topped with that hair-do.
This Narcissus was not drunk on beauty but on the grossest and most arbitrary displays of his own power. “You’re fired” he would snarl and almost without exception they would whimper, apologize and slink out of the throne room. There were two exceptions. One of the contestants glared in deep hatred but said nothing. A young woman defied the Emperor and tried to defend her leader who was about to be fired. Trump’s wrath was almost incandescent.
Icarus plunged to earth when he got too near the sun, but these poor souls had gone down into Hades to become victims of the wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command.
I tried to work out what viewing the tape meant to me other than fill me with despair at the sad search for 13 minutes of fame that has so many in thrall. This post is, I suppose, part of that working out. As a teenager I remember being deeply puzzled and depressed by the Marabar Caves episode in Foster’s Passage to India. Mrs Moore goes into the caves and experiences some kind of nervous breakdown when the echo in the cave seems to say to her, ‘Everything exists, nothing has value’. Mrs Moore leaves India, decides not to write to her children and she then proceeds to die. Thank you Mr Foster! Watching the youtube tape I wondered if this would become my Marabar Caves moment?
I have, though, since read Vasant A. Shahane’s Zen Buddhist reading of the Marabar Caves incident. For him, Mrs Moore encounters the Void and comes to understand the essential meaningless of life. BTW I am not absolutely convinced by Shahane’s insistence that his reading is an optimistic one.
I can accept the proposition that all that Trump stands for – his wealth and power and vulgarity contain nothing of value. I can understand that for him to be strutting the airways is a sign of the almost absolute decay and decomposition of late capitalism. But I feel that what Trump represents must be actively resisted. It is necessary to be horrified at the spectacle of him doing dirt on life, but it is not sufficient. Instead of quietism and acceptance, we must stoke the fires of revolutionary resistance. it is necessary to say once more *encore un effort.*
From the Bin No 6
8 May 2025