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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 24th, 2024

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  • You’ve raised great questions.

    I second those notes on national figures. I personally see an orange flag when people point to national metrics of economy, luxury, etc. as a sign of governance success (or failure). I’ve seen neglected public housing and gentrified tech-worker luxury a suburb apart, jump a couple more suburbs for mega-million mansions on the waterfront. This is all within an electorate or two. So what the heck do national statistics matter?

    You mention means, medians and modes… I like to see medians when they show their face, do you have some critiques of medians in these kinds of statistics? I’d like to be aware if I’m giving them too much credit, perhaps because they so clearly contrast against means to demonstrate inequality in distribution.

    Anybody have good data sources they’d like to share?

    I’m afraid I don’t, especially not for Australia. I could try and adapt the Wealth Shown to Scale explainable to Australia’s ultrawealthy…






  • I’m not saying the following to argue, but to add caveats and challenge assumptions.

    Not wrong, but all over the world does not have compulsory voting

    I see some other people treating compulsory voting as an anchor, but we’re seeing a prolonged shift away from the dominance of Coalition and Labor. We’re talking about a reactionary politician promoted by plenty of mainstream mass media outlets with astronomical funding - many casual apathetic forced-voters will be exposed to more of her populist policies and less of her terrible perspectives and Gina-service than we see. Especially if everyday people like us don’t talk to people about it.

    Add to that a high proportion of immigrants

    Many immigrants will vote for One Nation. It sounds unintuitive, but there are plenty who openly support Hanson. They’ve already immigrated, and might trivialise the racist attitudes of the party in support of other gripes, especially if they feel association with Australia and see themselves accepted as “one of the good ones”. One Nation is a racist party, but as a whole, it’s selectively racist: they will back candidates from most non-Arab ethnicities and have elected immigrants [admittedly not the best example].

    a solidly left leaning younger demographic

    Yes, but that doesn’t outweigh the larger, solidly right-leaning older demographic. Unfortunately Wikipedia haven’t updated their table since 2016 and I cbf summing the numbers on the ABS population pyramid, so I’m happy to be contradicted.

    Also consider that (judging by the first line of the ABS 2024 age/region summary plus my own assumption) younger populations are likely to be concentrated in cities, reducing the influence of a young vote on suburban and rural electoral seats.

    and Trump’s example

    And that’s been a useful tactic in dissuading ON prospectives, according to GetUp!, which to me also implies that plenty of people don’t recognise the similarity of Trump’s USA and Pauline’s ON.


    So, my perspective is, we should be optimistic and confident, but we must not be complacent and passive. These points you make only work if politically-informed people share our knowledge with the apathetic. And this doesn’t have to be preachy or direct, even passive exposure and “didjyahearabout” conversations will accumulate.








  • Fair call, promotion wasn’t the best word. What I meant to say was, they give her airtime without criticism - I’d say that’s a form of support, for a similar reason to your concern about giving her attention. Even if we’re talking about cases where the reporting is neutral, factual and with minimal bias, it’s still selected and reported on regularly, and that shapes the worldview of the audience, especially if the heavily-flawed ideas Hanson espouses aren’t addressed in the reporting. Repeating their messages verbatim through a megaphone is spreading their ideas - outlets almost never do the same with open neo-Nazis’ speeches, for obvious reasons.

    And as is common knowledge, there are additionally some mass media favourably promoting PHON, like Sky News, who have already called this event a “failed stunt” (lol)





  • I do have to question if that is giving her more attention, eg. “interrupted by protest banner” vs “Pauline Hanson’s press club address” really what we want?

    PHON is not a problem that can just be ignored, considering that capitalist mass media is constantly promoting her and the party is regularly claiming polls and some election results of >20%. We are past the era of denying attention. If we’re lucky, we’re still in the era of education and inoculation against their propaganda.

    If news outlets are going to promote her on the big stage no matter what, let’s mock her on that big stage.


  • eureka@aussie.zonetoAustralia@aussie.zonePathetic
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    12 days ago

    While espionage and conspiracy are real aspects of politics, Mossad being a known perpetrator, we must also be careful to not trivialise the material political interest that Western countries have in supporting the Zionist Regime. We’re not making weapons and weapon components for them just because some people are being extorted. This is imperialism for resources.

    As for the Epstein part, this is important and somewhat relevant: Origins of the Epstein Class



  • I’m pretty deep in redneck Queensland so that might have a bit to do with it.

    Maybe so. I also know a couple of likely-suspects (Faux/Sky News fans) who are open, paying members, insisting they’re trying to preserve for their grandchildren the world that allowed them to live well and make millions.

    An area near me has a huge Lib/Lab council facing intense scrutiny for developer corruption. If we don’t work year-round to build a viable, trustworthy support network, these people will be vulnerable to PHON selective messaging to seize upon anti-establishment sentiment (remember folks, billionaires and private media don’t count!)


    To all the people reading this - they have money and media infrastructure. We have numbers and neighbours. And without you and your friends, we have less numbers and less neighbours. If you care enough to click, you care enough to get involved.