Wednesday, April 12, 2017

In which the pond understands how the show trial mentality works, thanks to Simon Benson and John Anderson ...


There's much reading in the lizard Oz this day, much of it baying for dinkum Aussie coal, coal, coal ...

The pond had to resist crying out so that's what corporate fascism looks and sounds like ...

Well  if you sip on the reptile kool aid, it's very easy to turn reptile and retreat into simple-minded abuse ...



You see, this day it was Simon Benson that drew the short straw and had to froth and foam in a rabid way about inner-city leftist fanaticism, from his fanatical fascist authoritarian deeply inner city Surry Hills bunker ...

It's a reminder of how the reptiles have reduced discussions of legitimate policy concerns - such as actual climate science - to rabid gobbets of irrational bile ... with demonisation part of the process ... just look at the shifty figure in this illustration ...


Benson passes himself off as the lizard Oz's National Political Editor, but he could just as easily dub himself the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, RMVP .

Of course the pond understands why the reptiles are so desperate and look yearningly to the north for new jobs and opportunities ...


Here for that,  and is was probably only by chance that the Graudian also had this story here ...


When it came to the actual story, Simon kept his rabidity simple and brief ... just throw away money on a company registered in a tax haven, load it up with free water until the twelfth of never, and all will be well in the garden ...


There was something about Benson's malign effort which strangely reminded the pond of the way Stalinist show trials were conducted...



In this case, there's no room for consideration of climate science or issues related to the reef. That's just the inner-city streets of left fanaticism, as opposed to inner-city Surry Hills coal fanaticism ...

In a show trial, it was important to stand up and confess. In the Surry Hills bunker, the show trial format demands that ritually, one by one, the commentariat must stand up and confess that they follow the corporate line ... it's dinkum coal all the way, oi, oi, oi ...

But it's not just coal.

Sometimes it's handy to have an import come in and testify to the truth of the corporate line on other matters that get four people in Barners' office deeply agitated.

What's the point of a murmuration of just starlings, when a cauldron of raptors or an exaltation of larks could add to the clamour?

Week after week, the reptiles drag in yet another bystander to testify ... this day it's the entirely useless and largely forgotten John Anderson ...


The ritual is akin to the parade to be seen in a show trial, even if this is apparently a shot of Lysenko with Stalin ...



But that snap evokes the spirit of testimony, the manner of paying tribute to the corporate line ...

The form of the humbug is very specific.

It should involve a mention of McCarthyism - Orwell or Orweillian is almost de rigueur - and the strict etiquette demands a juxtaposition of free speech, up against identity politics and other dangers to the soul.

Now never mind that McCarthyism was dedicated to the eradication of Communism, and in his day Anderson was himself a keen McCarthyist and dedicated spotter of reds under the bed, and even in watermelons...

 

Ah, the old watermelon gag, it never gets old ...

Okay, let's face it, Anderson was never the sharpest disc on the plough, and was frequently short of a sheep to shear in the top paddock, but he surely knows how to stand witness in a lizard Oz show ritual ...


That mindless incantatory listing of all the grieves the reptiles is unnerving, a bit like the catechism that the pond had to recite to the nuns, or the need to devise a host of sins to reveal in confession ... well, there was hardly any point heading into the box to confirm an innately dull life of study ...

The point is a kind of reverse show trial ...


Anderson commits what many would consider a mortal sin while reciting his litany.

Sure he mentions Gra Gra (sssh, don't mention the Gold Coast), and there's Coopers Brewery, and there's a persecuted fundamentalist Xian, and there's more talk of McCarthyism - eek, watch out for watermelons - and there's ritual incantations around Marx and identity politics and the right to repeat like a blithering idiot everything that preoccupies the reptiles on a daily basis ...


But there was no mention of Orwell, or even the Orwellian predicament of what to write for the lizard Oz!!

For that, Anderson must be deemed an epic fail ...

Really, if you're going to recite crap like a well-trained parrot, or a prime rustic wanker, how could you forget Orwell? Remember, Big Brother is watching ...daily!


And so to a real tragedy, which is the way that the pond routinely gets a better depiction of matters arising in relation to policies and government from the sage papal advice of the Pope, rather than from anything to be found in the reptile church service, and luckily there's more Popery here ...

Would Simon Benson ever look at this cartoon and wonder? The pond wonders ... probably not, it's probably part of the new McCarthyism and might well involve identity politics ...

Such is the mindless moronism to be found repeating daily in the lizard Oz ...





7 comments:

  1. I'm wondering if Benson can be a Labor mole. I've always thought Bill Shorten had been too soft on this issue, probably because Annastacia has invested too much capital into supporting Adani.

    Now Simon has led a charge that Bill's lining up with the Greens and conservationists to save the reef and presumably ditch the costly white elephant of Adani. I don't know if it's true, and it's bad luck The Oz has so little credibility these days, but it's a wonderful boost to Bill without him lifting a finger or upsetting Annastia and her Queensland followers.

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  2. Good point, DP, about Stalin's show trials. There's a PhD for someone on the parallels between Stalin in the '30s and the Liberal Party since 2000 - the denial of reality (Lysenko cf climate change), the suspicion of everybody else, the sheer incompetence except in propaganda. Of course the Liberal Party hasn't executed millions, but in their denial of climate change they may play a small part in a major catastrophe.
    Anderson's Marx quote appears to be bogus.

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    1. A cursory search suggests Anderson's "quote" is a corruption of an earlier version: "A people without a heritage are easily pursuaded" which appeared on some religious-right pages in the early noughties. Of course, this earlier version also appears to be bogus, but it's still worth noting the mindset that has to amp up its nefariousness, from an observation about people to a guide to how to manipulate - classic conservative conspiracy ideation.

      His quote about Jack is wrong too - a search on that phrase returns three hits, all related to an article in the Australian from 2011 about good old Aussie egalitarianism. The actual saying? "Jack is as good as his master", which is loaded with all sorts of meaning of which John Anderson might not wish to remind his readers.

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    2. thanks Joe and FrankD for checking. The pond thought Anderson such a tiresome twit, we just wanted to get it out there, so we could get on with life ...

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    3. What about the parallels between Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Reich, Mussolini's Italy, China's Mao and America in the 1950s. 60s and 70s ? Much difference d'you reckon, Joe ?

      As to Jack, I would've sworn, FD, that I'd encountered that saying long before 2011. But maybe it's just one of those times when similar sounding things are somehow conflated in the memory as a single item.

      On the other hand, a quick greghunt found me this:

      The association of mateship with Australian egalitarian traditions was articulated most clearly by Russel Ward in The Australian Legend (1958): ‘He believes that Jack is not only as good as his master but, at least in principle, probably a good deal better.
      [ Bruce Moore 'The Story of Mate' http://ozwords.org/?p=7498 ]

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    4. Natürlich, GB, it may have existed as "mate" prior to 2011, just not on the intertubes, apparently. Personally, I've only ever heard it as "master" until now. Finding such diversions amusing, I looked it up in the Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which mentions only master: "An old proverb indicating the equality of man. It was the wise Agur (Proverbs 30:22) who placed 'a servant, when he reigneth' as the first of the four things that the earth cannot bear. See also WHEN ADAM DELVED.". I was curious to see what else the "wise Agur" found intolerable - "For a servant when he reigneth; and a fool when he is filled with meat; for an odious woman when she is married; and an handmaid that is heir to her mistress." What a tiresome old fuck Agur was - the rest of Proverbs 30 would give prattling Polonius a run for his money.

      But back to Jack, of course, the 1% are right alongside the idea of the 99% being equal to each other, just so long as they don't think they're as good as their betters - the rent-seekers have to seek their rents somewhere...

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  3. John Anderson, it’s pretty clear which employer already offers employment not ‘on the basis of skills, integrity and ability but of politically (in)correct assessment of one’s beliefs and associations.’

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