Category: dogwhistling

15 Jul

4 Comments

Brutal asylum policies & the Left’s ‘blame voters’ moralism

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In New Matilda today I have a major piece rebutting the dominant Left explanation for Australia’s brutal asylum seeker policies: That such policies are “poll-driven” in that voter attitudes on the issue are enough to swing elections. It is mainly a response to two NM articles last week written by their main political writer, Ben […]

01 May

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The ALP & the politics of anti-immigration (both kinds)

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Cross-posted from Larvatus Prodeo. Thanks to Mark Bahnisch for convincing me to return to this subject. I have to confess that I couldn’t bring myself to watch Monday’s Four Corners on the scandal of Australia’s “offshore” asylum seeker processing regime. I’m on the Sydney Refugee Action Coalition email list and read horrifying stories from Manus […]

10 Mar

Comments Off on Europe: The persistence of racism & the fascist threat

Europe: The persistence of racism & the fascist threat

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  by KEVIN OVENDEN Below are the points, updated and a little amplified, I made in a contribution to the highly successful Unite Against Fascism conference in London on 2 March. The speech (and I’ve incorporated my summing up) was in a workshop with Petros Constantinou from Greece, Marwan Mohammed from France and Glyn Ford […]

08 Apr

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Misdiagnosed anxiety: David Marr and the politics of Panic

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Welcome to the first post of the new Left Flank. We’ve moved from Blogger to WordPress, hosted at the lovely http://nuttify.com/ As you can see we’re still working on porting all the old comments from Disqus to the new platform. Time to change your RSS feed or subscribe by email (see the sidebar on the […]

11 May

Comments Off on How to become part of the political mainstream #47: Learn to dog-whistle

How to become part of the political mainstream #47: Learn to dog-whistle

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Have the Greens decided to join the chorus of anti-immigrant racism that has bedevilled Australian politics for over a century? It seems so, with Bob Brown using the term “queue jumpers” to describe skilled migrants entering the country. Criticising Julia Gillard’s “Malaysian Solution” to deport asylum seekers, he argued: We know more than 90 per […]

07 Dec

Comments Off on Michael Costa, George Megalogenis & the strange death of ‘reform’ politics

Michael Costa, George Megalogenis & the strange death of ‘reform’ politics

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Now also cross-posted to ABC’s The Drum website. The last fortnight saw the release of two significant contributions to the post federal election debate on the state of official politics, and more specifically its intimate connection with the fortunes of the Australian Labor Party. The first, the new Quarterly Essay by George Megalogenis of The Australian, is a detailed attempt […]