It is easy to laugh at Clive Palmer’s stunts. Whether he’s talking about creating a Jurassic Park or sending texts before an election claiming that Australia is giving control of all healthcare to the WHO, the temptation is to roll our eyes.
The fact that Palmer now claims to have video evidence of a poll worker taking away a box of votes from a booth seems just another laughable thought bubble from the great big buffoon. It is, however, a dangerous announcement.
His accusation will almost certainly fade away into nothing. The AEC is confident about its processes. The point is that the announcement is not talking to those of us connected to the mainstream media and the fact-based world. He is providing confirmation to a portion of his base that their sense of electoral grievance is founded. They were robbed.
Nobody is expecting Clive Palmer’s voters to storm Parliament House in an echo of January 6th 2021 in Washington. Then again, neither were most observers in the US. Those of us engaged in the civic debate don’t pay attention to the hermetically sealed information sphere of the radicalising Right. We don’t understand that there is a borderless global nation sharing panic and fear and unhinged theories.
Palmer’s voters are interwoven with the “freedom” ralliers against pandemic health measures. This is the group of people who brought Trump flags and wrote appeals to US constitutional Amendments on their Australian posters. Their civic education is formed in international Facebook or Telegram chats rather in the classroom.
Their commentary is highlighted for the laughter of more educated Australians on Facebook amalgamator page, Nuffies of Australian Politics. It is clear that preferential voting is a mystery to many of them. The poor showing of UAP – or PHON – candidates is a sign that something is deeply wrong in our electoral processes.
Part of the appeal of the conspiracy theory world that spilled out into the civic space over the pandemic was the communities that people built. There they reinforced each other in their largely fantasy-based worldview. Real world relationships were abandoned in many cases as individuals found their support in these cyber neighbourhoods. Qanon gave them a central narrative through which to weave every possible conspiracy theory and moral panic of the last century.
In the groups that converged on Canberra with their trucks last year there is a belief that there were hundreds of thousands if not millions there. This incorrect assessment of the size of the gathering in Canberra was matched with an inflated sense of their support in the broader community. Often rejected by their fact-based relatives and friends, many speak largely to each other. It’s no surprise they think “everyone” was voting for the UAP.
It is easy to dismiss this group and laugh along with the selected posts on display for a more savvy audience. This would be a mistake. A more justice-focused federal government led by Labor might provide the escape valve for their sense of persecution. It may be that a fairer government that acts on the climate disasters besetting the regions might diminish some of the rage. It is not only a sense of having been abandoned by the rich, however, that motivates them.
It was reported at the time of the May and July 2021 “freedom” rallies in Australia that organisation was emerging from a conspiracy group in Germany called Freie Bürger Kassel. That group provoked 129 protests worldwide on the same day in May. Its social media showed it was motivated as much by fears of White Christians being replaced as it was by pandemic scepticism.
The connections between pandemic protests and White Supremacist groups were apparent here too. Indeed the pandemic and Qanon brought together many disparate groups: lifestyle influencers and Byron Bay yoga women apparently had a nasty time being ogled and propositioned by the notoriously misogynist men of the Right at the Canberra campout. Palmer counts former Lefties amongst his support.
In America, many Evangelical (Pentecostal) churches have become centres of diffused Qanon conspiracy theories and MAGA politics. These are fed by the long history of support for racism from this Christian tradition. Even before the pandemic, however, the Evangelical movement provided a core support base for Donald Trump, a culmination of decades of work to bring their interpretation of Christianity to dominate “conservative” politics.
The mainstream of Australian civic discussion will make a mistake if it ignores the swirl of discussion that takes place out of our sight. Above all, the hard Right is fuelled by resentment and culture war fury at a Left it loathes. It believes that progressives had won every institution in society that matters even before the election. It believes itself to be existentially threatened. The election will compound that, especially if it is granted an excuse to believe that this election was “stolen” too.
Stochastic terrorism is also a risk from this network of people who believe their nations are being strategically filled with non-White, non-Christian populations to vote them into irrelevance, a plan they believe is organised by Jews. Buffalo’s mass murderer copied the rantings of the Australian mass murderer in Christchurch. The New York Times recently exposed not only the degree to which Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch were enabling their star pundit, Tucker Carlson, to foment Great Replacement panic, but also that Australian News Corp editors were watching his show for guidance on the Murdochs’ views. Sky News not only spreads its hysteria on YouTube but is funnelled on free-to-air stations to the regions.
We saw over the campaign how divorced from fact our corporate media was content to move in support of a beleaguered incumbent. If these radicalising “conservative” parties go further Right under Peter Dutton, this conspiracy ecosystem provides a fact-divorced “base” that can be harnessed. As in America, it will drive Right politicians as much as it is pandered to by them. The current display of minority rule in the US by a party harnessing culture war panics is sobering.
Progressive and centrist Americans are being shocked by the degree to which their “conservative” party is looking set to strip them of freedoms that don’t conform to Religious Right definitions of morality. These moves will provide cover for the funnelling of government money to the oligarchy.
Clive Palmer knows what his investment in harnessing a frightened and angry base for radicalised Right Wing politics might bring him in profits down the track. Democracy stands in his way.
Lucy Hamilton is a Melbourne writer with degrees from the University of Melbourne and Monash University.
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