A funny thing happened to me at the pub the other night. I was having dinner with a friend and there was another couple, a man and a woman (can I even say that any more?) sitting at the adjacent table.
For some reason, as I later reflected, probably more to do with drugs and or alcohol I suspect, the woman came over to our table and introduced herself, gushingly telling us all about her life, her business and the various properties she owned. Apart from incorrectly assuming from the outset that I and my male companion ‘were an item’ her interruptive effusive barrage was at the same time intriguing and amusing, and yet mildly annoying. What was even more intriguing was that this woman stated that she gets all her news, information and opinions from the ABC – “isn’t it a great TV station!” she enthused.
As the rather lopsided ten minute ‘conversation’ progressed she said to me “wasn’t it a great election result”, referring to the recent Federal election where Anthony ‘Albo’ Albanese became Prime Minister. When I replied that “Albo only got 32% of the primary vote” she then, with a quizzical look flashed towards me, quickly retorted “are we on the same page?” to which I replied with a smile “probably not” to which she then replied “well you can fuck off then” and she stomped away, not speaking to me again for the rest of the evening. Did I ask for any of this with my dinner at the pub?
Whilst I was taken aback by the vehemence of her reply, I guess I was not too surprised by it. Clearly I was not the comrade-in-arms she had perhaps hoped for with whom she could wax lyrical as a connected soul fighting the good fight. For the most part, conservatives are happy to disagree and to discuss, perhaps eventually agreeing to disagree on various sticking points; however, socialists are not. It’s either their way or the highway, and later on, the firing squad. That’s the real difference. They are so self-assured that they are right with their ideological worldview and its implementation upon the entire populace that everyone else has to be wrong, and not just amicably wrong but disagreeably wrong and worthy of (severe) punishment. That’s the difference between real democracy and communism or fascism.
And I say ‘real’ democracy deliberately, because that’s not what we have in Australia any more. Democracy must find its basis in facts and in truth, not in mind-numbing propaganda, but what is dished out to us now, through both the mainstream media and our crumbling education system, is nothing more than ideologically-driven propaganda. I never thought I would see the day that direct straight-out lies would be told on the nation’s principal taxpayer-funded television news channel, but such instances are now just par for the course.
It’s not the news presenters themselves that tell the lies, it’s the people they choose to interview who do their dirty work for them. Take the likes of Graeme Innes, the former Disability Discrimination Commissioner, who stated on ABC News24 at 8.35am on 24/4/2022 that “there is no scientific evidence at all that trans women have any advantage over other women, and if they do it’s only because they might have bigger hands or bigger feet, which is the same as any advantage that any other woman might have”! My jaw fell to the floor.
This statement is the exact opposite of all the scientific evidence that does in fact exist. Has Mr Innes never heard of testosterone? Mr Innes has not only misrepresented the truth, he has denied it, and continued to push an egregious ideology upon our population who instinctively and factually know that ‘trans women’ in women’s sport have a significant biological advantage over biological females which is now ruining women’s sport and disrespecting biological women. The ABC has facilitated Graeme Innes’ big lie without his false claims being challenged, tested or corrected in any way at all by the ABC. How does the ABC continue to get away with this?
Another whoppa that seems to be peddled by all and sundry at the moment is the one about Aboriginal ‘culture’ being “the oldest living continuous culture in the world”. The promoters of this lie (like ‘Albo’ himself) seem oblivious to the irony that if it’s actually true (which it clearly is not) then Aborigines are still living unchanged in the Palaeolithic stone age in which they were first found by the British over 250 years ago. This of course is arrant nonsense and pure propaganda; most Aboriginal ‘culture’ of today bears no resemblance whatsoever to what it was 250 years ago and thank goodness for that too. Most of what passes as Aboriginal ‘culture’ now is in fact (often whitefella assisted) creations of the last fifty years. Yet these lies continue to feed the likes of our fellow diner who, as an avid Q & A watcher, just seems to not be able to get enough of that stuff. They must feel so warm and good inside.
Something that continues to elude me and other conservatives alike, and to defy any explanation at all, is why the Liberal-National Coalition over the last nine years did not ever make any attempt to put a stop to the taxpayer-funded gender, Aboriginal, and climate change propaganda pedalled by the ABC and SBS? Why foster and perpetuate the misinformation and division? Whilst many seem fully aware of the Labor endorsement of all the above-mentioned scams, if Australia continues to suffer under these combined divisive propaganda fuelled fallacies, as it surely will, then the Coalition will have no-one else to blame but itself. And who will clean up the mess, or is it already too late for that?
Having dumped us as unsuitable bedfellows for her mantra, our fellow diner made her way around to the bar where she sought out some other folk apparently more amenable to her Shangri-La views and earbashed them instead. What a relief.
Dr David Barton (a white Celtic-Irish man) is a writer, researcher and social commentator who lives in Central Victoria.
