Joe Hildebrand: How another green party can help Labor kick its nasty Greens habit once and for all
There is no doubt the Greens have become as thoroughly captive to anti-Semitism as they have long been to anti-capitalism, writes Joe Hildebrand.
Opinion
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The toxic fallout from the war in Gaza has turned Australian suburbs into ideological battlegrounds, weaponised by extremist activists who have defaced war memorials and MPs’ offices with dead-eyed abandon.
The Prime Minister’s own electoral office in Sydney was blockaded for months on end, while in the loony left epicentre of inner-city Melbourne, Jewish MP Josh Burns and the culturally Arab Christian Peter Khalil have both had their workplaces targeted with despicable vandalism.
These are just a few examples of many disgraceful acts, and floating around them like a karmic chakra is the fig leaf of legitimacy provided by the Australian Greens, who have justified extremism at home and refused to condemn it abroad.
There is no doubt now that the Greens have become as thoroughly captive to anti-Semitism as they have long been to anti-capitalism.
They have been utterly colonised by a perverse modern Marxism that subjugates the interests of working-class people to that of urban tertiary educated elites and justifies terror in pursuit of ideological aims.
Actually, that is unfair and untrue. That is not modern Marxism at all. Just the original kind.
The difference is that it has now fully infected what was once a bunch of fairly harmless – if hygienically mercurial – tree-hugging hippies.
The Greens have gone from well-intentioned but naive idealists to radical misanthropic ideologues who are openly hostile to workers in general and the Labor Party in particular.
Their highhanded disdain for coal miners is proof enough of the former and their open ambition to cannibalise Labor from the left is proof positive of the latter.
They also sabotage every progressive cause they attach themselves to by attacking their more moderate allies. Thus even big wins they whinge about as big losses.
In short, they are horrible, unpleasant and unworkable people.
The problem is, that owing to the charming and moderating complexities of the two-party system in this country, the Labor Party has to work with them. Or do they?
The Greens’ increasing extremism in the wake of the October 7 terror attack and the Gazan conflict that inevitably followed has made it increasingly inevitable that Labor can no longer deal with them.
They have gone from being the loony but loveable lefties sitting at the kids’ table to a threat not just to the ALP but to the very stability of the two-party system. This is openly declared by their leader Adam Bandt, who has publicly laid out his plans for a slow cannibalisation of the Labor Party until the Greens are the major party of opposition.
Incredibly, some of the slower and more naive members of the Labor Left have played footsies with the Greens, apparently oblivious to their own ensuing immolation. I suspect some of these chickens, and Chicken Littles, are coming home to roost.
Far from reaching any accommodation with these implacable and treacherous radicals – see their betrayal of Julia Gillard – Labor needs to find new friends.
The good news is it has done so. I am told that, in Queensland, the party has reached a deal with Legalise Cannabis Australia to preference each other over the other green party.
That will do precisely sweet FA to stop Steven Miles from losing the election but it augers very well for the upcoming federal election in which Labor will be looking for Anyone But Greens to do a deal with.
Already the Liberal Party has said it will put the Greens last because of their disgraceful behaviour. The Labor Party would also like to, but faces more pressing political realities.
Approximately eight out of 10 Greens votes flow back to Labor after preferences. However, what is often forgotten is that this is less because of party how-to-vote cards than the fact dogged leftists hate Liberals more than they hate Labor.
Greens drones tend to be – and I use this term with the maximum amount of irony – “high information voters”. In other words, they consider themselves oh-so enlightened and politically aware, and of course highly left-wing. The upshot is they’re not voting Liberal come hell or high water.
Thus even if some votes bleed out and fail to reach Labor, it is highly unlikely they are flowing to the party that could actually beat them.
It also makes far more sense for Labor to prioritise Legalise Cannabis Australia over the Greens in terms of who the party is trying to reconnect with. One of the surprising support bases for LCA is tradies and other blue collar workers who prefer to relax after knock off with a bong instead of a beer – all for medicinal purposes, of course.
It is also positioning itself more broadly as peace-loving and freedom-loving – the very antithesis of the Greens’ angry inflammatory rhetoric and extremist links.
This gives Labor a nice path back to labourers as well as further distancing itself from a party getting uglier by the day. And so Legalise Cannabis could help Labor kick its nasty Greens habit once and for all.
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