Left or right, all extremists are ultimately the same

IF ANY mainstream politician had said what Jacqui Lambie did this week, they would have been booed. She got rapturous applause.

A FRIEND of mine has parents not unlike my own. They came of age in the 1960s and they never quite made it back from Woodstock, even if technically they didn’t quite make it there in the first place.

This was the generation that either saved the world from itself or stuffed it up for the rest of us, depending on who you ask. The generation of the JFK assassination and the moon landing, of Dylan and the Dead. And perhaps the first generation for which war was not an inevitable and expected part of life but something to be protested against until there were no wars at all.

They were heady times but of course such excitements never last. These days the children of the revolution tend to spend their time tending to permaculture gardens while listening to Radio National.

And like all generations this one is a jumble of contradictions: Compassionate yet condemning, hypercritical yet hypocritical, committed to peace and yet quick to anger.

But the one thing they certainly are not is right wing. Or at least so they think.

At any rate, the other day my friend is chatting to his mother and she starts talking about Hillary Clinton. Naturally she is an avid Trump-hater but it has come to her attention that Hillary is no cleanskin either and her latest political obsession is the mountain of mud that has followed the Clintons throughout their extraordinary political ascendancy.

“And yet,” she concludes with a fiery flourish of indignation and disbelief, “no one in the media is talking about this!”

“Um, actually Mum,” my friend mildly dares to correct her, “the media is talking quite a lot about this. It’s called Fox News.”

***

This delightful little exchange between mother and son sums up the new political landscape better than a thousand commentators ever could.

If you’d taken her rant and attributed it to a Bernie Sanders supporter my friend’s mum would have been right at home on ABC’s The Drum. Or put it in the mouth of a Trumpist and she would have had pole position on Mark Latham’s Outsiders. And in either case both audiences would have been in furious agreement, even though each is the sworn enemy of the other.

And yet they would never even know, because media is now consumed within silos which have become echo chambers of furious agreement. Instead of people tuning in to news or chat shows to find out what people are thinking, they go straight to the platforms where they know people already think like them. Of course my friend’s mother would have no idea what is on Fox News – she would never deign to watch it, just as those on the right refuse to watch Q&A.

And this is the final irony that may yet consume us all: Just like Julian Assange giving tacit support to Donald Trump or Jeremy Corbyn giving tacit support to Brexit, the far left and the far right have become essentially the same thing.

The new political dichotomy is no longer between left and right but between outsiders and insiders and the outsiders are getting bigger and bolder.

Indeed, the only people who appear to realise just how real this threat is are those stuck in the middle around whom the noose is tightening, yet they appear too paralysed by fear or indecision to act. Our current prime minister is the perfect incarnation of a moderate, centrist, pragmatic leader. And he currently has the exact same survival prospects as Joan of Arc.

Politicians in the middle throughout the Western hemisphere are now getting rounded up, ring-fenced and roshambo’ed. For one obvious example you need only look at Jacqui Lambie’s performance on Q&A this week.

Lambie is not just a political outsider, she is the ultimate outsider. First she was in an outsider political party, then she was outside even that and now she is outside the whole parliament because it turns out she wasn’t even eligible to sit there in the first place.

And if even all that wasn’t enough, her former chief of staff came out this week to accuse her of being a drunk. It seems she has been literally, politically and metaphorically smashed every which way AND loose.

But on Monday night she went on Q&A, the ABC’s flagship program for political debate and a favourite whipping boy for conservatives who see it as the home of inner city left-wing obsessions such as granting asylum to boatpeople and same-sex marriage, and loudly declared she vehemently opposed both.

If any mainstream politician had done either of those things they would have been greeted by boos or ominous silence and yet Lambie’s furiously scattered speeches were greeted with rapturous applause, even — or perhaps especially — when they made absolutely no sense.

Again, this tells us everything we need to know about politics today. The left loves Jacqui Lambie, even though she is vehemently opposed to the two causes it loves more than anything.

In fact this is the problem that has always beset radical politics, which is that the cause always ends up subservient to the radicalism. In the end it is not what the revolution is for that is most important but the act of revolution itself.

And so when Jacqui Lambie springs forth on our TV screens and starts attacking the system it doesn’t matter whether she is doing it from the left or the right. All that matters is that she is attacking the system.

This is why almost every revolution in history has resulted in a government just as bad as — and often worse than — the system it replaced, and few have produced a democracy without first producing a dictatorship. Even the so-called “good” ones produced horrors: The French revolution resulted in the infamous “terrors” of mass beheadings and the dictatorial imperialism of Napoleon and the American revolution produced a society which maintained slavery for generations longer than the colonial government it overthrew. And both were waged in the name of liberty.

Meanwhile, Lenin led to Stalin, a left-wing mirror image of Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot committed equally horrendous genocides and the tin pot dictatorships of central and South America were often indistinguishable in their tactics of suppressing dissent.

Indeed, in recent days we have been reminded of Robert Mugabe, a freedom fighter who ended up slaughtering his fellow freedom fighters and running his country into the ground. And now he has been overthrown by his former right hand man who did the slaughtering for him. And people are celebrating in the streets.

Left or right, it really doesn’t matter. All extremists are ultimately the same.

***

But all these are of course extreme examples. Just to really prove the point let’s come back home.

We recently had an unprecedented postal survey in which almost 80 per cent of the population came out to vote and, of them, 61.6 per cent voted for one simple thing: to extend the right to marry to all people.

And the most extraordinary thing about it is that the whole movement behind those who voted Yes in the marriage equality plebiscite didn’t think they should have to vote on it at all but they did anyway.

This should be a source of great pride, just like the 1967 referendum on including Aboriginal people in the census, which saw more than 90 per cent of Australians vote Yes – the biggest Yes vote in our country’s history.

And much like that historic result it was a largely symbolic expression: Most rights had already been conferred but it was a statement of the Australian people that they said no to discrimination and yes to equality. We could just as well have been voting for a packet of biscuits if that packet of biscuits stood for something. It was a joyous exclamation of who we are.

Now here is the fun part.

To put this in perspective, not once in Australian history has any party ever received a vote of even 60 per cent at a national election. The plebiscite result is so overwhelming that had it happened at the polling booth it would have been an unprecedented landslide.

However within the 38.4 per cent who opposed it – a sizeable minority whose right to disagree should be respected – two key groups emerge.

The first is the traditional conservative and Christian right who make up the grumpy rump of the Liberal and National parties and those who have drifted or defected from them. This includes Cory Bernardi’s new outfit, Bob Katter’s old outfit, Jacqui Lambie’s stunning outfit and, most especially, One Nation.

While they may be scattered to the four winds, they are essentially of a similar broad mindset, namely a belief in the “Aussie” dream of family and the farm, beer and battlers, church and chuckles.

In other words, they have a somewhat idealised vision of what it means to be Australian and what Australian values are. They are mostly not homophobic bigots but rather just a bit old-fashioned and sentimental. Indeed, they are quite likely to be little old ladies who do church bake sales and would happily give you and your special someone a nice cup of tea as long as you pretended you were just good friends.

This brings us to the second group, which is – SHOCK! HORROR! – Muslims.

Or, to be more specific, a whole bunch of migrants from more orthodox and traditional religious and cultural backgrounds which appears to have resulted in NSW recording the lowest Yes vote in Australia and Western Sydney electorates with the highest percentage of those populations recording the lowest Yes vote in NSW. It turns out it wasn’t the rednecks the progressives needed to be worried about but those of a different hue. All the white people were wearing rainbow face-paint and drinking three-quarter avo-lattes. A quick scan of the celebration parties can confirm that.

Frankly, from any demographic understanding this whole result should be filed under “No shit, Sherlock”. It is glaringly obvious to anyone who has half a brain or half a life that an Italian nonna, Greek yaya or Lebanese teita is probably less likely to go to the Mardi Gras than your average Bruce.

Likewise it stands to reason that a refugee who has just had their family slaughtered in a civil war is probably less likely to see same-sex marriage as a major civil rights issue than a university arts student.

And it is just as obvious that that will change in time. The longer you live in a peaceful, prosperous and democratic country, the more luxury you have to embrace principles you might never have previously considered and people you might never have previously encountered.

But for the moment, let us return to our friends and fellow citizens of the Muslim faith – which has, let’s face it, a pretty patchy record when it comes to embracing homosexuality. Who can they turn to to represent their interests?

Not, it seems, their local member. As has been widely noted, these are overwhelmingly Labor electorates and the ALP has been clear in its support of same sex marriage, including the very MPs of the Western Sydney electorates where the No vote has been as high as 70 per cent.

But what about the Greens, those tireless champions of marginalised Muslims and crusaders against Islamophobia? Surely they would advance something that is apparently such a core value of Islamic communities?

Sadly no. In fact they see same-sex marriage as “a stronger platform to create further change”. I look forward to their discussions with the Imams on that.

Nick Xenophon’s party is also for marriage equality, as are the Liberal Democrats — in fact David Leyonhjelm introduced a bill for it three years ago.

And of course the Liberal party is hopelessly divided on the issue, with one prime minister all for same-sex marriage and the one before him dead against it.

So which political party could possibly advance the cause of Muslims Against Marriage Equality? Where can they find their voice?

There is only one major political leader with the same conviction as that apparently held by the Islamic community on this issue and that is One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.

“I do believe people have a right to live in peace and harmony and love each other by all means, but I think the word marriage is between a man and a woman,” she said in September.

Meanwhile, the official One Nation policy on Islam is this:

“To stop the teaching and infiltration of Islam and its totalitarian ideology, that opposes our democracy, way of life and laws.”

Now, of course, democracy has spoken and Pauline’s position could not be more out of step with mainstream Australia, just like the handful of seats in Western Sydney that happen to have the highest Muslim populations that her party so strongly opposes.

So there you have it: One Nation and the Muslim community in furious agreement and Pauline Hanson the champion of fundamentalist Islam.

Left or right, black or white, red or blue, or any hue: All extremists are the same.