Champagne socialists, Bollinger bolsheviks and latte liberals. From America to Australia, Buckingham Palace to Beijing, social justice warriors who grew rich on capitalism in the 20th century are repudiating it from millionaire row. US senator Bernie Sanders is a big-spending socialist who preaches poverty while owning multiple houses and a private jet. Australian Greens candidate Julian Burnside decries tax breaks after amassing a $20 million property portfolio.
The socialists of old reserved the right to enjoy a certain number of contradictions in their personal lives. What we might call hypocrisy, they called revolution. By way of example, consider the father of Chinese communism, Mao Zedong, who banned high heels as counter-revolutionary. High heels were symbols of oppressive Western imperialism. Harems were another matter. Mao realised his grand theory of equality by starving millions of Chinese and keeping a virtual harem of underage girls. After he died, his former doctor, Li Zhisui, revealed the depravity the Western Left’s darling communist.
In the fashion of socialists everywhere, UN officials excel at spending other people’s money and rewriting history to suit their politics. They have a talent for corrupting truth. So it is only fair that they should embrace Fidel Castro as one of their own.
After his death, UN members observed a minute of silence for their hero. General Assembly president Peter Thomson lauded Castro as “one of the iconic leaders of the 20th century, with a great love for his homeland and the Cuban people”.
The UN’s venerated hero was a cold-blooded communist killer who enjoyed the visceral act of taking life. He took care to record some killings in gruesome detail. Like Mao, Castro came to power promising equality and then delivered the people misery with a splash of misogyny. He took the proceeds of revolution to furnish a lavish lifestyle while claiming to live in a fisherman’s hut. According to his former bodyguard Juan Reinaldo Sanchez, the hut was really a luxury pad. Castro also had an impressive property portfolio. Forbes magazine estimated his personal net worth to be $900 million. As Forbes contributor Keith Flamer observed, “That’s a lot of socialist rationing for one person.”
There is a rich history of Marxists who made millions from violent revolution while claiming egalitarian credentials. But as Margaret Thatcher warned: “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
The new reds on the block are a Thatcherite cliche. They are corrupted by greed, but offset guilt by virtue-signalling for causes certain not to dent their investment portfolios or slow the pace of their upward mobility.
Like the Nimbys of old, champagne socialists want radical change, just not in their back yards. They idealise a world without borders but sit back as immigrants poorly prepared for Western life are sent to someone else’s neighbourhood.
If latte liberals were serious about open society, they would refuse to accept asylum-seekers or immigrants who repudiate free-world values. And they would live next door to the immigration centres, welfare offices and public housing required to resettle refugees humanely.
Winston Churchill said: “The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” Churchill isn’t remembered for being overly generous, but he was positively mawkish to describe socialist virtue as an “equal” sharing of misery. George Orwell provided a more accurate insight into the socialist mind — one that came from having intimate relations with it: “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.”
The more equal than others walk among us in green-left robes. Lest we forget the former Australian Human Rights commissioner Gillian Triggs who baulked at the idea of dining in a rural town. Responding to criticism of a $60,000 AHRC awards night, she said: “I really do take umbrage at the idea that somehow because you’re a human rights body you’ve got to do things in some sort of shabby way. We don’t want to be in a village hall in Koo Wee Rup just because we haven’t got a lot of money.” The following year, the Herald Sun reported Triggs had a $408,000 annual salary package with the AHRC. By contrast, the median weekly household income in Koo Wee Rup was $1345.
The elites who preach equality but won’t dine with the proles are more common than a social justice troll.
Xenophile and human rights aficionado Julian Burnside is a fine cultural fit for the Australian Greens. They are a party of progressive politics — on paper. The Greens present as the face of female empowerment, among other things, but have a pressing problem with rebel women who buck the party line.
When Liberal senator Jane Hume suggested Burnside should quit talk about dismantling the patriarchy given his membership of the Melbourne men’s only Savage Club, he pointed a finger at her, saying “don’t interrupt”. Greens senator Jordon Steele-John lacks Burnside’s lawyerly charms. When he felt upset with The West Australian’s columnist Gemma Tognini, he told her to “stfu”.
The past century has demonstrated the stunning hypocrisy of social justice warriors who rose to power promising egalitarian utopias while amassing vast wealth from the proceeds of revolution. Beware those who preach equality from millionaires’ row.
Miners change tune on climate change
Peak mining industry body The Minerals Council of Australia has joined the fight on climate.
Easy to point the finger
Demanding we abandon coal for climate is akin to asking NZ to give up love affair with sheep.