En Passant

The future of journalism and democracy lies in news and analysis that reflects the interests of ordinary people, I write in Independent Australia.

Here are some of my recent unpublished mainstream media letters to the editor. This first one is a letter I sent to The Australian. (Yeah, I know. And no, there is no irony in the fact that the ‘newspaper’ with a fake free speech campaign for one of its cartoonists should refuse to publish this. Free speech is free speech for the rich and powerful and those who disagree within their set and acceptable boundaries.)

Australia’s mainstream media is a bit like Australia’s politics. It gives the impression of difference but in reality the two major newspaper outlets – News and Fairfax – disagree only on the detail. They agree on the overriding message and practice of neoliberalism and austerity. They agree too on creating a distraction from austerity. For Fairfax disguised and now not so disguised Islamophobia and liberal racism are good ways to do that.

As capitalism slides into deeper recession or depression, the ruling class may well need the fascists to smash the organised working class, which means smashing unions and the left, all the way from the revolutionary socialists to the Labor Party types. That is why the mainstream media don’t call out the wannabes Hitlers as the Nazis they really are.

Let me add my voice to the growing chorus against the pink ball.

As the Canberra Times continues its conversion to conservatism and its cost driven agenda of regurgitation, the time approaches when, if my current mood survives, I will bid it farewell and return to The Australian and the battle against that newspaper’s various opinions and ideas. It at least is a more worthy opponent. And for revolutionary socialist analysis there is always Solidarity.

Let’s hope your decision to publish Kuhn’s article is a light bulb moment for Fairfax owners and senior managers that there is a big audience for left wing ideas in your newspapers, driven by the desire of millions of Australians for a social democratic country. Who knows, printing more of such articles might actually help address the disastrous decline in the Canberra Times’ readership numbers.

Earlier on Monday I sent an article about Jeremy Corbyn and an offer of a weekly column to various MSM outlets here to help them connect with the big social democratic audience in Australia. I will catalogue the responses and non-responses over time.

Until an anti-austerity mass movement and its political expression arise we will continue to have bad government after bad government in Australia. That new formation will I suspect only happen when we decide to take action as the working class against whoever is in power, the Liberals or Labor.

The capitalist media reports and emphasises or spins things that reinforce a capitalist world view. To seriously report, let alone investigate, police violence against medics, or domestic violence, might undermine two key pillars of capitalist society – the police and the family.