This Australian version of the Big Lie is the first stage of a war for the future of the federal Liberal Party, with the far-right unable to resist the opportunity to exploit the removal of so many more moderate MPs to drive the federal party away from climate action and towards culture wars, division and attacks on women and minorities.
At the centre of it will be the foreign political party News Corp. Despite its irrelevance to mainstream Australia being demonstrated by the election result, the Murdochs will continue to wield significant influence within a purged Coalition, and the company will seize on its status as an opposition party. From yesterday, the Murdoch campaign of regime change in Australia began — it’s just that the campaign extends to the Coalition as well as a Labor government.
This shouldn’t be treated as some sort of sideshow. When Tony Abbott defeated Malcolm Turnbull in 2009 by one vote, with the backing of News Corp, he set the stage for 13 years of climate wars and polarised, toxic politics. He was aided by Kevin Rudd’s failure to seize the moment and go to an election that would have smashed the Coalition. One mistake is all it takes and the course of political history can be very different.
The Big Lie, Australian style, is just the start.
Source: Election: Australia’s Big Lie (from the right): Morrison went too far left
On Sunday night, we got strong evidence that, for the most part, Republican voters understand that the Big Lie is indeed a lie. They just repeat it because they view themselves as co-conspirators in perpetuating it. In his speech at the second “annual” Conservative Political Action Conference of the year, Trump bragged about how he lies about polls and elections when he doesn’t win them. “You know, they do that straw poll, right?” Trump asked, referring to the 2024 GOP nominee straw poll CPAC conducted of attendees. “If it’s bad, I say it’s fake. If it’s good, I say, that’s the most accurate poll perhaps ever.” The “humor” of this not-actually-a-joke is due to being a sly reference to the Big Lie — an admission on Trump’s part that he didn’t win in 2020 and is merely saying otherwise for political gain. And it’s no surprise that Trump went there. He loves to brag about how much corruption and crime he gets away with. What is perhaps more important is the audience’s reaction to this not-a-joke.
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