It’ll be alt-right on the night…
As the current flash mob of alt-right wing* figureheads enjoys its moment in the sun, there are few things that spring immediately to mind. One is how limited their base is.
They and their policies might generate enormous support in particular sections of the mainstream and social media, but this support isn’t reflected by the number of people who vote for them.
For example, Pauline Hanson One Nation’s party, at their most recent showing in the WA election, received 4.7% of the vote, in spite of their preference deal with the Liberal Party. In the Senate race in the 2016 Federal election, they received 4.3% of the vote. Across the states in the same Federal election, in the lower house, One Nation received 1.3% of the vote, or 175,020. To put that into perspective, Nick Xenophon’s party received 250,333 votes, and they were all South Australian.
Not a week goes by, however, without the Australian political media picking up one story or another that boosts One Nation’s profile. So, given its low voter support, how is it that One Nation gets the coverage that it does?
One argument is that parties like One Nation, or Deutsch Alternatif or Le Front National or Liga Norda are political icebreakers; opening up space for the more centrist parties to engage in dialogue that they previously wouldn’t have been able to.
As regular readers will recall, twenty years ago, Pauline Hanson was disendorsed by the Liberal Party for attacking what she claimed was the Australian Federal Government’s attitude of positive discrimination towards Indigenous Australians.
Today, she’s back, her party is “more sophisticated”, and her chief of staff is an ex-Liberal National Party staffer with a history of backroom games. Whatever you might think of James Ashby, and it’s fair to say that he isn’t held in universal esteem, he’s clearly seen One Nation’s importance in the current political climate.
Having a disavowable alt-right fringe party setting the political agenda gives the centrist parties some political elbow room; to test ideas in a politically safe environment that, if they don’t succeed, won’t result in unpalatable consequences.
Letting One Nation, or to a lesser extent Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives or even the LNP’s George Christensen rail against Muslims or refugees or same sex marriage allows the Liberal Party, the National Party and even, to a point, the Labor Party and the Greens, see how those messages are received in the electorate.
If there’s no obvious bounce in the polling, then the ship of state sails on. If, of the other hand, the message gets a response, then it’s just a matter of dropping anchor and fishing for votes.
The problem of using the alt-right as the disposable canary in the coal mine of contemporary politics reveals itself when the polling and the mainstream media get into a feedback loop. Punters believe what’s coming out in the media, while the media, in a bid to shift papers / boost ratings / bait for clicks, are posting stories they’re hoping appeal to the “silent majority”.
Eventually the whole circle jerk comes loose from reality and we start getting our news from Breitbart, Infowars or Texe Marrs. And we start getting results like Brexit or Donald Trump’s election as US President, events few foresaw and that have wildly unpredictable consequences.
A recent example is the debate around changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), where despite the obvious potential for emboldening racists and the unpopularity of the changes in the broader community, the Federal Government seemed determined to press on. Perhaps they’re encouraged by Pauline Hanson’s claim that Australians aren’t racist. While the changes were defeated in the Senate, it seems clear that the issue hasn’t gone away. But it’s hard to see how it ever became an issue in the first place…unless you’re Pauline Hanson…or possibly George Brandis.
Encouraged to promote their opinions and beliefs, no matter how appallingly ignorant, endorsed and supported by political and media organisations that seek to profit from their contribution while staying a deniably arm’s length distant, the alt-right is being accorded a stature far beyond anything their views or their support might warrant.
However, as long as the mainstream political parties and the mainstream media allow the alt-right to set the political agenda, whatever their ulterior motives are, it seems hard to understate the damage that’s being done to the practical application of modern democracy.
For the institution to function as we’ve come to expect it, it requires the various parties to the social contract to act and react within a mutually understood range of responses. If, for example, the Federal Government opts to amend the legislation regarding corporate insolvency, it would be unusual for the nation’s liquidators to commence an indiscriminate bombing campaign. For the alt-right, however, it appears that this mutual understanding is no longer mutual.
That may be a problem for you and me, but for the alt-right, democracy looks like an outdated idea, ripe for replacement with a newer, altogether more dictatorial model. It’s no surprise that the alt-right admires the example set by Vladimir Putin when it comes to blending nationalism, ethnocentrism and conservative nostalgia. While this may be an academic argument today, for more and more Western democracies, it’s beginning to look like something that will need to be addressed sooner rather than later. Otherwise, wondering who votes for the alt-right will be the least of our problems.
* What I’m calling alt-right isn’t really right or left in the context of a modern democracy, but is an expression of neo-nationalist conservatism that lends itself to the ‘glorious leader’ model of government. The new generation of outliers seem to distinguish themselves from the mainstream political discourse by shying away from the demos and towards autocracy.