Australia - From Le socialisme sans doctrines To A Corporatised Client-State

by George Venturini …..

In a little more than one hundred years a sycophantic 'ruling class' has 'managed' to turn a budding social-democracy into a sinkhole for banking, mining, retailing and other foreign interests …..

A well-known, and for a time very successful, propagandist once wrote: “Propaganda must always address itself to the broad masses of the people. ...  all propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed.  ... the art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses. ...  the broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgement in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another.”  As to the methods to be employed, he explained: “Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favourable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side.  ...   the receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward. ...    every change that is made in the subject of a propagandist message must always emphasise the same conclusion. The leading slogan must of course be illustrated in many ways and from several angles, but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula.” [Emphasis added]

The words from this long quotation could well be described as the current lesson plan for conservative politicians and the mass media. But they were not quoted at the meeting/dinner to celebrate seventieth of the Institute of Public Affairs, perhaps because they belong to Adolf Hitler’ s Mein Kampf.

On 4 April 2013, some seventeen months after becoming Leader of the Opposition, and quite confident that ‘the propaganda’ would work, Tony Abbott attended the Institute of Public Affairs’ 70th birthday in Melbourne.  He was one of the keynote speakers; another one was Rupert Murdoch, whose press was campaigning daily against the Gillard Government.

Other notable attendants to fawn at the court of King Murdoch were the wealthiest business person in Australia, Ms. Gina Rinehart who was the third keynote speaker, the Master of Ceremonies, Andrew Bolt;  Cardinal George Pell, soon to be appointed Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy of the Vatican; Hugh Morgan, a leading light of whatever is reactionary in Australia;  about half the Coalition both federal and state, which included one ‘long-serving member’ Victorian premier Denis Napthine, ‘conservative’ shock jock Alan Jones, and The Australian  columnist Janet Albrechtsen.

Great fun was had by all, if the amount of head nodding and similar affirmations observed are an indication.

It was reported that those at the meeting/dinner were in ‘broad philosophical agreement’ with the Institute of Public Affairs, although differences did exist, mainly in the ‘means’ to a particular end rather than the desired end itself. One does not have to guess what sort of end these ‘distinguished’ people have in mind for ‘ordinary Australians out there’.

No doubt the participants in the meeting/dinner would have no difficulty in agreeing with the ‘wish list’ of August 2012, which in essence represents a further more accelerated massive transfer of wealth to the rich, destruction of public infrastructure and any semblance of a just, equitable, compassionate and fair society.

One can see many of the points in ‘the list’ being favourably presented by the main stream media with a combination of fear, misinformation and an exponential rise in the use of outright lies.  And one will also understand how effective the repetition of those short slogans would be on the ‘ordinary Australian’.  Politicians, particularly those in the conservative ranks, seem to be reading from the same script   -   simple, short, memorable  messages repeated ad nauseam to the public through a largely complicit media.

‘Ordinary Australians’, having elected the Abbott-led Coalition on the assumption that it was a group of predominantly male adults with an instinct for parsimony    -     “grown up” as they saw themselves     -     and a good feel for the location of maritime borders, may come to be confronted by a ruling reality which might have been just a little underwhelming.  For those who had bothered to take an interest, there must have been a vague sense of deflation when they realised they had elected a government led by a man who could offer no greater ambition for his term at the apex of the electors’  hopes and dreams other than to be remembered as “an Infrastructure Prime Minister”.

Correct    -   because there stands a man who, if he stands for anything, stands for the sclerosing idea that in government ‘less is more’.

http://www.countercurrents.org/venturini160514.pdf