As Kevin Rudd’s petition for a royal commission into the Murdoch media closes, he casts blame for the current state of the US on Rupert.
As Donald Trump was threatening to take the election the other day night, previous prime minister Kevin Rudd was pinning the blame for the great American unraveling on another old white male: Rupert Murdoch
” In creating 2 warring states in America, our pal Rupert has actually had a big role to play in that,” Rudd told a special talk for Crikey subscribers.
An election that ought to have been a Democratic landslide had turned into a distressed nail-biter.
Fox has developed an “echo chamber of unhappy reactionary populism”.
7 years after News Corp helped kick him out, Rudd gets something about politics which a lot of experts and pollsters miss– that regular voters aren’t always driven by a cautious consideration of policies, but rather baser, approximate feeling.
And there, Rudd states, lies the success of the contemporary demagogic right. They’ve been able to “mobilise the psychological neuroscience of fear, anxiety and hatred”, developing a politics constructed around nationalism and pride.
On the other hand, the left’s efforts to combat this, with Obama-esque platitudes about hope and chance are falling flat.
” It’s like getting in a street battle in Brooklyn in 1962 with a pocket-knife.”
Rudd is arming up in his own way. He is, in his own words, “still from Queensland and still here to help”. In his sights is News Corp. Hours after speaking to us, his petition calling for a royal commission into the Murdoch empire reached half a million signatures, more than any other in Australian history.
Rudd states its remarkable success is a sign more individuals outside the media-political bubble are identifying the level of News Corp’s malicious impact.
Of course, at the end of the day, Rudd requires progressive politicians to battle the crusade too.
Rudd is unapologetic.
” They’ll seek to ruin you, disembowel you and then defenestrate your remains,” he stated.
The silver lining to that is that a present Labor leader merely has nothing to lose.
The left needs more than simply platitudes to beat back the deeply emotional siren call drawing the old working class to the reactionary right, he informs us.
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About the Author
Reporter
Before signing up with Crikey in 2018, Kishor was an editor at Honi Soit, an intern at The Sydney Early Morning Herald, and a legal reporter for Justinian He has degrees in arts and law from the University of Sydney.
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