The reaction to Steve Bannon’s interview was as predictable as it was off-beam. This is why it’s dangerous.
This is one of those things you get used to, but then you step out of the country for a bit, and you realise how ridiculous it actually is.
I’m talking to the reaction to Steve Bannon’s interview on ABC’s 4-Corners program.
The general flavour of the flak the ABC is getting is that they shouldn’t be in the business of ‘enabling psychopaths’.
The poor ABC must feel like there’s no way they can win. Conservatives continually accuse them of bias, but then when they actually interview a conservative, the progressives start howling at the moon.
Andrew Bolt had the inside running:
The Four Corners interview with Steve Bannon this week has caused a deep rift at the ABC between those who believe holding figures like Bannon to account is exactly what the flagship program should be doing and those who are unhappy the former White House adviser and Breitbart editor was given an ABC platform.
Those in the first camp include, of course, the interviewer, Sarah Ferguson, and her executive producer, Sally Neighbour, and established ABC stars Leigh Sales and Virginia Trioli.
Those in the other camp tend to be the younger, more ethnically diverse journalists including ABC Life’s Osman Faruqi and digital news producer Jennine Khalik.
Unbelievable. Have all those social justice warriors learnt nothing in the past couple of years?
First, how is Steve Bannon not interview worthy? He was literally one of the key figures behind getting the most controversial American president elected, ever. Of course, we should be taking an interest in what he’s got to say.
Especially, for the record, what he’s got to say about China. He reckons the US is at ‘economic war’ with China, and Australia is at risk of becoming a ‘tributary state’ if we don’t start taking them more seriously.
That is definitely an opinion that needs more air-time. I find the press’s silence on China, which, remember, is still pretty much a totalitarian dictatorship with clear global ambitions, just baffling. Almost conspiratorial…
Anyway, back to the ABC story. So the ABC go and interview arguably one of the most important figures of our times, love him or hate him, and progressives go into conniptions about it.
The ABC should not be giving “ethno-nationalist racists” a platform, they argue. The media, and especially the ABC, should “challenge enthno-nationalism through a journalism that reflects Australia’s diversity.”
And that means, apparently, not talking about it all.
Seriously, what world are they living in?
They seem to believe that if they can ‘control the discourse’ – control what gets said where and the sorts of ideas that people get exposed to, then they can control reality.
There is all sorts of wrong with this.
First, f#&k off and leave me alone, Dad. What kind of paternal crap is it where you don’t trust people to have exposure to controversial ideas?
Seriously, do we really think that listening to some of Steve Bannon’s ideas is going to flip a regular, latte-sipping suburban liberal into a cross-burning racist? Really?
And rather than dealing with the expressions of the problem, why not deal with the actual causes? Why not start wondering why Trump’s ‘deplorables’ are feeling totally f%@ked over by the elite and the global trading system. Ask them about their tragically high suicide and substance abuse rates, their broken communities. Ask them why they’re looking for radical solutions.
But no, the left’s solution is to throw piss-bombs at the movement’s figure-heads, and yell “racist” at any one who takes an interest.
Second, even if it was a good idea, you just can’t control reality this way.
We know this at a personal level. We call it “repression”.
I mean, imagine if my heart was yearning to be an inner-city theatre director with a small dog. But the controlling mind of me decided that I needed to be a construction worker with a SUV.
Historically our strategy has just been to try and banish any tendencies to take an interest stage design at their inception. Treat them as a thought crime. Beat my self up about it. Get angry at my inner theatre director, and then at all theatre directors. Smother, shut down, deny.
This is repression. And we know it doesn’t work. It doesn’t solve the problem, it just makes the problem show up somewhere else.
This is literally the left’s strategy with Trump and Bannon.
It’s not acknowledging pain or any problem at all. As soon as anyone speaks to that pain, they get shut-down, denied.
So that pain will find an outlet, one way or another.
And what I would say to those bleeding heart liberals is that if you actually wanted to create another Hitler, an actual populist monster, this is exactly how you would go about it.
Apply more and more pressure on the working people while denying any outlet for their pain.
Sooner or later, boom.
From where I sit, it’s as obvious as the nose on my face.
But seriously, Australia and the ABC are just lost in a dream.