Domainfax versus Donald Trump

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For anyone with a sensible and centrist outlook on policy, last year was a shocking shunt away from evidence-based government worldwide. This year has started even worse as President Donald Trump launches his Twitter agenda and the mainstream press beats every tweet into a catastrophe.

Yet neither Donald Trump and the deglobalisation revolution, nor the rear guard action to defend the status quo has to date proposed radical policy. It is some mix of political messaging and confused policy vandalism right now, captured best in the hotly contested travel ban. The real problem is the mendacity that has taken a hold of both sides. The ends now justify the means for political Left versus Right in a way that is new to my eyes. This is the post-truth world that seeks power, either for revenge, or to protect an interest group.

There is no doubt that the Trump Administration and deglobalisers are seeking change. They rose from the need for it – the hollow heart of crony capitalism exposed since the GFC – and are seeking to hammer some square peg of oligarchy, working class values, Christian conservatism and nationalism into that round hole.

But is that as wildly crazy as it’s being made out to be by the mainstream press? Out of that perverse effort one can draw both positives and negatives. In the US, a reasonable mix of tax reforms, protections and fiscal investment will benefit working class standards of living, but an overzealous push for nationalist policy could unleash a destructive wave of tit-for-tat trade actions that costs everyone. In Australia, cuts to immigration will lower house prices to the benefit of disenfranchised millennials, as well as force desperately needed reform to drive growth, but too much will make the patient overly ill from the treatment.

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But we’re not going to hear about it at all in those terms. Instead the global Left – in the form of globalisers and social justice warriors – is painting the deglobalising Right as some new incarnation of Nazism. Let’s not forget that it was this same hysterical Left that abandoned the very working class constituents that have given rise to the political figments it now attacks, governing for the service economy elites and their socially progressive views alone, often times despite the overwhelming evidence of corruption.

This reflexive lack of self-reflection is on display today at perhaps the most outstanding global exemplar of anti-Trump rhetoric, the Domainfax press, via Andrew P Street:

Here’s a statement that seems weird to have to explicitly outline in 2017, but here we are: fascism is a bad thing that leads to horrible consequences for human lives.

While Allied countries like Britain and Australia and the United States take every opportunity to paint their involvement in World War II as a righteous battle between good and evil, one thing that everyone likes to quietly brush over is how much everyone was falling over themselves to not do anything to annoy Hitler in the years leading up to the invasion of Poland.

…Turnbull’s silence is doubtlessly connected with his very reasonable fears that maybe Trump won’t honour the US’s commitment to take our unwanted refugees held on Manus Island and Nauru – which, given that a lot of said detainees are Muslims from Syria, Iran and other banned countries, seems destined to collapse regardless.

That this is beyond the ability of our nation’s leader is important, because it makes crystal clear to all Australians – particularly those of the Islamic faith, and those who’ve come across the seas – exactly how strongly Malcolm Turnbull, and the Australian government generally, would be willing to stand up for them.

This isn’t shrewd political caution. This is pure cowardice.

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Readers will know that I share the view that the US has shifted towards fascism on the political map (though it is not “fascist” and very unlikely to become so):

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Unfortunately, pretty much the entire world is headed that way as the the liberal democracy we have assumed was historically destined to dominated is pulled apart by the failure at the heart of capitalism, to govern itself for the benefit of the majority.

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Obviously good people should speak out against race-based politics where it exists. But the Left in all of its forms should also be examining how it lost its mandate to rule so broadly and comprehensively, not adopting the untruth practices of those it professes to loath. This becomes all the more pressing when one accepts that businesses like Domainfax are invested in the politics of the debate themselves owing to their profit dependence upon the broken system that gave rise to Trump. Domainfax profits will be hit hard if Australian immigration is cut owing to its complete dependence upon real estate revenues to survive. Indeed, it may kill the firm outright, so its comprehensive dedication to polarising the immigration debate is quite self-interested and, unfortunately, also likely to stoke the rise of the very thing it purports to resist.

Paul Kelly is onto it at The Australian:

Donald Trump’s order restricting entry from seven Muslim nations signals a decisive realignment of Australian politics. On display is the fierce progressive class assault on Trump, the lethal fracturing of conservative politics and decline of rational policy debate. Each will have long-run consequences.

Trump’s executive order is further early evidence of a dysfunctional and dangerous presidency. Justified by the claimed need “to protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals”, this action, on balance, is more likely to endanger the American public. It is a public policy blunder, an administrative shambles, an anti-terrorism setback and inspired more by ideological gesture than rational calculation.

What should Malcolm Turnbull do? It’s the Trumpian dilemma: is the federal government supposed to win Trump’s trust and work closely with him or should it prioritise moralistic gesture and condemn Trump when he breaks with our values, cognisant this may constitute a long list of issues.

The notion that Turnbull is selling out to Trump will gain public traction despite its falsehood. Don’t expect rationality to prevail in this environment. The truth is Turnbull has won a significant victory from the US government: he got an agreement from Barack Obama for the US to accept resettlement of refugees from Nauru and Manus. Few people predicted that. Turnbull then got — contrary to repeated local media claims — President Trump to commit to honour the deal.

This deal, under both Obama and Trump, shows the value of the alliance. It would never have materialised without the alliance framework. It is impossible to know how many people the US will take but Turnbull desperately needed Trump to sign up. Any Trump repudiation would have been devastating, a humiliation for Turnbull, a sign of US contempt for Australia and an intensification of the government’s political woes over Nauru and Manus.

…What do we see in the US today? There is a profound split in conservative and Republican ranks. It is stark on the immigration issue between irrational populists for whom the Trumpian ideological drama is what matters, and rational mainstream conservatives who judge it and condemn it on the results.

The same will happen in Australia. Conservative politics will be fatally split between the Trump champions and the mainstream pragmatists. Pauline Hanson runs with Trump. Hanson wants to “stop further Muslim immigration” to this country with no more mosques or Muslim schools being built. Now she has an immense gift — she can claim vindication from President Trump.

Have no doubt what is coming given the serious problem Australia faces with Muslim integration. Hanson’s call means a discriminatory entry policy based on religion, a de facto declaration of “no confidence” in Muslims and the descent into bitter internal divisions that will intensify the local terrorist risk. This populist pitch will win significant Trump-­enhanced minority backing; it will erode Coalition votes on the periphery; and it will send multiple fractures through the conservative voting base, with dangerous and possibly fatal consequences for the Turnbull government.

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Two points. It’s blindingly obvious that Do-nothing Malcolm has done a deal with Donald Trump to take refugees in return for silence. This explanation fits with Trump’s “art of the deal” methodology and his executive style. Within that narrow lens, Turnbull’s silence is in the national interest, given it is part of alliance management with a new American president, as he says:

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has hit back at criticism of his refusal to blast Donald Trump’s Muslim immigration ban, arguing to do so would jeopardise the national interest.

In the strongest indication yet the Prime Minister fears joining the global condemnation could imperil the deal in which America will accept up 1800 asylum seekers from Nauru and Manus Island, Mr Turnbull said his priority as Australian Prime Minster was the national interest.

“What is important for me to do, as Australian Prime Minister, is to deliver for Australians and to deliver for the Australian national interest. That’s my job,” he said.

“When I have frank advice to give to an American President, I give it privately, as good friends should.

The question is why was it so important to rid ourselves of a few refugees in the first place? The answer to that is that it is still the government’s only answer to the increasingly fraught immigration debate: to persecute refugees as a bait and switch maneuver that enables it keep the front door open to an enormous wave of economic migrants.

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Second, that policy position is clearly under immense strain and well passed its use by date. We are well into the flux of politics around what will replace it. Whatever it is, Australia must NOT go the way of discriminatory immigration policy. That is NOT in the national interest no matter who else does it. It will lead to horrible consequences for Aussie Muslims and help cement the self-generating notion of the Clash of Civilisations that is completely inimical to modern Australia (and modernity itself). In short, it would put Australians at far greater risk than they are today.

The solution here is very obvious. All immigration needs to be cut back and the entire debate depoliticised by sticking it where it belongs, in the economic frame of reference that the Domainfax social justice warriors cannot afford to mention lest they let the truth put them out of a job.

That is that immigration is far too high for the economy as it stands. It is driving falling standards of living for extant Australians via strained infrastructure, stalled income growth and absurd property prices. If it is allowed to run then the anger that mass immigration generates in the community will be channeled into the rise of One Nation and the discrimination that Domainfax likes to tell itself that it resists.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.