In Netflix’s darkly amusing series “How to become a tyrant” there are six steps:
- Seize power
- Crush your rivals
- Reign through terror
- Control the truth
- Create a new society
- Rule forever
I will add a seventh: demonise an ethnicity.
And eighth: secure the sponsorship of a foreign superpower.
In Australia’s emerging regional dictatorship, Solomon Islands, we are seeing all of these steps underway in the regime of Manneseh Sogavare:
- he is attempting to suspend elections satisfying 1&2
- he has imported a private army of Chinese brown shirts satisfying 3
- tribal conflict is well underway across islands satisfying 5&7
- and he has secured the backing of China to remodel the political system satisfying 8.
Today we get tick off four as well:
Chinese Communist Party propagandists have blunted anti-Chinese sentiment in Solomon Islands and boosted criticism of Australia and the West by spreading false narratives about last year’s riots in the capital Honiara and the country’s subsequent security pact with China.
A new Australian Strategic Policy Institute report reveals the co-ordinated Chinese disinformation campaign gained traction with print and social media claims that Australia, the US and Taiwan instigated the riots, and the security agreement was a necessary response to “colonialist bullies”.
The CCP narratives were most successful when deployed with the support of Solomon Islands media outlets and trusted local actors, the report states.
It found the Chinese embassy in Honiara played a key role in the influence operation, exerting pressure on editors and journalists to run favourable coverage and suppress stories that run counter Beijing’s line. Its narrative was reinforced through training courses and sponsored trips to China for local journalists.
Even though this spits in the face of the brave Solomon Islanders, Australians and Americans that died liberating the islands from just this kind of foreign yoke, in pragmatic terms it is harmless so long as any military build-out in kept in check.
Then again, allowing Pacific political normatives to swing away from liberal democracy is not, in the long run, going to support the Australian national interest.
