Wokey continues its good work for the CCP, led by Bernard Keane, China groveller extraordinaire.
Abbott’s hypocrisy on this was so extraordinary that even the toddler speaking with him pointed out he’d negotiated a free trade agreement with China when he was briefly prime minister. Abbott defended himself by saying it was possible to see that China was on a liberalising path a decade ago. Abbott has been peddling this line for a long time: hilariously, he lauded Xi Jinping for Xi’s commitment to full democracy after he allowed the Chinese leader to speak in Parliament House in 2014.
Alas, it’s nonsense. China’s oppression of the Uyghurs was already well-known by that point, including its sentencing of academics to prison for crimes such as “separatism“. The Xi regime’s treatment of dissidents was notorious. China was already building islands in the South China Sea to advance its regional claims in 2014, and Abbott’s own foreign minister Julie Bishop was rudely rebuked by her Chinese counterpart for daring to mention the issue.
The idea that Abbott can now plausibly claim to be shocked, shocked that Xi turned out to be anti-democratic and aggressive is garbage. He knew what Xi was like then but he charged ahead and not merely signed a “free” trade agreement (which included a sovereignty-abrogating investor-state dispute settlement clause aimed at preventing Australian governments from making policy changes that inconvenienced Chinese companies) and demonised anyone who criticised it as racist, but went further and actively undermined Australian sovereignty. He did that by promising Xi he would progress an extradition treaty that the Howard government had agreed with China before it lost office. Once he lost the prime ministership and it was left to Malcolm Turnbull to implement Abbott’s promise to Xi, Tony decided in fact he’d opposed the extradition treaty all along.
We all know Tony Abbott is a dill. He lost the prime ministership because of it.
But, this does not mean that Australia should sell itself to China today. That’s not an argument; it’s a form of revenge suicide.
Worse, Bernard Keane and Wokey more generally have, in recent years, lost their minds to culture wars over hard-nosed politics.
Ironically, and just as hypocritically as any Tony Abbott backflip, this has led Wokey to the cultural corner directly opposite News Corp.
Neither of these binary corners has much truth in them. They are identity structures to define a vertical market, and little more.
It is difficult enough trying to navigate this false binary regarding domestic policy.
When it comes to geopolitics, such binary thinking is kindergarten-level stuff. Anybody expecting ideological and moral purity from the Game of Nations is dangerously naive.
Realpolitik is the art of the possible, not the ideal.
So, when we assess our developing circumstances in reference to the two Great Powers competing for our backyard, some very clear-eyed thinking is needed.
Would a CCP hegemon better serve Australian interests than the US version?
In my view, the problem with Keane and his ilk is that they do not understand the underpinnings of their own thought.
These culture warriors have swallowed the lie that power is exerted over people via forces of culture, not production.
These proto-Marxists and social engineers fixate on unfairness as defined by identity, not class.
This is a form of fascism in which cultural labelling and cancellation determine social hierarchy. Or, Wokey, as it calls itself.
The alternative model of liberalism embraces freedom as its own end. It celebrates achievement and merit, regardless of cultural markers. It is fair because it is blind to culture.
This is why a CCP-aligned nation would very likely make us poorer, as freedom and innovation gave way to the Party and central planning. We can already see this in our failing centrally planned immigration-led economy that has killed productivity.
A CCP-aligned nation also ends in a one-party state run by Labor, so Bernard Keane would be reduced even further to a propagandist. One might hate News Corp, but is this preferable?
A CCP-aligned nation would impose a social credit score system and punitive measures to support it, including, in due course, forced labour camps.
Ironically, this would start with and exert most pressure upon those who consider themselves divergent from the cultural norm. They would be re-educated first and most ferociously.
Compared with any conceivable American version of hegemony, Trump or no, these outcomes are alien and destructive to the national interest in equal measure.
The American empire may go through convulsions of foreign adventurism and sovereign intervention from time to time, but compared to any empire you care to name over the broad sweep of history, it is spectacularly benign for its subjects.
Choose your hegemon with care, not with the bitterness of Wokey.
