The state, the far right, and repressive laws
The debate on the left sparked by Emma Norton’s recent comment piece in Red Flag about establishing safe access zones around abortion clinics exposed a worrying trend among some of Norton’s critics. Norton argued that the left must oppose moves by governments to criminalise anti-choice big...CONTINUE READING
Media bias against Muslims documented
Reading “Islam in the Media 2017”, an investigation by Sydney-based Muslim production studio OnePath Network, is like looking through the greatest hits compilation of the world’s worst band. In this case, it’s the Murdoch press. Who could forget the Daily Telegraph’s dogged campaign agains...CONTINUE READING
Milo ain’t so sweet
“I find humour in breaking taboos and laughing at things that people tell me are forbidden to joke about.” That’s Milo Yiannopoulos, media commentator and former tech editor at Breitbart, the Trump-supporting media platform at which he’s published such articles as “Birth control makes wome...CONTINUE READING
Separate but unequal
Attempting to present the case for a No vote on marriage equality on ABC’s 7:30 program recently, former Woolworths CEO Roger Corbett instead gave a rambling and at times contradictory interview in which he unwittingly exposed the deeply segregationist logic beneath the right’s defence of...CONTINUE READING
What happened to the lunar right’s hostility to homophobia?
In the aftermath of last year’s Orlando, Florida, shooting, when 49 patrons of the gay night club Pulse were gunned down, some of the LGBTI community’s most vocal “defenders” came from the hard right. Daily Telegraph columnist Miranda Devine linked the attack to her horror at watching vide...CONTINUE READING
Students taking a stand for Yes
With some 200,000 young people in Australia between 18 and 24 not enrolled to vote when the marriage equality plebiscite was announced, the National Union of Students (NUS), along with campus student unions and Victorian Trades Hall Council, went into campaign overdrive. We ran daily stall...CONTINUE READING
Marriage equality: we need a ‘yes’ vote to push back the bigots
“If you don’t like same-sex marriage, vote ‘no’. If you’re worried about religious freedom and freedom of speech, vote ‘no’, and if you don’t like political correctness, vote ‘no’ because voting ‘no’ will help stop it in its tracks.” With those words, conservative former PM Tony Abbott fir...CONTINUE READING
You can’t take the politics out of Safe Schools
What happens when a ragtag team of do-gooder celebrity gays and their allies get together to lobby for a new, moderate, “politics and controversy free” version of the Safe Schools program? Well, politics and controversy, of course. The proposal, brainchild of former Fairfax journalist Ben...CONTINUE READING
Election highlights political polarisation in France
The presidential elections have exposed the political polarisation of French society. For the first time in the post-war period, the two major establishment parties have been left out of the second round of the country’s elections. And for the second time, the fascist National Front (FN) h...CONTINUE READING