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The controversy over social media and Big Tech platforms banning US President Donald Trump and his supporters is not about free speech. It is about political power.

The right to free speech is only enforceable against the State. It is not enforceable against private entities like private firms or individuals however big or important they might be. It would have been a violation of the freedom of speech had an arm of the US government banned Donald Trump. Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple and Amazon are private firms and are free to do whatever they please provided it is not illegal on their platform. Users who dont like it have the freedom to leave the platform and head elsewhere. While we can have debate on the Big Tech companies wisdom and sense of judgement in banning Trump and de-platforming Parler, the pro-Trump social media network, we cannot deny them the right to do as they please on their private property.

At a time when free speech is kicked around as a partisan political football than a universal principle that a free society must uphold, its very important to emphasise that the right to free speech protects citizens from their government. Why so? Because unlike big media and Big Tech, the government has a monopoly over the legitimate use of force. You dont want the person authorised to use the big stick to also be the one to determine what you can or cannot say. That is why liberal democracies, including our own, make fundamental rights enforceable by the citizen against the government. If the editors of ThePrint refuse to publish my article, they are not violating my right to free speech. If, however, the government censors my article, it violates my right. Lets take it even further if every publisher in the world refuses to publish my article, it is still not a violation of my right to free speech. There is no right to being heard.

Also read: German Chancellor Angela Merkel finds Trumps forced social media exile problematic

Making it about free speech distracts us from the real issue: the political power that social media and Big Tech platforms have. This is not new. Publishers and media companies have always had the ability to influence public opinion and political decisions. As Benedict Anderson argues, the advent of the printing press and availability of literature in vernacular languages led to the rise of nationalism and nation-States. In the pre-television era, Dileep Padgaonkar, the editor of The Times of India, was perhaps justified in boasting that he had the second-most important job in the country after the prime minister. Since the 1990s, we have seen the emergence of powerful television anchors, with the ability to shape public opinion. Newspaper barons were key players in the British politics of the 1980s. Rupert Murdochs media empire remains influential in more than one Western democracy. Before Twitter and Facebook, radio talk show programmes in the US served as the rallying point for both conservatives and liberals.

What distinguishes todays social media platforms is their scale, their instantaneousness and their interactivity, which is unlike anything that came before them. They thus enjoy the power to allow narratives to strengthen and become powerful, and also the power to cut them out if they please. As Trump himself admitted, he would not be in the White House if not for Twitter. Now Twitter might have decimated his reach. As for tech platforms like Google, Apple and Amazon, their power lies in the ability to control access to these social networks. Once Google, Apple and Amazon decided to get Parler off their servers, it becomes extraordinarily difficult but not impossible for the latter to acquire the reach it enjoyed.

Also read: Bans on Parler and Trump show the power Big Tech wields over web conversation

Free societies should always be wary of the concentration of any kind of power in any kind of institution. So liberal democracies must worry about the power that Twitter, Facebook, Google and others have come to possess. Democracies other than the US have the additional challenge of contending with the fact that the shareholders, executives and permanent establishments of these companies are located outside their jurisdiction. The problem is: we have yet to evolve ways to govern trans-national technology and social media companies in a manner consistent with the rights of citizens and the interests of sovereign States.

As I wrote in a column a few months ago: Democracies are trying to fit the problem into an anti-trust frame. They want to break up platforms citing the phone company analogy The European Union, always trigger-happy on the antitrust front, is likely to embrace ex ante competition regulations. Politicians in India are both throwing many of our abundant laws and regulations at Big Tech and thinking up new ones. Everyone is grappling for answers. The paradox all democracies face is that it is impossible to check platform power without cutting into free speech and economic freedom that the former seek to protect and the latter actually provide.

The Big Tech companies were right to use their power to take drastic action to reduce the risk of further violence and signal that mob attack on the US Congress would attract consequences. Yet, their continued failure to act to prevent or punish hate-driven violence in other countries exposes them to the charge of selectivity and opportunism. Their feet seem to have discovered the ability to kick the man only after he is down, their corporate consciences still subject to the exigencies of having to do business with whoever is in power. And now that they have used their power to de-platform individuals, how strong is their commitment to resist political pressures of various kinds to do the same to less exalted individuals?

Nitin Pai is the director of the Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy. Views are personal.

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Liberal democracies must worry about the power that Twitter, Facebook, Google have - ThePrint

The federal opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, has attacked the Morrison government for $1.8m worth of communications contracts given to a firm with Liberal links and whose staff are registered as federal lobbyists.

According to AusTender records, Primary Communications Partners received the funding from the Australian Tax Office, the National Mental Health Commission and the attorney generals department between March 2019 and January 2021.

All but one of the contracts were awarded through open tender, and the company has rejected any claims of partisanship. One $36,330 contract, awarded by the NMHC for public relations work, was granted through limited tender.

The Primary Communications chief executive, Chris Hall, has described himself as the longest-serving NSW state government chief of staff. He worked as a battleground seat director for the Barry OFarrell Coalition government and was thanked by federal Liberal MP Craig Kelly in his maiden speech for work on his campaign.

Other senior employees with Liberal connections include the senior account manager, Craig Regan, who worked for federal ministers Paul Fletcher and Arthur Sinodinos, and the senior counsel, Frank Coletta, who served as senior media adviser to the NSW deputy premier.

The firm is listed on the federal lobbyist register, working for clients including Rugby Australia, Scouts Australia and eating disorder charity the Butterfly Foundation.

According to the ACT lobbyist register, the firm also has a former adviser to Labor senator Deborah ONeill on staff in Eliza Mitchell.

A spokesperson for Primary said three of its staff are registered government relations consultants, as disclosed on the register, but it does not lobby on behalf of any government departments.

Primary is also strictly non-partisan and does not work for any political party, they said. Primary provides all communication services in line with the professional and ethical standards of the Public Relations Institute of Australia and the Registered Consultancies Group.

Contracts awarded to Primary Communications Partners included $97,000 for media support to the NHMC related to Covid-19 and most recently a $199,000 contract with the ATO for public relations work.

Both the ATO and NMHC said their contracts were conducted in accordance with the commonwealth procurement rules. The NMHC said rules allowed the use of panel arrangements where agencies pick from pre-approved suppliers in open tender processes.

Primary Communications was chosen because it was assessed as representing the best value for money, the ATO spokesperson said.

Albanese accused Scott Morrison of treating taxpayers money as if it is Liberal Party money by showering his Liberal Party mates with PR contracts.

He is obsessed with wasting taxpayers money on advertising and marketing, the opposition leader said. This waste has to stop. Scott Morrisons gift to Australia is a trillion debt and a billion dollar bill for advertising.

In December, Guardian Australia revealed the Morrison government has spent a total of $128m on advertising in the past financial year, including $5.2m on market research for the ad campaigns.

Since 2013, total government advertising has cost $1bn, including high-profile campaigns spruiking government policies in the lead-up to the 2019 election although much of the cost is attributable to more mundane ads like defence recruitment.

Guardian Australia contacted the NMHC and Hall for comment.

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Federal Labor attacks government for awarding PR contracts to firm with Liberal links - The Guardian

Violence in the periphery always comes back to the center, eventually. On January 6, the world saw Trump-supporting protestors and conspiracy theorists coalesce in Capitol Hill before storming Americas legislative branch in open insurrection. Whatever we call it, the question is why it happened, and there are many partial answers.

A leader-obsessed analyst will point to Trumps acts of sedition; he played a unique role in encouraging the protestors toward violence and willful disorder. Some might draw our attention to polarization trends in American politics. Others might rightly point to structural racism or oligarchic capitalism causes that are far upstream of Trump or any singular event. Each of these takes has part of the story but misses other crucial aspects.

The Trump-centric explanation, for instance, is true but uninteresting, raising more questions than it answers. How was Trump possible? How could Trump command the violent loyalty of so many citizens when other presidents could not and would not? Polarization is a real thing, but not only reeks of whataboutism between right and left; it doesnt tell us why violence and insurrection is limited to Trump supporters with nothing comparable on the left. White supremacy, meanwhile, is unfortunately a constant in American politics, which raises the question of why now if its the underlying cause of an insurrectionist moment. And its true that extreme inequality deprives working-class conservatives of any material claim to American identity, leaving them open to radicalization because of their near total reliance on culture-war symbolism. But what, then, accounts for their material deprivation?

These answers all lay partial claim to the truth, but we should understand that what took place on Capitol Hill was a longstanding risk built into how the national security establishment thinks about foreign policy. There is a way in which we were long warned that Americas grand strategic commitment to an overmilitarized form of deep engagement abroad was always going to culminate in a direct affront to democracy.

This is bitter medicine for me, because I came up in the national security establishment before becoming a scholar and am still part of the tribe. I even believe in deep engagement, just a less militarized version thats impossible to realize as long as Washington collectively fails to see how militarized foreign policy decisions over the decades contributed to the shock on Capitol Hill. If policymakers continue to overlook the connections between what happens at home and what we do abroad, well see much worse than what happened on January 6.

A grand strategy of deep engagement sometimes gets described as liberal internationalism or liberal hegemony. Its basically US military superiority over all conceivable adversaries, forward positioned in key regions to preserve a favorable balance of power in turn necessitating US alliances to host US military presence and a global economic order structured to promote the free movement of goods and capital as well as human rights (in theory). Washingtons foreign policy mandarins have long believed that this collection of policies produces international security. For a time, it helped deter great-power wars, eschew arms-racing pressures, and incentivize prioritizing trade and diplomacy over conflict. To an extent, it arguably still does.

Speaking against the Vietnam War in 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.intoned, A nation that continues year after year to invest more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. Only a peoples experiencing spiritual death can think storming Capitol Hill is any kind of answer to their problems.

But this distinctly muscular way of engaging the world has a massive, costly blind spot overreliance on the threat and use of force. The idea that We will fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States wasnt just a Bush-era war on terror slogan; it echoes the logic of Washington grand strategy before and since the Bush days forward military everything is the best way to keep regions we care about stable.

Yet one of the classical insights from post-colonial studies and research on imperialism is that militaristic foreign policies breed militarism at home. Scholars have been writing about this for a hundred years. W.E.B. Du Bois lectured that European and American imperialism caused World War I; the perfection of killing techniques and norms of domination in far flung lands eventually made its way back home to ravage Europe, the metropole. John Hobson explained that instead of political enfranchisement and attending to inequality at home, governments used foreign threats and jingoistic foreign policy to bemuse the popular mind and divert rising resentment against domestic abuses. Distraction over progress could be the theme of the past four years. More recently, the essayist Pankaj Mishra noted how It was always an illusion to suppose that civilized peoples could remain immune, at home, to the destruction of morality and law in their wars against barbarians abroad. Weve been told in a million different poetic ways that its simply not possible to keep the destructiveness of war and its preparations quarantined overseas.

But this singularly important takeaway from the age of empires is utterly incompatible with a grand strategy of militarized liberal internationalism. US foreign policy betrays a jaundiced reading of history that skips over its most inconvenient lesson. It has given us this insurrectionist moment in unintentional but specific ways that are not hard to see if you comprehend how literal and structural violence abroad molests democracy at home.

Speaking against the Vietnam War in 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. intoned, A nation that continues year after year to invest more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. Only a peoples experiencing spiritual death can think storming Capitol Hill is any kind of answer to their problems. Dr. King witnessed anti-poverty programs in the early 1960s which were making a difference in the lives of Black people displaced by the need to pay for the escalating Vietnam War. As Michael Brenes has shown in a recent book, what King saw was the prevailing pattern of political economy in the Cold War, not an anomaly. Today, the massive cost associated with maintaining a dominant military and keeping up a horizon-less war on terrorism comes at the expense of domestic investment in programs capable of deflating anti-democratic attitudes and preventing right-wing radicalization in the first place public education, poverty reduction, public works, and realistic living wages for workers. We cant know how many of the Capitol insurrectionists were unemployed or otherwise disenfranchised, but we know that running perpetual deficits for the sake of the military apparatus rather than for national investment amounts to slow violence against civil society itself. The Cold War made a conventional wisdom of impoverishing the welfare state by substituting the warfare state. Fast forward to 2020, when the only thing Democrats and Republicans could agree on was ensuring that the National Defense Authorization Act overcame a presidential veto to commit $740 billion to defense spending. In the middle of a pandemic and great-depression economy, that kind of money could be spent giving people a brighter future than one where they believe insurrection is the only option.

War is also a powerful influence on culture, especially on masculinity. Kathleen Belews research, to take a directly salient example, exposed the Vietnam War as a wellspring for the white power movement of the 1990s, and by extension todays alt-right. So we should hardly be surprised that foreign policy would fuel a willingness to storm and occupy the Capitol in more subversive ways, like the bro culture born of endless wars.

In the ecosystem of bro culture, sharing common referents like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson means youre likely to know more about the unverified miracle benefits of CBD oil or the latest conspiracy theory than whats in the Constitution. But most people who identify with bro culture arent right-wing radicals. They simply seek something personal betterment, brotherhood, or to measure themselves against prevailing standards of masculinity. Im part of this world. I train in jiu-jitsu. I served in the military. Im a self-improvement junkie. I listened to Rogan for years. So Im not ready to condemn anyone simply for being part of a culture in which many men find fulfillment and constructive ways to channel their energy.

The problem is this way of living is capable of incubating fascism. And sometimes it does. Ive seen friends I train with go down the MAGA rabbit hole. Look at any photos of the insurrectionists at the Capitol and youre bound to see Punisher logos, camouflage fatigues, flak jackets, and any number of other accouterments of militarism even beyond the guns aplenty. Such garb accompanies the tactical life time at the shooting range, survival tactics, motivational YouTube videos by Navy SEALs, and depending on their information diet, a large dose of propaganda. The coolest parts of the culture glamorize prepping for violence and disaster without any specific purpose or intent. Its an outgrowth of a generation of (mostly) men that have lived in the ambient glow of continuous war amid everyday life. Many are veterans, and even those who arent still valorize soldiers fighting something, anything for most of my life its been terrorists and rogue states, but its quickly becoming China. Being immersed in bro culture means being ready to be activated for the right cause. A disturbing enough number of folks who live this way clearly thought storming the Capitol was the cause theyd been waiting for.

And then theres the promise of social cohesion and healing that a culture of endless wars deprives us of. Im haunted by Adam Serwers observation that War nationalism always turns inward, but in the past, wars ended. America is missing out on the boost to national unity in the civic sphere that normally follows recovery from wars because the logic of the war on terror has no end. How can we expect anything but national fracture when politicians agree on military superiority and endless war but little else?

You can dress up militarism abroad with rhetoric about liberty and freedom, but you cant escape the consequence that doing so poisons your own polity. To borrow again from Dr. King, there is a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war-centricity of American foreign policy and a degradation of democracy at home so great that waves of US citizens believe they need to launch an insurrection. The real shock is that we who make national security do not see how this nightmare was a risk built into our designs from the beginning.

Van Jackson is an American professor of international relations at Victoria University of Wellington, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and a distinguished fellow with the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. He also hosts The Un-Diplomatic Podcast and served as a strategist and policy adviser in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during the Obama administration.

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The Liberal Internationalist Origins of Right-Wing Insurrection - Inkstick

"For Michael to claim ignorance about Bernie's comments, the way he did on Monday, was just stupid, and supporting Bernie doesn't do anything to improve the assessments of his political judgements. And I say that as someone who really likes Michael."

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A day before the violence at Capitol Hill in Washington erupted, Mr Finn shared a lengthy post reiterating false claims of election fraud and wrote that US President Donald Trump had "set a wonderful example to every other national leader by putting America first".

And while rioters stormed the building, Mr Finn shared an image of former US president Ronald Reagan and an excerpt from one of his speeches.

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction," the snippet from Mr Reagan's speech began. "It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same."

David Davis, the Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council and the third most senior Liberal MP, last week said the party would confront Mr Finn over his pro-Trump social media posts.

Mr O'Brien on Monday dismissed comments about the US Capitol riots as a "fourth order" issue and refused to indicate when he would address Mr Finn's posts.

He said Liberal members had not raised any issues about Mr Finn with him.

"I'm not interested in having a conversation about every single opinion held by every single member of my party," Mr O'Brien said.

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The Opposition Leader on Tuesday refused to answer further questions about Mr Finn, would not reveal if he had spoken to his MP and said he did not discuss private conversations with his colleagues. Mr O'Brien last year revealed he had cautioned one of his frontbench MPs against calling the Premier inappropriate names.

Several Liberal Party sources said Mr Finn's status as a factional ally of Mr O'Brien was one of the reasons the Opposition Leader had refused to take an effective stand against the Western Metropolitan MP, who is also the shadow assistant minister for autism and small business.

Liberal MPs were "furious" when Mr Finn recently shared a Photoshopped image of Premier Daniel Andrews with a cross-eye that critics slammed as "ableist".

"Can you imagine if anyone else made the comments about the disabled community the way Bernie had? People would be talking about their preselection. It was f---ing outrageous," one Liberal MP, who is not an ally of Mr O'Brien, told The Age.

"There is no doubt that Bernie Finn is ... a protected species.

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"Our colleagues want to skin Bernie. We are sick of him."

One Liberal MP, factionally close to Mr O'Brien, said there were "bigger things in the world" than one MP's views, and that Mr Finn was one member of the parliamentary team working to win the next election.

Another Liberal MP said Mr O'Brien should not be held liable for the conduct of Mr Finn and his future in the caucus, warning Mr Clark, a factional ally to Mr O'Brien, and the administrative committee had far greater responsibility to manage the situation.

"Michael deserves the term, Michael deserves a chance and he doesn't need distractions like Bernie," the MP said.

"I think this is an issue for the party president and for the administrative committee I don't think this is an issue solely for Michael O'Brien ... It's the party's problem, I think it's unfair and unreasonable to put it all on Michael."

Liberal state director Sam McQuestin declined to comment. Mr Clark and Mr Finn have been contacted for comment.

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Sumeyya is a state political reporter for The Age.

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Liberal leader urged to take 'clear stand' against controversial MP Bernie Finn - The Age

Members of the Proud Boys fight with a counter protestor during a rally at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio, on Jan. 6, 2021.

Joshua A. Bickel/The Associated Press

The Trudeau government is investigating whether the extreme right-wing group the Proud Boys should be declared a terrorist organization. That is a legal decision. But theres politics in it as well. The Liberals are trying to discomfit Erin OTooles Conservatives by linking the party to extremists.

On the Proud Boys, officials will be analyzing useful intelligence and evidence as that comes forward, Mary-Liz Power, press secretary to Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, said in a statement on Sunday.

When this work is completed, it will form the basis of the decision whether or not the Proud Boys or any other ideologically motivated violent extremist organization reaches the legal threshold for listing.

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Insurrection at the U.S. Capitol: What the pro-Trump mob did, how Congress responded and what happens next

Jagmeet Singh isnt prepared to wait.

The Proud Boys helped execute Wednesdays attack on Capitol Hill, the NDP Leader tweeted Thursday. Their founder is Canadian. They operate in Canada, right now. And I am calling for them to be designated as a terrorist organization, immediately.

It will surprise no one if investigations into the attack on the Capitol Building last Wednesday conclude the Proud Boys were among the main culprits.

But prominent Liberals arent waiting for official reports or arrest warrants. They know that most Canadians despised U.S. President Donald Trump even before he incited the mob that attacked Congress.

Ive been shocked at the admiring words about Trump and Trumpism that I have personally witnessed usually off the record from members of Canadas conservative establishment, Peter Donolo wrote in an op-ed that appeared Saturday in the Toronto Star. Mr. Donolo was a senior aide to former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrtien and former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.

Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen claimed Mr. OToole and other senior Conservatives had accounts on Parler, where extreme right-wing figures migrated after Twitter banned Mr. Trump and others who incite violence.

Maybe its time to delete your Parler accounts, Mr. Gerretsen tweeted.

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The OToole account is fake, Melanie Paradis, Mr. OTooles director of communications, messaged me. Other accounts were either created as placeholders (to prevent fake accounts), or were created before Parler became associated with extremist speech. Ms. Paradis said. Google and Apple have now banned the app.

Anyone who knows Mr. OToole knows he has no truck with the radical right.

Conservatives support the listing of various white supremacist groups as terrorist organizations, the Conservative Leader declared in a statement released Sunday.

But the Tories have a political problem that the Grits are happy to exploit. Although its ludicrous to conflate support for the Conservative Party with support for white nationalism or any other form of racism lets not forget that more people voted Conservative in the previous election than for any other political party there are Canadians who support Mr. Trump, and some of them also support the Conservatives.

Elections are won or lost in Canada in the swath of suburban ridings surrounding Toronto. Those ridings contain large numbers of immigrant voters. The Liberals know that if they can plant the notion in peoples minds that the Conservatives are racially intolerant, those voters will reject the party.

Mr. OToole condemns right-wing extremism, supports a robust immigration policy, defends the rights of LGBTQ Canadians and other minorities. But he also, at times, makes poor choices. Slogans such as Take back Canada are a gift to those who seek to portray Conservatives as intolerant. Who would he take it from?

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There is a photo that shows deputy leader Candice Bergen wearing a Trump MAGA hat floating around on social media. Ms. Paradis said that someone handed Ms. Bergen the hat and asked for a photo at an event a few years ago. Its not her hat. But the photo doesnt do the Tories any favours.

The trauma of the attack on the Capitol will dominate American politics for months to come, and influence Canadian politics as well, at a cost to the Conservatives. Mr. OToole will do everything in his power to focus the voters attention elsewhere: on problems with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, on deficits and lost jobs. But there is a lot of politically damaging noise coming from south of the border.

And the Liberals will do everything they can to amplify that noise at the Conservatives expense. Politics is a tough game.

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It's absurd to conflate support for Tories with white nationalism but Liberals will try - The Globe and Mail

The day after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington, the Financial Times the worlds pre-eminent financial journal observed: America has a national security problem in the form of the far right.

This closed world of misinformation, paranoia and grievance receives succour from mainstream conservatives, public office holders and cable news anchors, it added, beforeconcluding that the costs, are increasingly unmistakable.

We all watched those events at the US Capitol with a sense of horror, and yet for me at least, without a great deal of surprise.

For ever since Donald Trump descended his golden escalator, his has been a slow-motion insurrection against all the institutions of a great democracy.

Of course it was going to end like this. This is always how insurrections end.The real question is how do they start?

From the end of the second World War until the elections of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States, the gap between rich and poor narrowed in Western countries as prosperity grew.

It was the pay-off for the defeat of fascism, the 30 glorious years as the French called them.

From 1980 onwards, the world became a place of stunning inequalities. In that time the bottom 50 per cent captured 9 per cent of total income growth, the top 1 per cent captured 28 per cent.

So the biggest economic losers of the past 30 years have been Western low- and middle-income earners, and the biggest winners in advanced economies have been the Western elite the top one per cent.

Twelve years ago, the collapse of the US financial system and housing market brought the Global Financial Crisis and the great recession that accompanied it.

As Barack Obama assumed the US presidency, the American financial system was imploding, taking the global financial system with it, and unemployment everywhere was exploding.

Just as Obama struggled to right the ship, the right-wing Tea Party faction burst on the scene and eventually took control of the Republican Party.

It threw sand in the gears of American governance and set out to cripple Obamas presidency. But their aim was deeper and broader.

As Obama puts it in his memoir, A Promised Land: GOP candidates adopted a central theme: That someone else was getting something we werent and government couldnt be trusted to be fair. Government was taking money, jobs, college slots and status away from hard-working, deserving people like us and handing it all to people like them. Those who didnt share our values, who didnt work as hard.

This, according to Obama, led to a deep and suffocating cynicism.

Economic discontent simmered amid race and cultural wars, fed by this increasingly extreme Republican sentiment.

Their aims were cynical as Obama said but their ultimate achievement was something else: Assisting Trumps takeover of the party and delivering him the presidency.

We can think that this was unintentional on the part of the Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell. But if it was, it turned out to benefit them and their donor class hugely.

And they enabled Trump every step of the way right up until the moment their front door was quite literally knocked off its hinges by a violent mob.

Incidentally this is what makes home-grown Trumpers like Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, and LNP backbenchers George Christensen and Craig Kelly so dangerous the only rats ever seen running on to a sinking ship.

We shouldnt need to see the ransacking of the Capitol to remind us that inequality breeds disdain, resentment, bullying and callousness.

We know from history that when trust is lost, people can turn to authoritarian leaders.

We are living with a political volatility of the type the world hasnt experienced since the 1930s. A ring of fire of nativist and extremist political forces, aided and abetted by state actors like China and Russia, is destabilising our world.

We ought to be encouraged that the US democracy held and incoming US President Joe Biden was bolstered by a large popular vote.

Yet 74 million Americans voted for Trump, almost 40 per cent of those believed the election outcome was rigged, and 8 per cent believe it should be overturned.

Their loss of faith in democracy wont dissipate quickly.

There was a sombre aspect to the Democrat result.

With turnout surging they still didnt do as well with working-class voters and not just white working-class voters. Whether the Democrats can figure out how to do better with working-class and middle-class voters is the biggest challenge they face.

So the economic volatility not seen for 80 years until the GFC has been followed by political volatility not seen in 90 years. And there is a connection. Big economic shocks and growing inequality have big political consequences.

This is where it all started growing inequality. And sadly COVID-19 has the potential to accelerate the process.

But it arrived several years after US politics went through the looking glass of the Trump political insurrection.

The unimaginable human tragedy of hundreds of thousands of American dead is rivalled only by the horror of watching public health measures become only the latest arena for a full-blown Trump culture war.

Trumps success has been to convince a large portion of working- and middle-class people to vote against their economic interests by pitting American against American using culture, race and identity to breed resentment.

To be serious about rescuing democracy requires social democratic parties to convince working people they can restore a measure of fairness to the operation of the market economy.

Biden did a good job of this but there is a long way to go to convince working Americans that government has the competence and the compassion to restore dignity to the American workforce and credibility to its safety nets.

There are many lessons from this experience for Australia.

Moderate small L Liberals have been driven from the party and there has been a contest among the contenders and pretenders over who is the more Trumpian.

As former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has said, up until last week Scott Morrison was content to be seen as a Trump-lite refuge in the southern hemisphere.

While its arguable whether Robodebt or the handling of the China relationship is Morrisons biggest self-inflicted disaster, the handling of both issues owes much to his tough, right-wing swagger.

It doesnt matter whether its climate change, industrial relations, removal of the Australia Post chief or a war with the ABC, the government is always out to prove its right-wing credentials to the cable TV anchors, climate change deniers, high-profile plutocrats and conservative cultural warriors.

The Prime Ministers refusal last week to condemn Trump for inciting violence is significant. As President-elect Biden said, a leaders words matter. Our Prime Minister needs to say them.

He needs to set an example and pull his far-right backbenchers into line and distance himself and our country from extremist Sky News and right-wing commentators.

As historian Timothy Snyder observed: Post-truth is pre-fascism. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place.

For Labor it has never been more important for us to put forward a platform serious about jobs and economic recovery, the quality of our democracy and real action on climate change.

The pandemic and its fallout not only makes it easier but also more urgent for us to politically dismantle the essence of the governments trickle-down agenda tax cuts for the wealthy, wage suppression for the rest, and continuous undermining of social security and the wider safety net.

We could be just nine months away from an election.

Its vital that we use our March conference to frame the choice available to Australians. Its a choice between the Labor Party led by Anthony Albanese that understands whats important to ordinary families and has a clear plan to get Australia back to work, and a failed Coalition government that didnt do enough to save jobs or get Australians back to work after COVID, and wasted the recovery with too many rorts and too much time playing politics.

In light of the recent events in the US it has never been more urgent for measures that enhance and protect accountability in our democracy.

Truth in political advertising laws, full donation transparency and campaign spending limits, a National Integrity Commission, and enhanced independence and funding for the ABC are long overdue.

The pandemic delivered to our nation a master class in why a strong social democratic state underpins our quality of life, the strength of our economy and, indeed, the durability of our democracy.

They feel acutely the pain of rising inequality and workforce deregulation. They are our people and our fight for them is our fight for our democracy.

Yes, soon enough and not a moment too soon, Trump will be gone. But the politics and the people who abetted his rise and enabled his crimes will still be there.

As far as the US is concerned, holding them to account will be the task of a hopefully newly vigorous US democratic system.

But we need to understand the Trumpers in our midst as well.

Wayne Swan was Australias Treasurer from 2007 to 2013, and Deputy Prime Minister from 2010 to 2013.

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Democracy is fragile, and the Liberal Partys embrace of Trumpism puts Australia in danger - The New Daily

Its amazing to me that Dr. Frusci would demand Nicoles resignation, but not surprising as CSI has become a brainwashing liberal college. My son went there for a year and left after he could not take being ridiculed or chastised by professors who did not let any Trump supporters voice their opinions.

Where was the doctor when the far left was saying we need unrest in the street, and our city and others were being trashed and burned to the ground? Lives were destroyed then, and not a word from the doctor or any other far-left hypocrites. We, as a nation, should stop the nonsense of only one side counts.

We should focus on getting back to normal and if there is corruption on either side, lets eliminate it. But you cannot have it both ways, Doc. I dont condone any violence anywhere, but all parties need to wake up and concentrate on making America a better place.

Right now, we are in sad shape and, as my mother always said: It takes two to fight, so dont blame one side and not the other.

(John Coughlin is a Meiers Corners resident.)

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Liberals cant have it both ways (letter to the editor) - SILive.com

Jim Vibert

The Chronicle Herald

[emailprotected]

@JimVibert

The race to replace Premier Stephen McNeil is moving into its final frenetic lap without a clear front-runner.

In less than a month on Feb. 6 Iain Rankin, Labi Kousoulis or Randy Delorey will win the leadership of Nova Scotias Liberal Party and, very soon thereafter, become the premier of the province.

Who among them will be the partys chosen one is anybodys guess. The race has tightened to the point where none of the Liberals I talked to this week would hazard such a guess. (The campaign insiders and other Liberals interviewed for this column agreed to speak on background, which means, while I can disclose what was said, I cant identify the source.)

As with so many things during the pandemic, this leadership race is unlike any before in Nova Scotia, at least in living memory. There are no rallies, no coffee klatches or tea parties crowded with local party faithful trying to size up those who would be their leader.

Just one of four all-candidate encounters had the contenders in the same room. The other three were disappointing, technology-dependent events erroneously billed as debates that produced very little political heat and not much more light.

And so, after four months of COVID-limited campaigning described as always difficult and sometimes painful by one campaign insider we are nearer to knowing who will be the next premier, but only as measured by the calendar.

Key players on each of the three campaign teams believe their man has secured more than a third of the vote or, more accurately, of the points but none expects to win on the first ballot, which would require a candidate to take 50 per cent plus one of the available 5,500 points. (Each of Nova Scotias 55 ridings is worth 100 points, assigned based on vote share.)

When the race began four months ago, many Liberals felt that Delorey was the man to beat. He came out of the starting blocks with the backing of several caucus and cabinet colleagues and a potent campaign team headlined by well-known and better-connected Grits like Kirby McVicar, McNeils former right-hand man and John Gillis, MD and former party president.

Judged by the company he kept, Delorey was almost immediately dubbed the establishment candidate. Im not quite sure who the establishment is, but Delorey is the candidate of continuity; the guy who will mostly stick to the direction set by McNeil.

Iain Rankin, another former McNeil cabinet minister all three candidates served in McNeils cabinet but resigned to offer for the leadership was, in those early days, expected to give Delorey the best run for the top.

Like Delorey, Rankin has considerable support from his caucus and cabinet colleagues. At 37, hes the youngest of the three candidates and from the outset has been advocating the most progressive policies among the three.

Dont go to sleep on Labi, was the advice one prominent, long-time Liberal offered this week, echoing the opinion of a number in the party who believe Kousoulis, initially considered the longest shot in the short field, is outperforming expectations and, in the view of some, his two opponents.

Kousoulis is the son of Greek immigrants who worked in the family restaurant in his youth, then worked his way through university. After stints in banking and with Wilsons, he started his own business, just like Stephen McNeil, he reminds his Liberal listeners.

The three candidates have made a plethora of promises and policies announcements and on most of the major issues theres not much difference between them. But as the vote draws near, predictably, the barbs are becoming a little more frequent.

Kousoulis proposes to twin the highway from Sydney to Yarmouth, a promise Rankin has derided as a low priority with a big price tag. Conversely, Rankins drawn criticism from the other camps for pledging to get Nova Scotia off coal by 2030, because to achieve that goal, they say, power bills will go through the roof. Friday, 56 per cent of Nova Scotias electricity was generated by burning coal.

Wednesday evening, when most folks were still glued to screens watching the horrific Trump-inspired attack on the U.S. Congress, the candidates had their final debate. Like the earlier versions, it was more Q-and-A than give-and-take.

Delorey, who bills himself as the most experienced candidate all three were first elected in 2013, and all three served in cabinet, although Delorey arguably held more senior portfolios in health and finance said, now more than ever, we need a proven leader.

While that may well be true, Liberals have to pick a leader from among these three guys, and exactly how any of them has proven his leadership chops escapes me.

The final words are from a former Liberal MLA and cabinet minister in a long-gone government:

Taking the measure of a candidate is incomplete without face-to-face connection. Tasting skimpy samples of statements, debates and stories are part of a meager buffet. It is strangely comforting to be detached and yet very challenging to decide on who best to lead.

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JIM VIBERT: Theres no clear front-runner in Liberal race - The Guardian

On Tuesday, the liberal-secular self-proclaimed journalists and activists attempted to not only mislead the public by peddling false propaganda on a recent incident that had allegedly occurred in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh but also endorsed paedophilia in their bid to oppose Uttar Pradesh governments recent law to stop forced conversion.

Self-proclaimed liberals took to Twitter to share a Times of India report that claimed that Bengaluru man who flew to UP to meet girl was thrashed and detained by the Uttar Pradesh. The Times of India carried out a report that claimed that a 21-year-old Muslim youth flew down from Bengaluru toLakhimpur Kheri, Uttar Pradesh to see a Hindu girl he had met online.

Reportedly, the youth was allegedly beaten up by some right-wing groups who later handed over the guy to the local police station. The man, who worked as an engineer in Bengaluru allegedly started talking to a teenager girl online since April last year. As it was her birthday, the youth wanted to see her, so he booked a flight, brought gifts a soft toy, chocolates and sweets and reached Lucknow.

The report claimed that when he got there, the parents of the girl asked him who he was. As he revealed his identity, the neighbours gathered and soon a group of right-wing outfit joined, who beat him up and informed the police, the report claimed adding that the groups acted on the apprehension of forced conversion.

The usual fake news peddlers descended on social media platform to peddle misleading information on the incident. Rohini Singh, associated with leftist propaganda website The Wire, took to Twitter to claim that a Muslim man was jailed and beaten as he wanted to wish the girl on her birthday.

Singh, who has a complicated relationship with the facts, insinuated that the youth was beaten up as he was a Muslim youth and went on to deliberately ignore the real facts pertaining to the issue.

Rana Ayyub, the Islamist troll masquerading as journalist, as usual used the opportunity to spew venom against the country. Sharing misinformation, she claimed that Muslim youth was thrashed and detained by Uttar Pradesh police for meeting a Hindu girl. Shockingly, without any shame, Ayyub called India a shithole country.

Vidya Krishnan, who claims to be a Health reporter, also ignored the facts of the case and instead shared a misleading article put up by Times of India, which was devoid of facts in the first place. Vidya then went on to blame Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the alleged incident.

Shehla Rashid, who wants Dalits to give up their reservations for Muslims compared PM Modi to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

However, the claim that the youth was beaten up by the right-wing groups only because he was a Muslim is a blatant lie.

The report by Times of India has left out important facts pertaining to the incident. It seems like Times of India has deliberately chose to ignore certain facts in the case as it fails to mention that the Hindu girl was a minor. The 21-year-old Muslim youth had reportedly lured the minor girl on social media platform and got access to her phone number.

Most importantly, the minor girl did not even recognise the Muslim youth when he visited her house in Uttar Pradesh. The accused did not visit to the residence of minor girl alone, but was accompanied by one of his companions, whofledfrom the spot after neighbours confronted them.

Contrary to the reports that the youth was in a relationship with the Hindu girl, in reality, the youth had only talked with the girl a few times on social media. However, there was no relationship between the two. The Muslim youth was in an one-sided affair, who mistook their conversations as some kind of relationship and reached Lucknow to meet the minor girl.

Despite the fact that the Muslim youth was chasing a minor Hindu girl and was in a one-sided relationship, the liberal-secular intelligentsia and the left-wing trolls on social media continue to spread false propaganda on the issue by claiming that the Uttar Pradesh government was harassing consenting inter-faith couples. However, it is not true.

In their hurry to target the Uttar Pradesh government over the recent law to stop the forced religious conversions, especially the Grooming Jihad cases, the left-liberals have not gone to the extent of supporting the heinous act of paedophilia.

Excerpt from:

In a bid to oppose UPs anti-forced religious conversion law, Liberals end up endorsing paedophilia - OpIndia

Liberals are criticizing Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg's claims that her platform is not responsible for the attack on the U.S. Capitol despite significant evidence of violence being incited on Facebook in the days before the attack.

I think these events were largely organized on platforms that dont have our abilities to stop hate, and dont have our standards and dont have our transparency, Sandberg, the company's chief operating officer, told the Reuters Next conference on Monday.

Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog that has been monitoring Facebook content, said that Sandberg's claims are designed to deflect attention from Facebook and shift the blame to other platforms like Parler or Gab, which are popular among conservatives.

On Monday, at the same time that Sandberg made these comments, there were at least 70 active Stop the Steal groups active on Facebook, according to Media Matters, meaning that tens of thousands of Facebook users are still using such groups and racking up millions of interactions. Forty-six of these Stop the Steal groups were private, and so it would be difficult for the public to know the communications occurring within them. The "Stop the Steal" phrase refers to President Trump's claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

Democrats have accused Sandberg of making false statements and being disingenuous in her denial of Facebook's role in fomenting violence that led to the Capitol attack.

"Its amazing how effortlessly Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg can lie through her teeth," said Jon Cooper, an ally of President-elect Joe Biden who has worked for both Biden's and President Barack Obama's campaigns in the past.

"This is demonstrably false," Rachel Cohen, communications director for Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, said of Sandberg's claims. Cohen on Twitter cited news articles with evidence of Facebook allowing its users to organize and incite violence before the Capitol attack.

Some went so far as to call Sandberg to leave her leadership role at Facebook.

"Is a Sheryl Sandberg denial a prelude to a Zuckerberg apology? Either way both are inadequate and demonstrate why they both need to resign," Democratic Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky said on Twitter on Tuesday.

Sandberg on Monday admitted that Facebook's content moderation enforcement "is never perfect, so Im sure there were still things on Facebook."

Just hours after Sandbergs comments on Monday, Facebook announced, many weeks after the election and five days after the attack on the Capitol, that it would remove all content containing the phrase "stop the steal" in an attempt to curb misinformation that could incite violence during Biden's inauguration.

Media Matters, the liberal watchdog, said Monday that Facebook's actions to censor "Stop the Steal" content was "once again too little, too late."

Facebook's explanation Monday for the delay was that they have been allowing robust conversations related to the election outcome and that will continue."

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Liberals accuse Facebook of lying about its moderation of 'Stop the Steal' content - Washington Examiner