When all else fails, try fear

December 29, 2023 11:54 PM

A musical number about how in 2001, with his poll numbers dropping, the then-Prime Minister of Australia John Howard used fear and xenophobia to boost his ratings. Facebook link with professional captions. Youtube link with only crappy auto-generated captions. It's also noteworthy as a general song about how some politicians around the world wrap themselves in the flag and use persecution of refugees to boost their votes. This is from a 2023 Australian TV show called Australian Epic, which is a historical retrospective which intersperses serious interviews with key experts and witnesses with musical numbers by actors. This song is from the episode about the political showdown of the Tampa affair, when a Norwegian freighter carrying 433 rescued refugees was denied entry into Australian waters by the Howard government. If you are in Australia you can watch the whole episode about the Tampa affair here: unfortunately, it is geolocked.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (5 comments total)

I was watching, thinking as I sometimes do, that it's impressive what the ABC gets through sometimes, and then they flashed up Thatcher as an example of someone who led through economic prosperity instead of fear, and I relaxed as the balance was restored to state media.
posted by Audreynachrome at 4:44 AM on December 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

Jesus fuck, chariot pulled by cassowaries, I did not expect John Howard references today. Great post (as usual) but I'm nope-ing the fuck out of that eyebrow motherfucker tonight...
posted by prismatic7 at 5:16 AM on December 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Jesus fuck, chariot pulled by cassowaries, I did not expect John Howard references today. Great post (as usual) but I'm nope-ing the fuck out of that eyebrow motherfucker tonight...

prismatic7, if it makes you feel better, the part of John Howard in the music video is played by an Asian actress with glued-on giant eyebrows and an impressive vocal range.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:43 AM on December 30, 2023

That fucking election. My first one. Dutifully cast my vote in the mortgage belt for the Australian Democrats for lower and upper houses under the leadership of Stott Despoja. For all the bloody good it would do. Put the ALP above the Liberal but our seat was pretty safe Liberal.

Should have been PM Beazley and Australia would have been better off for it.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 10:13 PM on December 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

To be fair, Australia always being better off under Labor than the silvertails is a generally applicable principle, the craven Australian press's historical success at misrepresenting the latter as "better economic managers" notwithstanding.

At some point I expect to be able to test my firm expectation that we'll be better off still under a Labor/Greens coalition.
posted by flabdablet at 10:37 PM on December 30, 2023