I bumped into a quote by Frank Zappa on Sunday. It was: “The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre”1.
This got me thinking about the propaganda that citizens are fed about their own country. By this, I don’t mean so much about the propaganda put out by political parties. Political propaganda tends to use selective information that supports a particular viewpoint, and often features repetitive messaging to create the illusion of truth. Most dangerously, and more so in recent decades, political propaganda often creates a dichotomy between ‘us’ and ‘them’ to foster division and loyalty to a particular group, while asserting that the political competition are in favour of ‘them’2. This is particularly prevalent among conservatives and bigots.
What I am on about here is internal propaganda, or civil propaganda, which is largely apolitical in that both sides of politics use the same propaganda for their own ends. In the US, citizens are told that they live in the greatest country on the planet, which they will tell you is the land of the free. While I am only looking from the outside, the prevalence (albeit declining) of American television programs in Australia, make this propaganda less unfamiliar than it otherwise could be. Most people in other western democracies know that this is only that, propaganda, something that was very clearly explained in the answer to a question in the superb television series ‘The Newsroom’ which was spoken by Jeff Daniels and written by Aaron Sorkin3. In part, it went as follows:
“…just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is that there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re seventh in literacy, twenty-seventh in math, twenty-second in science, forty-ninth in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force, and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies. None of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student, but you, nonetheless, are without a doubt, a member of the WORST-period-GENERATION-period-EVER-period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about?! Yosemite?!!! We sure used to be. We stood up for what was right! We fought for moral reasons, we passed and struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were, and we never beat our chest. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and cultivated the world’s greatest artists and the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, and we acted like men. We aspired to intelligence; we didn’t belittle it; it didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election, and we didn’t scare so easy. And we were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed. By great men, men who were revered. The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one—America is not the greatest country in the world anymore”3,4.
The series ran for three seasons from 2012 to 20145.
I have occasionally bumped into Americans, many of whom in the not too distant past, seemed to be Trump supporters, and who seem to want to justify their idiocy in electing the Mango Mussolini. There are vastly fewer of such people now as the reality of the Trump idiocy is dawning on them. When those Trumpettes used to start spouting the drivel about the land of the free, I simply tell them that the only freedoms they have that we don’t have in Australia, are to go broke from medical bills and to die in a hail of bullets. They tended to go away after that.
I suspect that all countries (I have only been to a few) have their peculiar style of internal propaganda. In Australia those in power will tell you it is all about the ‘fair go’ and ‘mateship’ which makes us special. This also is complete bullshit, just as US civil propaganda is there.
Mateship is said to be peculiar to Australians and New Zealanders, but is very difficult to define6. If you look it up on the internet you get all sorts of definitions as well as huge amounts of propagandising, such as the following: “Mateship is a uniquely Australian term that represents a strong bond between people, built on mutual trust, support, and equality. It is about standing by one another in times of hardship, offering a helping hand without expecting anything in return, and treating others with fairness and respect. Mateship is not limited to close friends—it extends to colleagues, neighbours, and even strangers in need. This concept is a core part of Australian identity, reflecting the country’s values of inclusivity and resilience. Unlike traditional hierarchical relationships, mateship is based on equality, where everyone is seen as a mate, regardless of their background, status, or wealth”7. It is unsurprising that this quote comes from a marketing corporation.
Mateship is said to come from the early days after colonisation when, in this harsh, sparsely populated landscape, [white] people depended on it. The propagandists will usually also throw in something about the ANZACs in the First World War. This gives an indication that no other countries with a harsh environment have been sparsely populated in their early days. This would be news to other places such as Canada, the US, Russia, Brazil, and Argentina among many others. Troops from many of these countries and numerous others also fought in the First and Second World Wars. Marketers and politicians want us to think we are special in this way, but we are not.
Australia is also said to be the land of the ‘fair go’, which suggests that we are a classless society. This is something that is deeply ingrained in the national psyche, the marketers and all politicians would have you believe. In Australia, cost-of-living pressures, stagnant wage growth and unaffordable housing, are issues that have a disproportionately negative impact on people from lower classes, but we tend not to talk about class. We need to recognise that our class means we don’t all start from the same place, and it means that we don’t all have the same opportunities throughout our lives8.
Research by the Diversity Council, based on a survey of more than 3,000 workers, showed that for Australian workers it’s class more than any other diversity demographic investigated, that is the most strongly linked to workers experience of inclusion at work and one of the most strongly linked to exclusion, with 43% of lower class workers reported having personally experienced discrimination and/or harassment in the workplace in the last 12 months, compared to 26% of higher class workers9.
In addition, the Australian neoliberal economic system doesn’t give many people a fair go. Ever since the adoption of neoliberal economics, the disparity between rich and poor has risen. Neoliberalism is that economic system which emphasises market-driven policies and has led to the erosion of traditional forms of social support such as in the reduction of income support payments, the privatisation of essential services, and the increasing reliance on punitive compliance mechanisms. As a result, those who are most in need of support are often the least able to access it. Part of neoliberalism is the stigmatisation of welfare recipients who are often portrayed as lazy or irresponsible such that they are often subjected to intrusive assessments and monitoring, which can be both humiliating and disempowering and often leads to vulnerable people facing social exclusion10.
Perhaps epitomising this is the bastardry of the Howard government regarding investment in housing. The housing crisis plaguing Australia is the direct result of Coalition taxation policies that favour individuals with capital and assets, and disadvantages individuals on wage incomes. In 1999, Howard reduced Capital Gains Tax (CGT) liabilities by 50 per cent for individuals investing in property, after Labor had introduced the CGT in 1985. This reduction resulted in a boom in investment in existing housing (an instantly earning asset), and it prompted richer individuals to transfer income into capital gains to reduce their personal tax bill. His led to a fall in tax revenue, so, in 2000 Howard introduced the Goods and Services Tax (GST) to bolster lagging tax receipts. The GST taxes a higher proportion of income from the poor than from the rich. After 25 years of Howard’s CGT tax cut for property investors, the unstoppable boom in house prices still continues, yet it occurs without a concomitant boom in house construction. Indeed, the rate of annual construction has fallen from a high of almost 10 houses per 1000 population in 1970 to just over 6 per 1000 today11.
As an example of the housing price rises; back in 1985, we bought our first house for $74,000 which at that time was about 3.5 times my then salary. That same house would now cost close to 10 times the current salary of the same job. This decoupling of house prices and wages started soon after Howard introduced the CGT tax cut12.
That is not a fair go. As Midnight Oil said, ‘the rich get richer and the poor get the picture’. Fair go? The only people who get a fair go are those with loads of cash, and that is at the expense of everyone else.
Sources
- https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12280-the-illusion-of-freedom-will-continue-as-long-as-it-s
- https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8865339/understanding-political-propaganda-in-australia/
- https://bemagazine.org/video-the-newsroom-america-is-not-the-greatest-country-in-the-world-anymore-but-it-could-be/
- https://speakola.com/movie/jeff-daniels-sorkin-newsroom-2012
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Newsroom_(American_TV_series)
- https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2021/10/mateship-might-sound-blokey–but-our-research-shows-women-value-
- https://ibapartner.com/the-true-meaning-of-mateship-and-why-it-defines-australian-culture/
- https://www.dca.org.au/news/opinion-pieces/land-of-the-fair-go
- https://www.dca.org.au/research/class-at-work
- https://socialjusticeaustralia.com.au/neoliberalism-in-australia-3/
- https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2024/09/16/howard-government-housing-crisis
- https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/what-the-hell-happened-the-year-australian-house-prices-broke/news-story/d1da4674b3f60efa32fd636ef2108141
