William Rait
1 August 2024
Doubtless, by now, we have all heard the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation”. Or who could forget, “fake news”, a favourite jibe of former President Trump. Certainly you will have noticed the increasing prevalence of demands for “freedom of speech”—or decries of its inverse, “government censorship”.
Unless you have been living under a rock, you’ve heard of Elon Musk’s sensational acquisition of Twitter. “Failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,” wrote musk, shortly before purchasing the platform in 2022. You might even have enjoyed a spirited wine-fuelled lecture on the topic, delivered to you by that friend who spends too much time scrolling Youtube.
If you are paying attention domestically, you will know about proposed new laws “to combat online misinformation and disinformation”. You can sample public opinion toward these laws for yourself by perusing submissions received as part of the government’s consultation process, available here. I implore my learned colleagues to do so, as there are some spirited submissions.
A group calling themselves “The People’s Revolution”, for example, who boast a swish website, replete with a merchandise shop, submitted that the proposed laws “will see the descent of this great nation into fascism the likes of which even Stalin and Mao could not conceive of in their wildest dreams”.
Organic Baby Bodysuit available on The People’s Revolution website shop
Now, it’s easy to poke fun at some eccentric who thinks Stalin and Mao dreamed of fascism, or at eccentric billionaires for that matter. But some submissions are highly considered, raising complex and thought-provoking points.
“Science in fact shifts suddenly on occasion, not just in an incremental manner”, one submission reads, referencing Thomas Kuhn’s seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Scientific mis- or disinformation one day, might be scientific truth the next, the point goes.
Relatedly, there is plenty of furore surrounding COVID, and at least a third of submissions seem to make rather dramatic segue into comparisons with totalitarian regimes. After haranguing their government with foreboding warnings about Australia goose-stepping its way toward an Orwellian nightmare, some authors end their submission with “Sent from my iPhone”.
But what do these submissions reveal, beside reminding us of our fellow Australians’ propensity for colourful political expression? I would have you consider the following.
Cultural rituals often persist, largely out of habit, long after the original reasons or meaning behind them have faded away. Take the increasing obscurity of Anzac Day, for example. Dawn service attendance has plummeted in recent years. This is unsurprising.
It is almost 106 years since the end of the World War One, 79 years since the end of World War Two, and 51 years have passed since Australian withdrawal from Vietnam. Afghanistan and Iraq remain in recent memory, but these wars are not comparable in scale. 39,657 Australians died serving in World War Two, compared to 47 in Afghanistan and 4 in Iraq.
There are simply less Australians living today who can remember the horrors of war, and so, its lessons fade from our cultural memory. Yet, many continue to observe Anzac Day passionately, with a kind of “intuition” that losing that cultural memory risks us repeating history’s mistakes. These ever-vigilant observers sometimes seem like fossils, unusual specimens to find in the 21st century, but their intuition is ever prescient.
Like war, the threat of democracy’s demise is always lurking. Clumsy as they may seem, the torch bearers for “free speech” sense something in the waters. Perhaps something that we have forgotten. Is their intuition true, or are they barking mad?
Purely Dicta 