Raising Hell: Issue 21: If The Coup Fits, You Will Still Probably Acquit

If anything could be said about the acquittal of Donald J Trump, it’s that from a distance the detail of the whole sage reads like an atavistic American fairy tale. A failed New York real estate mogul and the “king of debt” fumbles his way to the apex of the American state where he spends roughly four years deploying its institutions against anyone he doesn’t personally like. When he loses the election, he goes on to insight a motley collection of fascists to storm the Capitol building in his name but is ultimately let off on a technically by the pro-business conservatives who once promised to keep him in check.

Not being American, I’m in no real position to offer judgement on this series of events, especially as there are others with their finger on that particular pulse. For me, the significance in waking up to news Trump had been acquitted was more so what it meant for everyone else outside the US who might have been watching. For all the debates about what actually constitutes “fascism” currently raging among the American left since January 6, the reality is right-wing authoritarianism has imprinted itself on polities from Turkey to Brazil. For the Orban’s and Erdogan’s and Bolsonaro’s of the world, Trump’s clumsy incitement of an insurrection may yet prove a quick how-to guide for anyone else thinking about seizing power. It doesn’t matter that he did not exactly succeed. What matters is how well those guys might learn from Trump’s mistakes.

Video: Mitch McConnel’s ferocious speech — given minutes after letting Trump off the hook.

Even among liberal-democracies that haven’t quite broached the same level of authoritarianism yet, the whole episode should be worrisome to anyone engaged with civil society for the signal it sends those looking to do bad things. The acquittal of a former US president — a position that despite what Democrats like to tell their supporters, remains one the most powerful offices in the world partly owing to the ability to drone-strike anyone, anywhere, anytime — on an apparent technicality may be the American Dream in action, but it also reinforces the growing awareness that there are no real consequences for wrongdoing.

Here in Australia, some version of this sensibility has already taken root. It’s why the office of the New South Wales Premier can shred documents and be told they did nothing wrong, why the Federal government can promise bushfire ravaged regions the world without ever paying a cent and why the Prime Minister can’t seem to give a straight answer to even basic questions. To be fair, some version of this had been brewing under previous iterations of the Conservative government but the big lesson of the 2019 federal election was that it was possible to screw up every way possible and still get elected — so much so that now people aren’t even trying to hide their bad behaviour.

In fact, that we have now be reminded that coups are once again possible makes everything else seem less bad by comparison. Abuse of office, insider trading, bribery — all of these things become more likely because what is possible has shifted. Given the way that conservative parties in particular are highly organised and networked thanks to the dizzying array of thinktanks, industry associations, campaign consultants and staffer-swap programs, my concern is that whatever ambivalence takes takes hold among the US Republicans going forward will quickly be exported round the world.

But then, what can you do? Plague and political instability are nothing new in historical terms. And as any student of history could tell you, the only constant through time is that no one ever really learns anything, anyway and getting worked up about it makes about as much sense as trusting Craig Kelly with pharmacology.

Reporting In

Where I recap what I’ve been doing this last fortnight so you know I’m not just using your money to stimulate the local economy …

It was a busy fortnight as I tracked the saga following the alleged FunTea assault and have been hard at work putting to bed other projects so please enjoy this list of everything I’ve published:

• ‘Woman assaulted during dispute over alleged unpaid wages in South Australia’ (The Guardian, 2 February 2021).
• ‘South Australia assault: man arrested after woman attacked during dispute over alleged unpaid wage’ (The Guardian, 3 February 2021).
• ‘Adelaide bubble tea shop assault: women hit back at employer's claims’ (The Guardian, 4 February 2021).
• ‘South Australia assault: owner of Adelaide tea shop admits to paying worker $10 an hour’ (The Guardian, 10 February 2021).
• For more on the FunTea saga, you can also see this Tweet thread from me offering more detail.
• ‘What The Hell Is It Like To Actually Investigate A Cold Case?’ (Raising Hell, 11 February 2021).
• ‘New Victorian MP Keith Wolahan's disappointing position on Indigenous rights’ (NITV, 12 February 2021).
• ‘Wages war in Adelaide’s Chinatown’ (The Saturday Paper, 13 February 2021).
• ‘The Australian property market is booming but the gains are based on 'massive' debts’ (The Guardian, 16 February 2021).

Photo: Image taken from the protest against wage theft in Adelaide’s Chinatown (Source: Royce Kurmelovs)

Cracking COVIDSafe

Over the course of November, Raising Hell ran its first serialised investigation, CrackingCOVIDSafe, in association with Electronic Frontiers Australia. The series looked at the creation of the government’s automated contact tracing app COVIDSafe and stepped out how I used Freedom of Information to learn more so that others may learn to do their own. Along the way, we tracked how a constellation of government agencies and a clutch of for-profit companies made a hash of a new public service. So far we have managed to reveal how the government prioritised reputational risk over service quality and how security issues were not addressed by government for weeks after release, even though they put the app in breach of the government’s own privacy policy.

Laramba’s Water

The story of Laramba so far is straight forward. High concentrations of uranium were first found in Laramba’s water back in 2008. The situation in the remote Indigenous community of about 263 people hit the headlines in 2018 when NT Power and Water Corporation (PWC) published a report showing uranium concentrations there nearly three times higher than the national guidelines. That story made news again early this year when the community lost a legal fight to force the NT Government to do something to fix it.

Thanks to the support of my generous subscribers I’ve been able to pick up the issue to find out more. Here’s a running list of published stories that will be updated as I do more over time.

• ‘High levels of uranium in drinking water of NT community’ (NITV, 31 July 2020).
• ‘Company remains shtum on plans to filter Laramba's contaminated water supply’ (NITV, 21 October 2020).

Just Money (UQP, 2020).

I’ll be marking my first ever appearance at Adelaide Writers Week this year in 2021 and I can tell already tell you it’s going to be a riot. You can catch me hosting a panel with poet Geoff Goodfellow and Chris Raja about their recent books, chatting with Rick Morton about our recent books, including Just Money, and talking to Marian Wilkinson, author of The Carbon Club. You can grab more details in the links below:

• Suburban Dreaming (Sat 27 Feb, 1:15pm)
• (Re)launch: Live and Local! (Sat 27 Feb, 6:15pm)
• The Meaning of Money (Sun 28 Feb, 9:30am)
• The Carbon Club (Thu 04 Mar, 12:00pm)

You Hate To See It

A dyspeptic, snark-ridden and highly ironic round-up of the news from our shared hellscape…

• Dressing For War? Make A Statement: Clash!

  American Apparel, the once-favoured Millennial purveyor of fashion basics, is attempting to claw its way out of financial doom by pivoting to the Military Industrial Complex. In announcing the $1.1 million contract with the company, the US Department of Defence described it as a way “to sustain critical industrial base production of U.S. military uniforms” that “will offset financial distress brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

• Thoughts And Prayers

  And if anyone was wondering how things are going in the US now that the Trump show has closed its first season, the Biden administration is trying to secure a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill with massive cuts to key systems like healthcare, the White House now has love-heart signs on the front lawn for Valentines day urging the citizenry to “unity”, “healing” and “courage”.

  Reporter: What inspired you to organize this Valentine's Day art installation at the White House?
  
  First Lady Dr. Jill Biden: "I just wanted some joy ... With the pandemic, just everybody's feeling a little down. So, it's just a little joy. A little hope. That's all."

  — NBC News (@NBCNews) 2:44 PM ∙ Feb 12, 2021

• Yas Queen!

  To England now where Queen Elizabeth, has been using her power as the ultimate SHE-EO of the entire British Commonwealth to pursue her dreams and actualise stricter secrecy laws that hide the extent of her family’s inherited wealth built on the back of decades of colonialism. Because while she certainly owns it, there does come a point where flaunting it in front of the masses is just embarrassing.

• If It Quacks Like A Neo-Nazi…

  It’s true that 2020 may have been bad, but 2021 is already getting weirder as news comes a roving gangs of white nationalists has been prowling the streets of Albury-Wodonga. A group who have declared themselves an Australian offshoot of the Proud Boys, a US neo-fascist group that has been declared a terrorist organisation in Canada, has been turning up to random workplaces to terrorise people they accuse of being “members of Antifa” — usually just because they said something mean about them on the internet.

• The World Of Finance Is Bastards All The Way Down

  Anyone who has stumbled across mention of microfinance will have probably heard the same pitch. The programs promise financial freedom to the masses by lending small amounts for things like starting a small business or paying for white goods. Unfortunately, some pesky academics have looked at it and concluded the only difference between payday lending and microfinance is the mission statement.

• Bread And Circuses, But Digital!

  The worlds billionaire tech oligarchs are now looking to deploy virtual reality as a “solution” to issues like wealth inequality, environmental disaster and political instability, rather than, you know, solving problems like wealth inequality, environmental disaster and political instability — all of which may ultimately involve the same people having to give up a portion of their wealth or generate fewer plant-killing bitcoins.

• Money Can’t Buy Class

  Lawyers. You gotta love them, especially when they’ve been getting in the news for all the wrong reasons of late. First there was the lawyer caught on camera stripping down and having sex with a client during an video hearing. Then there was the internet-breaking moment when another technologically inept lawyer accidentally turned on a cat filter during a hearing held over Zoom to hilarious effect.

Failing Upward

Where we recognise and celebrate the true stupidity of the rich, powerful and influential…

• This fortnight, we here at the Raising Hell offices simply couldn’t slow-roll past the figures of Daniel Wild and Cian Hussey of the Institute of Public Affairs. The duo were the authors behind a “report” for the organisation that claimed any Australian transition to a zero carbon economy would lead to the loss 653,600 jobs and see the “complete destruction” of regional downs. As an exercise in pearl-clutching, the detail of the report appears to have been uncritically picked up by The Australian, complete with a portrait photo of Nationals MP Matt Canavan covered in coal dust. We expect it to be used to justify letting the world burn for years to come.

  

  We’re no statisticians, so thankfully the ABC’s Casey Briggs took the time to explain why the report is (in our words) more or less bullshit and how the authors pretty much made shit up in order to generate a scary headline that is politically useful. Despite peddling in mistruths, we expect Wild and Hussey are well-remunerated and will continue to enjoy a enviable degree of job security due to their willingness to shill for the oil and gas sector.

Good Reads, Good Times

To share the love, here are some of the best or more interesting reads from the last fortnight…

• IndigenousX published a moving piece about how the duty to “bury our own” is a radical act of resistance among Indigenous people whose burial sites have been desecrated and the bodies of their answers pilfered to sit in museums across the world.

• US media outfit Axiom have this incredible account of a deranged meeting in which the Trump Whitehouse lurched towards a fascist takeover. The whole story is best summed up in the following par:

  At its essence, the Powell crew's argument to the president was this: We have the real information. These people — your White House staff — don't believe in the truth. They're liars and quitters. They're not willing to fight for you because they don't want to get their hands dirty. Put us in charge. Let us take control of everything. We'll prove to you that what we're saying is right. We won't quit, we'll fight. We're willing to fight for the presidency.

• In the much-needed time I took off over Christmas, I missed this really great article in The Guardian pointing to how the obsessive focus with the psychology of the individual left us exposed to a global crisis in which we needed to cooperate. This connects with another great essay in Overland talking about bullshit jobs and how the very category of “essential workers” has exposed the politics of the last thirty years as craven opportunism.

• I’m also a sucker for street photography, so when I clocked this in the New Yorker about American Street photographer Corky Lee, I had to share it.

• Not quite a goodread, but science magazine Aeon have this incredible half hour documentary that cobbles together footage from successive years of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. The production kicks off with a group of protesters who have to ask directions to the nearest Bank of China branch — which they promptly set on fire.

Before You Go (Go)…

• Are you a public sector bureaucrat whose tyrannical boss is behaving badly? Have you recently come into possession of documents showing some rich guy is trying to move their ill-gotten-gains to Curacao? Did you take a low-paying job with an evil corporation registered in Delaware that is burying toxic waste under playgrounds? If your conscience is keeping you up at night, or you’d just plain like to see some wrong-doers cast into the sea, we here at Raising Hell can suggest a course of action: leak! You can securely make contact through Signal or through encrypted message Wickr Me on my account: rorok1990.
• And if you’ve come this far, consider supporting me further by picking up one of my books, leaving a review or by just telling a friend about Raising Hell!