Not a lot economic news in Australia this week but the US is cramming five days worth of economics into just three days thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday.
McClelland’s new terror bill is soft totalitarian nonsense
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Robert McClelland is probably not the dimmest bulb in the Rudd government, but he sure looks it — an owly dopey dad from a US sitcom, blinking beneath a twelve dollar coiffure which looks like it was lowered on to his pate with a fish-hook. That’s disarming and unfortunately so, because amid the blundering around in the new terror bill, some of it good, some of it, well, terrifying, is this neat little idea about extending the notion of harm to include “psychological harm” arising from an attempted or completed terror attack. Historians of the future are going to love that one, because it brings together in one swift move, the two dominant repressive forces of our time — the extension of a national security state usually associated with the political right, and the quasi-therapeutic social control of people which has become the hallmark of the “New Labour” left. Indeed Rudd New Labour — its offices frequently visited and advised by New Labour experts cum refugees — can justly claim that this is the first time it has extended the masterful social control politics of the Blair-Brown era, with something of its own — an open-ended notion of harm whereby stupid or malign non-violent acts, such as calling in a fake bomb threat, can now achieve the status of an actual physical act of terror, because the ‘harm’ was no less real. The law already allows for this. Calling in a bomb threat can already get you jail, with the penalty determined to a degree by the inconvenience, terror, actual disarray or injury it causes. The crime of assault includes the provision that the threat of violence in itself can constitute assault. But in these and other cases, the notion of harm is predicated on the possibility of actual violence down the road, and seen as subordinate to it. We don’t extend the menace notions of assault into the criminalisation of sarcasm for example — even though the relentless application of such could mess with someone’s head, or in the jargon, do harm. What McClelland’s bill wants to do is reverse the relationship between physical and psychological harm — essentially the reverse engineering of a crime from the assumptions that the social policy professions that surround labour use to construct their reality. In a world where everyone receives counselling after a nosebleed, every kid has ADD and every incident is a possible cause of PTSD, the notion that people are simply psychological crash-test dummies rather than robust and resilient citizens in a free society comes naturally to Labour. The core of this logic is implicitly totalitarian, not in an old-fashioned police and camps sort of way, but in a softer fashion in which every aspect of life, inner and outer, is colonised by the state and systems of law, punishment and control. Thus rather than the reaction to an actual terror incident — of which we have had none precisely since 9/11 — being left as a free space whereby some people are freaked out, others take it in stride etc etc, the reaction of citizens to a negative event, McClelland’s idea is that these reactions should be calibrated, measured, analysed and a standardised trauma scenario made the implicit norm. In other words, people are treated not as citizens, but as subjects — i.e. subject to forces shaping them, strapped on the metaphorical gurney being measured. Such soft totalitarian lawmaking comes naturally to Labour governments when they have largely abandoned the task of tackling inequality and allowing people the space to take more power, rather than simply mitigating the worst effects of an inequality permanently imposed — in the name of ‘nation-building and the creating of a global elite. The “nation-building” language of Rudd and Gillard comes as much from Mussolini’s side as it does from the progressive Labour tradition, and when notions such as McClelland’s idea of psychological harm as a “real” thing is added, then the repressive aspects of the package are complete. Like most of what came out of 2020, its construction by a labour elite inevitably bodies forth a profound contempt for citizens, disguised as overweening concern. Should this nonsense make it to the final bill, one will watch with interest whether the Coalition have the strength to stick to their liberal traditions and knock it back — or will they be stampeded by the politics of fear, which this law raises to a positive standard. Don’t hold your breath — others might be worried about you, and that would be a cause of psychological harm. Let’s hope McClelland’s head does something other than support real hair that manages to look like a wig, about as neat a picture of the proposed legislation as you could wish. |
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14 Comments
Thought provoking, just a correction re terror incidents “of which we have had none precisely since 9/11”. There have been lots, but mainly committed by our big bully brother, while we cheered on the sidelines.
Blair and Brown have turned the UK into a police state and Obama is planning similar in the US through the extension of FEMA powers, the Patriot Act and Obama’s youth brigades. I hope Australians let their governments know they are not going to be conned by this age old tactic of the state.
Remember Rahm Emmanuel’s oft cited comment:
“You can never let a crisis go to waste” . And if you don’t have a naturally occurring one you can always conjure one up. No thanks I am passing!
WTF ” the Coalition have the strength to stick to their liberal traditions and knock it back”
Mate, that’s got to be the funnist thing I’ve ever read. Where did Rundle go? we want Guy back!
Yes, this latest attempt at state terrorism is certainly causing me psychological harm. But, since when have we had a “Labour” party? Has some sub-ed gone crazy? This is starting to do my head in…. is it time to call in AFP?
yeah fair enough phil. i should have put a ‘purported’ in there somewhere.
This “psychological vs physical” dualism is dubious, given the evidence that PTSD can cause brain, ie physical, damage in children, for instance.
Do you know that there are more CCTV cameras in England than in China? For quite some time I have suspected that we are chasing communists. It seems we’ve surpassed them already.
The Western ‘democratic’ legislations more and more look like a copy cat from the Soviet Block. And all in the name of liberty!!! It would be good if our politicians had the guts to tell us that they are changing our political system without our knowledge. Anti-terrorist laws are very arbitrary and usually terrorise the whole community.
It reminds me about many jokes from the Soviet era, but one about Mayakovski, the revolutionary poet, comes to my mind.
’ NKVD officers knocked at somebody’s door at dawn. ‘Hallo, Mr. Mayakovsky, open the door’ The door is open and a very elated guy on his knees praying to God says: Thank you, thank, you thank you. Mr. Mayakovski lives next floor’.
(Mayakovsky ‘committed a suicide’ at the NKVD orders.)
When Shrub railled that bin Liner wanted to destroy amerika’s way of life he was doing his usual imbecile, hysterical trope.
As the perennial ACP Presidential candidate said, “When fascism comes to amerika it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a bible”.
The most effective way to destroy a nation is from within, always in the name of ‘protection’
No harm that bin Liner could have phantasised would come within cooee of what Blaaahh, Shrub, Rodent did to their citizens and now Krudd will do even more, in that brain dead, bureaucratic way of all apparatchiks. The word, “Kafkaesque” is often wrong used to mean a malevolent BigBrother but what he wrote about was a mindless, lumbering, insensible & uncaring behemoth, sorta like…..
joan, that’s exactly the division between the idea of subjects and citizens that i think the alp has come down on the wrong side of. 100 years ago people were measuring the bumps on people’s skulls. lets treat people as people not brains in a vat
Guy, sounds like you had an upsetting experience as a volunteer subject in Psych 1.
Great article, Guy. Cuts like a knife. The appetite of moden Australian governments for control over every aspect of life is astonishing and a constant source of annoyance to me. It seems that every development in ICT triggers a compulsion to get more and more information (control) over the body politic. The problem is, the quest for more information begs more questions - it provides less certainty not more security and actually fuels distrust and the obsessive policy responses that follow.
The problem lies with our Government having to bring things down to that powerful uncommon demoninator. Sadly in our society this exposes the rightwing as who they truly are: a group who will say and do anything to get their fix of that right to rule addiction. So then how do you restore balance and offset the reach of the ill-motivated into all areas of big business and most of our media ownership. Think about how long any government would last through the almighty fear campaign that would be unleashed by the rightards if draconian antiterror laws were reversed or basic civil and human rights re-inforced . Don’t you ever wonder how the Howard Government got to stay in power for nearly twelve years? Why it is that a comedy, “The Daily Show” in the US is the most trusted conveyor of news and current affairs. The tragedy is that human decency is out gunned by society’s monied interests and religious ignorance. So keep up the your good work Guy, you’re a breath of fresh air in a very poluted atmosphere.
So now we have the “Brave New World” totalitarian model instead of “1984”. So when will we see “Fahrenheit 451” ?
As soon as we run out of other fuel to burn. Intellectuals are already under fire for disturbing the rightards comfort zones, it’s happening now Jim.