auspol

#Auspol #USpol #History #ItalianHistory #Fascism #DodgyAndGreatLeaders

#Reading or more like dipping into

B. A. SANTAMARIA
ITALY CHANGES SHIRTS:
THE ORIGINS OF ITALIAN FASCISM
MA THESIS
UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
1934

and am enjoying focusing on sentences and letting my mind mull over ideas while i do/ watch/ read other stuffs. this might become a thread with occasional ramblings.

i’m struck by some parallels with USA (how could one not be?) but for context am reminded mussolini had established himself as leader much earlier than hitler and was, in fact, admired by hitler. (i think a great deal of hitler’s success was down to goebbels.) both mussolini and hitler lived in a time when the ongoing war of ideas between communism and capitalism were front and centre.

the labels and the details morph and change over time, but when our previous opposition leader threw words like “liberal”, “commie” or “woke” around, i suspect it was really more of the same.

in the red corner, people who think governments can and should care about everyone, and in the blue corner, those who think individualism is essential to god’s grand design.
I wonder, sometimes, if the USA is one western country that never really had a “left” at all.

On the very first page of his thesis, Santamaria suggests the Italian public embraced fascism (and the idea of a strong leader) because parliamentary democracy seemed to suck.
(Echos of this in Trump’s “drain the swamp” rhetoric, and his now open contempt for the system altogether)

Discussing Mussolini, Santamaria goes on to say Lenin believed “the only man who could successfully rule Italy was the one who reproduced in himself the main characteristics of the great mass of Italians”

The USA has a problematic electoral system, and many people are disenfranchised in one way or another. I don’t want to slander an entire nation, but I do wonder how many people found it easier to identify with Trump than with Harris?

Closer to home, how well do we identify with this or that type of leader in Australia? Do we reject potential leaders more easily than we embrace them?

1975 in Australia was a disappointment, but I distinctly remember that, apart from the scare about whitlam overspending/ seeking dodgy loans from someone with a foreign name, a lot of people were fed up with having to vote, and all the campaigning that goes with more-frequent-than-usual elections.

"We found when generative AIs produce images of Australia and Australians, these outputs are riddled with bias. They reproduce sexist and racist caricatures more at home in the country’s imagined monocultural past."

#AusPol #AI
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/15/researchers-asked-ai-to-show-a-typical-australian-dad-he-was-white-and-had-an-iguana

Meta has admitted it used all its users’ public posts on its platforms going back to 2007 to train its AI models during an Australian senate inquiry.

The only exception was for users in the European Union who opted out.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-11/facebook-scraping-photos-data-no-opt-out/104336170

#tech #meta #facebook #ai #artificialintelligence #australia #auspol

Which is worse?:
1. fascists that know they are
2. know they are but pretend they're not
3. that don't know they are

Fascists are ineligible to vote

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Vote See results · people ·
347 days left

#fascist #ostrichIfArseIsSand #H8 #myopia #duksezmoo #poll #worldPol #ausPol

To find your nearest polling place for election day this year use the official AEC handy link attached: https://www.aec.gov.au/election/voting.htm#start

#AusPol #Election #Voting #Boost #BoostMe

Peter Dutton awaiting the vote count

#auspol

ALT

Not even 8:30pm and it’s already been called. He-who-must-not-be-elected has been defeated. But let’s not kid ourselves. This result happened not because of an amazing campaign, but because people saw the insanity the tangerine Palpatine was causing in the US, and said “not here”. #auspol #ausvotes

Whether it works or not isn't the lede - face-scanning everyone to access social media's fuck off dystopian. Government by Black Mirror.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-19/teen-social-media-ban-in-doubt/105435036

#auspol #privacy

I Do Not Give Consent

I do not give my consent to this war, to this unjustified violence.
To this illegal act, even if against a terrible regime, based on uncertain evidence of supposed nuclear capabilities.
I do not accept the civilian casualties, the horrifying cost that everyday people pay for the egos of "big" men.
I believe in upholding the international rules-based order, in which all are held to the same standard, where a war crime by one is as abhorrent as a war crime by another.
The alternative is a world of warlords and supplicants, organised by the cynical calculus of brute power, where humans are fed into the maw of the Great Game.
I denounce the media that fails in its journalistic duty, and instead does the work of warmongers, asserting a supposed objectivity where one country has a right to defense but another does not, where the killing of one child is worthy of attention but hundreds of others are not.
I scorn our spineless politicians who cannot even learn the lessons of recent memory, who lack the gumption to call out the abysmal behaviour of their supposed friend, who prefer the safety of acquiescence over the discomfort of standing up for what they must surely know is right.
I do not give my consent.

#Israel #Iran #AusPol

Lots of people told me that AOC cannot possibly win the US presidency. But I think she can, and I am not alone. https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-aoc-run-president-2028-110807645.html #auspol