Abbott's use of Nazi propaganda techniques

The Blowfly has been hanging around the Prime Minister this week seeking to understand how our No 1 redhead is thinking.

It has all been rather frantic trying to sell the carbon tax and matching Toxic Tony.

She wont listen to The Blowfly. I have been sending out telepathic signals to her to not even attempt to match him. He simply cant be matched! He is in another dimension.

A dimension where it is okay to tell lies and mistruths and treat human beings just like Joseph Goebbels did for Hitler.

And on that note The Blowfly was happy to see the PM reading the rather illuminating article by Ian Robinson in last Saturday's Fairfax papers. Ian is the president emeritus of the Rationalist society of Australia.

"Taxing the truth:why we must not let Abbott's dogmas lie" is a wonderful little tome on the methods that the Coalition in general, and Abbott in particular, is using to distort the reality of the political debate in Australia.

Although the PM says she is not that interested in the polls, because she has her eyes firmly on the end game, she is neither deaf nor blind.

She can hear the commentators opine that Abbott has the Government with its back to the wall and that he is a certainty to be our next PM.

This has surprised her a little----to say the least!

She thought that the three word slogans were used by Tony simply because that was all he could remember.

She thought that the way he misrepresents her apparent commitment to 'no carbon tax' before the last election was just sour grapes because his offer to build a $1 billion hospital for Andrew Wilkie was not taken up.

But according to the article these tactics are all propaganda strategies enunciated by Hitler in 'Mein Kampf' and used by his trusted assistant Goebbels to manipulate the thinking of the unsuspecting German people.

The PM was so intrigued by this article that she got out her trusty iPad and looked up 'Nazi propaganda' on Wikipedia. This is what she found.

Julia highlighted some of the points she thought were relevant .

"Mein Kampf contains the blueprint of later Nazi propaganda efforts. Assessing his audience, Hitler writes in chapter VI:

"Propaganda must always address itself to the broad masses of the people. (...) All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. (...) The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses. The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. (...) The great majority of a nation is so feminine in its character and outlook that its thought and conduct are ruled by sentiment rather than by sober reasoning. This sentiment, however, is not complex, but simple and consistent. It is not highly differentiated, but has only the negative and positive notions of love and hatred, right and wrong, truth and falsehood."^[5]

As to the methods to be employed, he explains:

"Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favourable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side. (...) The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward. (...) Every change that is made in the subject of a propagandist message must always emphasize the same conclusion. The leading slogan must of course be illustrated in many ways and from several angles, but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula."

 The entry on Nazi propaganda in Wikipedia is worthy of review by anyone curious about the propaganda methods used by the Nazis. The Blowfly commends it to anyone who is interested in the truth and the foundations for manipulating the thinking of voters.

But back to the PM!

As she absorbed the material on Nazi propaganda methods a serenity seemed to come over her as she realised what Abbott was up to.

At least when you fully understand what your opponents are up to you have a chance of winning.

And so instead of resorting to Goebbels she pondered the words of George Bernard Shaw: "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world."

And then she put her head back, clasping her iPad to her breast, and pondered the future.

A future where Tony Abbott has to explain to people why the carbon tax did not cause the sky to fall in.

A future where voters realise that the Minerals Resources and Rent tax is one of the few ways that Gina, Twiggy and Clive get to genuinely share their wealth with the people who own the minerals.

A future where the NBN allows Australia to be competitive in a global economy.

A future where Question time is used constructively to ask questions rather than be bastardised with censure motions.

A future where there is a genuine civility in the Parliament.

A future where refugees are welcomed as a building block of our nation.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! Poor dear! She dozed off while thinking about what this country could be.

Politics is an illusion: Don't take it too seriously!

The Blowfly had the good fortune to recall the words of George Bernard Shaw during the week.

“My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.”

And so it was in Australian politics last week.

Shakespeare could not have set up a more hilarious plot. Nor Bob Hope’s comedy writers!

A beleaguered government, trying to prepare for the delivery of a budget, was under attack because of allegations that it’s Speaker has sexually harassed a male staff member and rorted the travel system.

This was followed by revelations that this staff member sought counsel from non other than Mal Brough, the Liberal stalwart who is seeking to take the Speaker’s seat at the next election. And to add slightly more intrigue the Opposition-heavy Chris Pyne admits to a late night drinking session with the sexually harassed staff member only one month before the complaint was made.

Tony Abbott, the Opposition leader, gives a TV interview saying, in words carefully chosen, that he new nothing about these events. Nothing! Nothing!

Out of left field comes one of Australia’s richest men, Clive Palmer, to announce his intention to enter parliament. Clive has previously told us about his conspiracy theories and now delivers a promise to build a new Titanic.

And in a seemingly unrelated incident Rupert Murdoch was declared an unfit person to run a media empire by a committee of the UK parliament.

What has happened to the world ?

Is all this stuff about 2012 and the world ending finally coming to fruition?

This scene of comedy-sketch proportions provoked The Blowfly to consider another illusion that seems to dominate our existence.

Ponder this!

Lets say you were a purveyor of newspapers.

Your revenue streams consist of sales of printed matter to the populace and advertising from businesses.

Recently you have been struggling with your revenue streams because of the new technologies that are able to leverage this beast known as the internet.

You bought into My Space a couple of years ago so that you could learn more about this phenomena and get the march on your competitors. You paid about $900 million for it and you sold it for less than 10% of that only recently. It was a costly lesson in understanding people’s emerging needs.

It seems the populace has this overwhelming desire to share information about each other with each other.

And they want to do it for FREE!

Oh dearie me! How are you going to build your wealth if people are going to share information for free.

Twitter and Facebook are aiding and abetting this.

And Twitter has been responsible for the acceleration of some social movements such as the ‘Arab spring’. You fear it because using Twitter decimates the need for people to buy newspapers. Ordinary people can become reporters and disperse reports quickly about incidents, injustices and scandals.

You’re damned if you can understand Twitter so you poke your toe into the water with it. You express your views as everyone else seems to do on Twitter.

You tell people , on Twitter, that the ALP government in Australia needs to go.

This ALP government is also developing something called the National Broadband Network. It will allow Australians to communicate with each other faster AND………..with the rest of the world!

Your business model would really come under pressure if this happens.

You find other allies to align with to prosecute your cause.

Climate change has been a controversial topic in your country of birth. But it seems to sell quite a few newspapers! Especially as you have been able to motivate crowd-pleasers such as Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones to keep spruiking their scaremongering.

And Tony Abbott falls in behind quite easily. Just as your editors know that the populace only reads the headlines as they rush past the newsstands, or listen to the 20-second grabs on TV so does Tony. He is a master of the three-word slogan and creating fear in the hearts and minds of voters. He studied politics as a Rhodes scholar and he knows you have to keep it simple and destructive.

It is in your interests to use the full resources of your empire to preserve the full resources of your empire.

Your timing is perfect.

Your interests and those of the conservatives glove together neatly.

They have committed to pulling down the NBN. This means you may be able to preserve your newspaper revenues longer.

They have committed to repealing the carbon tax. This means you wont be penalised for cutting down the trees to print your newspapers.

The status quo will largely remain. 

That is, after all, why they are known as conservatives.

In the meantime you have been fighting a rear-guard action trying to maintain the revenues of your existing economic activities----newspapers!

You worked out ages ago that the best way to do this is to create headlines.

Politics is usually good for this.

Politicians tend to take themselves seriously and believe that they can make the world a better place.

This fits perfectly into your mode of operation providing they are taking the world where you believe it should go.

Politics gives you much scope for headlines.

When politicians tell the truth your newspapers can tear them apart and invade their private lives because anyone who tells the truth is likely to be a homosexual or philanderer.

When politicians tell lies your newspapers can damn them because no other person ever tells lies and there must be no moral fibre in a society that produces liars.

Sometimes however the news gets a little slow and newspaper sales flatten out.

In order to create more fodder for your reporters you get up to mischief. A little phone tap here, a little bit of scare-mongering there, and not to mention a good sex scandal-----especially with a homosexual angle!

And that, my friends, is the illusion!

Many believe that politicians pull the strings of our society and that politics is to be taken seriously as an altruistic endeavor.

There is another reality that would save the populace from a lot of anxiety.

Politicians only think that they pull the strings.

But like a good old-fashioned puppet show it is simply a distraction that should be perceived as entertainment of the highest order.

As any blowfly knows, it is the puppeteer that is actually pulling the strings.

Duntroon: Setting the pace in gender issues?

The Blowfly has been considering the issue of the Duntroon sex 'scandal'.

Can I encourage you to play a little mind game with me? Imagine that you are a young woman who has always wanted to be a member of the Australian Defence Forces.

Your mother was a proud feminist who threw away her bra before you were born. Instead of reading Enid Blyton stories at bedtime she read you passages from Germaine Greer’s “The Female Eunuch”.

You always slept well! You grew up playing soccer and cricket and believing that anything a man can do you can do better. Except for Don Bradman, of course!

You can think of nothing more exhilarating than attending the Royal Military College Duntroon and serving your country by being shot at, yelled at by drill sergeants, marching in endless parades, receiving degrading remarks from men and being targeted whenever you have a few too many drinks.

You apply for, and are accepted into, Duntroon. You get into the swing of things. You have a healthy, normal interest in young men and you have several ‘friends with benefits’ relationships.

One night while you are availing yourself of these benefits, unbeknown to you, your ‘friend’ has other ideas. He has taken it upon himself to educate his friends about the nature of your relationship. Without telling you he beams your ‘benefits session’ into their rooms using Skype.

It takes a few days for his breach of trust to filter back to you.

Your world is turned upside down.

You ask yourself a number of deep and meaningful questions: “How could he do this to me? What is this world coming too? Are all men the same? Will I be able to trust any man again? I wonder if the microphone was working properly? What will I tell mum and dad? What will he tell his mum and dad? What did his mates think? Will I be seen as cheap? Did I give a good performance? Have I become a sexual object? Did I find it degrading or did I enjoy it? Will this affect his future sex-life more than mine? Will this ruin my chances of promotion or help it? Will I be banished to driving trucks forever?”

Then a funny thing happens! A number of new enquiries are announced. One of these is to review the role of women in the ADF with a view to moving them more into combat positions.

This will provide you with an even greater chance of achieving your aspirations of being in the frontline and being shot at, marching in endless parades and being subjected to degrading remarks from your male colleagues. You wonder if you are onto something! Something Germaine Greer had not considered. Nor Andrew Wilkie for that matter!

There is another obvious way to serve your country. Sleeping with more cadets and beaming your activities into more rooms by Skype might stimulate the ADF to move even more quickly to promote gender equality in the armed forces!

There should be plenty of bandwidth due to the NBN. And what better time to do it than when Australia has a liberated, female Prime Minister?

Hockey's 'bank-bashing' redefines the notion of 'Liberal'

The Blowfly has sometimes been possessed with a fascination for things on the North Shore of Sydney.

Mostly the garbage! It's always of a higher quality!

And recently the noises by the federal Member for North Sydney have reinforced The Blowfly's views that the garbage on the North Shore is more comprehensively enticing, mystifying and strangely tasteless.

Not to mention John Howard's book----which surely must rate an all-time high in respect to North Shore refuse!

Joe Hockey is trying to establish himself as the champion of the little voter by becoming a 'bank-bashing boofhead'.

His line is simple!

The Australian banks have ripped Australians off and are continuing to wreak havoc on economic activity in this country.

The Blowfly learnt during the week that the big four Australian banks are all in the top 20 safest banks in the world as rated by Global Finance magazine (interestingly enough there are no US banks in the top 20 safest banks).Rankings were NAB (11), Westpac (12), CBA (13), ANZ (16).

The Blowfly has also absorbed Phil Ruthven's column in the Business Review Weekly this week. Phil points out that all the journalistic reporting on the nightly television focuses on the quantity of profits rather than the relative profits.

If you look at the profits in relation to the amount of shareholders' funds required to produce them you will find a different story to anguish about.

Ruthven points out that none of the 4 banks rate in the Top 10 largest listed companies in Australia when it comes to returns on shareholders funds. In fact he reports they are well down the Top 30 list.

Now here is the tightrope that Hockey is walking.

In these times when other countries around the world are still experiencing stress and failures Australia's greatest asset could well be its strong banking sector. We need to nurture that situation.

But in terms of capital employed our banks are being outperformed locally by Fortescue Metals, Telstra, AMP, Coca Cola Amatil, Woolworths, BHP Billiton and QBE Insurance Group.

This leads The Blowfly to his juiciest dilemma.

The Blowfly's simple understanding of being a 'Liberal' is that the private sector should be left alone as much as possible to pursue it's goals and then we all benefit from the fruits of 'private enterprise'.

Our friend Joe, The Blowfly believes,is simply trying to get traction by making a noise. He knows that we all hate the banks.

But his antics hide the real dilemma for Australians!

Which side of politics will spend the time developing the vision for our nation.

Possessed of a robust banking sector, armed with a National Broadband Network, endowed with a raft of mineral resources and prettied-up by some bloody good intellectual resources, beaches and sheilas we have a lot going for us as we slide into the future.

Will we be able to exploit all this to put Australians into a position where our children will be able to look back in 50 years time and admire us for the astute and visionary way we tackled the future in 2010?

We might well ponder the words of Grouch Marx:"I didn't like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions------the curtain was up!"

Unfortunately for Hockey the curtain is up!

Let's hope intermission comes soon.The second act could only be better!

Turnbull knows he can still be Prime Minister

On Sunday The Blowfly sought out the Member for Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull.

His seat is named Wentworth for a reason.

It could be the 'real' seat of democracy in Australia.

In Malcolm's electorate there is a huge rock. On this William Charles Wentworth sat while he drafted the NSW Constitution and gazed lovingly across the harbour towards Sydney.WC Wentworth found fame as one of the trio who traversed their way into Australian history books by crossing the Blue Mountains first.

The Member for Wentworth had his dictionary out and was pondering his fate ,and for that matter-----his brief from Tony Abbott!......."Demolish the NBN"

The Blowfly saw him turn to the word "demolish".

"Knock to pieces, destroy, overthrow" the dictionary revealed.

He closed his eyes and rested his weary head on the back of his chair.

His mind wandered. He thought of the ETS. He thought of Ozemail. He thought of his days with Nick Whitlam.He thought of Kevin Rudd and his leadership being destroyed. He thought of his old friends at Goldman Sachs and the money they would make from a carbon trading scheme.He thought of John Howard and his failure to install Peter Costello as his replacement.He thought of Janette (but this is a family blog and these thoughts have been censored).He thought of Twitter.He thought of WC Wentworth. He continued to think about WC Wentworth. He continued further to think about WC Wentworth.In fact he could not get thoughts of WC Wentworth out of his head.

And then a paranormal event occurred.

The spirit of WC Wentworth then satiated Malcolm's head with it's presence.

Malcolm had channelled Kerry Packer before---- but never WC Wentworth!

And here is The Blowfly's recollection of what William Charles Wentworth said to Malcolm Turnbull.

"My boy, you have been set up.You are not born to demolish. You are born to build.Just like I was!"

WC Wentworth was coming through loud and clear. He had Malcolm's attention---total and complete!

"That scoundrel Abbott does not have a 'building' bone in his body. He thinks that politics must be adversarial. Good Lord, Turnbull you must stick to the high ground. You have a good brain in your head and you should use it. But don't use it on a negative task given to you by a Catholic! And he deserves no more respect just because he is a Rhodes Scholar.You took on that Packer chap and won, Turnbull.You can take this chap on and win too!"

The Blowfly noted, from the comfort of Malcolm's shoulder, a little stirring in his psyche and even a minute shudder in his thought processes.

WC continued: "When we discovered the route over the Blue Mountains it opened up the agricultural wealth of this nation. In due course railroads were built and the wheat belt developed.The wool industry expanded.New industries started up.New jobs were created.It was a bonanza."

Malcolm sighed. The analogy was dramatic.The NBN had the same capacity and he knew it.Australia could be the envy of the world.

"But", WC continued,"in due course several other routes were found and this allowed the wealth of Australia's natural resources to be exploited even more".

"So in biblical terms, Turnbull, 'there are many ways over the Blue Mountains'",WC stated, chuckling at the beauty of his metaphor.

"And we did not perform a cost-benefit analysis on any of them! We just knew it was what had to be done."

"Your job, my boy is to build this thing up for the benefit of this nation. You don't owe Abbott a thing. You have your principles to uphold!And you are in a good position to do it."

"You see, young Turnbull, you have a hung Parliament to work with. This has been designed precisely for your wits.Not Abbott's. He is too much of a street-fighter. This situation demands finesse. And you have that! You will know how to see the trees from the forest. That's what you have been learning on your life's journey. That's what that rebuff at the Constitutional Convention was about. That's what the loss of your Liberal leadership was about. You have to do your homework better. You have to win the troops over with your beguiling nature."

It was at this stage that Lucy entered the room. She was totally bemused at her husband---- sound asleep with a dictionary open in his lap!

She gave him a loving peck on the cheek and he opened his eyes and looked adoringly at her.

"I've been channelling WC and he's told me how I can be Prime Minister at the next election, darling", he said with a glint in his eye.

She responded immediately.

"If you'd listened to me Malcolm, you could've been Prime Minister after this election."

He rolled his eyes and then reached for his iPhone.

As he left the room all The Blowfly could hear was him mumbling about talking to Stephen Conroy.

By this time The Blowfly had been distracted by the exquisite smell of a lemon-meringue pie that Lucy had produced in the kitchen.Conroy could wait.

Even a Blowfly can't live on political intrigue alone!

Has Kevin bitten into too much this time?

This Sunday morning The Blowfly is aloft the Prime Minister's ailing shoulders as he reads the weekend newspapers.

Of particular interest to him is Michelle Grattan's article in the Saturday paper.

Entitled "Who is the real Kevin Rudd?" the PM is goggled eyed as he absorbs the observations about himself. Grattan raises the question as to whatever happened to "Sunrise' Kevin,' the articulate, engaging frontbencher who sparred with Joe Hockey?'

He rests for a while. His eyes close. It has been a heavy week. There is lots to do with an election approaching. The Blowfly tunes into his tired brain to get a handle on his thoughts as they dribble through his grey matter.

"What did happen to 'Sunrise' Kevin?............it was so easy in those days.........I could spruik off without having to come up with the goods...........now it's just damned hard work.........I never knew how chaotic being in office could be..........God, it takes a lot to get public servants and Cabinet Ministers working as hard as they should.........anyone would think that they want to have lives of their own.........Why cant they be like I am?........(and at this point he breaks into a little song)....Perfect in every way! Oh whats the matter with ministers and public servants today?" You see him smile a wet Queensland smile. One that Anna Bligh would be proud of.

He opens his eyes and returns to his newspaper.

He focuses on the Western Australian Treasurer's quote about him. Troy Buswell makes the pertinent observation that if the Commonwealth Government cant manage a programme to put insulation batts into peoples houses they can hardly trust them to run a hospital system that looks after our kids and parents.

"Fucking Western Australians', he thinks to himself,"They're all so sanctimonious. Brian Burke was the same.........I thought Peter Garrett was going to be ok with those batts........but he stuffed that too........I hope he doesn't stuff our policy on whales and the Japanese.........Oh god! I'll bet he does......who am I going to put in to look after that..........what would John Howard do?........he owes me few favors after I got him a guernsey for that ICCC job..........no......... if I ring I probably would have to talk to Janette first and I know that she hates me for destroying her husband's political ambitions."

He closes his eyes again. 'Cloud cuckoo land' comes to him.

Into his mind comes his pre-election agenda and problems."The ETS.New standard curriculums.The Murray-Darling Basin problems. The global financial crisis. Obama's visit.Whaling.The Henry Report............zzzzzzzzzz............who are we going to get to manage these issues?.........zzzzzzzzzz................."

And suddenly..................

He ponders the National Broadband Network and the takeover of the nation's hospital system together.At the same time. Simultaneously!

At that point his brain explodes.Grey matter everywhere. Queensland neurons all over the place.

It was simply too much for a mere mortal from the Labor side of politics to deal with.

All you can now hear are the voices of Mel and Kochie making soothing noises about appearing on 'Sunrise' again.

You conclude that you should find another shoulder to perch upon.

"Where is the office that big, tall bastard from Midnight Oil? If he is a 'first class minister' he might be worth a visit!"