Anyone who has spent time on social media has seen the cycle. First, transgression: a particular social boundary is seen to have been breached. Second, demonising: the individual accused of the transgression is turned into a villain. Third, the backlash, as those who object to this particular social boundary being policed push back hard. Finally, on the principle of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”, the original villain becomes a hero of sorts, at least to one side of politics.
This cycle did not originate with the internet. As satirical character Philomena Cunk put it, you might call Jesus “the first celebrity victim of cancel culture”. But social media sped up the cycle and made it ubiquitous. When we talk about the tendency of social media to “reward outrage”, as independent senator David Pocock did last week, this is often what is meant. Social media has made extremely simple stories – in which each issue can be split into good and evil – a far more powerful part of our culture.
Last week, we received two demonstrations of such cycles and their simplifications (not all of it online).
One came after allegations emerged involving drug use, years ago, by the Victorian leader of One Nation, Warren Pickering. This was the transgression. Pickering was on his way to becoming a villain. Then a press conference was called. It was dramatic, full of stories obviously chosen for their emotive force, with arguments carefully sculpted. And it was fascinating, too, because it was another sign – along with the party’s recent hiring of a former Scott Morrison adviser – that One Nation is in a period of transformation. It is getting serious.
So Pickering was made into a sympathetic character. To whom was he now a hero? As Chip Le Grand argued in this masthead, One Nation’s base, who will see Pickering as a victim of both media smears and a woman (his ex). But perhaps others will admire him, too. Pickering’s story about turning his life around was both moving and convincing. For some, this presentation may have been more appealing still given the original stories ran in The Australian, a publication hated by the left and known for its bullying tendencies.
But while Pickering was declared the “winner” of this clash, this is not really a simple story. The reporting raised legitimate questions about hypocrisy, given One Nation’s usual tough line on drugs. (Pickering denied some of the accusations.) And Pickering, of course, is a leader of a far-right party that deploys racism, scapegoating migrants for many of the problems in society. As an individual, Pickering may be sympathetic. But how far should this affect our impression of him as a politician wanting to influence the nation?
The other example came in Andrew Hastie’s decision to attack Pauline Hanson over her party’s cartoon suggesting he was a “traitor”. Hastie, having waited several weeks before responding, declared he was “calling time on cowards who have never served a day in the Australian Defence Force … they’ve picked a fight with the wrong veteran”.
Hastie is in the right here. He was entitled to defend himself. He was right, too, in making points (which he has made before) about “holding Australian soldiers to high standards of battlefield conduct”. And he drew an implicit contrast – perhaps a defining one – with Angus Taylor’s embarrassing reluctance to take on One Nation directly.
Right now, Hastie looks like the nation’s great opponent of Hanson, and therefore strikingly different. But what do those differences amount to? Last year, he posted a social media video that seemed to reference UK politician Enoch Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech about the dangers of immigration. About the same time, he joined Barnaby Joyce (then still a National) in raising questions about a measure to give paid parental leave to parents of children who died or were stillborn because, while supporting the law’s intention, he wanted to make sure those receiving late-term abortions did not have the same entitlement. The father of the baby girl for whom that law is named described this debate, at the time, as the “politics of hate”. Yesterday, Hastie said he did not regret his comments but was learning to advocate more sensitively.
Tellingly, on Sunday, he also said this: “I’ve always been respectful of Pauline. I’ve tried to build a relationship with her in the past and it’s been good. And then she came for me and I started to see, OK, this is not the person I thought she was.” This is a striking admission. No earlier sharp rejection of Hanson over principles – he was only able to see her clearly once he was on the receiving end.
Still, his point about Hanson coming for him ties to a broader point, also evident in Hastie criticising her, on Sunday, for disparaging remarks she had made about Anthony Albanese’s mother staying in public housing. On Sunday, Albanese responded too, saying “kindness isn’t weakness. I’ll tell you what’s weakness – nastiness.”
As Hanson widens her attacks beyond migrants and Muslims – to Hastie and by implication the soldiers who also testified against Ben Roberts-Smith, lazy workers, the prime minister’s mother and the victims of domestic violence – she risks this impression of nastiness taking hold. Will this be a problem for her?
One aim of the government’s social media policies is clearly a desire to diminish outrage, with its pile-ons as new villains are minted on a daily basis: to shrink the influence of nastiness in our online culture and, as a result, in our culture at large.
But there remains an open question about whether the clock can be turned back: whether, by this stage, nastiness has become normalised. After all, Hanson’s approach is hardly a revelation and she has at times this year been the most popular politician in the country. So far, voters have shown little willingness to treat her nastiness as a transgression for which she should be penalised. Perhaps, depressingly, as Hastie’s experience demonstrates, that will only happen if her nastiness is ever turned on them.
Sean Kelly is an author and regular columnist. He was an adviser to former Labor prime ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.
Sean Kelly is author of The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison, a regular columnist and a former adviser to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.Connect via X.From our partners
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