![]() The idea of Australian tyranny has spread far beyond the rightwing media bubble. ![]() When Sharri Markson, a journalist with the Australian and a Sky host, went on Carlson’s show in August to denounce the YouTube ban on Sky News as “the most extreme cancellation of free speech imaginable”, it gave Carlson the opportunity once again to characterise Australia as a “Covid dictatorship”. It has also been cemented by the cross-pollination between some Sky News Australia personalities and some of their Fox News counterparts in the US. ![]() ![]() She added: “This has happened a lot since the pandemic as anti-mask and anti-vax conspiracies have thrived among the far right, especially online.” Heidi Beirich is co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, an NGO set up to combat transnational far right extremist groups.Īsked about the American far right’s depiction of Australia’s Covid response, Beirich wrote in an email: “We’ve seen more and more cases where the far right brings up concerns, usually based on disinformation, about horrors taking place in other similar countries.” This feedback loop between Australia’s fringe right and the major organs of US rightwing media has been in place throughout the pandemic, but it has become particularly intense as Australia – once a border-controlled, Covid-free oasis – has struggled with outbreaks in New South Wales and Victoria. The usefulness of the nightmare vision of Australia can be seen in the way the New York rally and its dark message were boosted internationally by rightwing influencers and media. The video of that interview, containing a lengthy excerpt of the banned speech, remains on Ingraham’s own Facebook page. Ingraham has been on the attack over Australia’s pandemic response since at least August, when she interviewed Liberal National MP George Christensen, after a video of his anti-lockdown parliamentary speech had been removed from Facebook for breaching the platform’s Covid misinformation policy. On Thursday, she hosted self-styled “freedom lawyer” Tony Nikolic, who has tried to sue Chant and the NSW health minister, Brad Hazzard, over mandatory vaccination. For a local view, he interviewed the director of the libertarian Institute for Public Affairs, Gideon Rozner, who readily agreed with Carlson’s take, and claimed: “I don’t think it’s possible to say that Australia right now is a functioning liberal democracy.”Ĭarlson’s Fox News colleague Laura Ingraham has pursued the idea of an Australian dystopia even more aggressively, if anything, on the cable news channel and on her conservative talk radio program.Īnd again, she has drawn on fringe figures in Australia to lend her message authority. She said it out loud.”īut Carlson did not have to make his case alone. After Carlson played the relevant clip of Chant, he remarked: “The new world order. That phrase has long been invoked by conspiracy theorists as a term for the imposition of a worldwide totalitarian government by a shadowy global elite. Carlson, whose show is the highest-rated news program on US cable television, according to Adweek, also seized upon the use of the phrase “new world order” by the New South Wales chief health officer, Dr Kerry Chant, at a press conference.
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