The Road to Brazil

Censorship has reared its ugly head again. Last month the Albanese government dragged out its legislation supposedly intended to combat the horrors of misinformation and disinformation. Government is demonstrably the greatest source of both, but as in the previous iteration of this bill government lies are exempted.

The bill empowers the 500 faceless bureaucrats at the government-funded Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to “regulate” digital platforms using the threat of fining them into bankruptcy to coerce them into censoring anyone who doesn’t toe the government line.

We’ve seen this film before. Any criticism of the government’s Voice to Parliament was deemed “misinformation” and censored by Facebook without any help from this legislation. Why? Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (owner of Facebook) gave us a clue when he admitted that moderators at Facebook and Instagram were put under enormous pressure from US government bureaucrats to censor their users, not just on Covid but on matters that directly benefited the Democrats, such as refusing to publish the bombshell revelations of longtime Quadrant friend Miranda Devine which appeared in the New York Post four years ago this month on the eve of the 2020 election. The cost of that censorship is incalculable but as American venture capitalist Eric Weinstein tweeted in the wake of the admission, “Mark Zuckerberg owes a lot of people a lot of money in damages. Lost lives. Lost elections. Losses in reputation …”

Intrepid journalists like Matt Taibbi and public figures like Michael Shellenberger have exposed, with the co-operation of X owner Elon Musk, the global reach of the whole sordid Censorship Industrial Complex in their must-read Twitter Files which showed that Britain played a pivotal part and Australia joined in as Little Sir Echo.

And regardless of the regrets of Mr Zuckerberg, globally co-ordinated censorship continues. Only last month in Brazil, G20 Ministers announced that “For the first time in the G20’s history, the agenda of tackling disinformation and promoting information integrity will be part of the forum’s ministers’ declaration.” Oh the irony of using a meeting in Brazil to trumpet plans to turn G20 countries into the dystopian surveillance state portrayed in Terry Gilliam’s cult film Brazil. Which is pretty much what the Brazilian government is doing. Brazilians who support the opposition are not impressed. Almost 50,000 turned out to protest the government’s attacks on free speech such as the decision of Brazil’s Supreme Court to seize $3 million from Elon Musk’s Starlink in retaliation for X’s refusal to censor critics of the government.

Is it just coincidence that multimillion dollar fines handed down by ACMA are what the Albanese government wants to legislate? Is the government emboldened by the G20 agenda? Either way, the Coalition, having tabled similar legislation during the pandemic, has seen the error of its ways and is now opposing the bill. As well they should—their supporters will be among the first to be censored.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland says the proposed laws will “combat” “conspiracy theories” such as “dangerous, unproven health remedies spruiked by social media influencers to make a quick buck”. We have seen that film too. During the pandemic anyone who dared to report the findings of the world’s top medical researchers and scientists was censored if those findings ran counter to the government narrative. GPs, cardiologists, Australia and New Zealand’s leading authority in obstetrics and gynaecology lost their licences to practice or were hounded out of hospitals simply for honouring the injunction of the Hippocratic oath which solemnly binds them to “First do no harm”.

With the support of the Greens, the Teals and the left-leaning independents, the government could have passed this iniquitous legislation already but thanks to criticism from religious groups, civil liberties groups, media organisations, the social media companies, more than 20,000 Australians who lodged submissions, and even the pusillanimous Human Rights Commission which was disgracefully silent on the abuse of human rights during the pandemic, the government was shamed into withdrawing the bill the first time it was tabled.

The trouble is that governments took all the wrong lessons from the pandemic: that they can censor shamelessly, coerce mercilessly, count on media and corporate complicity, and use relentless mendacious fearmongering to deprive people of their fundamental freedoms and turn Western democracies into police states.

Quadrant will not be silent on this subject. Our international editor, John O’Sullivan, writes this month about the criminalisation in the UK not just of memes but even of silent prayers. Nick Cater delves into Albanese’s attack on free speech and the curse of busyness that afflicts Labor.

We are also hosting the first visit to Australia of celebrated author and distinguished theologian, the Reverend Canon Nigel Biggar, Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford. Professor Biggar chairs the board of trustees of the Free Speech Union of the United Kingdom and will be touring New Zealand hosted by their counterpart. In addition to free speech a key focus of the visit will be the themes discussed in his best-selling book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (2023). In his chapter on Australia, he analyses the competing claims of historians Henry Reynolds and Keith Windschuttle. No prizes for guessing who he thinks gave the most accurate account of our colonial history.

Inspired to bring two titans together on the same stage, we went one better and in the spirit of The Three Tenors, Quadrant is presenting dinners in Sydney and Melbourne featuring The Three Historians—Nigel Biggar, Keith Windschuttle and Geoffrey Blainey and possibly even a mystery fourth historian, as well as many other contributors and friends of Quadrant. Books will be sold and signed, drinks quaffed, memories made. Subscribers to our e-newsletter will already have received all the details and if you haven’t already, subscribe to it via our website, email us on [email protected] or ring us on (+61) 03 8317 8147.

Professor Biggar has made an outstanding contribution to redressing the black armband view of the British Empire so perniciously drummed into Australians from their tenderest youth. This relentless distortion of our history has real-life consequences. In this issue, Michael Evans looks at how unprepared Australia is for a major war not least because it is so difficult for the armed forces to recruit Australians who have been brainwashed into being ashamed of this country.

This contrasts forcefully with Hungary, which teaches Hungarians to be proud of their country without flinching from the darkest chapters of its history. Hungarians learn about the seamless transition from Nazi tyranny to communist dictatorship in the House of Horrors museum in Budapest which was the headquarters for both the Nazi and communist secret police. Hungarians live their history, talking about the tragedy of the Treaty of Trianon and achievements of Matthias Corvinus. The Hungarian Minister of Defence proudly explained the tagline for a very effective campaign for army reservists: “Hungary: Love it. Defend it.” Hard to believe it would be used here.

October, of course, also marks twelve months since the largest pogrom since the Second World War was unleashed on unsuspecting Israelis who were slaughtered in the quiet rural surrounds of kibbutzes and at a music festival in the desert where young people were dancing with friends. That horrific clash between the civilised world and the barbarians at the gate echoes other dates and atrocities in this long assault by Islamist fascists on the West: the fatwah on Salman Rushdie, 9/11, the Danish cartoons, Charlie Hebdo, and now October 7.

Looking back, what is most shocking is not the unbridled barbarism of the Islamists who, in the end, only did exactly what they have always said they would do; it is the tidal wave of anti-Semitism and condemnation of Israel that it unleashed even before the bodies of the victims were cold.

Rachael Kohn addresses this deeply depressing conundrum, writing about Norway’s unholy rush to recognise Palestine only six months after Palestinians triumphantly celebrated the October 7 massacre, while Israeli hostages lay starving in tunnels, and Hamas officials declared they would continue the slaughter until they destroyed the Jewish state. Gavin Silbert KC surveys the distressing and unprecedented surge of anti-Semitism in Australia and tries to answer to the question, “Why this time?”

Music editor Alexander Voltz takes a closer look at the case of Jayson Gillham, the pianist who, during a Melbourne Symphony Orchestra concert, made an impromptu change to the program, and turned the stage into a soapbox to repeat the outrageous lie that Israel had deliberately murdered numerous journalists in Gaza to prevent them reporting its war crimes. Gillham didn’t mention that the source of that calumny is Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation that murders without blinking anyone who refuses to join their jihad and turn the world into a seventh-century caliphate.

Unfortunately, Gillham’s stand is all too familiar. Useful idiots wearing keffiyehs are everywhere—campaigning for the Greens, running amok on campuses. Steven Schwartz, a former vice-chancellor, looks at the role the academy has played in fuelling this cult of nihilism. As he wisely observes, campus orthodoxies take hold not because of a belief in God but because of a belief in the devil, with apostates eagerly subjected to a twenty-first-century auto-da-fé.

Grim times—but all the more reason to read Quadrant and come to our dinners. We hope to see you there.