Releasing Captive Minds

How did we get here? How do we get out? Though tolerant and generous conservatism lies at the centre of Australian life, the big lie is that it is Leftism which sits in the calm, logical, peaceful centre of things. The lie, taught by the illiberal Left, teaches that conservatism is a dissident, angry and illegitimate force which must be either ignored or silenced. In this strange fantasy, criticising the Left is depicted as shrill, ill-natured and even bad mannered—they don’t like not being loved. The elite Left media consistently undermine popular conservative politicians by representing them as outsiders, with no right ever to rule or even to comment. The big lie asserts that everything not Left-conforming is incorrect, extremist and bad and must be discounted. Reality does not count. The lie even depicts Quadrant, Australia’s most read small magazine with the largest-rating website, as some sort of extremist and little-read publication on the far Right. The results of the lie include a threadbare unrepresentative higher culture, and a debased popular one.

The big lie is enforced by the cultural gatekeepers. A private letter from ABC journalist Marius Benson to Gerard Henderson, which the latter made public, illustrates the point. The ABC Benson works for is distorted by Left politics, it is intolerant of dissent and achingly biased yet the journalist displayed his belief that a conservative commentator is biased whereas he, in his strange worldview, is impartial. First telling Henderson that he was “dishonest”, Benson questioned his right to be heard and was dismissive of the legitimacy of his writings: “in your public life you are an advocate for a point of view, a view that could be labelled Liberal Party (conservative wing). That’s fine but it means that truth comes at a discount, yours is the truth of the advocate. You seize on things that support your case, ignore those that don’t and generally harness everything to your cause.” To those following the climate debate Benson seems to have exactly described the biased coverage of his own organisation and the activities of his fellow journalists. Henderson replied, “Marius, I did not ask for psychological analysis—I just asked for your evidence.”

The idea Marius Benson spells out is one expressed over and again by the Left. It’s simple, brutal, and very effective. The Right has no legitimacy, therefore no right to be heard, no right to speak, in fact, no right to exist. Easy as ABC.

Being constantly expounded, the big lie that the Left is the central source of intellectual probity and good sense is widely accepted, even by many on the Right. How else to explain the tragedy of turning over the national history curriculum to Left ideologues such as Tony Taylor and Stuart Macintyre? Europe had one Munich agreement; Australia has them every day and the Left correctly read the Right’s policy of appeasement as confusion and weakness

In some areas of what should be public discussion only a single left-wing point of view is ever heard. In culture and arts policy left-wing goals and arguments are privileged. The problems of arts policy (usually discussed in terms of money, completely ignoring the political aspect) are seen through Left eyes, and discussed in educated Left vocabulary. There is an urgent need for incisive research and the development of policy recommendations to reconsider the role of government in the arts.

The poverty of the non-Left in this discussion was illustrated by a recent article in Policy magazine (published by the Centre for Independent Studies). The title of Cassandra Wilkinson’s article, “Beyond the Culture Wars—Arts Policy for a New Generation”, promised and delivered a discussion which completely ignored the political. It also failed to deliver practical policy proposals for any generation. Faced with an aggressive Left consuming government arts funding like clubbing pill-poppers, the author’s discussion ignored the role of the Australia Council and confused the topics of education and arts training and government policies for funding artists and art companies: “it makes sense to invest in the creativity of the young, as we already do successfully with sport”. Wilkinson’s policy seemed to be “bigger cheques” plus “entrepreneurialism and mass participation” though without the detail of how these objects were to be achieved. She also offered suggestions that missed the realities of the artistic life and of the deadening effect of government bureaucracy on creativity: “Arts policy needs to recognise artists as small business people, entrepreneurs and innovators.” Right, just the same way as they recognised the entrepreneurs and innovators of the live cattle export industry. A new discussion of government arts policy must consider how existing policies are used to further Left political aims and how this can be stopped, and how artists can be helped financially. The present reality of the existing public funding of Left politicised culture and the deadening effect this has on artists and what is produced is worthy of study. Also unremarked in Wilkinson’s essay was the immense problem of the ABC, a giant publicly funded media network, and its dismal broadcasting sibling SBS, both devoted to transmitting Left agitprop and providing employment and career opportunities for the otherwise unemployable new class.

Banal anecdotes flopped into Wilkinson’s text but hardly touched the deeper problems of arts funding: “Queensland academic Mark Ryan has studied the hot springs of the horror industry and finds that traditional funding practices are not only unhelpful but actively antithetical to this independent movement in Australian cinema.” The horror of our culture isn’t in funding genre movies but the use of public money for the politicisation of culture by the Left, and the dependent handout mentality the arts grant system has fostered.

Wilkinson’s final recommendations seemed like more red tape and more old platitudes. Commenting that “Treating art like an industry may be just the ticket for future policy”, she made three suggestions: a “regulatory impact review”; “a review of opportunities to move funding from supply side to demand side”; and getting the “whole community to engage” in the arts by participating. Clearly, there is a need for a new non-Left think-tank devoted to the humanities where matters like this could be seriously studied to develop realistic proposals for real change. 

Individuals do break away from the big lie. Non-intellectuals see the reality of government actions, compare it with the rhetoric and make commonsense voting decisions. The ALP is presently suffering as large sections of their electoral base, offended by their actions, reconsider their options. Left intellectuals, more subservient to theory, are more wedded to the lie. They know the dangers of wandering from its protective shield.

In the conformity of literary and artistic life it is rare for individuals to free themselves. Even in America, when a major playwright defects from Left to Right it is major cultural news. The US Left stopped clapping David Mamet in 2008 when he published an essay in the Village Voice called “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’”. His new book, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, affronts American liberalism with the knowledge of an insider and the passion of a convert: “The Good Causes of the Left may generally be compared to NASCAR [stock car racing]; they offer the diversion of watching things go excitingly around in a circle getting nowhere.” Don’t expect to find copies in many Australian bookshops.

When Left belief smashes into reality few intellectuals change their minds. Life, when friends turn to enemies, is too dangerous and they rightly fear the anger that would be directed towards them by the true believers whose ranks they are quitting. Those who do make the change undertake a passionate voyage into the unknown. As Mamet said, “I spoke with my first conservative at age sixty.”

Some of Mamet’s predecessors have left notable guidebooks which tell of dangerous journeys begun, usually, against the will of the traveller. Whittaker Chambers’s Witness and David Horowitz’s Radical Son are rightly famous, Eugene Lyons’s Assignment in Utopia is less well known; and I can’t think of a single Australian example. Lyons was an American journalist in Moscow in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He told the lies, and then told the truth. His book appears as a footnote in histories of the Soviet Union and it deserves a wide modern readership. It describes his naive enthusiasm for communism clashing with Soviet realities and his own struggle to keep the faith along the way: “The anxiety to ‘belong’ in the dominant social circles in Bolshevik Moscow, the fear of being rejected by the only circles that mattered at home played their roles in keeping me ‘friendly’.” The not belonging, the ostracism, the hatred they would have to bear still keeps many possibly dissident Left intellectuals in obedience.

Lyons confronted the realities of the Soviet Union. Chambers, after spying for the Soviets, turned against communism. Horowitz, a leading US 1960s radical, turned against radicalism and popularised the term “second thoughts” for people like himself who crossed from Left to Right. It’s a term which has never caught on in this country—well, not exactly. A festival of talks being held at the Opera House next month has turned it inside out for a segment called “On Second Thoughts” which “features presentations by three prominent Australians who have changed their mind—Cheryl Kernot, Philip Nitschke and Dick Smith”. The farce of the Australian Left never fails to delight.

Mamet’s predecessors turned against the Soviet government, communism, radicalism. His book is different because by now the storyline has changed and he is responding to the wholesale takeover of our culture by the Left-liberal Zeitgeist. Mamet’s book won’t convince the Left: they won’t read it and anyway they don’t care. For those familiar with criticisms made of their society by contemporary non-Left American writers and broadcasters there is little new, but Mamet’s observations sparkle. For those crossing a lonely land it is valuable, and warm, and reassuring: “For mine is a generation which never grew up. And we have, in our short lives, dismantled that necessarily imperfect system of industry and government for which our parents lived and died.”

Unfortunately this, and many more books like this, would probably have little effect in freeing captive minds. To do that we need to marshal far stronger forces and move into areas in which conservatives are commonly blacklisted. Television entertainment, for instance. 

The way we got here, the way the great lie was able to be imposed over us, has a lot to do with marketing and fashion. The much vaunted 1960s counter-culture was a product sold to a young, moneyed generation. The source of the ideas being sold were the previous generation’s: the 1960s radicals were buyers of ideas, not creators. In that decade the Left used capitalism to sell their worldview. Modern conservative ideas are unfashionable and unsold because conservatives are barred from access to the markets—principally Hollywood and the manufacturing of films. There are very good reasons why this is so. Conservative ideas are attractive, they are capable of changing perceptions, and the Left is afraid of the appeal of those ideas. Left ideologues are aware of the dangers of allowing conservative voices to be heard in people’s homes. In Australia the introduction of The Bolt Report on television was met by a campaign to drive away advertisers. In the USA a supposedly conservative mini-series on the Kennedys was barred from the small screen; but fortunately found DVD sales.

Arts pages (where they exist) are filled with stories of theatre, dance, books and film. The most important part of our culture, the part we all share, is comparatively little examined yet most nights, most people are at home watching television. Here is where a new counter-culture could take on the Left in areas other than news and public commentary. If the internet has served conservatives then it has formed the beginnings for a new television audience. The Left manipulation of television has been very well done. Television sells us our ideas. It is not done in preachy unattractive ways. Popular entertainment is consciously used to teach Left messages and it influences all of us. You think the Gillard government is introducing a carbon dioxide tax because of the science? It’s more likely because she and the Labor caucus vaguely remember things they have seen on television. At the back of the bad tax there is probably a bad Al Gore documentary. Remember, this is the government who destroyed the live cattle export industry because of a forty-five-minute documentary on the ABC.

Presently Left culture is the only product in the television shop. The Left control popular entertainment to market their ideas. Its influence is inescapable because it comes on the inside of enjoyable, popular, entertainment. A highly rated television series is playing. There is a likeable gay male homosexual couple. Suddenly, and just in passing, they are discussing their plans to have children. That’s not entertainment, that’s advertising. It’s a view from somewhere on the west coast of America that is being sold worldwide to heterosexuals, and to homosexuals who until now had never realised that kids were a fashionable gay accessory. That any of the young turn to the Right is miraculous. As we watch Left-inspired disasters unfolding we tend to think, “Now, they’ll get it.” They usually don’t, because they don’t see it on television.

If there is widespread community support in Australia for gay marriage it is probably because of Will and Grace. However, that support might suddenly evaporate after a documentary on the real sexual practices of promiscuous gay male homosexuals in Oxford Street, but it’s hardly likely Four Corners could find their way to those corners of Sydney. Similarly, a documentary allowing climate sceptics to mount their arguments would blow away the warmist Gore-ist claims.

Television is undergoing great changes. Linked to the internet, it will be a provider of immeasurable amounts and kinds of product. If a new conservative film-making emerges which utilises the new distribution opportunities presented it will not be to turn out remakes of Father Knows Best. Those who will make it have grown up with a completely different experience of the medium and have a deep knowledge of how the Left have used it to sell their product. That the intellectual Left has drifted into a self-absorbed form of nihilism offers engaged conservatism unexpected opportunities to combat and defeat a wounded but still formidable ideology. The way out is probably much like the way we came in: taking ideas, good ones this time, and selling them.