I’m sipping an Ole Fashioned. The heater’s on. Beyoncé’s wailing in my ear about how crazy in love she is with Jay-Z. And I’ve spent the day with the lady who I am, in point of fact, rather crazily in love with. The Bey to my Jay, as it were.
And as I sit here nursing my whisky cocktail it occurs to me how easy it would be to think that all is well with the world. That all is well, even, in my tiny little corner of the world. But all, sadly, is not well.
These are difficult times for everyone. Costa Livvies keep going up, extreme weather events are happening more extremely, Clive Fucking Palmer repeatedly fails to unexist. And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s a dark and disturbing shadow corrupting much of our national discourse right now.
And it’s a deliberate shadow, one rooted in selfishness and amorality. A technique that’s been crafted over decades in corporate law courts and marketing agencies, and honed to perfection in American politics and on the internet. It’s known by a cutesy three letter acronym: FUD.
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. It’s an incredibly powerful, monstrously sinister game plan that takes advantage of the worst of human nature.
It was born, as I said, in marketing agencies and by corporate lawyers in the seventies. You can’t trust those scientists, said the tobacco companies. There’s a lot of uncertainty in those studies, they said. The government is coming for your smokes, they said. Then the software companies and the techbros started using it. Microsoft put code in Windows 3.1 that gave a bogus error message if it detected rival software on the machine, so users would doubt the other programs. Then climate change deniers used it against environmentalists. Fear – your electric car will end the weekend. Uncertainty – the science is debated. Doubt – the world is so big how can us tiny humans have any effect on it?
But the most disturbing place I’m seeing FUD now? The Voice debate.
We started with an overwhelmingly popular notion: constitutional recognition of First Peoples and an advisory body to represent them to parliament. Simple, reasonable, and a tiny step towards reconciliation and unity.
But any success in the referendum would be a win for the Labor government, and that is something Australian conservatives can not abide. Let me be perfectly clear: the mainstream No Campaign exists purely as a political machine to hurt Labor. Dutton doesn’t oppose The Voice because of racism or bigotry, as many have suggested, but entirely and absolutely out of opportunism and ambition. I will concede that the so-called “Progressive No” is probably more honourable, if misguided, in its intentions.
And the only way the No Campaign can defeat The Voice is through Trumpian politics – negativity and FUD. Disinformation, muddied waters, misdirection. It is increasingly becoming the default (and often the only) strategy for the right, for one simple reason: it’s astonishingly effective. It’s how we got Trump (maybe Obama is Kenyan?), it’s how we got Morrison and Dutton (African gangs anybody?), it’s why we got Brexit.
There is now nothing left in my tumbler but a half-melted chunk of ice and a sodden slither of orange peel. I, similarly, shall leave you with but two things: a piece of advice, and an earnest appeal. My advice is to be continually vigilant and on the lookout for FUD. You will see it more and more as our political and cultural discourse becomes further saturated with it in the coming years.
And my earnest appeal? I beg you: if you don’t know, find out. If you’re unsure what The Voice is about, do a web search. Ask someone who does know, or read an explainer on The Conversation or the ABC.
And now, as I stifle the exceptional auditory experience that is Mrs. Knowles-Carter, I’m going to refill my lowball, read another chapter of Wodehouse and then embark on a hopefully peaceful adventure in dreamy slumberland. Goodnight, dear reader.