Pixelated Semantics

A schizotypical inventory

No condolences for a hillbilly dictator

Joh Bjelke-Petersen's passing has sadly, predictably become a whitewash in the local and Australian media, largely leaving it to overseas media agencies to unvarnish the reality of his undemocratic, ignorant reign. Though some activists will persist with preserving the memory of those oppressive years, the press is predictably blinkered by the notion that development at the price of democracy is an acceptible trade off - they will wrly jibe at his "twisted syntax and mixed metaphors" and avoid giving depth to the real hallmarks of Joh's fascist political era. His history ought to be, and will be, written by the people, who like myself, protested, published, organised, and nurtured creative dissent (at least, until crossing the nearest state border was a more enticing option than increasingly vicious encounters with Joh's corrupt enforcers,) and not by the armchair agents of organs like the Courier-Mail that profited and pandered, and saw defending civil liberties as irrelevant during his entire office. No condolences are offered for the hillbilly dictator, for the man did absolutely nothing to earn civil respect.

Update: Against Brian Laver's singular and honest observation of Bjelke-Petersen ("an egomaniacal bigot and also a person who ran a ruthless police state"), the local Murdoch press manages to "balance" critical responses including:

"malicious, inappropriate, uncalled for, minute, irrelevant, un-Australian, stupid, malicious, grumpy, and pathetic"

Plans by an activist cadre to picket Joh's funeral in Kingaroy are unlikely to recieve favourable reception at any time. Being badly characterised by the Sunday Mail's sensitive reporting (which repeatedly states how the picketers will be "run out of town") is not going to assist.

Remarkably, the Australian's Editorial today takes an unexpectedly trenchant and realistic appraisal. Unlike others, the writer recalls how Joh "undermined the democratic and civic values of the state he was elected to lead", that he "trashed democracy", and urges the media and the political community to "get past the idea that the corruption and abuse of power that characterised the Joh ascendancy are an unavoidable concomitant of having a populist larrikin as premier". A stark contrast to the Courier-Mail's apparent lapses of memory and perhaps in the end, civic responsibility.

Item posted by AutoEditor at 12:52 pm ::