In this latest Australian election cycle, history repeats itself with increasing intensity as policy debate is relegated to a relic of history in favour of strategies of dissembling, distraction and scapegoating. This is not a new phenomenon, but one that has been emerging over the last two to three decades as parties scramble to resolve…
Ongoing protests over Victorian state government lockdowns and vaccine mandates are emerging as fodder for ‘moral panic’ feeding into the 2022 Australian election cycle. A strategy as old as the hills, moral panics create an atmosphere of polarisation that offers cover for political blame-shifting and victim-blaming, allowing corrupt and bought candidates to reinvent themselves as…
Debney, B. (2019). Halal Certification Uproar: The Muslim Scapegoat as National Safety Valve. In C. M. Hall, The Routledge Handbook of Halal Hospitality and Islamic Tourism. Routledge. Halal food certification is a service provided by Islamic religious authorities to food manufacturers to certify that their processes and products meet the dietary and customary standards required…
Homelessness? Housing unaffordability? Domestic violence epidemic? Growing income inequality? Climate change? Support for renewables? Nope. Apparently the main issue confronting the Victorian state election later in the year will be african youth gangs. Sat up to the very wee small hours of the morning writing up a piece on the federal government’s sleazy, vile and…
https://www.academia.edu/28916965/The_Terror_Scare_War_on_Terror_Mythology_and_Moral_Panic ‘Moral judgment about the historical events with which War on Terror narratives have become associated has become implicit in the mere act of referring to them. As a result of the currency it has gained through widespread usage in the mass media, irrespective of its patent lack of objectivity, usage of the proper noun…
‘Never let a good crisis go to waste,’ Winston Churchill famously remarked. Famed for leading the Allied opposition to Nazi aggression during WW2, Churchill was no doubt aware more than many of the political value of crises, particularly to anyone looking for some scapegoat or other onto whom to shift the blame for the undesirable effects of policies for which they themselves were responsible.…