Two things strike you about recent discussions on democracy.
Or at least, they do if you watch lots of new media podcasts online. And, after all, what else is there to do? They might be limited hangouts, as James Delingpole would probably argue, but they do inform and create space for critical thinking about our times. The legacy media certainly don’t do that. They cannot, given they are bought up and owned by malign forces.
Those two things?
One is that elections no longer serve as democratic processes. Elections are rigged. Voting systems prevent minority voices from being represented. Promises mean nought. False mandates are claimed. Governments are elected with a third of the vote. Etc. This is widely known, if seldom acknowledged.
The second is that referendums can serve as democratic processes. The two case studies most mentioned that show clarity of the popular will – as elections no longer do – are Brexit, shockingly, nearly a decade ago now, and the Voice (reluctantly capitalised).
Each referendum has been said to show a very clear expression of popular sentiment in relation to totemic issues. Each summed up a lot of pent-up frustration with political class. One delivered a narrow victory, the other a massive one.
Each has amounted to not much, sadly. Brexit was screwed by Tory politics and Tory indifference to the core concerns of the “leave” majority. And by Nigel Farage’s “moving on” post Brexit, if Ben Habib of Advance UK is to be believed. And he is right. On the Voice, well, the yes brigade are all doing it anyway. See under Jacinta Allan in Victoria. And Boris Johnson and successors at Number Ten.
If evidence for the remoteness of the ruling class and its disdain for the popular will, clearly expressed, is required, then here it is. Not a ringing endorsement, then, of democracy-by-referendum. On its face. Not an argument for going down the Swiss path.
Yes, there are ways for the political class to kill referendum outcomes. And there is another thing. Who holds the power to call referendums? The political class, of course. David Cameron and Anthony Albanese, both servants of the globalist caste from different sides of the aisle but glued together in UniParty, called referendums they thought they would win. Cameron felt compelled to, since he had promised it. For Albo, it was pure ideology. Apart from Palestinian radicalism, Albo’s lifelong commitment has been to walking back the British colonisation of Australia.
Referendums only get called from the top down. There is no “right” to a referendum. If there was, there would be one called on mass immigration. THE biggest issue across the West, right now.
But there is one thing that referendums like Brexit and the Voice do. They reassure the silent majority that they are, in fact, a majority. The referendum campaigns galvanise the outsider class. They remind us that we have latent political power.
The question becomes – what do the silent masses do with this knowledge? So far, not so much.
A whole bunch of Australian nationalists are taking to the streets this weekend. Why? As David Starkey recently suggested to Brendan O’Neill, they feel they have no other path to getting their concerns recognised.
They know elections don’t work in their favour. And they also know that referendums mostly go nowhere.
They are driven to this. Some suggest that violence is only the answer. If you are called far-right enough, well, why not act it out?
Sadly, the likely outcome of their on-the-street efforts will be zip. Net zero. There will be nazis-on-demand. Actors performing scripts. Maybe a little violence, on demand.
It is a bit like conducting wars on terror. Your cause may be just. But it will get you precisely nowhere. You will simply reinforce the messages of the ruling class. You will prove their claims. That you are racist cookers. That you are anti-immigration. Xenophobes.
They have the power of the bullshit on their side. The authority of the state. Backed by the institutions. Especially the media. When you are innocently listening to a community easy listening radio station and then get, on the hour, Al Jazeera talking points on repeat dial, you know who is in charge.
They have plausible deniability. They have decades of propaganda study behind them. You, the dissidents, are the bad guys. It is a grisly virtuous circle for them.
When all the debates are now settled online, with constructed narratives and the power of the elite oligarchies behind them, you have to wonder what is going to be achieved by a showing of populism.
Until the organisers of the marches figure out the next step, what happens the day after, they will continue to be sitting ducks. Expressing frustration does not equal strategy. And they will continue to do a disservice to the many people who wish them and their cause well.
What other mechanisms might disenfranchised democracy-inclined grumps use to get their views across? Well, in Manchester they have put up a sign on an overhead bridge saying “Keir Starmer is a wanker. Beep if you agree”. There were lots of St George and Uniion Jack flags festooned as well. There was a lot of loud honking. Paul Joseph Watson concludes that “people really hate this f…… government”.
I think it can be safely said that there is a bit of that abroad down under, too. What is different is that Britain is a political powder keg, with electoral options on the table. It took the Tories over a decade to acquire the level of hatred that Sir Keir Groomer has reached in fourteen months. The voters there understand pretty clearly the notion of a UniParty. We do not, outside a fairly small circle of alt-activists and thinkers. Some of these will be making their feelings known this weekend. Yes, the issues in the mother country are much more in-your-face, what with the grooming gangs – grooming “clans”, as David Starkey calls them – and the hotels full of well-fed illegal migrants. Perhaps British elites have jumped the shark on mass immigration. Our “leaders” can still – it seems – get away with painting cranky dissidents here as racists and xenophobes. They have given it their best shot these past weeks.
We did have a couple of bush summits recently. These weren’t so much about immigration. Feelings ran high there too. Angry farmers chased Albo down the streets of Ballarat in their tractors.
The Commo Premier, Jacinta Allan, Daniel Andrews without the wedding tackle, copped it too. She decided, unwisely, to lecture rural Victorians about renewable energy. Albo lied about climate change, too, and copped a bit of heckling. And they laughed at him too.
It was a little reminiscent of ScoMo’s reception in Cobargo during the bushfires.
And that was before he single-handedly ruined the country just a year later with his Covid fascism.
But I don’t think this bush summitry and the marches will shift the needle much, alas. Like Britain, with its Londonistan and 64 per cent of people who live there being born overseas, and the rural landscape the only remaining place for native Britons to retreat to, Australia is now a divided country, with regional areas far more likely than cities to be resistant to the globalist regimes we have inherited. I am guessing that Dubbo would have difficulty rounding up tens of thousands of Palestinian flag wavers to go on a march down Macquarie Street (Dubbo). Sydney’s Macquarie Street would find the task a doddle.
Paul Joseph Watson goes on to note that Essex Council has offered “support” to staff distressed by all this Brit flag flying. Despite the fact that the building in which they work has the Union Jack and St George’s flag flying outside.
Oh dear.
Turning protest into fun can have a similar liberating effect to using comedy to bag our rulers. But will it change anything? We have to keep hoping that it will, despite the evidence all about that the elites have it all sown up.
Perhaps, in contemplating our misfortunes, we should reflect on the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground, regarded by many as one of the greatest books ever written.
Get the book for free, here.
https://www.planetpublish.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Notes_from_the_Underground_NT.pdf
The country is being destroyed. Those who care about this are taking to the streets. The Liberal wimp, Senator James Paterson, fears this will upset “social cohesion”. I guess he doesn’t get that social cohesion – which we once had in the 1950s, as the writers of a new book on the missing Beaumont children point out – is now already gone, thanks to the globalist policies that Paterson’s party and Labor have inflicted upon us. As Starkey points out, we are now ruled by lies. Rod Dreher suggests, in a book about heroes of the eastern European Soviet gulag, that we should not live by lives. These heroes were men of action, not the thinkers who so appalled Dostoevsky. They are refusing to go along with their countrymen, many of whom have succumbed to learned helplessness.
Jacinta Allan calls the Australians on the streets over the weekend “walking with Nazis”. Of course she does. Jacinta herself prefers to walk with communists.
Rather than castigating those who care about our nation, we should be applauding them, and, like the farmers, hurling invective instead at pathetic ruling class gigues like Albo and the Premier of MelDanistan.
Right on cue, the Catholic bishops have chimed in with a call to be nice to migrants.
The 1950 letter—read aloud in churches across the country—called on Australian Catholics to exercise their moral duty to extend kindness, practical assistance, and hospitality to new arrivals, especially those who had been displaced by war and persecution.
In the anniversary letter released 22 August the Bishops Commission for Evangelisation, Laity and Ministry said those words “remain just as applicable to us today”.
“Once again, our nation serves as a sanctuary and refuge for thousands seeking a new life—whether fleeing hardships in their homelands or pursuing the opportunities, freedom, and prosperity that Australia offers, and we are called again to extend the hand of welcome to migrants ‘patience, kindliness, sympathy and practical help … in God’s name’.”
The letter notes that the lived experience of migrants—who represent about a third of Australians—has “not always been a positive one”.
“Despite significant progress in fostering a multicultural society, prejudice persists among some of us who view others as being ‘different’ or ‘other’ within our nation.
“And in todays’ political climate, as conflicts from abroad spill into our own nation, we are witnessing growing tensions, division, and unrest, which are threatening the harmony of our communities.
https://catholicweekly.com.au/australian-catholic-bishops-call-for-immigrants-to-be-welcomed/
They refer to their own 1950 document, On Immigration. The Bishops might have profited from a little reflection on history and context.
1950? That was then. It was, indeed, the time of the Beaumont generation. And it was a time when our migrant intake was small and very selective. When those coming sought to be Australians. To be somewheres in a new country. Mostly they outdid us in being Aussie. Just like converts to the faith, they were often more Aussie than cradle Australians. No wonder we were nice to them. And we were. We were especially nice to a young Pakistani cricketer. We made him a test cricketer and a millionaire. He is now the local branch of the Hamas protection society.
Now, we have millions coming. From cultures foreign to our own, increasingly. Many have little regard for our history or traditions, and, for many, our values. They are anywhere. They merely happen to be “based” here. They set up enclaves. Many are no-go areas. They come for the welfare and for the safety of a woke ruling class which endlessly panders. Many hate us. They are their own clans. Tribes and not would be patriots. Many were illegals until Tony Abbott stopped the boats. And they use tricks to get in. Like student visas. James Morrow calls our universities “international finishing schools”.
I reckon the migrant cohort of 1950 would be out there, too, on the streets today.
Should we still be nice to them all? Well, mostly, we still are. We can walk and chew gum. We can think migrants are welcome. But, as my late mother used to say, “everything in moderation”. We don’t have to think that both the new levels and sources of migration are okay. That all of those saying “kill the Jews” out Lakemba way are welcome here. Walk the streets of Auburn and you are in another country. Not ours. Just like the past – say, 1950 – is another country. They do things differently there. To borrow the famous phrase of the novelist L P Hartley.
Sorry to report that methinks the (I hope) well-meaning Bishops have their heads in the sand. Perhaps the biggest protest march of them all, certainly on a per population basis, has been in Brisbane. Rocco Loiacono has noted that the brand new Archbishop of Brisbane (Shane Mackinlay) is a “big fan” of the idea that the Church should “blend in” with the modern world.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2025/08/when-will-pope-leo-start-poping/
Yet another modernist, then. AI search says that the Archbishop believes that the Church is enriched by engagement with the people around it. By “walking together”. With those who are different. Perhaps the good Archbishop might take a look outside in Brisbane today, and note what we-the-people think the modern world has done for us. Maybe also the ruling class should practise a little Francis-style synodality. You know, listening to “those below”.
Of course, the late Pope thought climate denialism was a sin. Perhaps we should have a referendum on that.
Paul Collits
31 August 2025
Every person who hated covid rubbish woke up to the games of the elites very quickly. Thousands who marched today and got called racists by their leaders on the news tonight just woke up to. Win win. The politicians all looked so ridiculous. Waffling on about social cohesion and multi culturalism like well schooled automatons. Win win. It might not be much but I'll take it.
Well said. The pressure mounts. Who knows which gasket will blow first. But it will be contained and mis-named. It is like thick boiling porridge until the moisture dries out and then the pot burns and then the smoke alarm goes off and then the pot ignites and .....