The response from Nationals MP Michelle Landry to fresh revelations of sexual misconduct in Parliament left a lot to be desired…
Everything old is left again In among the white noise of yet more tawdry news out of Canberra, you may have missed this moment of genius from Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells. After ASIO’s recent declaration that terms like “far right” and “Islamist” terrorism were no longer “fit for purpose”, she hit Director-General Mike Burgess with a classic: “I have a comment and then a question.”
She asked if the language change would help “educate” those “who do not know their history and do not want to admit that national socialism and Nazism are not right-wing” before insisting, yep, national socialism is a movement of the left.
Senator, we’ve been here before. The Nazi party was purged of any socialist influence by 1933, and formed and maintained links with big business for the entirety of its time in power. Hitler launched the disastrous Operation Barbarossa against Russia, which would prove a turning point in World War II, partly out of a hatred of “Jewish bolshevism”, a belief that communism was a global Jewish conspiracy.
