The Trumpian Grandiosity of the Antilockdowners

On Saturday in Richmond, Victoria anti-lockdown protesters rushed police lines. Having had plans to march through the city’s centre dampened by the state government shutting down public transport they tried to march on foot. Hence the police barricade.

The crowd looked shambolic - a hodgepodge that you usually get at these things. Wearing ersatz protective gear of bicycle helmets, goggles and umbrellas, sporting Eureka stockade flags, Australian Federal flags and banners saying things like “Science has disgraced itself” or “Free our kids”. The numbers weren’t massive but were too significant to be dismissed.

Footage that spread throughout social channels showed police blocking a thoroughfare in a narrow gully, the photographer videotaping from above. A front-line of burly male protesters rushed and quickly broke through the police lines. A policeman was knocked over and trampled. A short melee ensued but behind the vanguard a long column of protesters streamed through - not rushing but jogging. The third wave were ambling, now a mix of men and women, old and young. It is difficult to reach any lasting conclusions from footage like this. As experience shows you are always limited in time and space with video clips - critical context is often omitted.

In real-time, in comments sections the anti-lockdowner were out in force - desperate to wrestle the narrative from journalists and convey the sense that the police had instigated the violence. No footage I have seen supported that.

Also their language betrayed a sense of grandiosity seemingly out of proportion with their gripes. This lockdown has been particularly difficult for those in Melbourne. Hope has been its nadir and the difficulty experienced during lockdown depends of circumstances - Are you a carer? Are you employed? Do you have children? Are you watching the business you have poured everything into slowly whither away? Depending on how you answer these questions can determine how stressful your life has been.

Yet the vernacular of the anti-lockdown movement is desperately out of step with hardship even that extended over years. This was not nurses or teachers marching for increased pay or a group with a gripe. Instead it was closer to the language of an historically oppressed minority. Those protesting are “standing up for your rights,” and “fighting for freedom”. Victoria has become a “police state” it was “my body my choice.”

That last one.

So much of this language, signage and tactics has been borrowed from other movements. It looks like a collage: umbrellas from Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, messaging from anti-vaxxers and the bent away from science and towards radicalisation of Trumpistan. Far from diluiton, mimicry like this demands further radicalisation - it also means we’re taking cues from overseas.

And while movements like pro-democracy in Hong Kong are justified they escalated to a level of fury that took time to build. The antilockdowners are not just pirating tactics and messaging they importing the late-stage anger of protracted causes.

Another worrying aspect of the antilockdowner’s language is how consistent it all is. These sentiments have clearly been bubbling away below the surface and has been allowed to develop inside an echo chamber from a set of shared opinions into beliefs. This is dangerous because it makes interacting very difficult, especially when one of these beliefs is a rejection of science and the ‘mainstream’ if such a thing exists, which in this case usually means any opinion more moderate. It is much harder to counter a belief than an opinion. Now they have breached the chamber’s walls and spread in force coagulating in comment sections.

This is not just a bunch of basement dwelling keyboard bashers living on the fringe. Late last month controversial right-leaning Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson directly asked his Australian followers “are you being asked to choose between the dangers of a police state vs the dangers of Covid?” The response was overwhelming. It seemed that many Australians believed they were living in a police state already. Is that a dog whistle?

It is easy to cast off comments on social media as being limited to bots or a vocal minority. But again and again we have seen that radicalisation on the internet culminates in real-world consequences. Whether its storming of the White House, Pizzagate or tragic mass shootings Christchurch - the tenor of the discourse on the internet is not just hot air and is dismissed at our peril. Radical words often end in radical action.