In the few minutes that Tony Abbott was Prime Minister, he said some really dumb shit. Remember “what the housewives of Australia need to understand”, or describing Indigenous people living in remote areas as a “lifestyle choice”? But last week Tony blew up his own dumbshitometer with an article in The Australian, in which he blamed the Russian invasion of Ukraine on “cultural marxists” and “culture wars”.
According to Tony, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine because the west is weak. And the reason we’re weak is because the left has spent too long worrying about issues like transgender athletes, religious discrimination, and Australia Day. The whole thing read like Mark Latham on LSD, and left me wondering if the blows Tony had copped to head during his student boxing career had finally taken their toll.
My favourite part is when Tony claimed Monty Python’s Life of Brian couldn’t be made today because of “politically correct wowserism”. Firstly, wowsers did try to shut down Life of Brian, but they weren’t from the woke brigade, they were from Tony’s tribe of conservative Christians who claimed the movie was blasphemous and led to it being banned in various cities of the UK. Secondly, there is no way Tony Abbott liked Life of Brian. I can’t see him rolling in the aisles to “blessed are the cheesemakers” or chuckling at Biggus Dickus and his wife Incontentia Buttocks.
Sadly, Tony Abbott is just another turd in the toilet bowl of conservative commentators blaming Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on culture wars and wokeness.
Disgraced Liberal MP Tim Smith recently posted on his Facebook page, “Save Ukraine. That’s a real threat to diversity and inclusion” and “Maybe it’s time we started worrying about real issues, instead of our pronouns.” If only Tim had worried about real issues, like the dangers of drink driving, before crashing his brand new jaguar into a child’s bedroom. “Worrying about real issues” is very rich coming from a bloke who once tried to ban bats from his Kew electorate. Maybe Tim was just jealous that bats know how to get home safely, even though they’re blind.
Last week professional homophobe Lyle Shelton tweeted that Ukraine had been forced to fight alone “because our leaders didn’t have the courage to stand up against LGBTI activists”. Putting aside the fact that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is an outspoken supporter of LGBTI rights, what the fuck is Lyle talking about? Does he honestly believe Vladimir Putin was sitting in the Kremlin one morning, when an adviser burst in and said, “Sir, a transgender kid wants to play football in Australia!”. Then Vladimir looks up and says, “That’s it, send the tanks into Ukraine!”
In the Herald-Sun, Andrew Bolt managed to blame the war in Ukraine on climate activism, saying “Vladimir Putin would never have dared invade Ukraine if the green movement hadn’t first made Europe look helpless.” The only surprise was Andrew Bolt didn’t also try to blame the Ukraine war on African gangs from Melbourne’s outer suburbs.
Bolt was in good company pointing the finger at climate activists. On Steven Bannon’s YouTube channel, contributor Ben Harnwell even blamed Greta Thunberg for Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, saying, “There’s a direct causal link between Greta Thunberg on the podium at the UN with the tears & Putin’s invasion of Ukraine”. He then spent the next 12 minutes elaborating, but I tuned out after a minute because a) it was utterly nonsensical b) he was wearing a bucket hat, and no one should ever have to listen to a grown man wearing a bucket hat.
It is starting to feel like right-wing commentators have a giant wheel filled with every pet peeve and petty grudge they have against the woke left, which they spin before scribbling their editorials on the causes for the Ukraine War. Next week they’ll be blaming kids in Che Guevara t-shirts and people who order sides of smashed avo.
Blaming the woke left for every atrocity and injustice is the current conservative play of the day. It’s political correctness gone mad 2.0. Tune into the vampires on Sky News any night and listen for how many times they repeat the word woke, like an old, scratched CD that can’t stop skipping.
Wokeness is just the newest boogie man hiding under the bed of every conservative commentator. But like all boogie men, if you shine a light on them, you quickly find out there’s nothing there. All you’re left with is a frightened child with an overactive imagination who’s too scared to go to sleep.
If Tony Abbott really is a fan of Monty Python, then maybe he should invite Tim, Lyle, Andrew and all the other conservatives who want to blame global atrocities on the woke left over for a movie night. He could whack on The Holy Grail, and I’m sure they’d all enjoy the Black Knight, a character who can’t stop picking fights, even though his whole body is being dismembered. By the end he’s just a head and torso lying on the ground, but keeps taunting people who have walked past him and into the distance. The Black Knight thinks he’s brave, but he’s really just an idiot in complete denial. And he’s the biggest joke in the whole film.
