Waleed Aly is a broadcaster, author and academic.
Celebrating is the natural response of those living under authoritarianism to news their tyrant is gone. So much is loaded into the moment. Like releasing a breath that has been held for decades.
If you’re an Australian republican, you might see this scandal involving the man Anthony Albanese has called a “grub” as a pivotal moment.
This story is not merely about the possibility of the Coalition moving to the right. It’s about One Nation outbidding them by moving even further that way too.
It’s tempting in this hyper-political moment to assume everything is some kind of political confection, calculated to provoke or propagandise.
Inflation hits poorer people harder, which creates the very worst social equation: the wealthy can continue to spend, further stoking inflation. It creates a recipe for populism.
Neo-Nazis have embraced the idea of swarms of independent cells – with no central control or direction – as a more effective way to produce chaos and social panic.
We’ve seen oppositions destroy themselves over some divisive issue. But I don’t ever recall it happening over an issue they themselves foisted on the government.
Legislation is not a press conference. It has to anticipate future situations and be coherent 20 years hence.
Perhaps the key to the Venezuela puzzle is to remember that Trump’s administration is made up of divergent factions. When it acts it is because one has prevailed, or the factions have agreed.
Bondi does not seem to come from a world of “networks” and “cells”. All signs are it was much more self-driven than that.