The Left appears to have very little to say about AUKUS, even though it amounts to the most comprehensive imposition of hegemonic whiteness currently on offer.
All seizures of government have unanticipated consequences. The 2021 coup in Myanmar has had many. One of the most remarkable is that the military has inadvertently rehabilitated ‘the People’ as a primary category for political action.
The quest to understand the death of Kumanjayi Walker has progressively opened out to reveal a wider plain of consequence. Withdrawal, disengagement, lack of trust, betrayal.
In supporting the Coalition government’s decision on AUKUS, the Albanese government has made the most significant departure from the party’s defence and foreign policy tradition in the last forty years.
Progressive politics has become increasingly accommodating of state power in the last two decades, reversing positions that have historically underpinned left-liberal politics.
Human solidarity depends on the sense that we are all equal in coming from nature, and that attempts to reengineer ourselves will prove corrosive of this deeper equality.
