Thread by @davrosz

Did you know that @independentaus has lost about 20 subscribers, net, since the election?
I'm not sure people realise that abandoning sources of truth is exactly what the mainstream media want.
If you cancelled, please think about signing up again. independentaustralia.net/about-ia/subsc…

I don't usually do this, but I am about to write a little thread about independent media, politics and the election. So, here goes...

Many people, and I am one of them, was extremely disheartened by the election result. Like many people, I think, I withdrew from the result. I could not comprehend Australians re-electing perhaps the most corrupt and incompetent administration I have ever seen.

But after some reflection, I realised that the fault did not lie with Australians. The people of Australia, disengaged with politics and picking up their slender political insights from television and, perhaps, a Murdoch headline glimpsed at the local coffee shop, were mugged.

It is a little known fact that the biggest swing towards the Liberal Party came from more working class electorates - electorates that, typically, one would think would support Labor. And the swings to Labor came from more prosperous electorates. These more or less cancelled out.

So what is happening? Why is the working class sliding towards the party of big business, the party of capital, the ones - one would think - who are their natural foes? The ones who scorn and deny them?

There is a famous John Steinbeck quote: "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

The working class, the impoverished and underprivileged, the ill-educated and ill-informed, in my view, voted against their own interest because the idea of another tax on their meagre income - 'The Bill you can't afford' - was an extremely powerful message. Was emotive.

And, as Bill Shorten correctly pointed out, the Government's feeble message of fear - as tiny and ill-founded as it really was - was magnified and reflected and amplified by the mainstream media. Especially the Murdoch media, but also Nine - who now own Fairfax - and the others.

So, a powerful collective of interests - the conservative parties, aided immeasurably by Clive Palmer, who spent millions on anti Labor advertising to support his private business concerns notably his huge coal tenement in CQ - utilised a complicit MSM to swing an election.

As most of you know, the Australian media is the most concentrated in the Western world. You only need to venture overseas to see how dysfunctional and inaccurate it really is. I have lived overseas. That was one reason I started @independentaus.

I started @independentaus because I have done fairly well - not amazingly - in my working life and, coming back to see how incompetent the Australian media is - and it really is - I wanted to provide a positive and progressive news source. To provide an alternative to propaganda.

Yet, in the wake of an election result largely influenced by wall-to-wall conservative nonsense - fact free scare campaigns, repeated and spread through commercial media, social media and even the ABC - after the election, supporters start to abandon @independentaus. It hurts.

It hurts not for me - who cares about me? - but because exactly what Murdoch and Channel Nine/Fairfax want is for truthful sources of news that question their their false and corrupting deceits, incorruptible and independent news sources - to disappear.

In truth,, @independentaus is teetering on the edge. If you want us to survive and go on to challenge the stranglehold of commercial media, you need to stop sitting on the fence and subscribe. We need 2500 subscribers to be viable: independentaustralia.net/about-ia/subsc…. With 10,000, who knows?

And if you can't afford to subscribe, even 50 cents makes a difference. Donate and keep the dream of a democratic Australia alive: independentaustralia.net/about-ia/donat…
Thanks for listening to my rant.

*were*

P.S. The truth is, if you want to get through to the people, you need a loud voice. I have a loud voice. But not loud enough.
Help.
independentaustralia.net/about-ia/subsc…
independentaustralia.net/about-ia/donat…

The alternative is that IA closes and we all give in.
I have other things I could do.
One of the first things I'd do without @independentaus is emigrate.
What about you?
independentaustralia.net/about-ia/subsc…
independentaustralia.net/about-ia/donat…

Were