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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/15/pauline-hanson-one-nation-borrow-from-trump-grievance-politics-ntwnfb>
"When Donald Trump descended the golden escalator in 2015 to announce that he
was running for president of the United States, the world laughed.
And when I landed in Washington late that year to lead the ABC’s coverage of
the election, there was an expectation that Hillary Clinton would walk into the
Oval Office.
Throughout that campaign, as the other correspondents and I crisscrossed
America trying to understand the grievance politics that was creeping across
the nation, especially the inland states, we battled a perception from
Australia that Trump was just a sideshow.
And yet he masterfully commanded centre stage, attracting outsized mainstream
media coverage because he drove clicks and ratings, creating a massive
unfiltered Maga echo chamber via social media and successfully undermining
journalism as fake news.
By the time the media snapped back at him, along with the whiplashed political
classes trying to hold him to account, it was too late. Criticism was read as
conspiracy against the will of the people.
Those who stormed the US Capitol in January 2021 were accused of treason, but
in their minds it was the reverse. They believed the election had been stolen
from Trump.
Even attempts to hold Trump to account (via impeachment no less) merely fed his
popularity.
He was able to capitalise on a fragmentation of trust – in politics, in the
media, in the global order. Mystifyingly, given his wealthy background, he was
able to frame himself as the “everyman”, the one who would stand up for real
people and call out the elites.
By the time the media realised he was building a movement, it was too late.
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t
lose any voters, OK?” he famously said in 2016. “It’s, like, incredible.”
Right now, in Australia, commentators left, right and centre are similarly
trying to grasp the bouncing ping-pong ball that is Pauline Hanson’s One Nation
which has been hiding in plain sight.
If only journalists had been as quick to catch on to the shortcomings of the
major parties as the voters have. This is partly a result of the lack of media
resources for ongoing field reporting, but it’s also to do with the media’s own
attachment to the two-party system.
And while they now marvel at the rise of a party that’s been a sleeping threat
for years, the ping-pong ball has escaped the arena and is already bouncing
down the hill."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
