A survey of news articles since the May 18 election provides evidence for all fourteen early warning signs of fascism. This is no hyperbole. Any objective analysis would show the Government is driving Australia down a dark road. We must urgently resist their proto-fascist project and offer a different political vision to engage and inspire the broader community. The alternative does not bear thinking about.

Really Australia, you have renewed faith in this ecocidal Government?

17th Century Political philosopher Thomas Hobbes said it was the state of nature that was a “war of all against all”. He hadn’t yet been to the toilet paper aisle of his local supermarket.

At precisely the moment at which the ALP is positioning itself as the coal industry’s best bud, Richard Di Natale has reached out to Labor in a spirit of co-operation. Part three of our series on escape routes from the death cult of Australian politics argues that now is not the time for coalition-building with a fossil-fuelled party whose hatred for The Greens evidently outweighs their desire to “fight Tories”. Now is the time to fight the bipartisan commitment to ecocide by waging an anti-establishment class war and telling an inspiring story of political transformation.

Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers says the lesson from Corbyn’s defeat is “you don’t beat populism of the right with populism of the left”. As Hillary Clinton showed in 2016 and the Liberal Democrats proved in 2019, you beat it with a spineless defence of the suicidal status quo.

This second article in our series on escape routes from the death cult of Australian politics argues that the shallow and self-serving establishment analyses of the British election result can crawl back into the reject bin from which they came. Instead we make the case for a three-pronged democratic socialist strategy to end the shitfuckery and transform this country.

The daily news cycle about Morrison’s increasingly authoritarian nation-burning agenda, in tandem with Labor’s capitulation, is relentlessly depressing. Understandably, progressive responses trade in outrage and despair. Challenging as it may be, we urgently need to devote just as much energy to devising and debating strategies to end this nightmare. To this end, this is the first in a series of Situation Theatre articles suggesting escape routes from the death cult that is Australian politics in 2019.

This first one argues that a reinvigorated Greens politics would not only significantly boost their share of the vote, but also drag Labor back from the dark side.

There can be no clearer sign that our politics is every bit as sick as refugees languishing on Manus, nor any more obvious evidence of the urgent need for treatment to heal the wounds.

This is the introduction to the 7th edition of the Situation Theatre newsletter. It’s a weekly round up of events which also links to our work and the best memes and articles from the week that was. When Sacha Baron Cohen says Hitler could have advertised for the Final Solution on Facebook without sanction and you think he could well be right, it’s probably time to find other ways to engage an audience.

Tuesday night’s climate report on The Project shows the pernicious pervasiveness of neoliberal ideology. We must bin this individualist nonsense and fight for our democracy as collectives and communities.

A satirical site with a serious mission.

If you enjoy Situation Theatre’s work and would like to see it become a stronger counterweight to the daily assault of centrist and right-wing propaganda from much of our media, we’d love you to join the fight by becoming a Patron.

The following is the introduction to the 5th edition of the Situation Theatre newsletter. Now we know Mark Zuckerberg is wining and dining with the far-right, it probably won’t be long before Facebook is strictly pro-Nazi. Get on board and sign up to the Situation Theatre newsletter at the bottom of this piece so we don’t all have to become fascists to maintain an audience for satire.

This week we learnt that correctly naming the causes of catastrophe, accurately pointing to the perpetrators of those causes, and calling for action to prevent such terrible events in the future is just as bad as speculating on the voting preferences of bushfire victims.

The viral meme says much about the failure to build solidarity amongst the 99%..

We must offer hope to those hurting in the wake of Saturday’s infuriating result. Alienating the masses and tearing each other apart will get us nowhere.

It may be tempting to draw reactionary lessons from this calamity. These are the lessons of establishment journos and smug politics, and they are lessons we can ill-afford in an age of climate emergency.

From climate crimes to crimes against humanity, from coddling white supremacists to closing Indigenous communities, from attacks on public broadcasters to assaults on media diversity, from cutting funding to schools, hospitals, penalty rates, pensions and community organisations to cutting arms deals with terrorists, from prosecuting whistleblowers to protecting the banks, from its war on civil liberties to its war on the poor, from Islamophobia to homophobia, from rigging the tax system to ruining the NBN, from naked corruption to never-ending corporatism, the fight against extremism compels Australians to give the Coalition an electoral flogging of painful proportions.

A frank assessment of Hawke’s role in tipping the scales in favour of capital is fair enough. Ignoring his many progressive policies is not.

A mining magnate who steals his party name from the 1930s, takes his slogan from a reality TV President, and rips his advertising budget from 800 of his own workers, can do so with reckless abandon because “there’s no limits”. We must change the system which feeds him.

Rupert Murdoch has been poisoning our democracy for decades. It’s time for a united front to offer an antidote.