This week, Friendlyjordies legend, Kristo Langker, appeared in court to plead not guilty to fascistic Berejiklian Government charges that have muzzled criticism of Deputy Premier John Barilaro.
Every red-blooded journalist in the country should be outraged and alarmed at this overreach by the thin-skinned Nats, trailed, as usual, by corruption allegations that accompany this bush redistributive party wherever it treads.
But there is one “journo” that has gone the other way. Tory Shepherd, writing at Crikey, put the boot not into Berejkilian fascists but into FriendlyJordies instead:
Arresting Kristo Langker is not just a thoroughly bemusing use (misuse?) of police powers. It also risks making a martyr of one of the internet’s most egregious egos. YouTuber Friendlyjordies (aka Jordan “Persecution Complex” Shanks-Markovina) was already soaking up victimhood status after NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro starting suing him for defamation.
And now Langker, Shanks-Markovina’s producer, has been charged by the NSW Police Fixated Persons Investigations Unit, paving the way for Friendlyjordies to follow the Pauline Hanson script even more closely.
Like Hanson, Jordies has tapped into disaffection in specific pockets of the community and exploited it mercilessly for power and money. Hanson has eked out sympathy by playing the victim ever since her 2003 prison term, and Jordies pitches himself as the brave soul battling dark and powerful forces who feel threatened by him.
On the face of it the arrest seems like a massive overreach, as lawyer Michael Bradley argues here. The high-profile arrest of an (allegedly) satirical video producer could pose a genuine threat to free speech (as opposed to the phantom threat cooked up by the I-should-get-a-platform-to-say-whatever-I-want crowd).
It’s hard not to think that the unit’s time would be better spent hounding the hordes of fascists, angry incels, and enraged men’s rights dudes that appear everywhere online. Court processes should show whether there’s more evidence we’re not aware of for now.
Meanwhile, the move will fuel the perception of victimhood that Jordies and his fanatical followers already had.
Like Hanson, former US president Donald Trump and others of their ilk, Jordies’ brand is of the outsider who “tells it like it is”, who has the cojones to reveal truths that the mainstream media can’t, or won’t. Where Trump weaponised the phrase “fake news”, Jordies accuses all media of being propagandists, of being indoctrinated. He picks on the ABC and others for being tools of politicians despite all evidence to the contrary.
Such high-falutin’ hypocrisy. This is a guy who explicitly exploits internet algorithms to get more clicks. “We’re slaves to the algorithms like everybody else,” he told Rolling Stone. That article also details how he wants to be the next Rupert Murdoch, and how he fanboys far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The other Jones (Alan) also meets with his approval. As do Ray Hadley, John Laws and Andrew Bolt.
There are so many things wrong with this “argument” that it is hard to know where to start. To keep it civil, I will stick with two basic problems of illogic.
First, let me introduce Crikey and Ms Shepard to the fallacy known as “affirming the consequent”. It goes like this:
If an animal is a dog, then it has four legs. My cat has four legs. Therefore, my cat is a dog.
In the case of the Crikey attack on FriendlyJordies it goes like this:
If a political actor is a racist populist, then s/he is an outsider. FriendlyJordies is an outsider. Therefore, FriendlyJordies is a racist populist.
In short, Crikey has used meta-click-baiting, meta-superciliousness, meta-hypocrisy and unreason to allege that FriendlyJordies’ deeply researched satire is engaged in click-baiting, superciliousness and hypocrisy. Even while FriendlyJordies is being muzzled by a fascistic Berejiklian Government for very likely being too close to the truth about Nats’ corruption, the exposure of which is supposed to be Crikey’s raison detre.
The second point to make is that satire is a different form of truth-telling from journalism. Its role is to prod, poke, provoke, cajole and outrage society and politics to do better. From Jonathon Swift to Jon Stewart, there is a long tradition of satire impacting social change for the better with greater efficacy than self-important media drones.
In Australia’s intellectual desert, FriendlyJordies has done this spectacularly well over the years (other than when it consorts with Labor). And the fact that it is now being pursued via anti-terrorist legislation by a fascistic Berejiklian Government is evidence that this tried and true form of subversive truth-telling is once again on the verge of breaking power.
Thus, Crikey holding Friendlyjordies to some humourless standard of pseudo-journalistic illogic tied to cancel culture is not only absurd, but it is also, ironically, fascistic in itself.
If you are as appalled as I am by this totalitarian garbage from fruitcakes of both left and right then support the bloody heroic stand of Freindlyjordies with a donation here.
