"We're building an army:" Angry anti-renewable groups take to city streets ahead of state election
The protest, organised by Across Victoria Alliance, brought around 300 CFA volunteers, farmers, One Nation and National party supporters, and a variety of renewable energy opponents into Melbourne on the sunny Friday morning.
Speakers, mainly men standing inside a large delivery truck, used Trumpian language to play up city-country divisions and went hard on militaristic calls for a war on transmission lines, renewable energy and data centres.
I'm disappointed that so many farmers and CFA who are going the be the most affected by climate change fronting this anti-renewables rally.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-war-without-weapons-anti-renewables-groups-whip-up-fresh-transmission-tension-ahead-of-state-vote/Open linkView original on slrpnk.net
21 replies
We are on the dumbest timeline.
I mean, not for much longer - if that's any consolation...
I laughed out loud at that.....now I am sad
Takes a lot of money to organize something like this. But I bet you the state government isn't competent enough to look into who bought all their train tickets/lunches.
One Nation and the National Party were present at the rally, so I'm assuming it traces back to Gina and the Minerals Council / Australian Energy Producers. They fund other pro-fossil-fuel astroturfing groups like "Hands off our Fuel"
Imagine being this huge of a fucking muppet
I'd go a long way before i'd call them "average".
These people feel unheard sure, but i get the distinct feeling that's because they're largely full of shit. Undereducated and over internetted.
I had to read that headline 3 times as I didn’t believe my brain was reading correctly.
Not to mention a lot of the farmers who are most up in Arms could be making a tidy profit off setting up shop on their land. Plenty of studies find that solar panels create useful micro climates under them that can yield some super positive results. I'd link to some of the articles but I am lazy and a hack, so I won't.
Anti RENEWABLES. WTF?
Okay, how do you wind up anti power transmission line? I am pretty sure these people are pro oil. How's that supposed to work?
Sorry, they’re anti what now?
So they are building an army of brownshirts then.
A small group of useful idiots fighting someone else's battles instead of their own.
A lot of these people have fallen for the propaganda. Sky News is available free-to-air in rural areas, and their legitimate grievances with both Labour and Liberal parties means they're turning to One Nation.
I worry about the future of my country.
There's having legimitate concerns then there's just being a reactive idiot
Example: ok, you hear from this that there's concerns over the power transmission corridors. Duxo's website will go on and on about them
But do you know what those concerns are? They're actually pretty fucking valid when we're talking about things like land access, restrictions about equipment they can use around them etc. i mean if somone said "we're gonna stick a tower in your back yard and pay you fiddy a month but you're not allowed to do basically 90% of your normal backyard things around them for an exclusion zone" i'd be pretty pissed too.
But they don't actually list any of that. They just go straight for the emotive bullshit and how it's like "raaar we're makin' a stand against the nazis!!!" "Lookit me i'm in a cage!!!" Without actually saying why.
And I suspect that's largely because their concerns - if they stopped listening to their fucking lizard brain for thirty damned seconds - would actually be addressed and allayed for the most part. But they're wedded to the battler mythos, the feeling of being a Brave Victim Under Harsh Treatment and that's their own damned problem.
They don't want their legitimate concerns taken away from them, because then they'd still be angry but wouldn't be able to justify it.
I'm not surprised at all. It's the kind of mindset where I am in the regional area that I live in Qld.
As someone who grew up in a remote rural Victorian town, only coming to Melbourne as an adult, this to me is the strongest domestic indicator of what the current UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham recently announced regarding the 2016 UK Brexit Vote.
Growing up around and knowing varying types of personality traits from that region, consistently there was a greater understanding for the environment and how to manage it in order to benefit from it.
This was prevalent and consistent to those on farms and the many that rarely stepped foot on a farm. The inner town people weren't much different from Melbourne suburbans, but most had a Greens leaning when it came specifically to environmental matters.
It was the more complicated social issues that were seen as a 'city issue', and a consensus that the Nationals were the only way to have a rural voting block, even if they aligned with what was strongly seen as a city party.
Personally I always felt that rural voters would be greater represented by a block of independents, rather than trading most of their votes to a city party for minimal concessions and the odd pork barreling, but that's neither here nor there.
To see rural people, who exist and live in the very environment that they themselves often have a conscientious understanding of responsibility for, fall into emotional misinformation and manipulation, really brings home just how significant an issue of political manipulation farms are from outside each of our democracies.
We need to consider what political free speech means for Australians in Australia and how it relates to people from outside of Australian IP addresses, whilst avoiding the loss of the inherent right to privacy that is mutually necessary in a democracy.
Australians don't have a right to free speech, but we do have the right to political free speech, I don't see how people commenting or posting from an IP address outside of the Australian geolocation would fall under our right to that.
Look at all the attention these 300 people are getting!