“A grand canyon has opened up in our world,” Fry said. On one side is the new right, promoting a bizarre mixture of Christianity and libertarianism; on the other, the “illiberal liberals”, obsessed with identity politics and complaining about things like cultural appropriation. These tiny factions war above, while the rest of us watch, aghast, from the chasm below. [...]
One might be forgiven for thinking that there’s nothing less dangerous in modern Australia than an arts festival, but it could have been otherwise. FODI split last year from its founding partner, the Sydney Opera House, and relocated to Cockatoo Island’s industrial precinct. The Opera House ran its own ideas festival, Antidote, in September, with a program that had a distinctly (implicit, if not explicit) progressive flavour. FODI, by contrast, is known for courting controversy, from Hitchens’ inaugural keynote to reports in July that the festival was trying to secure former head of Breitbart, former Trump advisor and one-time mentor to Milo Yiannopoulos, Steve Bannon, to speak. The program was eventually launched Bannon-free – perhaps to FODI’s benefit, given the (in this correspondent’s view, legitimate) criticisms of the ABC’s approach when giving the man a platform earlier this year.
Bannon aside, there’s always a certain amount of what feels like trolling in a program that is doing its best to be edgy. If one hadn’t had their fill of evangelical proto-capitalism listening to Scott “have a go to get a go” Morrison, one could, for instance, head along to hear a discussion between pundits like Nick Cater and Judith Sloan about the supposed benefits of economic inequality. Similarly, if one were not already aware of what headline magnet Germaine Greer thinks about anything, one could attend her festival panel, titled Too Dangerous, presumably to hear her speak about how she’s “too dangerous” to be allowed to speak at festivals.[...]
While it’s never quite clear what the primary outcome of these festivals is supposed to be, they do tend to serve as something of a barometer for the preoccupations of the literary class. The conversations over the weekend exposed a genuine frustration with the lack of nuance in popular debate. Cracks about the “musical chairs” (Fry) or “revolving door” (Tim Soutphommasane) of parliament aside, the Australian government seems to be little more than a sideshow to what is happening overseas – in the United States, in Europe, and increasingly, in Brazil. Does Trump represent fascism or populism? Do the opportunities presented by the mass collection of data by corporations and governments outweigh its potential to be used against the interests of the public? How are we to understand the collision between politics and social media that seems to characterise this decade?
