Yesterday, I posted a harmless tweet mocking Peter Dutton losing his seat in Dickson. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, it attracted many hateful comments targeting me personally and attacking my ethnicity. This reaction from the right of centre perfectly reflects how toxic and extreme some LNP supporters have become.
To those attacking me for being Chinese, or associating my ethnicity with the CCP, or absurdly claiming that I voted ALP because I want Australia “sold” to communist China ~ let me make this absolutely clear: I have opposed the CCP my entire life. My parents brought me to Australia seven years ago precisely because they wanted me to grow up in a country free from bigotry, censorship, and the oppression of authoritarianism that defined the first 40 years of their lives.
Today, watching Trump systematically undermine democracy, abuse power, spread lies, and promote cult of personality, xenophobic bigotry, misogyny, racism, transphobia, and extreme national chauvinism remind me of the communist China I once experienced. His threats to annex Canada and Greenland echo China’s aggression towards Taiwan. His subservience towards Putin also feels disturbingly familiar to me.
Of course, equating the LNP directly with MAGA would be unfair. At least the LNP retains some level of sanity and continues to respect our democratic norms, including peaceful transitions of power, which the US has lost since 2020.
Yet, with Putin and Trump exerting dangerous global influence and the conservatives becoming increasingly unhinged, I fear it wouldn’t take much for the West to drift toward alt-right extremism.
Geographically, the US may be thousands of kilometres away from Australia, but politically, the US is only one election away.
I voted ALP because I refuse to see Australia following the US’s path.
I voted ALP because I deeply cherish the Australia we know and love.
I voted ALP because I want a government that is committed to defending the shared values of the West (Canada, Australia, Europe, Japan, New Zealand, and Taiwan, I no longer consider the US a “Western country”), the values of freedom, diversity, equality, inclusion, justice, and democracy.