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Aussie Politician Threatens To Contact Employers of Satirical Article "Likers"
Chuq writes "Tasmanian Liberal candidate for Bass, Andrew Nikolic, was the subject of a satirical article by NewExaminer on Facebook. Nikolic didn't like it, which is understandable. However he then went to considerable lengths to identify the people who liked the article, find out their employers (via their Facebook profiles) and 'name and shame' them on a follow-up post on his own page. Andrew Nikolic has a history of poorly handling conflicting views on his Facebook page, resulting in creation of another page, 'Andrew Nikolic blocked me.'"
He's not even a politician - he's preselected to run as a candidate in the as-yet-unscheduled federal election, which isn't likely to occur until 2013.
he's a "big L" Liberal.
Confusingly in Australia, the Liberal Party are the conservatives and the Labor Party are the liberals (with the Greens to the left of them).
Of course, our Liberal Party would probably be to the left of the US's congressional democrats on most issues..
--Q
Don't care about the troll, but for anyone who doesn't want to look it up:
"Liberal" in Australia's Liberal Party refers to economic liberalism, not center-left politics. They're pretty firm in right-wing territory, including the obligatory hate against homosexuals and women's rights. Add gun crazies, religious zealots and Birchers and you'd have the GOP*.
*I'll refrain from making the obvious "Remove gun crazies, religious zealots and Birchers from the GOP and you're left with nothing" joke. Well, maybe not.
It's a bit of a shock, I know, but those strange and barbarous foreign people are allowed to use words in a way that is different than their use in the US. I'm not sure why Jesus allows it; but it happens.
In this case, the Tasmanian Liberals are more or less similar to those American 'Conservatives' who are still pretending to endorse the 'compassionate conservative' label.
Note key phrases such as "We believe in the importance of the family and that the standards of a free society should support family ideals.", "We further believe government should not compete with an efficient private sector", "We believe that Australia has a constructive role to play in maintaining international peace in alliance with other free nations", and "We further believe that competitive enterprise, the free choice of consumers in the marketplace and individual effort will maximise economic growth and national prosperity.".
You'd need a local observer to say to what degree these reflect genuine classical 'Liberalism', in something resembling the 19th century sense, and to what degree they reflect the rhetorical coating of a group of privatization-crazed crony capitalists with strong ties to local extraction industries and an enthusiasm for foreign policy adventurism; but these are not the 'liberals' in the American sense of the term...