Wtf is going on in Melbourne?

[hitmouse]

Seems to be vax/anti-vax related, so could just go in one of the general threads, but those tend to move quite fast...
Anyway,

Victoria’s construction industry shutdown could cost billions as protesters regroup in Melbourne’s CBD

State government held crisis talks Monday night after Victoria police used pepper spray and rubber bullets to move crowd outside CFMEU office

www.theguardian.com

CFMMEU or neo-Nazis? Victoria's anti-vaccine mandate protests had both

Painting the different groups at yesterday's violent demonstration in Melbourne as homogenous plays into the hands of those on the fringe.

www.crikey.com.au

CFMMEU condemns far right extremist violence

The CFMMEU condemns in the strongest possible terms the attack on the CFMEU Victorian Branch office and the mindless acts of violence perpetrated by members of the mob.

cg.cfmeu.org

Inside story: Why construction workers took to the street

Pressure has been building within the construction industry as frustration grows over lockdowns and vaccines.

www.theage.com.au

Shutting down the entire construction industry sounds like quite a major development, to put it mildly.

 

[LDC]

It does seem to be quite fucked up in Australia and especially in Melbourne! I've got a friend who's a nurse there and she says loads of people she knows are anti-vax and conspiracy loonies. Anyway, that Twitter above led me to this gem...

 

[planetgeli]

Ustase bodybuilders? WTF are they? Proud to be fascists? Linking up with a trade union who don't seem the most progressive? Communist vaccines?

Aarghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

The world is a confusing place to me today.

 

[Yossarian]

Can any seismologists confirm whether such an intense concentration of stupidity can cause the ground to shake?

Magnitude 6.0 earthquake strikes near Melbourne, tremors rattle southeast Australia

A magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck near Melbourne on Wednesday, Geoscience Australia said, one of the country's biggest quakes on record, causing damage to buildings in the country's second-largest city and sending tremors throughout neighbouring states.

www.reuters.com

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Can any seismologists confirm whether such an intense concentration of stupidity can cause the ground to shake?

Magnitude 6.0 earthquake strikes near Melbourne, tremors rattle southeast Australia

A magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck near Melbourne on Wednesday, Geoscience Australia said, one of the country's biggest quakes on record, causing damage to buildings in the country's second-largest city and sending tremors throughout neighbouring states.

www.reuters.com

Maybe there were a lot of gay people in the area - a well-known cause of natural disasters.

 

[extra dry]

news and updates, seems people are not getting paid.

 

[krtek a houby]

It does seem to be quite fucked up in Australia and especially in Melbourne! I've got a friend who's a nurse there and she says loads of people she knows are anti-vax and conspiracy loonies. Anyway, that Twitter above led me to this gem...

View attachment 289586

Chicken soup is the new bleach

 

[planetgeli]

Melbourne earthquake: Tremor rattles southeast Australia

A 5.9 magnitude earthquake rattles Australia's second largest city, causing damage to buildings.

www.bbc.co.uk

Awaits Twitter storm of "See. This is where Communism gets you."

 

[retribution]

Melbournian here. The "construction" protests have been taken over by a few hundred antivax loons, their numbers are pretty small and the majority of construction workers are staying home as instructed.

The earthquake this morning was pretty wild though. And it came minutes after our State Premier said the police were deploying "special tactics" to deal with the protests today

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Had the world always been this fucking stupid?

 

[Serge Forward]

T'internet and social meeja has just brought all the idiocy out into the open.

 

[two sheds]

If the far right is getting involved so much in anti-vaxx perhaps it'll eventually harm itself by being so thoroughly associated with it.



yeh wildly optimistic I know

 

[danny la rouge]

I’m afraid my cousin and her husband Melbourne have become antivaxxers. I’m not on Facebook but other family members tell me. It’s quite distressing. Her mum and dad are very upset.

They moved out there in the 80s, my cousins were in their teens. They come over every so often, and she always seemed very sensible. She’s a primary school teacher. So I think she just went down an internet rabbit hole.

 

[extra dry]

I’m afraid my cousin and her husband Melbourne have become antivaxxers. I’m not on Facebook but other family members tell me. It’s quite distressing. Her mum and dad are very upset.

They moved out there in the 80s, my cousins were in their teens. They come over every so often, and she always seemed very sensible. She’s a primary school teacher. So I think she just went down an internet rabbit hole.

Sorry to hear that.

 

[DaveCinzano]

This was in the Crikey emailer on Tuesday, which puts it into some kind of context (caveats apply etc):

Tradies or neo-Nazis? Yesterday's protest had both
Union leaders were quick to blame yesterday’s anti-vaccine mandate protests at the CFMMEU headquarters in Melbourne on violent extremists. But the truth is a little more complicated. Cam Wilson reports on how the protest was attended by a mix of different groups, and how painting them as homogeneous risks playing into the hands of those on the fringes...

CFMMEU or neo-Nazis? Victoria's anti-vaccine mandate protests had both

Painting the different groups at yesterday's violent demonstration in Melbourne as homogenous plays into the hands of those on the fringe.

www.crikey.com.au

 

[hitmouse]

There's now this from Andy Fleming in Overland as well:

Constructing a narrative: the CFMEU protest and the far right - Overland literary journal

It’s into this toxic political environment that the far- and extreme-right attempts to insert themselves, simultaneously denouncing unions for their presumed complicity in the denial of the right of workers to sell their labour in the ‘free’ market and presenting themselves as the workers’...

overland.org.au

Links to this older background piece from the Guardian:

Where 'freedom' meets the far right: the hate messages infiltrating Australian anti-lockdown protests

Exclusive: Harrison McLean has become a key organiser of Melbourne rallies against Covid restrictions, while maintaining ‘Hitler had some good points’ in extremist online groups

www.theguardian.com

Which is confusingly partly based on research by an antifascist group called the White Rose Society, very much not to be confused with the other White Rose.

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

In my opinion this is what happens when the left abandons the concept of freedom (freedom of speech, freedom of expression, etc) as a good thing to be defended. It has left a vacuum in which the far-right has adopted the platform as their own.

Now many non-political people are gravitating to the right because the right are the only people advocating for those values (cynically and dishonestly advocating, of course)

An infuriating time for sure.

 

[Sweet FA]

I’m afraid my cousin and her husband Melbourne have become antivaxxers. I’m not on Facebook but other family members tell me. It’s quite distressing. Her mum and dad are very upset.

They moved out there in the 80s, my cousins were in their teens. They come over every so often, and she always seemed very sensible. She’s a primary school teacher. So I think she just went down an internet rabbit hole.

Very old friend in Queensland has done the same. Started by 'just asking questions' on facebook; now full on antivax all over insta/fb etc. Same with someone I've known for 20 years in Canada. Only connection with each other is that they're into yoga and homeopathy, are vaguely anti-govt and they live in the middle of nowhere. I've defriended both but know people who are keeping in touch.

 

[stavros]

I've heard it's got so bad that people are only able to interact with a tiny cohort of people, cocooned in societies of only six or so households.

 

[hitmouse]

Recent article from ozzie anarchist communists:

Why the Left should confront the Anti-Vax Far-Right

Guest Article: Tommy Lawson - Geelong Anarchist Communists - Image: A man holds a pro vaccine placard at an anti-fascist demonstration in Italy…

acmeanjin.org