The phrase “useful idiots” may be of uncertain provenance but its applicability is rarely in doubt.
Oxford defines the term as referring to someone “naive and susceptible to manipulation for propaganda or…similarly manipulable for political purposes”, especially by totalitarian regimes. Not for nothing was it first applied to the willing Western tools of communist regimes. Even today, brutal dictatorships like the Chinese Communist Party can rely on its sycophants, toadies and fools – useful idiots, all – to do its dirty work in the West.
Former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam was intelligent and educated – and an idiot.
Australia has had a special relationship with China ever since Labor’s Gough Whitlam made his pilgrimage to the country in 1971 and 1973.
Before Whitlam established diplomatic relations in 1972 it was only ever referred to as “Communist China”. Mao Zedong had closed its borders but the enlightened and courageous Zhou Enlai was doing his best to open up the country.
China was a pariah nation then and Whitlam’s visit put Australia in the forefront of international efforts to bring the country in from the cold.
China was a pariah nation for good reason. In the early 1970s China was still in the grip of the Cultural Revolution; a Maoist reign of terror that resulted in the imprisonment of hundreds of millions of people in brutal “re-education camps”, the destruction of some three-quarters of China’s cultural relics – and the murders of some 20 million Chinese at the hands of Mao’s Red Guards. The Red Guards eschewed no excess in their zeal to demolish “old ways”, including public demonstrations of cannibalism: not from starvation, but as a weapon of political terror.
This was the regime that Whitlam “brought in from the cold”.
Worse, Whitlam’s useful idiocy has been ingrained into the Labor Party ever since. Labor officials have literally taken bag-loads of cash from CCP-linked donors. Labor premier Daniel Andrews deliberately ignored Commonwealth government and security agencies’ warnings and signed on to Xi Jinping’s notorious BRI. Rising Labor star Sam Dastyari was caught whispering in the ears of Beijing’s henchmen.
And Labor alumni like Graham Richardson continue to spin for Beijing.
The Chinese have long memories, so Whitlam’s move was never forgotten.
Neither will Scott Morrison’s be.
If Richo is trying to draw a contrast between the two prime ministers, it’s not the contrast he might wish it to be. Whitlam toadied to a genocidal communist regime; Morrison is standing firm in Australia’s interests against bullying from the same regime.
Richo might as well try and favourably contrast Vidkun Quisling with Winston Churchill.
China’s pride has been dented after our Prime Minister slammed Beijing’s “repugnant” fake image of an Australian soldier slitting the throat of an Afghan child. But the problem is largely self-inflicted.
China’s stubborn refusal to admit or apologise for COVID-19’s origins in Wuhan makes them look foolish in the eyes of the world.
Not “foolish”: liars – and worse. Richo is praising Beijing with faint damnation.
Australia needs the Chinese to continue building new cities and new roads — so there is a market for our coal in supplying electricity to the masses[…]
The old saying “discretion is the better part of valour” seems to apply well here.
The Australian
So, what Richo wants us to do is suck it up, kiss Xi’s backside and keep taking China’s cash and hope they’ll leave us alone.
I think not.
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