The Australian Polity’s Descent into the Absurd Is a Sign of Rising Authoritarianism

Two protesters were arrested in Magan-djin-Brisbane on 11 March 2026, for the completely absurd crime of publicly using the just prohibited slogan, “from the river to the sea”. A 33-year-old male is now facing 2 years in prison for using and defining the phrase, during a rally opposing the new law, whilst an 18-year-old woman wearing a shirt emblazoned with the phrase has been cautioned.

Further irrational laws appeared in federal parliament this week, following Albanese’s decision to commit troops to the US-Israeli war of aggression on Iran, which is said to be all about liberating the Iranians from the tyranny of their government. Yet, the new law now passed has created the capacity to pause the ability of Iranians to apply for temporary visas here, in an attempt to flee the fighting.

These developments are only the latest in a steady stream of recent policy- and law-making decisions, coupled with civil society incidents, that no longer bear the common sense that public life once held, with the 9 February NSW police brutalisation of a crowd of nonviolent protesters on Gadigal land in Sydney city, which the state has since refused to apologise for, being a case in point.

That public life and politics in Australia are no longer appearing rational is a sign that they’re shifting towards authoritarianism. The connection between the absurd and the authoritarian is well recognised, and whilst the initial irrationality on display from those consolidating power might be confected, the resulting system will eventually produce its own self-serving absurdities.

The increasingly erratic and arbitrary nature of public life in Australia is further inextricably linked to the rush to authoritarianism under the current Trump White House. And whilst its first iteration, commencing in 2017, had been successful in eroding the US polity through the application of post-truth politics, in his second coming, Trump is now attempting to cloak the planet in the irrational.

Stop making sense

Things started to make less sense in public life after Israel commenced its uninhibited assault on the Palestinians of Gaza in October 2023. This massive attack upon a civilian population fuelled by the irrational vengeance of the Israeli state was sold to the Australian public as Tel Aviv merely defending itself, and not in commission of a genocide, despite the unbridled killing streaming 24/7.

This impractical labelling of senseless killing as self-defence has never sat well with a large section of the local constituency, while questions were raised as to why the mass murder of civilians suddenly appeared kosher in the nightly news, and then a moral panic erupted over a surge in antisemitism, which has eventually seen “combatting antisemitism” become a national pastime.

Antisemitic graffiti and arson attacks commenced around Greater Sydney in October 2024. And while many questioned their legitimacy, the AFP and the NSW police did subsequently reveal in March 2025, that the 12 incidents in NSW had been staged by organised crime figures to convey a crisis. Yet, ASIO then advised last August that just one of the Sydney arson attacks had been the work of Iran.

Since taking office in January 2026, the Trump administration has been disappearing undocumented migrants, it has brutalised its public via establishing a belligerent domestic paramilitary force in ICE, and it has further taken an axe to the federal bureaucracy, yet throughout all these developments, Australian constituents have been watching their ministers continuing on as if nothing is abnormal.

And the height of this theatre now entails Labor ministers having appeared before the press on 10 March to announce that this country is sending military assets and troops to the Middle East, in support of the war on Iran, yet they further asked the people to entertain the idea that our country is not a part of the war effort, whilst it also conveys there is nothing illegal about the US-Israel attack.

Theatre of the absurd politics

Trump has made no secret about his admiration for strongman rulers, like Russian president Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.

In his 2016 documentary Hypernormalisation, BBC filmmaker Adam Curtis tracks how Putin applied techniques to produce frightening realities in Russian public life that would shock and confuse the people, in order to consolidate his own power. Curtis explains that in order to achieve this Putin purposefully caused chaos and confusion in the public realm, which served to maintain his control.

Trump has been employing post-truth politics since his first term in office, and when considered in light of Putin’s purposeful attempts to distort truth in public life, the current US president’s illogical statements and irrational behaviours suddenly take on new meaning, when its understood that this undermining of reality, weakens the polity and makes it more malleable.

Masked ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents have been disappearing undocumented migrants and other people off American streets since early 2025. ICE agents have been attacking people on the streets based on appearance, and when officers killed two civilians in Minnesota in January, this revealed to the public that the Trump administration can get away with murder.

The current MAGA White House is also applying these techniques on the international stage in an attempt to shore up US hegemony. The quick succession of attacks on foreign nations, commencing with Nigeria last Christmas, followed by the 3 January kidnapping of the Venezuelan president and then the current all-out war on Iran, have all been designed to cause global shock and awe.

The irrational has come to roost

The reaction to the ridiculous arrests in Queensland over people using a phrase that had been legal just a few hours prior, coupled the decision to block foreigners fleeing war, as our government claims it is also liberating these people, shows that irrationality has become a new governing force in this country.

The decision of the NSW state to set the NSW police on a group of protesters and then refusing to apologise to those brutalised, shows a state government that has spent the last two years banging on about social cohesion, now distinctly driving division within the constiuency, and signalling a group deserving persecution and demonisation to the rest of the populace.

The multiple tranches of the combatting antisemitism whole-of-society reform package, which includes a plan, a royal commission and a set of laws, has at its heart, the aim of silencing criticism of Israeli settler colonial expansionism in historic Palestine, which at present, appears to be moving to forge a ‘Greater Israel’, as Israeli forces attempt to secure land in neighbouring nations.

Combatting antisemitism involves having government departments and institutions adopting the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, which includes examples that conflate criticism of Israeli policies and practice with prejudice against Jewish people. The public is being asked to consider this legitimate and therefore, to stop critiquing Israeli apartheid or be charged with hating Jewish people.

And as the Australian polity dives even deeper into this irrational understanding of reality, it does appear that because this country is joined at the hip to the US hegemon, our nation is bound to follow the authoritarian Trump regime into whatever atrocities it can cook up, as the Australian political leadership has become completely paralysed by this onset of Amerikan fascism.