Marxism's sinking reputation in the community at large is counterbalanced by its (apparently) increasing vogue in the academy. Modern humanities courses are steeped in Marxist theory, gleaned second-hand from the German Frankfurt School, the Italian Antonio Gramsci, or (especially in English and Cultural Studies) the French Marxism of Althusser, Barthes, and most importantly, Foucault and Derrida. Indeed, a recent course in "Eighteenth Century (English) Literature" at the University of Queensland had the Marquis de Sade, Rousseau, and Denis Diderot outnumbering Defoe and Jane Austen on its reading list. (Of Swift, Pope, Fielding, and Dr. Johnson there was not a trace). The former French authors fit more neatly the Foucault/Marxist goulash taught as Holy Writ in the modern social sciences. In other words, Swift, Johnson, and co. are now subversive writers, whose work your English 101 tutor prefers you not to read. Lest you subvert the tone of the modern lefty "dominant paradigm". Those who find this contention slightly ludicrous would do worse than to view the ABC's recent Manning Clark bio-documentary, in which that power-obsessed worshipper of Lenin and his evil deeds was praised to high heaven by such acolytes as the writer Humphrey McQueen, who declared himself a Maoist when the Red Guards were publicly humiliating their elders and betters, hurling their opponents out of fifth-floor windows, and ruining the lives and bodies of hundreds of thousands with torture, public humiliation, and internal exile. He was still a Marxist by the time of Pol Pot's "Higher Organization", when one-fifth of the population of Cambodia (1, 200,000 people) was killed in two years. He's still a Marxist today, in fact, and running art exhibitions for Brisbane Lord Mayor Jim Soorley, and writing in the ABC's 24 Hours magazine of the Soviet Union's "Great Anti-Fascist War" of 1941-45, in blithe ignorance of Stalin and Hitler's partnership in the 1930s, culminating in their mutual non-aggression pact of 1939. Clark's importance as an unofficial Soviet "useful fool", a spreader of half-truths and justifications for the USSR, far surpasses any academic significance his work may have had. As an ALP policy document, his History of Australia is illuminating. As history, it is, as critics such as Peter Ryan and Robert Manne have observed, rendered useless by its author's constant insinuations that power-worship, violent revolution, and aggressive lefty politics would have created some Australian Utopia. Clark himself may be discredited, almost a figure of fun, but his ideas can be found driving whatever policy the ALP produces nowadays, and in every news bulletin, every book on "Australiana," and watch out for the Olympics. To the New Establishment, however, he remains much as he saw himself: a great, pioneering visionary who died, like Moses, outside the Promised Land after having been granted a glimpse of its vistas from his elevated aspect. In any case, not many people seem to have realized the existence of the New Establishment. Least of all itself. Kim Beazley, in what was described a the start of last year's "unofficial election campaign" in July 1998, did not stoop so low as to offer alternative policies or new directions for Australia. He and his ALP hacks rallied the faithful instead, the genuine "True Believers" of the Keating years. They released the Labor Party's new Arts platform, amid the usual gathering of Whitlams, wide-eyed media groupies, and rent-a-"personalities". Prominent among this group was the late P.J. Keating himself, who provided us with a little of what we've been missing out on with his cultured, artistic jibe that John Howard has "all the vision of Mr. Magoo and none of his good intentions". I didn't know Keating was so au fait with cartoon characters: he must have gained an English major in the years since his defeat. (And I'll resist the temptation to come out with a similarly wacky one-liner, along the lines of Paul Keating having all the good intentions of Wile E. Coyote and none of his forward planning capabilities). The assorted luvvies of stage, screen, and Black and White magazine lapped it up. Oscar-winning nutcase impersonator Geoffrey Rush enthused over this piece of stage-managed sycophancy in a Courier-Mail profile, declaring himself a "child of the Whitlam Renaissance" and claiming that the Tories "have no sense of continuity in the arts" (i.e., perhaps, that they've never paid anybody to paint their private parts flouro orange in a protest against The System). About a month later on 22 August 1998, the ALP's anti-GST campaign began in earnest on ABC TV news, with "Australia's writing and publishing communities" coming out swinging over potential increases in book prices. Australia's writing and publishing communities consisted, for the purposes of the ABC story, of some bearded bloke I'd never seen before claiming to represent a publishing organization I'd never heard of, and Bryce Courtenay with Gareth Evans apparently implanted into his left shoulder (superstitious acquaintances tell me that a pinch of salt flung backwards over the afflicted scapula can be most handy in such situations) bitching about how the "clever country" will never happen if people have to pay ten percent more for his books. (A possible solution to that one would be to follow the lead set by Richard Alston over CD imports: right now, we import books from the UK and pay through the nose. The US equivalents are dirt cheap in comparison, and have ads for the NRA on the inside back cover). The ALP may indulge in some inane election-time yap about "Toorak Tractors" and "the big end of town", but it knows its real constituency: the talking heads, the opinion-shapers, and the celebrities-of-the-week. They spent over a decade buttering these underprivileged folk up with a myriad of grants committees, perks and patronage, and cameo appearances doing Something Really Important at the Constitutional Convention. The result of all this is that, unbeknownst to the vast numbers of the public-in-general (and I hate to sound admonitory, but to Liberals-in-particular), Australia's "Arts Industry", for that it is, is incredibly politicized and polarized. The Weekend Australian's art critic, Giles Auty (a rare beacon of good sense whose work I'd urge you all to read), recently expressed his disgust at the "work" of "artist" Hani Armanious. Armanious was recently awarded $50, 000 and a trip abroad by the (publicly funded) National Gallery for a "work of art" entitled "Untitled Snake Oil". This stirring shaking of the pedestals of Dobell, Tucker and Nolan consisted of a few upside-down drinking glasses, and was meant to tell us all something about multiculturalism. (Lest we think this an inconsistent lapse on the part of an up-and-coming Australian creative genius, Auty also mentions that an entry by Armanious in a 1996 competition for potential flags of the Australian Republic "consisted of a white flag that bore the legend f*** off back to Fag Land." Yes, I know I've mentioned it before, but this sort of thing is one of Keating's continuing legacies and should be brought to wider attention). It may sound funny, folks, but we all picked up the tab for it. That was in February 1996, by the way, and bears all the hallmarks of a late Keating-era arts bash. The media and arts communities of this country have become confirmed cheerleaders for various political causes espoused by their ALP patrons: the ALP idea of multiculturalism (i.e., peoples of all creeds and colours living together in peace and harmony and participating gleefully in branch-stacking activities), the ALP's Republican sideshow (trundled out whenever the going gets tough, such as the final few minutes of Election '98's "Great Debate," if anyone can remember), and the Manning Clark/Paul Keating view of history, in which Britain and its Empire were comic irrelevancies in the history of this great independent socialist country. The ALP's Arts policy was released, as I have mentioned, in July 1998. Its taxation policy, for an election long touted as having tax as its central issue, was released two weeks after the election was called in September 1998. This is a much clearer statement of the ALP's policy outlook than any actual document ever could be: maintaining their grip upon the opinion-makers, the trend-setters and the pin-ups of the chattering classes takes priority in the ALP over the production of alternative plans for the nation. Kim Beazley may indulge in his usual blubbering and blustering over such "issues" as the Preamble to the Constitution, but he never offers any actual alternatives. Instead, such Government initiatives receive a "bucket of shit a day", in Rupert Murdoch's memorable phrase; from the news media, from television "comedians" and "satirists," from one-note and two-member pressure groups, and from overtly confrontational public institutions such as the Universities. In the battle of appearances, it seems the conservative side of politics (or the non-left side, at least) is at a perpetual disadvantage. The nation's opinion-makers and poll-shapers have a proven commitment to propping up an Opposition devoid of ideas, talent and momentum, because they consider its rhetoric more important than its ability to govern. There are notable exceptions to this rule, of course. (And I must make it clear that I'm arguing for objectivity here, not an even distribution of partisanship). Such exposes as that of Paul Keating's "piggery affair" would have been much more interesting and effective if the story had been "blown" when the misdeeds were occurring. Figures like Liberal Senator Michael Baume were attempting to give the allegations against Keating some momentum at that time, in the face of colossal media indifference. This stands in stark contrast with the eagerness demonstrated by several members of the news media in their unearthing of the business dealings of several Coalition figures in 1997-98. It follows, then, that media coverage of political events is conventionally governed by a tacit political bias within the industry itself, a bias first incubated within the academy and handed down to media students as The Truth. In conclusion, we can see that opinion; its manufacture and dissemination, whether it be in the media, the academy, or the arts community, is the province of a new, left-leaning elite. This elite, or establishment, does not see itself as explicitly biased, so much as embodying the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times (as P.P. McGuiness has recently commented). A journalist who files a story slating the Howard Government over a new initiative, using the standard tactic of leading the report with a comment from an ALP figure condemning that initiative, would probably deny they were biased. They would reply, perhaps, that their story reflected public opinion, and that only 40% of the electorate voted for the Coalition, etc, etc. That only 37% of the electorate voted for Keating in 1993, giving him what was then touted by the media as an unquestionable mandate, is a moot point, as is the fact that signed photos and autographs of Paul Keating were prized journalistic possessions in the early-to-mid 'nineties. For further reading, there's Robert Manne's expose in The Shadow of 1917 of the role of journalists such as Laurie Oakes and the SMH's David Marr in the explaining-away of the Combe-Ivanov affair of 1983. In this incident, a senior ALP figure, David Combe, was found to be a KGB recruitment target, and great pals with Valery Ivanov, a KGB figure stationed at Canberra's Russian Embassy. The details are too complex (and tedious) to be gone into here, but there was a carefully engineered "outcry" into the Hawke Government's treatment of Combe. Hawke quickly organized an inquiry into the matter, and dropped Combe like a red-hot potato. The media went berserk over this, snorting and sneering collectively at the very thought that the KGB would be active in progressive Australia, or that a nice Labor bloke like David Combe (who was also, by the by, a great mate of Laurie Oakes) could ever get himself involved with the Russians. The truth as established by the inquiry into the Combe affair was a lot more complex, of course, but the media were looking the other way by that stage. In other words, the New Establishment were looking after their own. The media have a blind spot where their ideological pals in ALP are concerned: imagine their reaction if, as Robert Manne has commented, a senior Liberal party official under Malcolm Fraser were found to be in close contact with an agent of BOSS, the South African intelligence agency, a year prior to the Combe affair. It certainly wouldn't be shoved under the carpet. Media studies and journalism ethics courses make no mention of the Combe affair, never mind the media's role in it The New Establishment has well and truly arrived. The great Marxist infiltration of the West's affluent elites has finally paid off. The greatest irony is that Marxism itself isn't around to see it: in the "Real World," it proved a disastrous, lethal flop. But the "political language" criticized by George Orwell in his 1946 piece "Politics and the English Language" has jumped into the driver's seat, as Orwell knew it would: "language for concealing and preventing thought," as Orwell put it, is the hallmark of the New Establishment, whether it be political correctness, Secret Women's Business, or the media safety net beneath Kim Beazley and his grousing, policy-free front bench. In other words (Orwell's again), the main function of the New Establishment is to "give an appearance of solidity to pure wind". The most crying shame about this is that it's working: the "pure wind" certainly seems solid, and everything the Howard Government has done, is doing, or will ever do, will be presented as a rearguard action against "virtual" True Believers.