Social media combined wickedly with fear,and our debates have been feverish. Against a common enemy we have been disunited,and around the city of Melbourne one found increasing examples of a particular kind of graffiti:“Take the red pill”,“Dan= dictator” and “The government is strong because people are weak”.

In December,Coalition MP George Christensen appeared on the USInfoWars show,hosted by the notorious far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones,to discuss Australia’s lockdowns. It would require too many column inches to catalogue the sins of this insidious clown,so let one suffice. Jones was an insistent disseminator of the theory that the Sandy Hook school massacre – 26 dead,most children – was a hoax,and that the grieving families were just actors employed by a federal government intent on passing gun-control laws.

The theory became so popular,and so dangerous,that grieving families were stalked and threatened,obliging some to employ bodyguards and move house. Obscenity was heaped upon obscenity. Just two weeks before Christensen’s appearance,a judge found Jones liable for damages to the families.

Last year,Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party formally aligned with Reignite Democracy Australia,an anti-lockdown group that’s careful to avoid extreme pronouncements,but which remains worryingly tolerant of the influence of white supremacists. White supremacists speak at their rallies,and funnel sympathisers to the party online.

In the past six months in Melbourne,“freedom” protesters have pissed on a shrine,attacked journalists,spat on nurses,and intimidated vaccine clinics into closure. A few were QAnon believers. Defining this conspiracy theory is like wrestling smoke,but it’s essentially a revival of the centuries old anti-Semitic “blood libel”:the belief that Jews ritualistically use the blood of Christian children.

In today’s reboot,a “cabal” of elite liberals – code for “Jews” – run both a secret world government and a vast paedophilic sex ring,not merely for depraved gratification but also to better harvest the blood of children,a rich source of adrenochrome. Bill Gale would approve.

On the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House last year,we saw nooses,revolutionary cosplay andassassination threats delivered by megaphone– a faint but disturbing echo of the murderousinsurrection on the US Capitol. State Liberals,some who’d likened the premier to Hitler,effusively praised the crowd’s passion,while UAP MP Craig Kelly denounced “tyranny”while flanked by an alleged neo-Nazi bodyguard. That same week,Victoria’s counter-terror police arrested a man for allegedly encouraging others to storm parliament and execute the Premier.

Yesterday,after a complex bureaucratic farce and the subsequent detention of Novak Djokovic,another tapestry of interests – aggrieved Serbians,refugee activists,and anti-vax protesters – gathered in noisy vigil before the hotel window of the world’s best tennis player. “[He] should be free to play,” UAP’s chairman,Clive Palmer,said in a statement.

There are at least four significant things for me here. First,the increasing size and confidence of far-right groups,who have parasitically infiltrated the freedom and anti-vax movements,and of whichour intelligence organisations nominate as our principal domestic terror threat.

Second,the radicalisation of suburban “normies” – otherwise average and apolitical people variously frustrated,depressed or anxious about the pandemic,and who,from their computer screens,have been swallowed by labyrinths.

Like the group that torched Old Parliament House,other protests have featured diverse motivations. So much so,that the “freedom” protests can feature both “accelerationists” – white supremacists committed to fanning unrest in the hope of sparking a terminal chain-reaction of social disorder that engulfs the present system,replaces it with primal chaos,and provides the stage for the Ultimate Race War – and Sally Citizen,a kindergarten teacher sacked for refusing a vaccination.

Third,state governments have too often been insensitive and unimaginative about the mental and social effects of long-term lockdowns and border closures. I recently wrote about the vaccinated Grace family,who weren’t allowed to enter Western Australia to identify the body of their suicided child without first completing a fortnight’s hotel quarantine. Elsewhere,just how many have been prevented from saying goodbye to loved ones dying interstate? Beyond the individual’s exquisite pain,what social scarring does this leave?

As someone who crawled through the 262 days of Melbourne’s lockdowns,I grew weary of the Premier’s daily sermons,which were often cold,exasperated and officious. At times,I wanted less hallway monitor,and more pastor,but beyond the most stale and perfunctory language there was little acknowledgment – and reflection upon – our collective suffering.

Finally,there’s our Prime Minister’s prodigious cynicism,deception,contempt for accountability and strategic vanishings. “We are all Victorians,” Morrisondeclared in 2020,but in November last year it took a whole week,and the intervention of a counter-terror squad,to mention the gallows and death threats.

This delay is typical of Morrison. Under his “leadership”,Australians have too often experienced a strange perversity:we know something’s badly wrong not because the Prime Minister has told us,but because hehasn’t. Morrison goes missing all the time,retreating into tactical silences – or the sands of foreign beaches – and one might now estimate the health of our country by the length of his public absences.

Hardly the attitude for these times. Rather than unify us against a common enemy,the pandemic ruptured us,and our subsequent fatigue,fractiousness and paranoia has become just another politically exploitable resource – mined by fringe parties,white supremacists,and other grifters. One partial antidote is a Prime Minister who takes seriously public morale,and who values the importance of honesty,transparency and competency in maintaining it.

But about the health of our public life,and our faith in its institutions,Morrison has been variously mute,equivocal or an active degrader of it, as when he cynically undermined NSW’s Independent Commission Against Corruption as to better wash the reputation of Gladys Berejiklian for her possible federal pre-selection.

The plot failed,not least because Berejiklian wasn’t interested,and we were left with another example of the ruthlessness of our Prime Minister. That he used our most powerful office to trivialise and misrepresent the work of a statutory body for a small and unlikely political advantage is repellent.

His craven games – and rolling blunders – pollute public faith,and encourage cynicism,alienation and the attractiveness of extremism.

You only need to look at the United States to see how this goes. It surviveda recent coup attempt, but well after Trump’s defeat the GOP still functions as his cult,one almost exclusively committed to voter suppression and upholding the lie of a stolen election. Trump opened a gate,and it wasn’t shut with Biden’s election.

Democracy is not bequeathed to us whole and immortal by some divine power;it’s an organism maintained by its own participants’ faith. Once that goes,all bets are off.

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