The Grim Choice of the 2024 US Election Will Be Replicated Here Next Year

US president Joe Biden called for an immediate ceasefire to bring an end to the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, during a graduation ceremony at Atlanta’s Morehouse College on Sunday.

Yet, this was just five days after his administration announced another $1 billion in arms and ammunition to Israel.

The last eight months have seen the US constituency, which had elected the Democrat president to rescue it from four years of post-truth Trumpian politics, reeling under an administration that’s financing the greatest atrocity since World War II, as well as denying it’s actually happening.

The surging popular campaign against the genocide, which is morphing into a full-scale divestment movement against Israel, began threatening to vote out Genocide Joe Biden at the coming 2024 election in November last year, regardless of the fact that his likely contender is Donald Trump.

And despite the reign of Trump having seen a heightening of divisions within US society, the reality of waging a genocide is so grave that many are unwilling to give their vote to re-elect the Biden administration, even though this forebodes an age of rising authoritarianism under the Republicans.

So, while Australians continue to gaze across the Pacific wondering what the hell happened in Washington to see Trump now the less destructive choice of leader, they’re also facing this same choice at next year’s ballot box and are rather adept at not recognising this.

Genocide Anthony

The coming of the Albanese government in May 2022 was supposed to mark a change, at least in the minds of some, after close to a decade of Liberal Nationals rule, in which the authoritarian creep had become palpable and the nation’s climate credentials were abysmal.

Newly-minted PM Anthony Albanese promised to end the climate wars, but he’s since let them simmer. And despite his hard-left credentials being on display, Albanese has gifted the White House increasing control over the nation of Australia, in terms of foreign policy and military outlook.

These decisions have been catastrophic enough but have since paled as our prime minister has stood firmly behind the US-funded Israeli-perpetrated military operation in Gaza, which involves the purposeful attempt to annihilate the Palestinians of the region, via bombing and starvation.

In terms of Labor’s unbridled support of the genocide, Sydney firm Birchgrove Legal produced a liability claim against our government, tracking its support for an Israel expressing genocidal intent, as well as our continuing to supply it with weapons parts and Pine Gap surveillance information.

Writing in Declassified Australia, Kellie Tranter recently tracked a freedom of information trail that reveals key government departments sourcing information in the early days of the Gaza catastrophe, in order to produce talking points that do their best to avoid naming the crisis a genocide.

The human rights lawyer points out that rather than attempting to conceal a genocide, along with its support of it, the Australian government, as a signatory to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, should be doing all in its means to prevent the atrocity.

Greenlighting genocide

Despite the dependant relationship this nation has had with the US since World War II, and the ties it established with the nation of Israel in 1949, the Albanese government didn’t have to throw its lot in with Washington to support Tel Aviv in the early stages of the genocide.

South Africa’s launch of the genocide case against Israel is evidence that the Gaza crisis has permitted unprecedented political action. And Labor came to power in 2022, with the promise to recognise Palestinian statehood, as the PM and foreign minister had long been supporters.

Yet, foreign minister Penny Wong has been key in ensuring that Australia maintains a tough-on-Palestinians stance. And she saw this country one of the first to cut funding to UNWRA, the main aid channel into Gaza, in the direct wake of the international court deeming it a plausible genocide.

Greens Senator David Shoebridge has raised figures regarding arms and ammunition exports to Israel on the DFAT website with Wong, yet she’s denied they’re accurate. And it’s since come to light that February was our largest trading month for such exports to Israel since the genocide began.

So, just like Biden, Albanese first championed Israel’s right to defend itself, which was later followed by a few ceasefire pronouncements bogged down in stipulations preventing immediacy, and he’s now launched an antisemitism scare campaign to assist in concealing the international crime.

Punishing the genocider

And just as mass slaughter facilitating Genocide Joe Biden is facing Trump at this November’s election, as it stands now, Genocide Anthony Albanese will be staring down the politician who’s been the most divisive Australian pollie for the last decade, Peter Dutton, in September 2025.

The Liberal leader, his party members and Nationals colleagues making up the Coalition have provided unquestioning support to Israel as it commits mass atrocities in the Gaza Strip, and, with the support of the Murdoch Press, they’ve harassed Albanese for not being tough enough.

The truth of the matter, however, is Albanese appears to be doing a great job in supporting a colonial slaughter, as well as in propagating the myth that antigenocide and anti-Israel sentiment automatically constitutes antisemitism, thereby silencing dissent by deeming it a hate crime.

And while the “genocide” moniker has not been applied to Albanese to the same degree as Biden, federal Labor’s support of Israel and it’s upping the ante in terms of the campaign to suppress expression of pro-Palestinian sentiment via the charge of antisemitism, is only on the rise.

So, the decision to boycott Biden at the next US election will likely be repeated in this country as voters refuse to support a prime minister who has backed a genocide, and this is not about electing a better leader into office, as, in each case, it simply serves to punish the current one.

Lurking in the shadows

That Dutton is currently opposition leader, waiting in the wings for the next election, does not bode well for the nation, as he relishes in his support of Israel as it commits atrocities, and he’s been a key figure in promoting the current climate of heightened surveillance and opaque government.

As home affairs minister during the Turnbull-Morrison administration, Dutton enacted numerous national security laws that have increasingly turned intelligence agencies on the people and, ever since he graduated to the defence portfolio, he’s been a keen China hawk.

Dutton is precisely the type of figure, who will openly press for more authoritarian governance of the nation, and he won’t attempt to dress it up to make it publicly appealing, which is a similar approach to that taken by Trump in the States.

So, just as the Biden-Albanese tag team has worked well in framing a genocide as an act of self-defence, whilst also ensuring this nation becomes an integral part of the US military industrial-complex, a Trump-Dutton partnership will likely unleash a heightened Orwellian storm.

A key difference in this country, however, is that the minors and crossbenchers do have an impact on the makeup of parliament and the laws that it passes, which was clearly shown at the 2022 federal election, as it saw a “greenslide” with many more Greens MPs elected, as well as teals.

But whilst the turning away from the majors at the ballot is a trend that aims to break the duopoly, it’s rather unlikely that this shift to alternative progressive politicians will result in one of the majors not in government next time, and it’s hard to consider Albanese won’t be punished at the ballot.

The schism that occurred in the Australian polity during the COVID pandemic, the same shift that occurred in the States under the first Trump administration, has only broadened since the onset of the Gaza genocide and it will only become more distinct under the rule of a figure like Dutton.

Indeed, the licence bestowed to Trump if elected president again is feared could result in that nation shifting further toward autocratic rule, and it’s obvious that Dutton’s authoritarian tendencies will see him open up further US military inroads onto this continent with an eye to warring on China.