Anti-vaxxer backs away from UAP … debunking pickle propaganda … IWD activi$m

I had it in the Palmer my hand As Cam Wilson noted in the aftermath of the Canberra convoy, the potentially devastating relationship between the resources of Clive Palmer and Craig Kelly’s United Australia Party (UAP) and the anti-vax activism of Reignite Democracy Australia (RDA) had begun to sour weeks ago, a process which appears to be accelerating. Over the weekend it was announced that Morgan Jonas had left the party, with Palmer putting out a stroppy message claiming Jonas had only joined UAP to promote his own “self-interests”. On his Facebook page last night, Jonas announced he’ll be running as an independent.

If nothing else, the drama illustrates the limitations of pinning your political fortunes to movements as fractious, individualistic and contrarian as anti-vax and anti-lockdown, as well as the limitations of grievance politics in general. As Guy Rundle put it in a different context, it’s “hard to stop once you’ve started, bad and moreish as gloopy pasta, the carb buzz of resentment, the well-cooked raw deal”. Anyone close to the mainstream who tries to legitimise them is going to find themselves branded as an elite sooner or later.

In a pickle In war, misinformation is rife, even in seemingly harmless stories. International media picked up the story of a Ukraine woman who apparently disabled a Russian drone with nothing but a jar of pickled cucumbers. So credit to Ukrainian outlet Liga, which tracked down the woman to set the record straight. Those were not pickled cucumbers. They were pickled tomatoes. The whole story, roughly translated by Ukrainian journalist Katya Gorchinskaya, is here.

Happy IWD! If you wonder where the hashtags that spread across Twitter every International Women’s Day — #breakthebias this year — come from, here’s a reminder. It’s not, say, the United Nations, whose theme this year concerns the effects of climate change on women, but for-profit corporation Aurora Ventures. Aurora snapped up the internationalwomensday.com URL, something which has long been a focal point for people dissatisfied with the corporatisation of IWD. To pick one example, as Celeste Liddle points out, Aurora proudly counts among its clients companies like Serco and Lockheed Martin, who have famously done so much for the plight of women around the world.