(Image: Gorkie/Private Media)

While there’s one key difference between the Voice to Parliament referendum and a general election — no government will change as a result of the ballot — the parallels between a win for the No campaign and the 2016 election of Donald Trump in the US are many and significant.

The No campaign relies upon, and the Trump campaign drew its strength from, white grievance and the positioning of privileged majority groups as the real victims of far less powerful, dispossessed minorities. Both rely on a conspiracy theory narrative in which progressive elites — corporate, political, media — are oppressing, robbing and taking away the rights of ordinary people, who are urged to vote in defiance of this plot.

In both cases that “elite” conspiracy theory hides that powerful and super-wealthy figures are providing extensive funding for the campaigns.

Both pitch themselves to voters as acts of angry, righteous transgression against an out-of-touch liberal order. Both rely on racist tropes and lies. Both, when caught out engaging in racist rhetoric, insist they’re joking and that censorious critics have no sense of humour. Both have the support of the Murdoch media, and complement the Murdoch business model of inciting and amplifying division.

And both have the support, or neutrality, of sections of the left that regard what’s on offer as insufficiently radical; a business-as-usual tweak to a fundamentally oppressive and unjust system.

While Hillary Clinton’s failure in 2016 was down to her own bad campaign and her failings as a candidate, Trump’s victory was helped by the fact that many American left-wingers either proudly refused to vote for her because she wasn’t left wing enough, or actually voted for Trump, enraged that Clinton was the Democratic candidate instead of Bernie Sanders.

You can ask American women, particularly low-income women in Republican-controlled states, how that’s working out for them, courtesy of Trump’s appointments to the US Supreme Court and the Dobbs abortion decision. You can ask the families of the hundreds of thousands who died of COVID under Trump. Or the families of the people who died in the January 6 insurrection. Democracy isn’t about your ideal candidate or proposal; it’s about what and who are actually on the ballot. That’s why it’s only ever the least worst system of government, not the best.

If the comparison with abortion in the US seems a stretch, it’s because the policy significance of the Voice proposal has been lost in culture warring. Closing the gap of Indigenous disadvantage requires that Indigenous communities help design and implement policies. Even the Morrison government, courtesy of the efforts of Ken Wyatt, recognised that, and set about further building up the capacity of Indigenous community organisations to engage in that process. The Voice is the macro level of what has finally started happening at the micro level, and is a necessary complement.

Capacity building. Policy design. Community engagement. Boring stuff, and how is that going to change the fundamental fact of invasion and dispossession and Australia’s continuing failure to negotiate a treaty with First Peoples? It isn’t — contrary to the wild claims of the No campaign — but it is going to be part of a process that evidence shows leads to improved outcomes like longer, healthier lives, greater economic opportunities, and better educational outcomes for Indigenous peoples.

For No voters — other than the overtly racist, who are content with existing levels of Indigenous disadvantage — where will that leave them after the defeat of the referendum, after they’ve cathartically expressed their anger about a political and economic system they resent, after they’ve chosen the transgressive option and stuck one up the elites, the progressives, the woke? With a constitution that pretends no-one was here when the British invaded, and no hope of rectifying that for a generation. With existing Indigenous disadvantage firmly entrenched. And certainly no closer to a treaty or a recognition of dispossession — if anything, defeat will delay a treaty even further into the future.

That’s the “positive” outcome. The negative one is that a No victory will, as Trump’s victory did in the US, empower, legitimise and amplify racism. While there won’t be a national leader heading the charge with bigotry and hate, racists and their enablers will be able to boast of support from ordinary Australians to articulate white grievance and victimhood and hatred of Indigenous peoples. It’s all there in that No campaign cartoon run, then disowned, by The Australian Financial Review.

In democracies, votes have real effects. There are no consequence-free acts of transgression or trolling in the polling booth. There’s no Fantasy Politics in which your ideal candidate or proposal is on the ballot instead. Lives are affected, and changed, on the ground. Just ask Americans.

What kind of effect is the No campaign having on Australia? Do we need to accept the least worst option or risk setting the country back even further? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.