The Irony Party of Australia
Encephalatronicalogical Pamphlet
8th March 2006
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UnFascist Radical Deprogramming Programme Proposed
Appearing on the Government television network the Australian Broadcasting Corporation tonight, Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty has proposed a programme for the deprogramming and reprogramming of political radicals, particularly (and at first) where those dangerous idealists pose some manner of immediate threat to the Australian State. Following models now in place in the United States and Indonesia, Keelty suggested compulsory reprogramming programmes could reduce the risk to Australian interests from militants, dissidents, and ideologues. However, the Police Commissioner recognises the issue of democratic re-education programmes in Australia raises ‘interesting policy questions. Therefore, Keelty intimated, the AFP is not upset that the unfascist proposal has not as yet been implemented, although the unfascist plan has been countenanced policy statements submitted to Gubment.
Keelty was coy in speculating on the urgency of the take-up of his proposal, given the current risk faced in Australia from dangerous foreign ideologies, and those dangerous militants not motivated by selfish reasons of economic gain or love of the Australian homeland and the glory of Empire. The Commissioner no doubt recognises it may be incumbent on the initiative of either Islamic extremists or future Governments and Commissioners of Police to contrive a more compelling reason for adopting the reprogramming in the form of a further violent demonstration close to home of the destructive potential of political and ideological conflict. But he hinted with characteristic subtlety at the possibility there could already be justification for the project’s rapid facilitation: ‘If the need presented itself to us, and I don’t want to talk about matters that are currently before any court, if the need were there I would be encouraging us to look at world’s best practise in this area.’
In discussing further the character of future participants in humane but effective deprogramming programmes Keelty specifically expressed concern about those who receive military training, but are less than enthused about the perpetuation of global Anglo-American supremacy. More broadly, though, the AFP has developed a sophisticated and culturally sensitive set of criteria for discerning which political radicals might be entered into the new re-education programmes - a select group of dangerous dissidents that Keelty succinctly described on Lateline as ‘People who believe something that the wider community doesn’t believe in.’
Community concerns about the deprogramming programmes occurring in their neighbourhoods must be taken into account: it is important that 'we be very careful as to how we present these operations.' Ideally, the Commissioner indicated, authorities would restrict media coverage of those undergoing deprogramming. The credibility of authorities, says Keelty can sometimes be damaged in particular communities, if ‘they see one part of their community being disenfranchised or being mistreated by the authorities.’
Keelty’s humanitarian concern for those caught up in the unpleasantness of all this opposition to the will of the Authorities was in evidence when he was asked by Lateline’s establishmentarian silverfish Tony Jones whether the aberrant behaviour displayed by those who resist approved ideological positions on domestic and foreign policy could be described, in some sense, as an illness. The Commissioner drew an analogy with drug addicts, noting that Australia still has no programme that coerces those addicted to prohibited substances into beneficial re-education schemes, although such schemes are flourishing under regimes elsewhere in the world.
The unfortunate case of those who insist on consuming illegal psycho-tropics, hallucinogens, opiates, and amphetamines can be extended in a sense, Keelty suggests, to other groups deserving of redirection . The unthinkable situation in which someone considers conducting a suicide bombing or some other act that causes harm either to themselves or the interests of a benevolent democratic State is roughly analagous: ‘Someone in that position has to not be thinking rationally.. if they’re acting and thinking irrationally then how do we convert that behaviour and bring it back to rational behaviour. And in a way, that is a sickness.’
Police Commissioner Mick Keelty is famous for having mislaid a moustache late last year at a time of disruption to the smooth flow of heroin profits in and out of the country due to inadvertent media attention that accompanied the arrest of Australians for drug trafficking in Indonesia, and the death of convicted trafficker and Melburnian Van Nguyen in Singapore. But the rumours the facial affectation was simply lost in transit somewhere, or was shed in compliance with a stipulation of a stylist not fond of traditionalist Nazi fashions in the 21st century, have been balanced with an equally plausible story. It’s been suggested the moustache was removed surreptitiously while Keelty slept, as a mild warning from one or another likely local heroin trader, who preferred that their operation didn’t become a scapegoat drug importation racket at a time when someone looked like being exposed. Or temporarily pushed out from under the AFP wing. Or even busted wide open.
Ironically Keelty appears, sans moustache, superficially less Hitlerian. But the Commissioner’s unfascist scheme for the reprogramming of radicals could see Australian authorities take further steps down a path with which the former German Chancellor and imperial aspirant was entirely au fait.
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disclaimer: the Irony Party does not condone violence against or even the physical inconveniencing of non-combatants, and would prefer where possible that invading armies went home instead of staying on and getting hurt
email or comment to: david@ironyparty.org
