Pauline Hanson’s rise cannot be countered by facts, logic or clever campaign tactics alone, because One Nation’s appeal is rooted in disgust, alienation and a belief that mainstream politics no longer listens.

Pauline Hanson is a handful for all the politicians opposing her, and not one of her rival political leaders has her measure in debate. Particularly when she is addressing her own constituents, regularly increasing in number as they desert other parties. She has almost no conventional rhetorical skills or tricks. She does not assemble her arguments in any sort of logical order. Written versions of her speeches rarely read well, and they lack any sort of metre or cadence or forensic arguments, and many of her statements show the limitations of her education.

Yet she cuts through in a way that her rivals do not. Many an opponent has sat down comfortably thinking he or she has demolished her arguments, diminished confidence in her understanding of facts and events, and undermined her appeals to prejudice and emotion. Then they have come to see that Hanson’s arguments have been retained in the minds of those disposed to hear them, and that little said by way of rebuttal has made much impression on the listeners.

It is simply too easy to say that she manipulates facts, and that her primary appeals are to feelings, alienation and complaint that those in control are not listening and do not care. It’s all very well to assert that she deals in grievance and catalogues of events and slights that resonate, even as she presents no solutions to the problems involved. It is easy enough to point to contradictions in her statements, or to a political record that does not suggest any real empathy with working class Australians, or any instinct for practical solutions to problems of the cost of living, access to the housing market, or services from government.

Just as easy to see that the foundations of her pitch to her people involve crude racism, attacks on “alien” creeds and demonisation of underprivileged groups.

Other politicians, of the left or right, have come to grief wading in this foetid swamp, but Hanson has not. Indeed, one of her current selling points is the consistency with which she has held her most repellent views for the past 30 years in public life.

Hanson is cutting through in ways that Albo and Taylor are not

Just how much her supporters adopt her foundational prejudices and views, and her calls for stringent cuts to immigration, is hard to say. Many of them seem to accept her critique in principle without feeling committed to particular policy prescriptions or simplistic solutions. That does not prevent their considering that Pauline Hanson speaks to them and for them in ways that other professional politicians do not.

A part of the reason, of course, is that they accept the Hanson message that politics has become a scam, with politicians on all sides mostly in it for themselves rather than for ordinary decent white Australians. Better than most she reflects disillusion with the character of most politicians, and the fact that politics and current ideas of democratic government do not seem to work........

© Pearls and Irritations