Less than three weeks away from the US mid-term elections, Trump’s republican party is at risk of losing bigly, but here in Oz, MAGA caps are becoming fashionable. Monte Dwyer.
I see MAGA caps are back in fashion. Except the latest ones stand for Make Albo Go Away. Classic right-wing populist messaging: short, rude, unoriginal.
For the record, Make America Great Again wasn’t a Trump original either. During Ronald Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential campaign, he used the slogan Let’s Make America Great Again. Then Bill Clinton announced his run in 1992 with the catchphrase “I believe that together we can make America great again.”
Before Trump popularised the cut-down version for his 2016, 2020 and 2024 campaigns and, unsurprisingly, claimed it as his own and trademarked it. Shame it wasn’t coined by Obama; then Trump wouldn’t have touched it.
We had a brief flirt with Make Australia Great Again before the 2025 Federal election, most notably with Liberal frontbencher Jacinta Price, who believed aligning with Trump would boost the conservative coalition’s chances. But Australia got cold feet when the US President unleashed his Liberation Day tariffs on the world in the lead-up to our elections, causing a massive swerve away from all things Trumpster.
Albanese’s Labor Government came home with a wet sail, and the Aussie MAGA caps were relegated to the bottom of the wardrobe.
“Make Albo Go Away”
It’s so witty I don’t know whether to laugh or shit myself.
Fire the Liar is another one that fills me with awe. All that genius packed into three simple words. That was a One Nation fundraising slogan the party claims generated close to $3m. The amount remains unverified, but the slogan conformed to type, and no doubt still tickles the fancy of the orange faithful.
Maybe that’s the essence of populist politics right there? Glib messaging, nothing said. Just take the Kool-Aid and believe. Politicians are all morons. The country’s broken. Only we can fix it. We’ve got the guts to say what you’re thinking, etc.
I’d much prefer they had the guts to think about what they’re saying.
We’re told the reason slogans work so well is because the brain loves a shortcut. It’s wired to take the most direct route, and if you offer it a choice between simple and obvious or difficult and nuanced, it’ll take the easy version every time. In effect, it’s lazy, like most of its owners.
Add to that trait the intoxicating mix of grievance and victimhood, and you have a cocktail that appeals to the disenfranchised and their algorithms, so its reach is amplified. At its highest, it’s a rallying cry to lift one team and silence the other, but ‘You’ll never walk alone’ it surely is not.
When did our political dialogue get so divisive?
And so angry? What happened to our famed laconic wit, our sense of fun? Or the putdown so irresistible it makes even its target laugh?
I have nothing against a clever slogan or a pithy retort, but I do despair over the mean-spirited mediocrity of the current crop. Our political banter wasn’t always thus.
Former PM Paul Keating’s “a shiver looking for a spine to run up” and “being flogged by warm lettuce” and others like it directed at opposition leader John Hewson come to mind, but even Keating stood on the shoulders of giants.
After being dropped from cabinet by incoming Prime Minister Billy McMahon in 1971, Sir James Killen found himself irritated by his PM addressing Parliament and lamenting that he was his own worst enemy. “Not while I’m alive,” corrected Killen from the back bench.
And perhaps my favourite was when National Party member Sir Winton Turnbull loudly declared to the House, “I am a country member.” To which then leader of the Opposition Gough Whitlam promptly replied, “I remember.”
Absence of eloquence
Struggling to remember any, I asked AI to find me some witty exchanges from Pauline Hanson, but it struggled too. It told me she was better known for
blunt, unpolished talk rather than traditional political wit.
This is the stuff her followers claim makes her real and relatable, one of the justifications MAGA used to elect Trump. But since when were ‘blunt and unpolished’ more desirable prerequisites for leadership than ‘traditional wit?’ Except maybe in the front row of a rugby scrum.
Highlighting Hanson’s shortcomings, though, isn’t always a winning strategy. Despite being in politics for 30 years, any legitimate criticism of her will still be seen as victimisation by her supporters, who’ll insist she’s not stupid; she just says what she thinks, and she does that because she’s not really a politician – which is a stupefying justification for someone they consider their political leader.
Copying Trump’s playbook
We are also seeing the classic Trump media play, with the ABC, The Guardian, The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald all blocked from One Nation press conferences because of ‘unfair reporting.’ And if you don’t recognise that from Trump’s playbook, maybe you should revisit Hitler’s Mein Kampf and see where Goebbels got his inspiration.
The comparison is intentional. When Trump started denying White House access to media outlets he didn’t approve of, people tut-tutted as the matter headed to federal court. Typical Trump, they said. Ditto the Pentagon when Secretary Hegseth denied access to journalists who wouldn’t sign away their independence; the public reasoned the journos could always keep each other in the loop.
When Trump’s hatchet man, Russell Vought, started redirecting Congress-approved funding into the coffers of the Executive, people were worried, but unless it affected them directly, they let it slide. Likewise, when Elon Musk’s DOGE began gutting Government departments under the guise of eliminating ‘waste, fraud and abuse,’ the people grew concerned but knew not how to resist.
Each time Trump attacked another American institution to ‘flush out the deep state,’ or leaned on another university to bend to his will, or extorted another legal firm to do his bidding, the people grew ever more alarmed. But what could they do? Piece by piece, their democracy was being dismantled before their eyes,
yet nobody seemed willing or able to push back.
This is Trump’s playbook, the Project 2025 manifesto, the Mein Kampf of our day.
Pauline Hanson has neither the charisma nor the intelligence of Donald Trump – okay, let’s call it rat cunning if you deny him smarts – and the sudden resurgence of her One Nation party has surprised everyone, including the orange one herself. There’s no Project 2025 waiting to be implemented.
But don’t be fooled by One Nation’s media bans. They may be minor impositions for now, but a free and fair press is a basic tenet of our democracy – okay, again, let’s call it an aspiration if tenet makes you laugh – and we can’t stand by and watch this mob undermine our Fourth Estate.
Or we could soon find ourselves in the same predicament as the US,
fearful the guardrails of our democracy won’t withstand whatever comes next.
So, if I may proffer a slogan of my own, an oldie but a goodie, attributed to Anglo-Irish philosopher and politician Edmund Burke from the 1700s (albeit probably paraphrased): “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
We’ll believe anything when it suits us, and nothing when it doesn’t.
Has Albo reset ‘Labor values’ in line with Pauline Hanson and Lachlan Murdoch?
Monte Dwyer - formerly a professional fisherman, fashion model, foreign aid worker, hospitality worker, failed property developer and TV weatherman - is an author and filmmaker. His latest book, "MAGA, Guns & God – A road trip through ‘red’ America", is available from his website.