Amy Remeikis says ‘civility politics’ is being weaponised to shut down debate

Civility politics is being weaponised to shut down genuine debate while allowing misinformation and powerful vested interests to maintain their influence, argues the Australia Institute’s chief political analyst Amy Remeikis.

At a launch for her new book, Screw Nice, the Canberra-based journalist said the demand for people to be ‘nice’ has led to ‘civility’ being prioritised over actual substance.

“It’s about stop defending the centre because the centre is way over in the right somewhere, and we never actually acknowledged that the centre got dragged so far right it’s sitting on Pauline Hanson’s eyebrows.”

Ms Remeikis argued the drive by centrist media to present ‘balance’ in their reporting had normalised political positions that were once considered extreme.

She said the rise of “debate bro” culture has also “elevated opinions next to actual facts”, where confidence trumps expertise in an arena dominated by people arguing over culture-war topics for entertainment and big money.

“There’s a climate scientist that’s telling you, not absolutely, that the planet is going to be on fire, but as close as they scientifically can get to it because they’re scientists and they don’t speak in absolutes unless the absolute exists,” she said.

“And here’s somebody who just doesn’t believe that these two things are the same debate, and it’s really easy to just debate something on feels because you can just use straw man arguments, you can tone police.”

Tone policing is a tactic to derail an argument by criticising the speaker’s tone, rather than addressing what they’re saying.

“You can just basically latch onto one particular word, and before you know it, you’re debating somebody on something that’s so far away from your original point,” she said.

The debate-bro culture has created lucrative careers for podcasters such as Joe Rogan, who’s amassed a nine-figure fortune by building a huge global audience stoking debate around deliberating provocative opinions.

“People saw there’s a lot of money in that to the point where you now have MAGA-aligned podcasters openly telling people that they can’t find any research to back up what they’re saying because research is biased,” she said.

“So, the science is biased. They can’t find the facts, but that’s fine. They don’t need facts because they’ve got common sense.”

“This is what has become of the media space in terms of like the far right, and then you have news organisations trying to get some of the sheen of the social media, so they bring those people back and put them on the mainstream media, which legitimises them even further,” she argued.

She said it also erodes trust in institutions such as universities, scientists and media.

“One of the ways that you delegitimise issues and you disempower populations is to make sure they don’t know anything,” she told the audience.

“And if they’re still trusted sources, then you delegitimise those trusted sources. You make them political.

“You’re Pauline Hanson banning media outlets that have been reporting critically against her, and you tell people that that is because they’re unfair.

“You know they’re too biased against me, and people go, ‘I can’t trust anything in the media these days, so maybe she’s right’, and before you know it, we’ve completely delegitimised one of the foundations of our liberal democracy, and then we wonder why we can’t talk to each other.”

Ms Remeikis argued that the same dynamics also extend into pop culture, pointing to Taylor Swift as an example of what she describes as “toxic girl boss feminism”.

“First and foremost, Taylor Swift is a businesswoman. She is a capitalistic queen,” she said.

“She convinced a good chunk of millennials that feminism means that anybody criticising her was an anti-feminist because it’s anti-feminist to criticise a woman.”

Ms Remeikis argued that the pop superstar has “captured victimhood so perfectly as a white woman” and convinced people it’s “too dangerous” for her to voice an opinion.

“I think it’s pertinent to remember that nobody entering a civil rights fight ever entered it knowing they were going to win. In fact, most of the time they figured they would probably lose and lose everything personally,” said Ms Remeikis.

“And then we elevate people like Taylor Swift, and we give them progressive labels like feminist, or whatever else you want to call her, and we make them heroes when they never enter fights, and they never ever lose anything personally, and that’s civility politics too.

“We’re saying that she’s the hero, but people who are risking everything going to a protest are uncivil.”