The wolf warriors of Holt Street.

One of the small consolations of living in these the End Times of our doomed civilisation is my enjoyment of the gradual closing of any rhetorical distance between the senior executives of News Corporation and the wolf warrior spokes-comrades of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

After ABC news director Justin Stevens finally called out News Corp’s ugly racist troll army for weeks of ugly racist attacks by an army of trolls on Stan Grant, News Corp Australasia’s chief executive troll wrangler, Michael Miller shot back, “The ABC needs to stop passing the buck and blaming others for its own internal problems.”

In form, cadence and po-faced chutzpah, it could have been hissed in heirloom Mandarin parseltongue straight from the Forbidden Palace. Indeed China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesbot hit play on their favourite flex…

“[Insert imperialist running dog here] needs to stop passing the buck/pointing fingers/stirring up trouble and blaming others for its own internal problems.”

… at the very same moment that Comrade Miller was demanding the ABC’s revanchist anti-NewsCorp forces abandon their Cold War mentality and accept the wisdom of Chairman Rupert Thought. Yes, China’s Wang Wenbin was urging the G7 to “stop pointing fingers at China… and take a hard look at their own history and human rights record,” but I’ve never seen Comrade Wang in the same room as Comrade Mike, so I remain giddy with anticipation of Miller’s thundering promise that the ABC “will crack their heads and spill their blood on News Corporation’s Great Wall of steel.”

Even if the Wall is a bit rusty and full of holes.

A favourite line of the recent attacks on Grant and his employer was NewsCorp’s reporting of the thousands of complaints that ‘swamped’ the national broadcaster after its Coronation coverage.

There were thousands of complaints. However, only a handful of them were made in good faith and referred to the ABC ombudsman to investigate any “possible breach of editorial standards.”

That doesn’t mean there was a breach.*

It just means that the referred complaint wasn’t a tangled ganglion of fever swamp gibberish inspired by NewsCorp’s increasingly deranged culture war agitprop or an ALL CAPS stream of racist abuse copied straight from the comment threads on one of Sky News’ After Dark Youtube conspiracy videos. Over ninety per cent of the complaints lodged with the ABC after the Coronation fell into one of those chum buckets.

For Stan Grant, of course, the abuse is literally personal. The harassment, racism and death threats don’t just lob onto a corporate contact page; they blow up in his Twitter feed. They drop into his mailbox. They find his family.

That’s probably why Miller felt he needed to say something. (Well, something other than, “Sorry, Stan.”) Grant’s real and obvious trauma was distressing to watch and could be somewhat awkward if sheeted home to News Corps editorial choices and shrinking but increasingly batshit crazy audience.

The Murdochs have always played the game for keeps, so it’s not surprising their bosses come off sounding like mafia capos or communist party enforcers. They have an empire to defend. For them, unlike Grant, it’s not personal.

Fear and loathing is just a business plan.

The Murdochs have long understood that power is built on scarcity. News Corp makes bank by adding perceived value to information that they alone possess or can deliver faster than anyone else. This used to mean beating other news outlets for access, breaking stories first or finding new angles on existing ones. But in a digital world, where iformation is both infinite and free, it needs something else to sell. Its most profitable product line now is fear.

Fear of “The Other”, be it refugees, Chinese people, Muslims or Indigenous Australians; fear of change; fear of difference. Fear is always profitable because it targets the oldest parts of our brain, the parts that prime us to survive in the jungle, on the tundra, in a world red of tooth and claw.

It was Stan Grant this week. Trans kids the week before. Muslims next Tuesday.

Change, difference, the Other.

In the attention economy, these things are the new oil. And the Murdochs are done apologising for exploiting them.

---

*(In fact, I’ve just read as I was checking this piece before sending it out that the Ombudsman cleared the ABC on all complaints).