Via Domain:
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd says controversial Labor YouTuber FriendlyJordies should be treated as a serious journalist and has defended working with the satirist, as NSW Labor leader Jodi McKay appeared to distance herself from him after a week of stunts and off-colour remarks.
…Shanks’ remarks on his podcast a fortnight ago about the persecuted Uighur Muslim minority in China’s Xinjiang region, an estimated one million of whom are detained in camps.
“The reason the Uighur population is detained is because they’re causing trouble. That is actually the reason,” Shanks said, claiming they had been radicalised by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Jordies starred recently in a CCP propaganda video which is even more disturbing given they just lifted his material as is:
At times, MB has loved FriendlyJordies piss takes. His material on the corruption of the Australian political system and the war on youth is first class.
But this capitulation to Labor is not journalism. Just as what Murdoch does these days is not journalism. Both are fake news and propaganda.
It’s hard to measure whether Labor is as corrupt as the Coalition. But it’s certainly close when we consider its state branch’s history with property and resource interests. When we add its horrible relationship with the CCP it is almost certainly worse than the Coalition right now. And that is saying something because today’s Coalition is as bent as any party I can remember.
FriendlyJordies going to bat for Labor and the CCP today is the vlogger version of useful idiocy. It’s a great tragedy for a once-great pioneer turns into the very thing that he once fought against.