I put to Latham that at some point he gave up trying to solve problems for the left, and shifted towards exploiting them. Instead of directly rebuking me, he redefines the aim as “refashioning some of those ideas into something relevant to the people I represent these days”.
Smells like “depends on what your definition of “is” is”.
Otherwise, just from that quote, his description sounds like a pretty faithful euphemism for exactly what he was accused of (and generally what demagoguery is) … IE finding “relevance” (wink wink) being basically the same as finding something you can get click-baity rage out of.
“Oh no. I worked for the fascists and then they undemocratically fired me!” /S
Here’s an old write up of Latham’s brain rot, that’s still relevant.
https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2019/august/1564581600/sean-kelly/mark-latham-outsider#mtr
Smells like “depends on what your definition of “is” is”.
Otherwise, just from that quote, his description sounds like a pretty faithful euphemism for exactly what he was accused of (and generally what demagoguery is) … IE finding “relevance” (wink wink) being basically the same as finding something you can get click-baity rage out of.