Benny the Butcher from Bennelong

Man-About-Town Dr Cam Sexenheimer explores the marginal electorates…

18. How will a Stalinist, a Satanist and a KKK member vote?

Cam Smith writes:

There’s allegedly an election coming up. The regrettable consequence of this is that newspaper editors suddenly care about the opinions of people in wishy-washy electorates like McMillan and Eden-Monaro. If the names and occupations of those people start with the same letter as their electoral division, so much the better – Oh, Benny the Butcher from Bennelong is concerned about housing prices and rising inflation! How dreadfully clever. Born of a need to fill space and a sick fetish for alliteration, canvassing voters in marginal electorates is easy. What’s trickier is canvassing voters in the margins of society. To this end, Crikey went looking for a Satanist, a Stalinist and a National Socialist to see which way the truly marginal would be voting.

Malaphite X (not what her mum calls her) worships the Dark Lord Satan. As such, she told Crikey at around midnight last night, it follows that she would vote for John Howard.

Finding a Satanist is not as easy as you’d think. A call to the bookshop of Church of Satan priest Drew Sinton ended with a Satanic clerk snapping, “We don’t want any publicity!” and hanging up. Enquiries to the Temple of Set went unanswered, as did a Myspace message I sent to someone who claimed to be a member of the Temple of the Vampire. I don’t think a real Vampire would list Buffy amongst her favourite TV shows anyway. Or be on Myspace. Finally, a researcher investigating Pagan iconography within Christian architecture put me in touch with freelance Satanist Malaphite. “Most Satanists won’t be voting,” Malaphite said, “but those who are will be voting for whoever will increase military spending.” Why? “Um, because of the Apocalypse?”

Like, duh.

Where do Satanists stand on ratifying Kyoto? “We need to promote global warming, cut down all the trees, and nuke everything.” Workchoices? “Definitely. We are very much in favour of slave labour.”

How, I asked, do I know you’re being straight with me? After all, you worship the Prince of Lies. “Lying can be a lot of fun. All people should lie all the time.”

So how will Malaphite X really vote? “Everyone should vote with a gun. It’ll be more pleasure. It’ll be more blood. Go forth and rape, plunder, pillage. Destroy as much as possible.” Good heavens!

Finding a Stalinist also turned out to be easier said than done. Peter Symons (a Marxist) from the Communist Party of Australia told Crikey that it would be difficult to find anyone to admit to being a Stalinist, and at any rate, that person would probably be insane. The CPA are advocating voting for the Greens first and putting the Liberal Party last, as are a number of other socialist organisations, according to the Trot Guide for 2007. Peter Watson, the 15 year old founder and president of the Stalinist League of Australia, says that the SLA are advocating a vote for the SLA first, the Socialist Alliance second, and the International Nerd-Gothic conspiracy last. The International Nerd-Goths are controlled by his science teacher and are responsible for, amongst other things, killing Stalin and having Peter banned from the library at his school. The SLA has had limited success in student council elections and doesn’t appear to be running any candidates federally.

David Palmer, the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, will be voting for John Howard, mainly because of the business practices of Therese Rein. He told Crikey: “She’s a con-woman. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the week before the election if the Commonwealth police don’t arrest her. I dislike Howard too, mainly because he took our guns off us, but as a compromise between the two I would trust Howard more than I would trust Rudd.”

No chance of a vote for the Greens? “It’s just a front for the Comms. The Comms had 3000 members, and they went somewhere. They’re watermelons.”

The Democrats? “They just go from one disaster to another. Politics is the art of the possible.”

Not even Pauline Hanson? “Pauline is never going to get anywhere; she’s really got no political ideas. She’s just an opportunist.”

Palmer says that the Klan remains a force within the Liberal Party. Although he thinks it would be easier to infiltrate Labor branches, considering their falling membership, the Liberals remain the Klan’s spiritual home. He claims the Klan had control of 70 Liberal branches at its peak, however this number has fallen in recent years to 11 – mostly in Queensland. How much truth there is in this claim is unclear. Palmer was a good friend of Liberal Party powerbroker Lyenko Urbancic, and some of his rivals on the far Right have accused him of being a member of the Liberal Party in the 1970s.