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Hate
The lamp
In 1992, political strategist James Carville pinned a note to the wall at Bill Clinton’s campaign headquarters. One line on it became the most quoted piece of campaign advice of the modern era: It’s the economy, stupid. It reminded people to stay focused on what voters actually felt in their lives. Wages. Jobs. The price of keeping a roof overhead.
Thirty-four years later, the economy still matters. People feel it every time they pay rent, fill a tank, or open a statement for a debt that never seems to shrink. But the line that now decides elections is different.
It’s the hate, stupid.
Not because people have become more hateful. Because someone found the lamp.
You know the story. A boy finds a dusty old lamp, rubs it, and a genie bursts out offering to grant his wishes. Social media found its own lamp, and the lamp is hate. Rub it, and the genie appears every time. Clicks. Shares. Comments. Hours of attention, harvested and sold to advertisers. Unlike the fable, this genie never runs out of wishes. And unlike the fable, the lamp doesn’t care whose hands are on it.
That last point matters more than anything else here, so let me show you how literally true it is.
When Guardian Australia looked at the largest Facebook groups promoting Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party…
