From The Gherk on Facebook. There is very little that I need to add to this… other than - who should we be looking at for normalising violence in this country and what should we be doing about it? 👇🏻 The Gherk: “We need to cool the political temperature in this country. A part of that means being honest about where some of the heat has come from. For years, parts of the Murdoch media ecosystem have treated casually violent language about public officials as entertainment. Different targets. Different presenters. Different political moments. Same underlying habit. Violence gets turned into a punchline. Threatening language gets dressed up as banter. If anyone complains, it becomes “light-hearted”, “non-literal”, “obviously a joke”, or everyone else being too sensitive and "go to your safe space". And then we all act shocked when the broader political culture becomes more aggressive, more dehumanising and more comfortable with the idea that elected officials are not fellow citizens to disagree with, but enemies to be humiliated, threatened or fantasised about hurting. Words are not the same as actions... of course they aren’t. But culture matters. Repeatedly normalising violent imagery around politicians lowers the threshold for what starts to feel acceptable. It changes the atmosphere. And it teaches audiences that rage is authenticity. That cruelty is strength. That threatening language is just another way of showing you’re politically serious. And it’s not just what gets said. How many front pages and splash graphics have we seen over the years with politicians framed inside rifle scopes, crosshairs, targets or gun sights because somebody in a newsroom thought it looked punchy? Again, a graphic is not an attack. But if your political visual language constantly borrows from weapons, execution, hunting and physical harm, you are helping build a culture where violent imagery around public figures feels normal. At some point, “it’s just a metaphor” becomes a pretty weak defence when the metaphors have been doing the heavy lifting for years. Then one day someone actually crosses the line and everyone suddenly discovers a deep commitment to civility. That’s the part I am struggling with. You cannot spend years monetising anger, grievance and fantasies of political violence and then act completely bewildered when public discourse starts to resemble a pub argument five schooners past sensible. This is bigger than left versus right. Anyone doing it should stop. Politicians. Media personalities. Influencers. Creators. All of us. Once violence becomes just another rhetorical prop, it becomes easier to forget there are actual human beings on the other end of the sentence. The person you hate politically still has a family. The person you think is incompetent still has kids. The person you want voted out is still not someone who should be threatened, assaulted or treated as less than human. We do not need to turn every disagreement into a blood feud. And we absolutely do not need a media culture that treats fantasies of political violence as a cheeky little ratings strategy. Maybe the standard should be very simple. Argue hard. Mock freely. Criticise mercilessly. But stop casually talking about hurting people. It is not edgy. It is not clever. And after everything we’ve seen lately, it is not harmless either.” Thank you, Mr Gherk🙏🏻 As an aside, I have noticed that ALL associations of Murdoch media have been busy in the last 24 hours pumping out the “Albo” rhetoric as the instigator of this violence. Look past Otto the real perpetrators. We really have to do something about the media and hateful populist rhetoric in this country. If you can’t do anything else - at least be kind.