16 September

Because we're entering dangerous times with echoes of the early 1930s (when people start talking nationalities and flags, lock the doors), I think it's worth looking at the features of criminal behaviour in Australia. See the dot points below. Imitation is the basis of most if not all human thought and behaviour. So any mechanism that allows the imitation of criminal acts will magnify criminality dramatically. Hello, social media. Criminals increasingly even film and share crime in their feeds, to outdo one another. The partner of imitation is scapegoating. When things go wrong through viral crime, a scapegoat is found to try to reduce the violence. In 1930s times, that was race. Not much has changed, though now you can add Left and Right and every other variety of identity-based social life, which proliferate in social media society. A Premier League with an exponential growth in teams. It's a powder keg waiting to blow. We never learn a thing from history, as the saying goes.