Jordan van den Lamb, the Victorian Socialists’ lead Senate candidate, says that running for Parliament isn’t his primary concern anyway.
Speaking to Crikey outside Merri Creek Primary School in Fitzroy North an hour before the close of polls on election day, van den Lamb, also known by the online alias “purplepingers”, said parliamentary politics alone wasn’t how social movements were built.
“I feel like we’ve had a pretty effective Red Scare campaign in this country for quite a long time,” he said.
“I feel like people are still a little bit suspicious of socialist politics, but once we get to talk to them, [they are] absolutely open to it — which is really exciting.
“As for the sixth Senate seat, that’s not what we’re trying to achieve here, that’s not what a socialist believes in, ‘getting the spot in Parliament, that’ll fix everything for us’.
“We believe in building a movement outside of Parliament, and what this campaign has done has allowed us to grow quite significantly, reach a lot more people than we would have previously, and get them to get involved in things that we’re doing outside the halls of power and building that movement. That’s how we threaten power.”
The Victorian Socialists, typically previously constrained to the upper houses of the Victorian Parliament, picked up Van den Lamb as their lead Senate candidate this election off the back of his significant online following.
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Van den lamb has gone viral over the past two years for his polarising advocacy of squatting and his database Shit Rentals, used to shame real estate agents who advertise subpar or inadequate rentals for extortionate prices.
The party advocated for a comprehensive nationalisation of energy infrastructure, a “whole of economy emergency plan” to convert in-place energy systems to renewables by 2030, and wealth taxes on billionaires and a 90% marginal tax rate on incomes over $300,000. It also sought to scrap negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount for all investment properties, increase company tax to 50%, and increase royalties on all coal, gas, oil, base and precious metals and minerals to 35%.
Asked about what he felt was important from the next term of Parliament, van den Lamb said that the election campaign had been “ridiculous — talking about policies that’ll do absolutely nothing to help people”.
“People are angry. People are mad. The housing crisis is affecting them, people are mad that they still have to worry about climate change, that their public schools are underfunded … the same stuff that was prosecuted election after election after election is still a concern for so many people.
“There has been quite a bit of disillusionment.”
“I don’t think we have any positive expectations of this next iteration of the Labor government. We know that everything that they’ve offered has been nothing but scraps, and scraps that will make all of the problems that we’re experiencing worse.
“But that’s not what it’s about. We don’t care about that stuff. We care about helping people, helping working-class people around us and in our communities, and getting people involved.”
