Bullshit authoritarianism and the return of the Kaya Toast Mini-Mentorship

This weekend is crunch time for me: I've got 35,000+ words to proofread for the May 2025 issue of Mekong Review before it has to be sent off to the printers on Monday, and this is on top of other meetings and obligations I agreed to earlier because my calendar didn't look that full at the time (a rookie mistake I make over and over again).

There'll be no wrap this weekend, but I'd like to share this essay I wrote for the Australian Book Review's Calibre Essay Prize earlier this year. It didn't get shortlisted—and I can see why, more on that a little later—but I think it's still worth sharing. It also gives me an opportunity to write about something that I've been planning on doing for some time.

The first section of the essay is free to read, but the rest of it is paywalled for Milo Peng Funders. Which makes it a good time for me to remind everyone that there are WTC birthday month discounts going on in April; just click the preferred button below:

In June 2021 (my goodness, was it that long ago?) I introduced the Kaya Toast Mini-Mentorship Initiative. It was a little experiment, an offer to work with aspiring or young—in terms of experience, not age—writers, especially those who might not have many other opportunities or spaces for their writing to be considered or published.

The first round worked pretty well; not everyone whose applications were selected made it to an end product, but two pieces were published in We, The Citizens. In March 2022, I decided to relaunch the Kaya Toast Mini-Mentorship on a rolling basis... and that's where things fell apart. A few people applied and got picked up, but no one made it to a completed piece. It's disappointing, of course, but much of the responsibility for how a mentorship turns out lies with me. There wasn't enough structure in the way that I was doing it, so I think mentees often struggled to really understand what I was getting at and what the expectations were. And while I'd wanted to offer flexibility, the lack of clear milestones or deadlines also meant it was easy to lose sight of where things were. We'd often have a few email exchanges—often with weeks, even months, between them—before things just petered out.

I'd like to try again—if there are people interested in this, of course. This time, I'm going to come up with a timeframe again, and will plan out a clearer 'curriculum' on approaching the sort of writing I'm most familiar with—long-form feature writing, blog/newsletter pieces, commentaries and essays—so there'll be clearer guidance with more sign-posting.

This mentorship plan came to mind when I found out last month that my essay wouldn't be going any further in the competition. Reading it again, two months after I'd submitted it (in a fog of stress and fed-up burnout, it has to be said), I could see all the bits that don't work well for a longer publication cycle—the things that were too current, too time-based, not evergreen enough to still sound fresh if published months after it was written. I could see the rhythm faltering towards the end, sputtering out instead of bringing things to a satisfying close. The raw emotion was there, but there wasn't enough clarity to reach a meaty conclusion. It might have worked for an article or newsletter on a quick turnaround; not so much for a journal or magazine. (Apart from fixing a few tiny things, I've left the piece as I submitted it, so you can see what I mean.)

I don't know if these were the reasons why it didn't make the shortlist, but these are the things I'd say as an editor. These are also precisely the sort of things we can talk about during a mentorship process: thinking about audience, about purpose, about accessibility and the different choices we'd make in different contexts. It doesn't have to be super high level, but we're learning all the time and there are basics that can help.

I haven't worked out exactly when Kaya Toast Mini-Mentorship 3.0 will be launched; I need to figure out my schedule better so it's manageable. But I wanted to say that it's on my mind—so if this sounds like something you'd be interested in, keep your eyes peeled for updates!

Bullshit authoritarianism

Written in January 2025

When people imagine authoritarianism and oppression, they still tend to picture Hollywood villains, unapologetic tyrants and murderous dictators. They expect mass killings, hard labour in gulags and dissidents disappeared or shot in the street. We all think we know the type, that we’ll recognise them when we see them. But nobody expects the polite, acceptably competent guys or the ones who look like bumbling idiots in front of the cameras. Sometimes they look like poseurs, grifters unworthy of being taken seriously. Sometimes they come across as so incredibly boring, fixated on the mundane drudgery of bureaucratic protocols or legislation written in mind-numbingly dull legalese. We don’t pay attention to these people and what they do; even when we do, we often fail to zero in on the right things.

I’m here to say: beware the oppressor who clowns, or the sort who might give you a smile and a customer feedback form on your way out. Overt oppression is so last century; there are new tactics now. This is bullshit authoritarianism: the type that creeps up on you while it gaslights, confuses, distracts and provokes.

'Keep billionaires safe; they’re people with feelings too! It’s those immigrants who are stealing your jobs and committing crimes in your cities.'

The outstretched palm, turned down, fingers together. The angle at which his arm stuck out straight. The smug expression of a man old enough to know the history and know exactly what he was doing. The context of the event: the inauguration of a man who had actively undermined democracy and pandered to right-wing misogyny, racism and xenophobia. It was pretty clear: Elon Musk, giving a speech on Donald Trump’s inauguration day, was doing the Nazi salute.

It looked like a duck, it walked like a duck, it quacked like a duck. Everything added up, pointing to the existence of a duck. But maybe, apologists suggested, it was actually an autistic swan? The mainstream media, more obsessed with going through the ritualistic motions of objectivity than with speaking truth to power, shrugged its shoulders: oh well, we can’t really know for sure what he meant by that “controversial gesture”. And while everyone was distracted by nonsense semantics, pedantry and false equivalence, the political goalposts shifted in a darker direction without much challenge.

Welcome to bullshit authoritarianism.