Far-Right ‘Australia Has Fallen’ Hashtag Taken Over By People Posting Images Of Their Pets
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Anti-lockdown Twitter users attempting to claim ‘Australia has fallen’ have had their hashtag taken over by people posting cute images of their pets and other animals.
Residents in Australia have been placed under a strict lockdown as coronavirus cases continue to rise and spread, with a record daily number of 886 cases reported in New South Wales and Victoria over the weekend.
Officials have enforced strict lockdowns in a bid to combat the spread, with hundreds of military personnel called up to help enforce restrictions in Sydney, but their efforts have been met with backlash from anti-lockdown protestors.
Protestors defied stay-at-home orders to demonstrate their anger at the restrictions on the streets of Sydney, with similar protests planned in Melbourne after Victoria premier Daniel Andrews expanded lockdown to the entire state after 61 new cases, Sky News reports.
Meanwhile, protestors have also taken to the internet to express their belief that ‘Australia has fallen’ as a result of the restrictions, with one person sharing footage apparently taken in Australia and comparing it to the violence being faced by Afghan residents following the takeover of the Taliban.
They wrote: ‘Can anyone notice the difference between the violence of the taliban against the Afghans, and the violence of the australian police against the australians?’
Another tweet reads: ‘#AustraliaHasFallen to the Pentecostal christian theocrats and their parliamentary leader, the man from marketing, the worst prime minister in the history of the colony, the hollow man without a plan, the man made of smirk, smoke and mirrors.’
Though the protestors attempted to use the hashtag to spread their anti-lockdown beliefs, those in support of the restrictions decided to try and make their own by using it to spread a very different message: animals are cute.
Following the efforts of hundreds of Twitter users, a search for the hashtag ‘AustraliaHasFallen’ now returns dozens of tweets featuring pictures of cute animals, as well as people discussing their delight at how the hashtag has been hijacked.
One tweet, including an image of a particularly cute puppy, read: ‘#AustraliaHasFallen victim to ‘hashtag hijackers’ who are posting pictures of cute animals on right wing hashtags to disrupt far-right pro-covid rally organisers.’
Another person wrote: ‘If #AustraliaHasFallen for adorable pets, that’s all good. Here some Quokka fun’
Australia’s federal government is giving state leaders some leeway on the restrictions they can choose to implement in each area, but with the delta variant spreading fast across the country the government has described its strategy as ‘aggressive suppression.’
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