Painting Fakes

One of the favourite political books from my young days was The Deep North  by Deane Wells.  It was published in 1979, the year I started university, and Wells was a Lecturer in Philosophy at my university.  His book analyses the political philosophy of Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who at that time was Queensland's Premier.  Joh was a figure who loomed large over our State, an authoritarian pro-business leader who outlawed political protests and set the police onto protestors.  During his reign the Police Special Branch spied on activists and union leaders and kept secret dossiers on them, trying to find ways to implicate them in crimes.   Wells' thesis was that Joh was a genuine, dinky di fascist.  He didn't mean this in the general sense that left-wing activists often use for right-wing authoritarians.  He meant that Joh followed the philosophy outlined by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, even though he had probably never read Hitler's writings .   He illustrated the point with va