Am I the baddie?

Yeah, a “life journey” all the way to the fucking Premiership of New South Wales…

So glorious leader (NSW branch) Dominic Perrottet made a somewhat extraordinary admission:

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has apologised after revealing he wore a Nazi costume to his 21st birthday party.
Mr Perrottet said he was “deeply ashamed” for wearing the uniform to a fancy dress party, saying it had caused him “much anxiety” through the course of his life.
He told a press conference in Sydney that he decided to come forward after receiving a phone call from a cabinet colleague two days ago.
“When I was 21, at my 21st fancy dress party, I wore a Nazi uniform,” he said. […]
Mr Perrottet said he was “not aware” of any photo depicting him in the uniform, denying the announcement was made to pre-empt any political attacks ahead of the March election.
“I thought this was important, that this is my truth, that I should be the one to explain that to the people of our state, not someone else,” he said. […]
The premier said he was “naive” at the time of the incident and “didn’t understand the significance of that decision”.
He said the party’s theme was “uniforms”.
“It was stupid,” Mr Perrottet said.
“It was just a terrible mistake where I, at that age in my life, I just did not understand the gravity and the hurt of what that uniform means to people, not just in our state, but around the country and around the world.” […]
Mr Perrottet said he acknowledged his “mistake” the day after the party, after his parents told him it was “wrong and insensitive”.
“It’s been something that I’ve had to carry with me for my life,” he said.

Dominic has been so haunted by his “mistake” that it’s taken him 19 years to admit to it, during which time he’s had a flourishing career as a Liberal politician in which he is currently the Premier of NSW. He would’ve turned 21 in 2003, only 58 years since the end of World War 2, and somehow he came to adulthood with apparently little understanding of what happened during that war and why cosplaying one of the Bad Guys from that war might be considered… inappropriate at best.

Not that anyone else at the party would appear to have thought it was a bad idea either, of course. Not if no one called him out on it until the next day. Dom didn’t become the Young Liberals’ president until a couple of years later, but I’m guessing a fair number of them would’ve been at the party too, so I’m not surprised if they didn’t have a problem with it given that, you know, ACTUAL NAZIS have been known to turn up in their ranks…

But the least believable thing about the story is the bit where Dom says he’s not aware of any photographic evidence of his “mistake”. For one thing, it was his 21st birthday party; the idea that no one there had a camera so no one would’ve got a shot of the birthday boys seems a bit ludicrous. But also… if there actually is no photographic evidence, then why is Dom admitting this at all, let alone now? I presume the call from the unnamed cabinet colleague was about a threat to expose him, but if there really is no proof then the whole thing could just be dismissed (maybe not easily, but even so)… the suspicion might linger but it wouldn’t go further than that.

I think someone somewhere’s got kompromat, and Perrottet’s trying to defuse it by saying “yeah, I was a dickhead when I was young, but hey, I’m cool with Jews now”, and in fairness to him he does seem to have been so during his political career, I don’t think he actually is a sympathiser for the other team or anything and I don’t suppose he ever really was. Just phenomenally stupid.

Talking of phenomenally stupid, that’s what it would be to try and nobble him just a couple of months before the NSW election; if someone is trying to push him into spending more time with his family, this would be a terrible time to do so with any putative replacement only having a few weeks to prove themselves, which worked so well in 1999 for Kerry Chikarovski, didn’t it? If someone in the party is trying to push Dominic out at this silly juncture, I feel that even Labor could pull the election off. Certainly it would be a hell of a way for NSW Labor to remind people that they still actually exist…