Jordan van den Lamb, aka @purplepingers — the newly announced Senate candidate for the Victorian Socialists — wants to talk about alternatives to capitalism.
“I don’t believe that we would know what that looks like until, you know, there’s a cheeky little revolution. And then, you know, the people decide.”
The Senate bid is not an altogether surprising move for the 28-year-old, who first garnered attention for his “shit rentals” website and videos, and whose public call for squatting in empty homes attracted the ire of property owners and panel show hosts.
While he’s mostly known for housing, van den Lamb cites his other areas of concern as Indigenous deaths in custody, attacks on workers (“not a big fan of that”), cuts to the NDIS (“um, no thank you”), and Australia’s involvement in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza (“if we could just not do that, that’d be fantastic”), noting his policies will “largely be informed by Vic Socialists platforms”.
When asked what he would say to followers concerned about voting for a group known to be fractious — the Victorian Socialists is one of multiple such parties in Victoria, with disagreements between the Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Alternative having led to a major split in 2020 — he says most people considering voting for him “would know who they’re voting for”.
“I feel like they’d be more people voting for me as a person than the Victorian Socialists as a party,” he says, deflecting somewhat. “And you’re going to get me.”
The Melbourne-based influencer is an interesting choice for the Victorian Socialists: a celebrity candidate for the party that is dominated by the more insular Socialist Alternative and doesn’t attract a lot of mainstream media.
He does, however, identify as “a bit of a communist”, arguing that we are currently seeing the effects of late-stage capitalism.
“We’re treating [problems] as individual issues instead of symptoms of the cancer that is capitalism,” he says, confirming that he wishes to abolish the system rather than reform it.
Given that, I ask van den Lamb why he’s decided to channel his energy into winning a Senate seat — a fairly remote prospect given the 550,000-odd votes required. Many on the far left eschew electoral politics, preferring to organise and agitate; several followers commented that they support him, but still won’t vote.
“So many people suggested it in comments and stuff like that,” he tells me. “And I just slowly became more and more discontented with our politicians, who were just behaving like cowards.” He can see some value in being in Parliament, noting he’d like to use Senate estimates to point out “just how shit of a job that they’re doing”.
“I haven’t changed any of the other methods of activism, because they’re honestly more important than engaging in politics,” he says. “But our politicians decide the methods by which we’re exploited. So if in the meantime, we can be exploited a bit less while we organise for better outcomes, I think that would be nice.”
With regards to people who are against engaging with the system, he adds, “I totally hear where they’re coming from, and to a large extent, I agree. But I’m of the personal opinion that we can absolutely do both.”
Some have pondered whether van den Lamb’s Senate bid is mostly an attempt to raise his profile and draw attention to his issues. Does he actually think he has a shot at winning?
“Yeah, it could absolutely happen,” he says. “But that’s not what matters here. It’s that we’re talking about alternatives to capitalism. It’s that we’re talking about socialism, and that the government understands that people are angry and can quantify just how angry people are by the amount of votes that we get.”
It’s certainly a febrile environment in which to have a crack. The major party primary vote continues to plummet to new lows, amid growing disenchantment with Labor. Meanwhile, the crossbench continues to increase in both size (welcome, Gerard Rennick) and influence. But there is little chance of the Vic Socialists winning a Senate spot, after claiming just 0.57% of Victorian first preferences in 2022 — 0.0398 of a quota.
Election analyst Ben Raue says van den Lamb is a good choice of candidate, appealing to voters who would not normally vote for the party. But he will be competing in the same “lane” as the Greens, who secured 13.85% of the Senate vote in Victoria in 2022. Most states only have space for one left-wing minor party (and one cooker, as Bernard Keane wrote on Monday).
Van den Lamb would need to pick up “a huge vote that came from Labor” in order to be competitive, winning votes in the middle to outer suburbs that the Greens do not — though that certainly seems to be part of the Vic Socialists’ plan.
The Greens are, in some ways, the elephant in the room here, having spent recent years focusing on the same issues van den Lamb plans to campaign on. He says their policies do not go far enough. Nine’s CBD column recently drew direct comparisons between van den Lamb and Greens housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather; van den Lamb repeatedly makes the point that the Vic Socialists have a “no landlords pre-selection policy”, while the Greens do not.
I ask how his approach would differ from Chandler-Mather’s, who has previously promoted @purplepingers on his own socials.
“I feel like I’m angrier than Max,” he says. “Not that he’s not angry. I think he does a fantastic job. But like, for example, Max has landlord colleagues, which makes some of his talking points a lot more different to those that mine would be. Like Max wouldn’t be able to say we should abolish landlords, um, because he’d be referring to his colleagues. And that’s no fault of Max. That’s the fault of his landlord colleagues.”
“At the end of the day, they’re not a socialist party. And therefore their policies, you know, try and engage with the capitalist system. And that’s something I inherently disagree with.”
He may disagree with it. But it’s worth noting that van den Lamb, by his own admission, is also open to engaging with the system — at least until that “cheeky little revolution” arrives.
Will the issue of housing shape your vote in 2025? Would you consider voting for van den Lamb? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
