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Comment by vonnik | Hacker News Reader

Rupert Murdoch is a special interest with access in London. Other special interests have access in Brussels. Just not the warmongering Australian.

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Murdoch renounced his Australian citizenship in 1985. He's been a citizen of the US of A for over thirty years now.

Speaking as an American, that's been our loss. National identity, to be clear, is not just legal but cultural. In that light, Murdoch will always be in some way Australian.

Do you know what country you live in? A bodybuilder from Austria with a heavy accent became governor of California. The son of a Kenyan economist battled an army kid born in a territory in the middle of Panama for the 2008 presidential election. The son of oil prospectors was born in Canada and then grew up to be the last challenger to Donald Trump.

Isn't this exactly the type of attitude that lead to Brexit? I can't believe I'm defending Murdoch, but who are you to determine one's "cultural identity"? What a bizarre comment.

As one who has lived abroad a long time, I can simply affirm that one's cultural and national identity are heavier than a passport. Murdoch spent much of his childhood and early adult life in Australia, where he still owns property, operates going concerns, and where more than one of his own children live.

Don't take my comment wrong. I'm not rejecting foreigners in America or anywhere else. I recognize my family's own European origins and humanity's migrant nature.

But I will say, particular to Murdoch, that I wish he had stayed in Australia, and I'm sure many Americans share my sentiment. He has had a vicious influence on this country's foreign and domestic policy, which has cost many innocent lives, and he has grown rich off it. A modern-day Hearst, and a shame...

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