The iconic words of Martin Luther King Jr are now being used to further the exact causes that the civil rights activist would have opposed. In the United States, conservatives quoted him to celebrate the supreme court’s ban on affirmative action based on race in university admissions.

Here people like Peter Dutton and the former attorney-general George Brandis are invoking MLK to rally opponents of the Voice to Parliament.

Last week, opposition leader Peter Dutton called for policy reform to regulate social media due to its impact on civil discourse.

But who gets to define what is and isn’t “civil” in the public sphere? And what does that say about power?