En Passant

As fascism organises in Australia today, Trotsky’s thinking about the squaddism of the German Communist Party in the early 1930s seems to me to contain important lessons for the left today.

The government’s racist and xenophobic attacks not only allow the respectable racists to come forth. They encourage the fascists and hard racists to not only air their filth but to attempt to mobilise around racism. The most recent example was the ‘United Patriots’ demonstration on Sunday in Melbourne which was an attempt to shut down socialist councillor Stephen Jolly. The left mobilised against the fascists and stopped them silencing Jolly. This is a victory for democracy.

The respectable racists have crawled out from under their rocks (often padded with copies of mainstream newspapers) to condemn the anti-fascist protestors. We have to confront not just the fascists but expose the respectable racists and the government which nurtures and provokes their racism too. We have to oppose the racists whenever they organise their Reclaim White Australia rallies. Just as importantly we have to challenge the governments which demonise asylum seekers, which attack Aborigines and point the finger accusingly at Muslims and which attack our jobs, or wages and our services.

The possibility of a populist Hanson and a neo-Nazi right within Reclaim Australia finding common ground, as they appear to be doing, is frightening. It could herald the development of a proto-fascist organisation, based on the disaffected middle and lower classes and racist fear-mongering. We need to gather our forces and begin the fight against the racist Reclaim (White) Australia movement. It is better to remove the weeds before they destroy the garden than after they have. Apply the weedicide now, not when the weeds have overrun the garden and it is too late.

A strong vibrant and active left and trade union movement, with a clear understanding of the nature of capitalism and the threat respectable racism and its hidden guest, fascism, pose to the left and to working people, could act as a pole of attraction offering hope for these middle and working class people currently driven by fear. Building such a left must be our long term goal. In the medium term it means rank and file workers winning back their unions and building strikes to defend workers’ interests. In the short term we have to confront the racists and their fascist bed fellows every time they poke their slimy necks out from their sewers of hate.

Here is a link to the Green Left Weekly 5 minute TV report on voices from the Melbourne Rally Against racism.

Operation Sovereign Borders stops innocent people who are fleeing war, murder and rape but Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison won’t stop fascists coming here. Says it all really.

What courage, what humanity the Warsaw Ghetto Jews showed in resisting the monolith of Nazism. There is a universal message here. It was right then to fight back against the Nazi occupiers. It is right now, even in the face of overwhelming force, to resist your oppressors, their invasions and occupation.

At the end of May, the Front National results in the European elections sent a shock wave across France, John Mullen writes from Paris. Here we look at the causes of this disaster, and at what can be done

The old forms of counter-revolution became less effective. The police were too easily outnumbered and the army was prone to mutiny.

That is why after the Russian Revolution of 1917 the ruling class turned to a new weapon, an extreme form of counter-revolution – fascism.

Fascism has never taken power in a country simply through elections – fascist parties have always been handed power by ruling classes in crisis.

If the economy does decline where will this middle class anger then go? Without a left wing or socialist working class alternative it could go further and further to the right…The need right now is to build a socialist alternative.