Tag Archives: Anti-fascist protest

TEN YEARS ON AFTER THE FILTHY, VIOLENT WHITE SUPREMACIST RIOT
TRADE UNIONISTS, ETHNIC PEOPLE & ALL ANTI-RACISTS MUST UNITE TO OPEN UP CRONULLA BEACH TO PEOPLE OF COLOUR! KICK THE RACISTS OUT!

PDF document of this leaflet. 362kb

12 December 2015 – Today, brave people of all colours will take a stand against racism on the shameful anniversary of the racist riot on Cronulla Beach. Ten years ago in Cronulla thousands of racists savagely rampaged against people of Middle Eastern and South Asian backgrounds and, indeed, against anyone without white skin. An Aboriginal youth and many people of Afghan, Bangladeshi, Iranian and Lebanese background were amongst those brutally bashed. The riot was always meant to target all coloured people: it was openly built as “L_b and W_g bashing day.” The disgusting radio shock jocks, like Alan Jones, who promoted the racist riot ranted especially against “Lebanese Muslims.” During the riot, at least one woman who was wearing Islamic head dress had her headscarf pulled off as she fled violent attackers. However, people from all religious backgrounds were attacked if they did not appear White enough. Thus, among those physically attacked was at least one boy of Jewish heritage and one girl of Greek background.

The riot incited copy-cat attacks in the weeks and months that followed. from the Gold Coast to Melbourne there were individual attacks on coloured people at other beaches. At the time, one fascist website boasted: “The last two months have done more for Australian nationalism than the last ten years combined.” Six weeks after the riot, a middle-aged Sudanese man was brutally bashed by white racists at Seven Hills shopping centre in Sydney’s West. The following week another Sudanese man, this time in his 20s, was hospitalised after being attacked by racists in the same shopping centre. In Rockhampton, Queensland on “Australia Day” – just a month and a half after the Cronulla riot – a gang of rednecks went around in two cars with air rifles shooting specifically at Aboriginal people (Koori Mail, 1 February 2006). Among those shot was a thirteen year-old boy. The Aboriginal youth had to be operated on to remove an air gun pellet just millimetres from one of his lungs. Further south in Toowoomba, the house where Sudanese refugee Khamisa Abui and her seven children were living was firebombed by Neo-Nazis (The Courier Mail, 28 April 2006).

Nevertheless, today’s anti-racist mobilisation in Cronulla is not about the past – it is about the present and the future. Since the 2005 white supremacist riot, racist violence against people of colour in Australia has actually increased. In 2009, racist attacks on Indian, Chinese and other Asian students residing in Australia reached such a high level that it made media headlines and provoked international outrage. Such attacks continue today. Over the last 18 months the number of racist attacks has surged. Discriminatory government policies and draconian repression in the name of “fighting terrorism” have all helped to create a dangerous racist climate – a climate that nurtures racist violence and abuse on the streets.

Some people who sincerely do not like racism want to put their head in the sand and say we should just forget about Cronulla and “move on.” But the lasting effect of the riot in Cronulla is encouraging racist forces all over Australia right at this very moment! Although Cronulla is a heavily ‘Anglo’ area by composition, prior to the riot the beach itself used to be a very multi-racial spot. It was Sydney’s only major beach with a train station near it and could easily be accessed by car from Sydney’s multi-racial Southwest without having to pass through city traffic. However, since the riot, the number of non-white people going to Cronulla Beach has greatly diminished. Especially given the heightened racism throughout Australian society, people of colour are, understandably, fearful of going there. Those who do venture there have sometimes copped hostile stares or verbal abuse. As a result many people from Middle Eastern, Asian and African backgrounds are forced to go either further south to beaches near or in Wollongong or south to beaches like Brighton- Le-Sands. As the leader of the despicable fascist Party for Freedom, Nick Folkes, put it: “What happened 10 years ago protected [Cronulla] … they haven’t had gangs [read people of colour hanging out in groups with friends] coming in.” That the riot has “achieved” such an on-going, de-facto “ethnic cleansing” of Cronulla Beach is a huge source of “inspiration” for Neo-Nazis and other violent racist groups – outfits that have been increasingly active over the last year. The Cronulla riot is their ideal! That is why one fascist group, the Party for Freedom, has planned to hold a rally celebrating the riot while a rival Neo-Nazi outfit, the Australia First Party (which actually helped incite the Cronulla riot itself) has vowed to effect flash mob provocations on the beach. More importantly, the fact that the riot’s effect has never been undone is one of the things that is giving confidence to bigots nationwide to harass and assault Asian and African people on public transport, bash coloured people on the streets and intimidate Muslim women wearing headscarves.

This is why Trotskyist Platform argues that today’s anti-racist mobilisation must have a perspective of not just opposing the far-right groups that plan to celebrate the riot but of enforcing the right of coloured people to use the beach safely. Our aim should be to bring a multiracial crowd of people, especially including a large number of people of colour, into the heart of Cronulla Beach and enforce their right to use it without intimidation or abuse. This was how black and white activists in the early 1960s Freedom Rides in the U.S.A sat together in bus terminal restrooms and waiting rooms (and later also restaurants and hotels) that were reserved exclusively for white people. We need a perspective of organising large numbers of coloured activists to unite with white activists and make a point of using Cronulla Beach together to break open the de facto restriction, effectively a system of apartheid in all but name, on the number of coloured people using the area. This will be the opposite of what happened ten years ago: it should be anyone who intimidates or makes people with dark skin feel unwelcome who should be kicked off the beach. Violent white supremacists have no place on stolen Black land.

If this perspective of de-segregating Cronulla Beach can be realised it will send a message to racists everywhere that their attacks will be defeated. Whether it is sensible to attempt to realise this perspective today will depend on how strong the forces are that have been mobilised for today’s anti-racist gathering. The intensity of the vilification of Muslims by right-wing politicians and the climate of repression since the Paris terror attacks does intimidate many would be anti-racist activists. But it is still possible that we may end up with sufficient forces today to open up Cronulla Beach to people of colour.

RELY ON THE MULTIRACIAL WORKING CLASS MASSES NOT THE CAPITALIST STATE

The Greens and some small-l liberal anti-racists have opposed any anti-racist mobilisation in Cronulla today using the argument that such a mobilisation will incite the extreme racists. However, far-right racists have for a long time now planned an event in Cronulla to commemorate the riot’s tenth anniversary, specifically with the hope of actually sparking a new riot. What is actually igniting the flames of extreme racism is the vilification of Muslims by the mainstream media, the brutality at the hands of sadistic detention centre guards against refugees imprisoned in the hellholes of Christmas Island and Nauru and the ongoing state repression against Muslims and Aboriginal people. The fascist inferno, once ignited, is then able to grow because the fascists and the government racist policies that fuel them have not been combated powerfully enough. Allowing the flames of fascism to burn unimpeded will only allow new fuel sources to combust in their turn and the racist bonfire will become larger and more menacing. Those who advocate a so-called ‘pacifist’ perspective, unfortunately regardless of their intentions, are actually assisting the spread of far-right extremism.

Small-l liberals, social democrats and Greens also say that we should leave it to the police, courts and governments to stop the extreme racists on the day of the Cronulla riot anniversary. But let’s look at how the police and courts actually responded to the Cronulla riot itself and the racist attacks that it incited. Consider the amount of forces that the police mobilised for the expected mass white supremacist rally on that day in December 2005. Police knew very well in advance that the racist rally was going to be big and very likely turn violent. Yet, by their own admission, they only deployed 92 police in Cronulla on the day of the riot (Cronulla Riots, Review of the Police Response, Report and Recommendations by Strike Force Neil). To put this in perspective, on 8 February 1990 when police raided the Aboriginal community on The Block in Redfern to bring eight minor charges against people – charges like unpaid fines, being drunk on a train six years earlier and alleged possession of small stolen goods – they deployed 135 cops. Just think about it: police mobilised one and a half times as many cops to arrest Aboriginal people for allegedly doing things like stealing an electric shaver and a pair of goggles as they did to stop an impending violent rampage by thousands of howling white supremacist thugs! This is not an issue of police incompetence or miscalculation. For the police and government, subjugating Aboriginal people is very important while stopping extreme racist violence is not a high priority at all. As for the courts in the hallowed halls of the bourgeoise’s much vaunted ‘justice’ system, in the aftermath of the riots those violent white supremacists who were arrested received relatively light sentences. This only served to encourage racist attacks throughout the country. Meanwhile, with great fanfare in the weeks following the riots, then NSW ALP premier Morris Iemma actually legitimised the rednecks by establishing the Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad which, as its name makes no effort to hide, openly targets people based on their ethnicity – the same ethnic group that were, actually, the main victims of the horrific racist riot!

The behaviour of the police, courts and government during and after the Cronulla riot was no aberration. Police and prison guards throughout Australia have killed large numbers of Aboriginal people in and out of state custody and are notorious for harassing coloured “ethnic” youth in Sydney’s working class suburbs. The courts have legitimised and covered up for all these atrocities. Governments of all stripes have been brutally attacking refugees, demonizing Muslim people and seeking to forcibly close down Aboriginal communities. The right-wing Liberal/Nationals are the most unashamed about their racist policies but these policies – including the mandatory detention of refugees and racist anti-terror laws – have been upheld and even sometimes introduced by Labor and Labor-Greens coalition governments alike.

The racist nature of the Australian police and courts arises from these institutions’ essence as central organs of a capitalist state that was created – and is maintained – for enforcing the rule of a capitalist exploiting class over working class people. The capitalist exploiters must continue to divide ordinary people with racism in order to continue to maintain their rule over a disunited populace. The state organs that enforce capitalist rule – like the police and courts – are, necessarily, in the forefront of this business of inciting and actually carrying out racist attacks. Governments under capitalist rule, no matter who its individual personnel are, administer this racist, rich people’s state.

We should have absolutely no reliance on the government, police and other capitalist state organs to stop racist attacks. We should, instead, seek to mobilise the masses – and in particular the organised working class. The working class has a very real interest in opposing racist attacks because racism means division and division means not being able to stand united and strong against greedy bosses. Today, the government, the police and the courts are trying to jail two CFMEU construction worker union officials for having stood up staunchly for workers’ rights – all as a means to intimidate workers’ struggle in general. So, today, building workers’ unity through positively mobilising against racist attacks is especially imperative for the trade union movement. In fact, the potential for mobilising the working class against the extreme racist threat was seen in Brisbane on May 2 last year when a hundred rank and file construction worker trade unionists were at the forefront of an action that actually drove a rally by the openly fascist Australia First Party right off the streets of Brisbane. Such heroic, working class struggle is simply demobilised if anti-racist workers get conned into believing that they can leave it up to the organs of the capitalist state to oppose racism. On the other hand, to witness the power of a group of multiethnic workers standing united together against a common racist enemy and succeeding in their struggle, as happened on that day in Brisbane, is a truly remarkable, powerful and inspirational experience.

True opponents of racism should also not be fooled by the moves of the Sutherland Shire Council and the NSW police to try and stop the Party for Freedom (PFF) from rallying in Cronulla today. For starters, even without a permit the PFF may well go ahead and hold their demonstration anyway. After all, the white supremacists didn’t need a permit to perpetrate the Cronulla riot in the first place. Furthermore, it’s clear that the police and government usually have no objection to fascists holding rallies. In fact, the cops have recently excelled themselves in actively facilitating rallies organised by the hardline racist Reclaim Australia movement, right up to the extent of violently attacking antifascist counter-demonstrators. If, through the actions of the courts, the state does stop this particular fascist demonstration, it will only be a hollow victory for the anti-racist movement. One far-right racist provocation may be to some extent thwarted, and of course we do not oppose this, but it will, in the long run, sow dangerous illusions in the state and demobilise the mass action needed to stop the fascists for good. A determined, mass action of anti-racist people of all colours, led by the united and proud, multiracial organised working class of Australia, is what really has the potential to truly land decisive blows against the fascist thugs.

Therefore, it is important we understand why in this particular case the government, local council and police are, ostensibly, reluctant to see a far-right rally commemorate the anniversary of the Cronulla riot. The main reason is that such a demonstration would give Cronulla and Australia a bad name. Yet, these state organs are equally intent on stopping any anti-racist protest in Cronulla for that would, too, draw attention to the ongoing intense racism in Cronulla and Australia more generally. The Sutherland Shire Council doesn’t want such attention since it would mean that businesses in the area would lose potential customers. Australia’s capitalist rulers, meanwhile, want to maintain a “good image” internationally because that helps them, under the guise of “human rights,” to politically and militarily meddle in other countries’ affairs – all the better to advance the interests of greedy, Australian-owned “multinational” corporations. We must not assist them in their predatory ambitions. Let the world know the truth about the intense racism suffered here in capitalist Australia!

Even while the local government wants a better reputation and, hence, more visitors and business for Cronulla, still they want to keep the number of coloured youth from working class suburbs visiting the area down to a minimum token level. This hostility to working class, coloured youth can be seen in the recent ex-Mayor of Sutherland Shire Kent Johns’ comments where, alongside correctly pointing the finger at the Neo-Nazis, he put the blame for the Cronulla riot, in the first place, upon “heaps of thugs from Lakemba” (The Australian, 12 August 2015). This is a complete re-writing of history that quite disgustingly blames the victims of the racist violence – the so-called “thugs” [i.e. coloured working class youth] from Lakemba – for the riot. It is apparent that Sutherland Shire Council just want to keep the status quo that has existed since December 2005: Neo-Nazis kept on the leash and forced to drag their feet somewhat as anything else would bring too much attention upon the racism inherent in Cronulla while, at the same time, non-white “ethnic” and, especially, young people from Sydney’s working class Southwest are, for the most part, kept away from the area. This all stinks of the purely racist and upper class prejudice wafting from the chambers of the largely Liberal Party- controlled local council. However, it also reflects councillors’ connections to property developers and property holders in general. Due to the racist and class prejudice of many of Australia’s upper middle class home buyers and investors, higher property prices can be obtained if an area does not have coloured working class youth wandering around, enjoying the sun. In fact, the current mayor of Sutherland Shire Council, Carmelo Pesce, himself owns four homes and two shops in the shire as well as a business connected to the building trades – i.e. connected to property developers. Both his property investments and his business thus stand to gain higher value by ensuring that Cronulla limits the amount of working class, coloured youth in the area. Similarly, deputy mayor Hassan Awada has a property development background. The fact that he is of Lebanese Muslim background is of little consequence – this capitalist, Liberal party councillor is guided first and foremost by the interests of his class which are, naturally, also his direct material interests.

That is why only stopping the planned Cronulla action by the fascist PFF, while it would be a useful victory, is far from sufficient unless it is melded together with a wider perspective of ending, once and for all, the de facto exclusion of most working class, coloured youth from the area. Let’s not play into hands of the mainstream right-wing forces who don’t want to be embarrassed by uncouth, far-right groups but, nevertheless, are entirely wedded to the “ethnic cleansing” effects of the racist riot that these far-right groups incited.

THE STRUGGLE TO DEFEAT FASCISM IS THE STRUGGLE TO DEFEAT CAPITALISM

Of course, the threat from fascists is indeed a serious one. As the capitalist system continues its inevitable process of decay and dissolution, while it produces hardships and insecurity for many, the capitalist rulers use racism to divide and divert the attention of the masses of people from the real culprits responsible for their troubles. Mainstream racist policies, in turn, fuel the growth of the fascists. Terror attacks by reactionary fundamentalist groups falsely taking up the mantle of Islam (and which were themselves at one time built up by the Western capitalist powers) have aided capitalist governments and their fascist compadres to whip up racist fears. The horrific actions of ISIS and Al Qaeda then provide a pretext for further intervention by capitalist powers in the oil-rich Middle East as well as in Asia and Africa – intervention that is ultimately not aimed at fighting terrorism but, as in time immemorial, at advancing imperialist exploitation. To justify such intervention, the imperialist rulers need to further engender nationalist arrogance. The nationalist hoopla that the Australian capitalist rulers have created to accompany their participation in the imperialist bombing of Syria and Iraq has made the racist climate here even more severe and incendiary.

Such is the cycle of capitalist decay, racism, imperialist intervention, terror attacks and yet more imperialist intervention and racism that the capitalist world is now swirling and seemingly stuck in. Right now, in every world power where Muslims are in a minority – with the exception of socialistic China – we are seeing the mainstream media and politicians engage in racist vilification of Muslims. And in every world power – again with the important exception of socialistic China – far-right racist forces are gaining in strength. In the recent French regional elections, the fascist National Front topped the vote count. And throughout Europe and America, the number of violent attacks by white supremacist gangs has increased. In Australia, where the mainstream is already itself so racist, the far-right forces are not yet as strong as they are elsewhere but have, nevertheless, grown noticeably in the last 18 months.

Some pacifist Left groups that oppose the idea of an action commited to physically stopping the fascists argue that we need to defeat the far-right indirectly, that is by combating the racist government policies that encourage the growth of fascism rather than by confronting the fascists themselves directly on the streets. However, does there need to be a choice to make between these two approaches. We need to mobilise against racist government policies and we also need to physically stop dangerous fascist provocations. Every time the extreme white supremacists get away with openly inciting racist hatred on the very streets of our cities and towns, it encourages every garden-variety redneck who is watching from the sidelines or out there in TV and radio land to, likewise, radicalise their racist stance. That means more racist attacks on people of colour on the streets, in public transport, in school yards and in nightspots. We need consistent and consolidated mass mobilisations of trade unionists united with Aboriginal people, coloured “ethnic” communities and anti-racists of all backgrounds right now to drive the fascists off the streets and shut down all the “Reclaim Australia” race-hate rallies. The same united forces – proud workers standing shoulder to shoulder with their even prouder Aboriginal sisters and brothers and all of the oppressed- need to mobilise now to oppose racist anti-terror laws, to demand freedom for the refugees and full rights of citizenship for all asylum seekers, immigrants, international students and “guest workers.” The struggle against racist attacks must be connected to a struggle to unleash a class struggle fight against the unemployment, casualization of jobs and cuts to social services that cause some all too misguided souls to seek salvation in radical racist so-called “solutions.” As part of building such a class-struggle fightback we must also put shoulders to the wheel within our unions and replace the current pro-ALP politics that leads the union movement with a militant class struggle and internationalist perspective.

Let’s decisively defeat the ever looming threat of fascism and liberate so many of our sisters and brothers in Australia who daily face racist attacks and humiliations. And let’s finally begin the great work of overturning the capitalist system itself that stirs the racist pot for the sake of profit. The working class leading all of the oppressed must sweep away the capitalist state. It is a thieving, brutal and murderous state that raised its flag of terra nullius over this land during the British colonial takeover and which some two hundred years later continues to crack its whip over the backs of workers, immigrant communities of Asian and Middle Eastern background and indigenous people alike. In the capitalist state one class of people – the relatively small number of bourgeoise – have the license to amass a fortune and build their pyramids of power using the surplus labour of so many. This privilege to exploit is, ultimately, enforced by the power of the gun hanging off the hip of the police officer and the grenade in the bloody hands of the soldier. The workers state that we will one day build will ruthlessly crush the neo-nazi threat in the process of tearing up the very roots of the capitalist state from which their foul fascist kind has grown. Moreover, in a socialist economy based on collective ownership, all of those machines and computerized systems of communication, all the big banks and mighty industries, all of the incredible means of production wrought by the common effort of the many hands and minds of 21st century humanity, all of this extraordinary productive power will be held in trust by the working class and used for the benefit of everyone in society. An Australian workers state will unite people together, not tear them apart like the capitalist state does today, as all will share a common economic interest, an interest in steering their ship of state into the calmer waters of a world free of racism, unemployment, poverty and war. A world which will one day only need to follow, as Karl Marx famously suggested, one simple rule: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” (Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx K., 1875) Let’s fight for this future world now by relying on the unassailable power of the working class and its allies in every progressive struggle that we are forced to face. Let’s advance working class people’s confidence in their own power by building a joint action of trade unionists, Aboriginal people, “ethnic” people and all antiracists to make Cronulla Beach safe again for people of all colours. The more we struggle together the stronger we will become.

Anti-Racism, Unions

PROVOCATION BY VIOLENT RACISTS CRUSHED IN BRISBANE

June 21, 2015

The 2 May 2014 anti-fascist action brought construction workers from the CFMEU, BLF and ETU unions together with anarchists, Trotskyist Platform, Socialist Alliance and other anti-racists.

PROVOCATION BY VIOLENT RACISTS CRUSHED IN BRISBANE

UNIONS UNITED WITH LEFTISTS & OTHER ANTI-RACISTS GOT THE JOB DONE!

This was a taste of the power of the organised working class. It was the workers movement at its best. On 2 May 2014 in Brisbane, over a hundred construction workers from the BLF, CFMEU and ETU trade unions formed the core of a demonstration of 200 anti-racists that successfully shut down an attempted march by the fascist Australia First Party (AFP).

The violent, white supremacist AFP had planned a march in support of its larger, Greek neo-Nazi counterpart, the Golden Dawn party. However, when they showed up for their provocation they found a multiracial group of construction workers and other anti-fascists facing them down. The Queensland police, of course, came to the defence of the extreme racists. However, the cops were not able to push around this anti-racist rally the way they often do. The contingents of trade unionists embodied strength in numbers, the inherent collective ability to act in tight unison and the threat of retaliatory industrial action if the police attacked them. As a result, despite a police line protecting the fascists, the anti-racist mobilisation was able to surround the neo-Nazis at various times.

Most construction workers appeared to be self organising, although there was at least one CFMEU organiser there. They were very well aware of what danger open Nazi organising in their own town meant for them as well as for everyone else. The construction workers, supported by other anti-fascists, made sure the Golden Dawn supporters could not march anywhere. When they managed to reach the city by car, to set up in front of the Greek consulate, the mass anti-Nazi action prevented them from doing this also. At this point, the Nazis were compelled to jump in taxis and hot-foot it out of there. Some of the fascists also ended up being taught a literally painful lesson by the construction workers. Brilliant – the workers united will never be defeated!

We congratulate all those that took part in this anti-fascist victory. Trotskyist Platform is proud to have joined the unionised construction workers anarchists, anti-racist students and other anti-fascists in participating in this action and to have actively built the mobilisation. In the days leading up to May 2, we mass distributed a leaflet in working class suburbs in Brisbane calling for trade unionists and other anti-racists to join the action.

What the union participation in the May 2 anti-fascist mobilisation was based on is the understanding that the violent racism of the likes of the AFP – incited by the “civilized” racism of the Abbott conservative government – is a threat to the unity of the working class, unity without which the workers movement cannot win strike struggles to defend their rights. In joining the May 2 anti-racist mobilisation, these trade unionists proved that they are at the forefront of the workers movement and are workers who really understand the often chanted slogan at union rallies: The Workers United Will Never Be Defeated! Unfortunately, there is also another, quite opposite, consciousness that is deeply prevalent in the workers movement – a nationalist consciousness promoted by the pro-ALP union tops that portrays overseas workers as rivals for jobs with Australian workers. This Laborite ideology see the union movement using divisive slogans such as “Stop exporting Aussie jobs overseas” and “Keep out overseas guest workers.” Such slogans go against the principles of unionism and workers unity as they pit local workers against their overseas sisters and brothers. It sees one group of workers – local workers – looking to cut a separate deal with the bosses at the expense of another group of workers – overseas workers. Not only is this divisive but it harms the struggle for workers’ rights. Politically savvy trade unionists know that even if the boss at a particular workplace is using the employment of one group of especially exploited workers (like young workers) to try and undercut working conditions, it is always destructive to workers’ rights for the remaining workers to demand that the business owner favour them at the expense of the others. This only allows the boss to divide workers and distract them from the boss’ sole responsibility for the workers’ grievances.

2 May 2014, Brisbane: Neo-Nazi filth (wearing a black shirt and leather jacket) cower in the face of the mass trade union centred mobilisation. The workers when truly united - and conscious of their collective class interests - can never be defeated. — 2 May 2014, Brisbane: Neo-Nazi filth (wearing a black shirt and leather jacket) cower in the face of the mass trade union centred mobilisation. The workers when truly united – and conscious of their collective class interests – can never be defeated.

Instead, politically advanced trade unionists know that what is needed is for all workers to unite against the capitalist boss and to demand that the conditions of the most exploited workers be brought up to that of other workers. Only this will, ultimately, stop the corporate bigwigs from undercutting workers’ rights. This applies both at a national and international level. The union movement must unite local, 457 visa and international workers to stand up together against the capitalist exploiter both here and abroad while simultaneously demanding that the conditions of 457 Visa workers and the employees of Australian- owned corporations operating overseas be brought up to that of local workers.

May 2, Brisbane: Staunch trade unionists teach one of the violent fascists a lesson in workers’ power. The organised working class has the power and interest to decisively crush the fascists.

The construction workers’ role in the May 2 victory pushes against the stream of divisive nationalism that the pro-ALP, current leaders of the working class pump into the workers movement. By enhancing workers’ unity across racial lines and by also giving workers greater confidence in their own power as a class, the May 2 anti-fascist action increases the workers movement’s ability to stand up to the myriad attacks it is facing today – from the anti-working class, anti-poor Abbott/Hockey budget to the developing ruling class offensive against the union movement. The fact that the capitalist rulers’ anti-union campaign is targeted in the first place against construction workers’ unions makes the May 2 anti-racist mobilisation all the more important.

The working class needs to build a new leadership that can clarify and spread the lessons of struggles such as the 2 May 2014 Brisbane mobilisation to the entire union movement. Such a workers’ party would use powerful internationalist- minded struggles such as the May 2 action to help drive out the influence of divisive Laborite nationalism from the workers movement. This would, in turn, make the working class more politically prepared to mobilise against the fascist threat. As the 2 May 2014 events in Brisbane showed, it is the organised working class that must spearhead the fight against fascism and racism. The workers movement will be at the forefront of this fight because the interests of their class demands that it be so, because their power to shut down production gives them the ability to deter police attacks against anti-racist mobilisations and because their collective toil at common workplaces gives workers a unique ability to organise and to act in disciplined unanimity. Most crucially, it will be when the working class lead all of the poor and oppressed in sweeping away the rotting capitalist system that fascism and racism can be swept away from this planet for good.

Below is reprinted the leaflet that Trotskyist Platform distributed to help build the May 2 anti-fascist mobilisation in Brisbane. The leaflet was titled, “Crush the Violent Racists’ May 2 Mobilisation! Unions United with Aboriginal People, “Ethnic” Minorities & Leftists Can Do the Job! Drive Out the Fascists from Brisbane to Athens!”

Vietnamese student Minh Duong was savagely bashed in Melbourne by three Neo-Nazi skinheads in June 2012. The racist scum kicked and punched him 70 times, stabbed him, smashed a brick over his head so hard that it broke in two and then left him for dead. Fascists cannot be debated but must be crushed by mass action.

Some people may have believed that the Second World War definitively put an end to the evil of fascism. Yet on 2nd May in the heart of Brisbane, a neo-Nazi group, the Australia First Party, will hold a march in support of its larger Greek fascist counterpart, the Golden Dawn. The Australia First Party was among the extremist forces that incited the December 2005 white supremacist rampage at Cronulla Beach against Arab, Asian and other non-white people. Just three months ago, the Brisbane Australia First Party attacked the January 26 Invasion Day Aboriginal rights march. Members of their Golden Dawn fascist colleagues in Greece are notorious for murderous attacks on dark-skinned people, leftists and anti-racists including the January 2013 stabbing murder of Pakistani migrant Shehzad Luqman and the September 2013 murder of anti-racist rapper Pavlos Pyssas. That the fascists plan to openly parade on 2nd May is an immediate physical threat to Aboriginal people and to the Asian, African, Middle Eastern and Islander communities of Brisbane. It will embolden every violent racist out there to commit yet more attacks – like the Neo-Nazi skinheads who in June 2012 savagely bashed Vietnamese student Minh Duong on the streets of Melbourne and left him for dead. The 2nd May fascist mobilisation is also a direct threat to the multiracial working class of Brisbane. Like Hitler and Mussolini, if fascists took power again they would exterminate real trade unions and all independent working class and leftist organisations. Yet long before they get anywhere near government, the fascists’ racist violence is already threatening the workers’ movement. For their actions sow the division, distrust and fear that is so harmful to efforts to build workers’ unity – the unity that is so crucial for workers’ rights struggles to succeed. The union movement must draw around itself all the intended victims of the fascists in a mass action to stop the 2nd May neo-Nazi threat. Indeed, a counter-mobilisation to the fascist march has been called and already hundreds have committed to this urgent action. Anti-fascists will gather at 11am, outside the Greek Club at 29 Edmondstone Street, South Brisbane. We call on trade unionists, Aboriginal people, Asian, African, Middle Eastern and Islander communities, Muslims, Jews, gays and lesbians and all anti-racists to be there on 2nd May to stop the fascist parade and drive the violent racists off the streets.

What is needed on 2nd May is not simply a protest against the Australia First Party and Golden Dawn but an action so overwhelming and determined that it will physically stop the fascist parade in its tracks and decisively disperse the violent racists. Fascism must be stopped! Fascism cannot be defeated by arguments or by debates or by ideological struggle alone. Because fascism uses physical force to “win” its battles, it must be confronted and overcome by a physical force that is far greater than itself. This force is the organised working class. In fact, it is the working class that has the most to lose if ultra-racist ideas take hold. In the long run, the working class is unable to win any gains for itself while elements of racism persist. Yet racism and fascism can be quashed if workers are mobilised in a disciplined and united manner.

Racism in Australia is undoubtedly being fed by the major parties in government, especially via their inhumane actions towards refugees and asylum seekers. Capitalist governments are acutely aware of their need to divide workers during a protracted recession. Such extreme racism from capitalist governments, however, can only proceed in the absence of class struggle and, particularly, in the absence of struggle led by the Trade Unions. If the working class does not mobilise to challenge mass unemployment and social decay – and the faltering capitalist system that causes it – then masses of disillusioned unemployed and semi-employed people and struggling sections of the middle class can fall prey to fascist movements of the ilk of Golden Dawn in Greece today.

The grotesque anti-human actions taken by fascist groups such as Golden Dawn inevitably lead to some with genuine intentions to call for Golden Dawn and/or Australia First to be banned, to have them made illegal. We are certainly not going to get in the way of the mainstream capitalists reining in their fascists guard dogs for a while. However, we absolutely should not be making any appeals to mainstream capitalists to act against their fascist counterparts. For the masses mustn’t be lulled into a false sense of security and fall into the fatal illusion that the capitalists can be trusted to keep their vicious fascist killers caged.

In reality, they are just throwing them pieces of meat, making sure that they are ready to be truly unleashed when the need arises. If we in the workers and left movement are not ready for this and have failed to put down the fascist animals ourselves – instead, leaving these dogs’ leashes in the hands of the capitalists – then, ultimately, we may well get devoured! The Australian capitalist state is itself founded on racism. It is based on the continued dispossession of the Aboriginal people of this land and racist oppression of other communities as well, most specifically seen in the barbaric treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. The capitalist state in Greece certainly has jailed some Golden Dawn leaders – but Golden Dawn continues to flourish there virtually unchecked. In fact, there are many cases where Greek police have literally stood by while Golden Dawn have beaten and assaulted immigrants and anti-fascist activists. Indeed, it is claimed that up to 60% of the police in Greece politically support Golden Dawn!

Make no mistake about it, the Australian capitalist state is no less racist and no less anti-worker than the Greek capitalist state. Here, the Australian government is leading an unremitting drive against the Union movement, in the form of Royal Commissions and page after page of anti-Union legislation stripping away workers’ rights won through over a century of struggle. In Queensland workers and community groups have lost the right to association with any group being able to be declared “illegal” at the stroke of a pen. The capitalist state is not neutral, it will not stop the fascists and does, in fact, often enough aid them. For example, in January 2011, when anti-racists mobilised to protest against a racist mural in the Sydney suburb of Newtown, the police attacked and arrested eight anti-fascist activists. Moreover, it is the capitalist state itself which creates fascism via the corporate media and corporate politicians whipping up racist hysteria in order to distract workers from their real enemies such as the banks and mining magnates who cream obscene wealth from the labour of toiling people.

Brisbane, 2 May 2014: Trade unionists and anti-racists pursue the Australia First Party and Golden Dawn fascists.

What we need to defeat the fascists is united front action. That means the broadest unity in action of the different tendencies in the workers movement and in the Left – all of whom are targets of the fascists – while at the same time each group completely maintains its own banner and program. Though we in Trotskyist Platform have sharply differing political views to the anarchist who runs the Slackbastard blog and who has initiated the 2nd May counter- mobilisation to the fascist threat, we applaud the initiative he has taken and are thus actively building this action. Strong united front action can indeed stop the 2nd May fascist provocation.

If such a victory is the result of a union-centred action it will strengthen the unity of the working class, increase its confidence in its own power and encourage it to rely only on the methods of mass struggle rather than the dead end of parliament and the courts. In short, a victorious workers-centred mobilisation to crush the fascist parade on 2nd May will give a badly needed shot in the arm to the struggle to smash the capitalists’ escalating attacks on workers’ rights and their assault upon basic social services and the poor. Unite all the working class, poor, Aboriginal and “ethnic” forces in the struggle against fascism! Crush the fascists’ May 2 mobilisation!

Staunch, multiracial construction union workers gather at the anti-fascist counter rally in Brisbane on May 2. Sharing the conviction, expressed in a clear way in the Trotskyist Platform banner, that the organised working class in alliance with Aboriginal people, “ethnic” minorities and anti-racists of all colours could put the racist, neo-nazi threat to flight, groups of workers streamed in from all directions to join and, in effect, take command of the anti-fascist action. This points the way to the future and demonstrates how courageous workers can refuse to be bullied into inaction by the federal government's lousy current anti-union drive. — Staunch, multiracial construction union workers gather at the anti-fascist counter
rally in Brisbane on May 2. Sharing the conviction, expressed in a clear way in the Trotskyist Platform banner, that the organised working class in alliance with Aboriginal people, “ethnic” minorities and anti-racists of all colours could put the racist, neo-nazi threat to flight, groups of workers streamed in from all directions to join and, in effect, take command of the anti-fascist action. This points the way to the future and demonstrates how courageous workers can refuse to be bullied into inaction by the federal government’s lousy current anti-union drive.

placard — Staunch, multiracial construction union workers gather at the anti-fascist counter
rally in Brisbane on May 2. Sharing the conviction, expressed in a clear way in the Trotskyist Platform banner, that the organised working class in alliance with Aboriginal people, “ethnic” minorities and anti-racists of all colours could put the racist, neo-nazi threat to flight, groups of workers streamed in from all directions to join and, in effect, take command of the anti-fascist action. This points the way to the future and demonstrates how courageous workers can refuse to be bullied into inaction by the federal government’s lousy current anti-union drive.