15 March 2019 – Today, white supremacists launched a horrific attack on people attending two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch. The terrorists were motivated by a Nazi-like agenda of genocidal violence against Muslim people and all non-white people. The main attacker, an Australian white nationalist, shot indiscriminately at unarmed women, children and men. Two other people have so far been arrested. This cold blooded and cowardly act of terror has so far left 49 people dead – Muslim people, many of whom were also migrants and refugees. Some amongst the dozens of other gunshot victims are now fighting for their lives.
New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, flanked in her
press conference by the union jacks that sit in the corner of the New Zealand
flag, symbols of brutal British colonial terror, said of the attack that “New
Zealand has been chosen because we are not a place where violent extremism
exists.” Many Maori people and immigrant-based communities from Asia and the
neighbouring Pacific Islands may well disagree with her statement. They have often
copped racist attacks from rednecks not to mention the bloody history of
colonialist state terror that the Maori people have endured and continue to
face, in different form, today.
However, as bad as racism is in NZ, it is much worse here
in Australia. That is why it is no surprise that the main perpetrator of
today’s atrocity is an Australian white supremacist. In the year 2016 alone,
there were two known white supremacist murders here: the heinous deliberate
running over of a 14 year-old Aboriginal child, Elijah Doughty, by a white
racist in Kalgoorlie and the fire-bombing murder in Brisbane of Indian-origin
bus driver, Manmeet Alisher, by a right-wing conspiracy theorist which both
media and state authorities stubbornly refused to acknowledge as an act of
political violence. Since then Australia has seen ongoing state and redneck
attacks on Aboriginal people, repeated assaults against Muslim people, violent
racist attacks on Chinese students, demonisation of African youth and the
burning down of a Hindu temple in Sydney’ southwest. The danger is that the
Christchurch attack will embolden Australia’s growing layer of violent white
supremacists. Already people on far-right websites have been hailing today’s
attack. That is why every time white
supremacists go public and try to build their strength they must be shut down
by mass mobilisations of trade unionists standing alongside Muslim, Aboriginal,
Asian, African and Middle Eastern origin communities. This is not an issue of
“free speech.” As today’s racist attack showed all too starkly it is a question
of physically protecting targeted communities. The fascists are not about
speech – they are about organising
for and perpetrating racist terror. They need to be crushed!
In the Sydney suburb of Ashfield, one of the most violent white
supremacist groups has a combat training centre where they learn how to conduct
acts of racist terror. Where violent
racists have such a known base, we need to shut it down!
Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, while condemning
today’s attacks said he is “shocked” by them. Yet, as an MP for the Sydney suburb
of Cronulla – the very place that saw the horrific, rampaging white supremacist
Cronulla Riot in 2005 – Morrison’s “shock” is blatantly disingenuous. After all,
he and his right-wing government have been busy whipping up racist fears
against non-white people by demonising and continuing the torturous detention
and “turn back” policy against refugees. It’s hardly surprising then that it
was a white, Australian man that spearheaded this horrific racist crime we
witnessed with such horror today. Unfortunately, little will change no matter
who wins the upcoming election. The ALP, while distancing itself from some of
the most extreme anti-refugee policies of the Liberals, fully supports the
racist, mandatory detention of refugees. And while the Greens have sometimes called
out the racist policies of their rivals, they, like the ALP, push economic
nationalist calls to restrict the entry of guest workers and to curb imports produced
by foreign labour. Such economic nationalism while not always directly racist
is always divisive and inevitably incites racism. Let’s note too that today’s
attack occurred under the watch of a social democratic-led government in NZ.
The Adern New Zealand Labour Party shares at least some of the blame for
today’s attack. They took office promising to cut immigration which is why they
were able to join in a coalition with the right-wing, anti-immigrant New
Zealand First Party. Although New Zealand Labour motivated their
anti-immigration policies in a softer way than New Zealand First, their blaming
of immigration for the housing crisis and infrastructure inadequacies in New
Zealand inevitably fuels racist hostility to migrants.
The problem is that the Liberal-Nationals, the ALP and the
Greens all uphold the capitalist order. And because this system is less and
less able to provide decent infrastructure and secure, permanent jobs for
people, those that oversee the capitalist state inevitably look for scapegoats
elsewhere. That is why from Trump’s America to Bolsonaro’s Brazil to the hard
right-infested regimes in Austria, Hungary, Switzerland and Italy, open racists
are gaining the ascendancy in capitalist countries. It is also why we can never
trust the state organs administering capitalist rule to protect us from
fascists – since these forces have been shaped by their role as enforcers of
the inevitably racist policies associated with capitalism. How can one rely on
the police and prison guards to stop violent racists when they, themselves,
have far too often bashed and killed Aboriginal people in custody or covered up
for their mates who have committed such horrendous, racist crimes.
It is now time more than ever that we, the working class masses
of the world, embracing and drawing behind us all those targeted by the fascists,
spearhead the drive to smash the white supremacists once and for all. It is in
the very interests of the multi-ethnic working class to crush the divisive,
racist forces for only then can we build the inter-racial unity so necessary to
fight back against the greedy, capitalist exploiters. Racism is not innate to
our human nature – it is purely and simply a disgusting, murderous weapon
wielded in the cynical hands of our capitalist exploiters for the one single
purpose of keeping our fighting ranks divided. What the bullying bosses across
the capitalist world are most afraid of is the mighty, unstoppable power of the
united working class. Their biggest fear is that we working class sisters and
brothers will lead all the world’s oppressed in a struggle against their brutal
system that, ultimately, only brings low wages, insecure jobs, economic crises,
unaffordable rents and as we saw today: terrible, racist, right wing terror.
Forward to a socialist world that will be free of racism, unemployment, poverty
and war! As Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto: “Then
the world will be for the common people, and the sounds of happiness will reach
the deepest spring. Ah! Come! People of every land, how can you not be roused?”
Ruling Class Politicians & Media
Manipulate Crime Reports, Bolster Racial Hatred
United Action by Multi-Racial Working Class will Stop
Racist Attacks of Australian Regime & Far Right Thugs
29 August 2018: On the 4th of August, Abdullah Qaiser was on his way to a library in Newcastle. But what had seemed to be just another evening for this student from Pakistan turned sinister when a group of people surrounded his car to rob him. And when they realised that he was a person of colour, the situation became life threatening. The white-skinned, racist criminals suddenly turned very violent. They called the student a “terrorist.” One attacker shouted at the 21 year-old, “Go back to your f**king country, you do not belong over here” and then punched Abdullah Qaiser with a knuckle duster so hard that he blanked out. Now, he requires surgery.
The worst thing about this racist attack is that it is far from being rare. On May 17, for example, a 25 year-old man went on a rampage in the Sydney suburb of Randwick specifically honing in on any Asian background person he could see (https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/man-allegedlytargeted-asian-people-in-random-randwick-rampage-20180518-p4zg0m. html). He punched and kicked at least seven people of Asian appearance including several women and a 70 year-old man. For every such incident there are hundreds more occurring in this country that never make the news: instances of racist rednecks terrorising Aboriginal children, ripping off the headscarves of Muslim women, calling African people the N-word and bashing South Asian, Chinese and other East Asian-origin residents and international students.
The racist rants of ruling class politicians and the mainstream media are inciting this violence. One of their means of stirring up poisonous nationalism is to ridiculously hypeup claims that China is “buying up” and “interfering” in Australia. Actual facts mean little to these hate mongers! Perhaps their most tried and tested method of sowing division is to brand various racial minorities as being especially prone to crime. Their latest favourite targets are African youth “gangs” – especially those made up of South Sudanese youth – who they label a “grave threat.” It is the hard right-wing Home Affairs minister, Peter Dutton – who last week came within a whisker of becoming prime minister – who is leading this hate-fest. His claims, which were backed by then prime minister Turnbull, are as ridiculous as they are vile. The truth is that crime committed by South Sudanese youth makes up just a tiny proportion of all crime. But that won’t stop the racist radio shock jocks at 2GB from amplifying Dutton’s claims.
Even less xenophobic media outlets, like the ABC, engage in the racist reporting of crime by only publicising the ethnicity of perpetrators when they happen to be people of colour! If one is consistent in noting the ethnicity of criminals then – even if we exclude the Australian state’s horrific massacres of Aboriginal people – one would find that the majority of Australia’s most ghastly crimes have been committed by people of white European heritage. Australia’s biggest mass murder since World War II, the 1996 Port Arthur shooting massacre of 35 people, was perpetrated by the blonde-haired white guy, Martin Bryant. The most deadly shooting since then was the Margaret River massacre perpetrated by another white man, Peter Miles, just three months ago when Miles heinously shot dead his wife, daughter and four grandchildren. All this does not at all mean that white people have a greater propensity to commit murders – since they do make up a majority of this country’s population. But it does show how deceitful it is for politicians and shock jocks to brand various non-white ethnic groups as being especially prone to crime.
Australia’s State Authorities:
Covering Up Racist Hate Crimes, Perpetrating Racist Brutality
The racial background of those who commit unwarranted acts of violence against others is, in fact, irrelevant. The one exception to this is when the crime is actually racially motivated. Yet, it is precisely in these cases that the mainstream media, police and courts suddenly insist that race is irrelevant to the crime! Take, for instance, the attack on Abdullah Qaiser. Incredibly, NSW Police released a media statement claiming that the attack was not racially motivated. Understandably, Abdullah Qaiser was perplexed:
An even starker case was the murder in Brisbane of Indian-origin bus driver, Manmeet Alisher, by white man, Anthony O’Donohue. On October 28, 2016, O’Donohue boarded Manmeet’s bus and threw a firebomb at the immigrant. The murderer was noted for ultra-right-wing conspiracy theories and he had an extreme hatred of trade unions. Most significantly, two other Indian-origin bus drivers told of how O’Donohue had previously made racist remarks about them. And yet the presiding judge, Jean Dalton, not only decided that O’Donohue was not mentally fit to stand trial – thus, enabling the murderer to get away with a shorter sentence in a mental facility – but outrageously declared that the attack was not racist. The mainstream media, including supposedly “progressive” types like the ABC and The Guardian, followed suit. Yet, Manmeet’s family and friends who held a protest rally outside the court were not buying it. Feeling a strong sense of injustice, they insisted that the murder was racist. As family spokesman, Winnerjit Goldy, stated:
It is little surprise that the police and courts would seek to whitewash the racist nature of hate crimes. For the Australian state authorities are themselves the biggest perpetrators of racist violence. The Australian regime brutally persecutes refugees in hell-hole prison camps. And video footage that was finally released last month showing how six heavy set prison guards brutalised to death 26 year-old Aboriginal inmate, David Dungay, illustrates the horror that cops and screws are unleashing against Aboriginal people. Racist state oppression, in its turn, incites redneck terror on the streets. Today marks the second anniversary of the murder of the 14 year-old Aboriginal child, Elijah Doughty, who was chased and deliberately run over by a 55 year-old racist white man in WA’s Kalgoorlie-Boulder region. Can any sane person deny that the racist rants of ruling class politicians and media hounds and the fact that state authorities are brutalising Aboriginal people – and getting away with it – without a doubt fuelled the racist, social media frenzy against Aboriginal youth in that town that culminated in this hate crime.
Keep Them Separated – Dividing the Masses is
Good for the Big End of Town Capitalist Exploiters
It is rabid right-wingers like Katter’s Australian Party and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation who are driving the racist offensive. But they are definitely not alone. In May, NSW Labor leader, Luke Foley, inflamed hostility to migrants by claiming that refugees are swamping Western Sydney leading to a “white flight” of Anglo families from these suburbs and a shortage of jobs and infrastructure. The ALP’s agenda was evident in January, too, when Dutton was spreading nonsense that Victorians are “scared to go out to restaurants” because of “African gang violence.” The day before Dutton’s racist outburst, Deputy Labor leader and supposed “Labor Left,” Tanya Plibersek claimed that it was “undoubted that many Australians aren’t feeling safe” and that people in Victoria particularly “feel that there is a risk that they will be the victim of gang-related violence” (https://www.theguardian. com/australia-news/2018/jan/03/peter-dutton-says-victorians-scared-togo-out-because-of-african-gang-violence). She then went on to criticise the right-wing government for not giving more funding to the Federal Police! In other words, ALP leaders were pushing, at best, a slighter softer version of the Hard Right’s anti-African hysteria.
The current politicians sow racial divisions because they all ultimately serve, with more or less enthusiasm, the capitalist big end of town. The capitalists – from billionaires like Andrew Forrest and Gina Rinehart to smaller-scale business owners – make huge profits from paying workers far less than they are entitled to for the actual productivity of their labour. This is the basic tactic capitalists have employed since the start of the Industrial Revolution to ensure their filthy profits by underpaying the working masses. From the vast surplus value of the workers of the world’s exploited and accumulated labour are built the now unimaginably enormous pyramids of stolen gold from atop of which the ruling class of capitalists rule most of the Earth. Quite naturally, this small class of exploiters fears that the masses of the world’s working class people will one day seek to unite against them. Indeed, they need politicians to divide the exploited working class and divert their growing frustration into self-destroying channels. Frustration over lack of job security, low wages and unaffordable rents is diverted onto innocent targets like Aboriginal people, other coloured ethnic communities and people who are toiling, just like we working class people are in Australian are but only abroad. The exploiters want workers to be divided so that we do not unite to resist the capitalist governments’ attacks on militant workers’ unions like the CFMEU. The media, from Channel 7 which is owned by the billionaire, Kerry Stokes, to Sky TV and The Australian and Daily Telegraph newspapers owned by the Murdoch family are always ready and willing to scapegoat racial minorities. And perpetrating racist divide and conquer schemes is easy for the Liberals, Nationals and even more right-wing parties since these parties are, themselves, dominated by capitalist business owners as well as wannabe capitalists. For the ALP it is more complicated. The Labor Party is, in its actual composition, a party made up of workers and some leading ALP figures even originally got involved in politics for the sake of improving the lot of the masses. Yet, the ALP seeks to improve workers’ position within the current capitalist order. That means that they not only chase corporate funding but, more broadly, seek the acceptance, or at least acquiescence, of the big end of town. ALP hacks are for ever looking over their shoulder, fearful that the demands that they place upon the capitalists will backfire on them and overly annoy the capitalist class and its all powerful media. Thus, ALP politicians not only invariably capitulate to the sentiments created by the racist, capitalist media but, moreover, the more that they recoil from a perspective of workers’ struggle against the capitalist exploiters the more they seek to “satisfy” the frustrations of their mass base by advocating a divisive agenda to favour the majority, local white workers over and against refugees, migrants and our producer sisters and brothers abroad.
Financially insecure small businessmen and self-employed contractors, whose economic position naturally means that everyone else in the market, including counterparts from other ethnicities, are seen as competitors, can be especially prone to buying into racist appeals. To a lesser extent, so too can workers at tiny workplaces who are largely not organised into unions and are often isolated from fellow workers. Many smaller-scale capitalist exploiters, a chunk of the middle class self-employed and a few workers from smaller workplaces are, thus, moving towards the ultra-racist, Far Right.
All this is pulling the mainstream conservative parties ever further to the right. Of course, there are “liberal” capitalists who worry about the overt nature of the Hard Right’s racism. The pursuit of international trade, investment and predatory imperialist interventions in the Asia-Pacific region lead bourgeois liberals like Turnbull, Julie Bishop and Christopher Pine to favour a much more disguised form of white supremacist rule than the openly proud, xenophobic “conservatives” do. This is the essence of last week’s leadership brawl in the Liberal Party. Although the Hard Right who toppled Turnbull did not succeed in getting their man Dutton into the prime ministership, the new prime minister, Scott Morrison, is almost as openly bigoted. As a minister in the former Abbott government, it was Morrison who drove the brutal military-led “turn back the boats” policy against refugees.
This movement further and further to the right of conservative parties is occurring worldwide. The hard right Donald Trump seized the leadership of the U.S. Republican Party and now, as President of the U.S.A, is administering an ultra-racist agenda. This has incited an escalation in racist violence – something that was already all too present during the rule of earlier administrations. Last year, people inspired by the racist Alt Right alone murdered 17 people in the U.S.; and that does not even include any of the racist murders committed by rednecks who aren’t overtly political. Just like in the U.S. and Australia, conservative parties administering governments in Hungary, Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere are also lurching further to the right. Meanwhile, in Italy, Switzerland and Austria, far-right parties are actually major parts of governing coalitions. In countries like Canada, Sweden and France where hard right parties are not in government, racist terror on the streets is also escalating. Even in developing capitalist countries, racist forces are gaining ground. India’s prime minister is a Hindu fundamentalist who, earlier, as chief minister of Gujarat province not only promoted school textbooks that glorified Nazism but also incited a horrific anti-Muslim pogrom that killed over 2,000 people. Meanwhile, in Indonesia, far-right extremists have been ever more viciously attacking the country’s Chinese and Christian minorities.
Thankfully, there is one huge exception to this alarming trend of growing racist reaction. In the world’s most populous country, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), a person from one of that nation’s numerous ethnic minorities or an international student can be almost certain that they are not going to be attacked or abused on the streets just because of their ethnicity. It is no accident that this big exception to the rule happens to be the only large country in the world which is not under capitalist rule. Although capitalists have been allowed to gain a significant place in the Chinese economy, the PRC still represents a fundamentally different system and continues to be dominated by socialistic, state-owned enterprises. The Chinese working class, albeit in a deformed way, continues to cling onto state power and that makes a world of difference.
For Militant Anti-Racist Struggle Driven by
Multi-Racial Working Class & Minority Communities
The danger facing racial minorities in most of the world was made all too clear in the German city of Chemnitz over the last few days. Seizing on the death there of a man during a fight with immigrants, thousands of fascists descended on the city chanting “foreigners out” and giving Nazi salutes. The neo-Nazis rampaged through the city bashing any person of colour they could find. Terrified immigrants stayed locked in their houses for days. Although the 1990 capitalist reunification of Germany was associated with a resurgence of far-right violence, Germany has not seen such a huge unleashing of fascist terror since the end of Nazi rule. The fact is that if the decaying capitalist system is allowed to run its course and the far-right resurgence is not combated immediately, a number of countries may well experience an outright takeover by Hitler-style fascists within the next decade.
The multi-racial working class must be mobilised to protect targeted communities from the rising tide of racist reaction. This is a matter of self-defence for the workers movement. By terrifying ethnic minority workers, racist attacks intimidate this crucial section of the working class and, thus, damage the capacity of the entire workers movement to resist the exploiters. Moreover, racism harms workers unity and the ability of workers to fight against the ever-increasing attacks on their wages and unions. Therefore, the working class movement must spearhead the following action program:
Mass mobilisations of trade unionists standing alongside people from African, Asian, Middle Eastern and Aboriginal backgrounds as well as Muslims, Jews, LGBTIQ communities and leftists must stop the fascists when they try to mobilise in public. Similar mobilisations must over-run any training centre or bunker that violent white supremacists seek to establish. It is difficult to mobilise against the numerous, disparate acts of racist violence by garden variety rednecks that occur every single day. However, by dealing severe blows in public to the extreme, politically racist elements, we can send a strong message to the unorganised racists that it is not in their interests to stick their ugly necks out and commit racist attacks.
All racist government policies must be opposed. We must fight to free the refugees, stop all deportations and win the rights of citizenship for all refugees, guest workers and overseas students.
The workers movement must be mobilised to support Aboriginal people’s struggle for justice and demand an end to the state’s systematic oppression which leads to so many black people being killed in state custody by racist police and prison guards. This perspective must seek to build towards trade union industrial action in support of justice for victims of racist state terror.
Economic nationalist schemes must be rejected – protectionism does not save jobs but, instead, by pitting workers in one country against another, makes it harder for workers to unite to stop their bosses slashing jobs. What we need in order to fight for secure, permanent jobs for all is class struggle action demanding that capitalist business owners increase hiring at the expense of their fat profits all around the globe.
In waging such struggles we must be aware that as long as capitalism with its social decay, unemployment and need for racist divide and conquer schemes continues to rule the roost, racist violence and the threat of a full-on fascist takeover will be ever present. However, to advance towards the socialist revolution that is needed to sweep away the capitalist order, we must unite working class people and teach them to understand their own power through mobilising actions right now against racist and anti-union attacks. That means we need to struggle for a new program to gain the ascendancy in our trade union movement: a program that rejects the currently dominant agenda of Laborism with its false hopes in salvation through parliament and its divisive economic nationalism. More than ever, we need a program based on militant class struggle and the building of genuine unity between workers of all races, local, guest and international workers.
Concerned Progressive Small-l Liberals & Social
Democrats Powerless to Stop Right-Wing Racist Reaction
Many small-l liberals and respectable “dissenting voices” have expressed alarm at the increased incitement of racial, misogynist and homophobic hatred by mainstream figures. Their concern is genuinely felt. However, because they are part of the capitalist establishment that is the root cause of the growing social reaction, they are powerless to resist the far-right or to even identify the factors behind its growth. Thus, we see fair-minded, middle class commentators in the media, academia and NGO milieu tying themselves up in knots as they try to explain away the rise of the extreme right by pointing, variously, to things like automation of production, social media culture causing people to not listen to each other, a lack of education about democracy, contemporary leaders being not what their forebears were … indeed just about anything but the plain truth that those at the top of the decaying capitalist order actually need to promote racism and other forms of bigotry for the sake of dividing and diverting the masses that they exploit.
Some ALP, and more often Greens, politicians do sometimes rebuff the most extreme statements from hard right-wing politicians. However, such resistance tends to be weak or inconsistent because the ALP and The Greens, themselves, uphold the racist capitalist order. When you do hear Greens – and less often Labor – politicians speaking out strongly against bigotry is when they are speaking to a particular, sympathetic audience, like at an anti-racism rally, in which case they work hard to get all the votes they can get! Yet, rarely will you hear them emphasising the same message to the general public – for example in their election platforms.
Unlike the “progressive” mainstream politicians chasing the perks and fame of a parliamentary career, anti-racist activists from the Far Left are, for the most part, idealistic people driven by a genuine hatred of racism. However, most of the avowedly socialist groups tail after the ALP and The Greens. Though these groups often do make correct criticisms of these parties, their basic strategy for social change revolves around campaigning to elect ALP/Greens governments and then hoping to use mass pressure to push these governments to the left. The most shameless about following this perspective is the Solidarity group but the strategy of Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative is, in essence, the same. At the rally held in Sydney on the day Scott Morrison became prime minister, leading members of the Solidarity group openly urged the pro-refugee activists gathered to campaign at the next elections for the ALP and Greens … and, yes, to also pressure these parties to be fairer to refugees. These “far left” rally organisers allowed an ALP youth leader to speak and put forward an ALP election pitch without making anything, even nearing, a commitment to opposing the imprisonment of refugees on Manus and Nauru and without having to face any criticism from rally organisers.
How bankrupt this “campaign for the ALP/Greens and push them to the left” strategy is can be seen by recalling that it was the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor regime in its final months that introduced the heinous policy that every asylum seeker arriving by sea will be imprisoned in an off-shore camp with no chance of residency in Australia. Now, Shorten’s ALP is descending even further into White Australia chauvinism. Last year, the Labor Party ran a video saying that it would “Employ Australians First” with visuals where nearly all the Australians shown were white Anglos. The ALP advertisement’s unmistakable racist message – that white people had to be supposedly protected from having their jobs taken away by non-white people – was so blatant that even right-wing politicians attacked it for dog whistling to racism!
The Greens have, by contrast, sometimes spoken out against such overt White Australia racism. Yet, The Greens simultaneously push divisive economic nationalist appeals – for example, by calling for tougher restrictions on guest workers and schemes to restrict steel imports. Such policies that call for putting the interests of (mainly white) Australian workers over (overwhelmingly coloured) workers from “Third World” countries inevitably reinforce White Australia xenophobic prejudices. NSW Greens senator, David Shoebridge, who, to his credit, has sometimes spoken out in support of Aboriginal victims of state violence, has been coming to the aid of the far-right Chinese-based group, Falun Dafa. Falun Dafa are characterised by extreme homophobia, a fascistic urge for racial segregation and a belief that mixed-race people are inferior. They have even held joint meetings with the white supremacist Party for Freedom and several of their members are One Nation supporters, including former One Nation candidate, Shan Ju Lin, who was later dumped as a candidate because her Falun Dafa-style homophobia was so extreme that it was an embarrassment even to Pauline Hanson, herself!
The support of a progressive Greens parliamentarian for the racist and homophobic Falun Dafa typifies more broadly why the Greens and the ALP can never be an effective force against bigotry. Shoebridge defends Falun Dafa because he shares that outfit’s anti-communist hostility to Red China. This flows from an outlook which, like that of the rest of the ALP and Greens, is based on accepting the existing capitalist order whilst seeking to make some progressive reforms to it through parliament. Greens and ALP politicians understand all too well that winning parliamentary seats and gaining acceptance of any reforms made there requires winning the confidence, or at least the acceptance, of the capitalist bigwigs who shape elections and parliaments through their domination of the media, NGO think thanks and political donations. The Greens and ALP will, inevitably, continue to kowtow to the capitalist ruling class in all major areas, be it their hostility to socialistic China or their need to divert the exploited masses with reactionary nationalism. No amount of left-wing pressure is going to fundamentally change this. Indeed, even a party that is substantially more left-wing than either the ALP and The Greens but which still acquiesces to capitalist state power cannot deliver serious relief from racist reaction and union-busting. Just look at Greece. To the cheers of Australian left groups like Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative, the radical left-wing party, Syriza, gained strength and eventually won Greek elections in 2015. Yet, in government they are administering anti-working class austerity measures that are as savage as did the conservative governments before them. Today, racist and homophobic violence in Greece continues to be on the increase.
Instead of looking for salvation through parliament, we fight for mass actions to force capitalist governments to grant concessions – such as pulling back from anti-working class and racist measures. Such gains can be won not because of the virtues of a particular party holding government office but when the masses have mobilised strongly enough to force the enemy to grant a concession. Illusions that progressive change can come through electing ALP or ALP-Greens governments is one of the biggest obstacles to such militant, mass struggle. For such illusions make the working class and the oppressed falsely believe that the capitalist state can be their friend and that progressive change does not require the arduous and often hazardous road of extra-parliamentary struggle.
As the federal elections draw near and reformist left groups divert well-meaning youth into the dead end “campaign for the ALP/ Greens and push them to the left” strategy, we will be working harder than ever to warn of the hopelessness of such a parliamentary-based strategy as part of our fight to mobilise the working class and all the oppressed in mass actions against racist violence and against the racist policies of capitalist governments. Let’s organise powerful actions of workers and “ethnic” communities to defend targeted minorities from violent far-right scum. Let’s join together to over-run and smash to smithereens the bunkers and training gyms of white supremacist paramilitary groups! Let’s build mass struggle – that will lead to workers’ industrial action – and demand justice for Aboriginal victims of racist state violence, the closure of the Manus and Nauru hell-hole detention camps, an end to all deportations and full citizenship rights for all refugees, guest workers and international students. The time is right – not just in words but in real, on the street, militant action – for workers from all countries to unite and fight!
Male Chauvinism Creeps into Every Corner of Capitalist Australian Society
HOW MISOGYNY CRUSHED THE CAREER OF A TALENTED WOMAN
Those serious about opposing the oppression of women are aware of the overall picture in Australia. How women are paid on average 23% less than men. How women’s right to abortion is at best tenuous, curtailed and under attack. How domestic violence, bullying and abuse of women is rife. Yet, the reality of women’s oppression in capitalist Australia is made up of millions of personal stories. Stories of subjugation, humiliations, abuse, received threats and dashed hopes.
Some women’s experiences are worse than others. A working class or other low-income woman tends to cop the worst of male chauvinism because her subordinated and vulnerable socio-economic position leaves her open to misogynist attacks from male bosses, landlords, welfare/ public housing bureaucrats, debt collectors and cops. If a low-income, working class woman is of a coloured “ethnic” background and even more so if she is Aboriginal, the racist oppression she can suffer only magnifies her subjugation as a woman and as a working class person. In contrast, women from rich ruling class and upper-middle class backgrounds, generally, have greater means to evade the full force of misogyny within society. This can sometimes apply, too, to others lucky enough to get a good education and have promising career prospects. Yet, even some of these women can be unfortunate enough to suffer cruel oppression. We present here the story of one highly educated, once theoretically “upwardly mobile,” professional woman whose career was crushed under the weight of Australia’s misogynist society. Her work life was turned from great hopes to torment and finally exclusion. This woman, “Rozita H” (not her real name), wants us to tell her story. We here oblige her wishes not only because she fully deserves to be able to air her sufferings but because her experiences help shine a light on the inner workings of this misogynist, capitalist society and the types of people who occupy the echelons of its “respected” classes.
Rozita was born in Iran and migrated to Australia in the 1980s in her late teens. She had wanted to get a high quality education and that time in Iran universities were closed. From watching movies during the era of the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran’s rule (which ended in 1979), she had thought that Western countries were places of “advanced science”, “freedom” and “democracy.” In time this would all prove to be a cruel illusion.
Rozita put herself through university in Australia, often working ten hour shifts in coffee shops and in aged care to gain the income needed to get by. She eventually graduated with an architecture degree from one of Sydney’s most prestigious universities. Rozita wanted to live the life of a skilled professional. Don’t get her wrong, she did not have ambitions of being a high-flying capitalist exploiter. Even from that age she was a leftist and, for instance, participated in protests against the first U.S./Australian war on the Iraqi people in 1990/91. However, what Rozita hoped for was an interesting, fulfilling and well-paying job as a professional woman. When you meet her you realise that she really has a lot going for her in addition to the potential benefits that a prestigious degree could be expected to bring her. Rozita is both technically and artistically talented, beautiful, bi-lingual and with an allround razor sharp mind. Theoretically, according to the if you are capable and work hard… principle that capitalist societies supposedly operate according to – the mythical “meritocracy” which even if it were real is still a flawed and anti-egalitarian principle – she was more than on her way to realising her dreams. Indeed, for a while it seemed to Rozita that she was on a pleasant path to success. After qualifying with her Architecture degree she found work in her field. Meanwhile, as she puts it, she enjoyed living the Bohemian inner city life of art and culture, following intellectual pursuits and socialising. However, before long, the reality of being a non-white woman in a racist and male chauvinist society started to come crashing down around her.
The fact that a misogynist who openly bragged about groping women could be elected U.S. president shows how much male chauvinist attitudes dominate capitalist societies. Trump’s election in turn serves to reinforce anti-women bigotry.
A WOMAN WHO DARED TO DEFY THE BOYS CLUB
Rozita’s first job was in the public sector. However, she soon found that her abilities were not recognised. It was a boys club running the show. Indeed, Rozita points out that, in her experience, having worked in several jobs in the architecture sector, only around 10% of architects are women and the directors and senior architects are always men.
Frustrated at the doors being shut in her face in her public sector role, Rozita moved to the private sector. This proved to be a case of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. She was simply not accepted into the workforce. Instead, at some workplaces, her bosses sent the message – slimily packaged in “coded” language to enable them to evade responsibility – that she needed to have sex with them if she was to get a foot up into real projects. Indeed, one male architect she once worked with explained the deal to her with brutally “honest” bigotry:
Men have designed, built and managed buildings and construction for over 5,000 years. What, do you think we are going to let girls in? We only let girls in to fu_k them!
Due to this misogynist pressure, Rozita moved jobs several times. She jumped from one “reputable” architecture firm to another but could not escape from a noxious male chauvinist environment. In one of the last firms that she worked at, the misogynist climate was especially severe. One of the directors of the firm was a big bully who she asked us to refer to as “Roy.” Roy’s stock in trade was screaming his head off at female employees. He and several other male architects in the firm also made unwanted, overbearing sexual advances at Rozita while being sly enough to cover themselves by thinly veiling their forays. From soon after she joined this firm, Roy made clear to Rozita – as he did to other female employees – that he owned her. His “justification” being, “I bring in millions of dollars to this firm so ….” On one occasion after word had got back to Roy that Rozita was seen at a nightclub dancing with a guy, Roy called in Rozita to tell her that he had heard this and then made clear that if she danced with another guy … she ought to submit to him!
Because she refused to succumb to the demands of her male bosses, Rozita was excluded from opportunities to use her architectural skills. Instead, she was given tedious draughting tasks that required her to work from 8am to 11pm, five days a week. Exhausted, Rozita told her “superiors” that she needed a break from that work and wanted the opportunity to get involved in an actual architecture project where she could utilise her training. The response from a male director was a series of clearly coded messages such as: “How about mixing business and pleasure?”
Rozita turned to the Human Resources Department hoping for some respite. She explained that she was being treated arrogantly and denied the opportunity to be involved in actual architectural projects and asked whether there was any problem with the quality of her work. The answer from the Human Resources Manager went something like this:
No, it has nothing to do with the work you are doing. Roy is very ambitious and if he does not get what he wants he will start screaming.
As Rozita puts it, the Human Resources Department acted as pimps for the firm’s directors. The Human Resources Manager was basically telling Rozita that she ought to submit to Roy saying that “Roy brings in millions of dollars to the firm and Roy always gets what he wants.” Eventually, Rozita ended up in a situation where she was not only discriminated against and harassed but felt physically threatened. Roy put her on practically meaningless tasks that required her to repeatedly stay back working late. He then, himself, hung around after work doing almost nothing except to invade Rozita’s personal space and slouch around in sexually suggestive postures. Knowing how aggressively and abusively Roy had behaved towards her and other female employees, Rozita feared that Roy would one day rape her. She had to get out! And she did.
Rozita is rightly proud that she always maintained her dignity and refused to submit to the pressure of her despicable male chauvinist “superiors”. She points out that several other female employees at various firms that she worked at did succumb to the wishes of their male bosses – although Rozita does not judge them. She, herself, has had to pay a heavy price for maintaining her integrity and standing by her principles. The architecture world is dominated by an elite clique of male mates. If word gets out that you are a woman who refuses to play the game and what’s more has the audacity to defy the big boys then doors are literally shut in your face. As a result, Rozita has been excluded from work in her field. It has been thirteen years since she has had a secure job in the architecture sector. This has been wholly demoralising. It also means that she does it really hard financially. The whole experience has taken a huge financial and emotional toll on Rozita. Fortunately, because of her considerable artistic talents she is able to fall back on art as a pursuit. Others not so lucky to have been endowed with her talents would have found it much harder to cope.
THE INTERSECTION OF RACISM, SEXISM AND CLASS OPPRESSION
So why did all this happen to Rozita? One factor is that most recognisable of “values” of current Australian society – racism. As a person of non-Anglo, non-European heritage, Rozita was immediately pigeon-holed by the arrogant boys who ran the architecture world as someone who would be subservient to their demands. She was thought of as someone who could be made to do the most laborious, tedious tasks without expecting any reward. As far as establishment, white supremacist thinking was concerned, that is what coloured people are good for … and “why we let them into the country anyway.”
Then there is that most obvious aspect of what Rozita endured – male chauvinism. Discrimination against women and misogyny are fundamental features of all capitalist societies. Marxists understand that the particular form of social organisation that we call the state – with its standing army and police forces, prisons, legal system and bureaucracy – first made its appearance on Earth only once human societies began to divide into mutually exclusive and opposing classes of exploiters and exploited, rich and poor, powerful rulers and oppressed subjects who are ruled over. The ruling class has always, necessarily, been made up of a smaller number of privileged people than the masses whom they exploit and so, in order to maintain their wealth, status and power this ruling class requires the use of all the various mechanisms of state from the big stick that their bully boys wield to the propaganda penned by their faithful scribes in the media. This has been true all through the ever evolving history of the state from its origins in ancient slave-owning societies such as in Greece and Rome, through to the medieval, feudal period with its “divine right” of kings and robber barons to rule over peasants and serfs and then on to our “modern” period where it is the capitalists, the merchants, bankers and traders who have gained ascendancy over the mass of workers and who extract their wealth, primarily, through the wage labour system.
But before the advent of these various systems of mass exploitation and the state which maintains such patently unfair social organisations in place, human societies – such as was in the case in Australia before British invasion, for instance – were, generally, organised into a federation of clan groups. And such societies, based on systems of kinship and kindness, knew nothing of exploitation, the discrimination against women or misogyny. The oppression of women was given birth to when society was first divided into classes of exploiters and exploited – and capitalism, we Marxists know, will be the last form of class society.
Part of the essence of class-divided societies like capitalism is that land and means of production, rather than being the common property of all, are owned by some private individuals while many others own no such productive property at all. For those lucky enough to own productive property – no matter how small – a key part of their existence is driven by a preoccupation with passing on their property to male heirs. However, so as to be sure that their wealth isn’t claimed by the patriarch of another family, these males want their property to be passed on to heirs who are indisputably theirs. This obsession with handing down their property to their own heirs and, thus, with ensuring that their wives do not bear children to other men drive these propertied males’ compulsion to socially – and, thus, economically – isolate their wives. Meanwhile, the greedy ruling class under capitalism does not want to actually pay people to conduct the essential tasks of housework and child rearing. And so it is held incumbent upon women to, without any pay, conduct these important social functions; work that in original human civilisations – including those of most of Australia’s Aboriginal nations – had humanely and quite rightly been carried out as the collective responsibility of whole communities. The combined result of women being almost exclusively burdened with doing unpaid housework and the partial – or in worst cases almost complete – straightjacketing of women by their husbands results in women’s (on average) greatly reduced opportunity to participate equally in economic life. Herein lies the material basis for women’s subjugation under capitalism. When a woman, because of her burdens and restrictions, is financially reliant on a male partner, she is almost inevitably going to have an unequal relationship with him. In the worst cases it means that if that partner is violent or otherwise abusive, she is presented with the agonising “choice” between leaving that partner and living an impoverished life (along with her children if she is a mother) or suffering under the tyrant at home. [See “The Struggles of a Single Mother Living in Sydney’s West: Kushi Demands Justice and a Better Life” in Trotskyist Platform Issue 12 which can be found at https://trotskyistplatform.com/Kushi.html].
The reality of economic and social subjugation of women breeds a foul male chauvinist ideology that reflects this oppressive reality. This ideology, expressed in mainstream attitudes, media, government, religion and all sorts of social taboos, customs and “social norms” in turn “rationalises”, perpetuates and reinforces women’s second class status. Even compared to other capitalist societies, misogyny is especially vile in Australia. The brutal nature of capitalist White Australia’s foundation as a convict colony and the ongoing violent dispossession of and horrific acts of genocide against Australia’s First Peoples has, necessarily, brutalised all aspects of this society ever since – including gender relations. Women who are doing it hard financially and who are dependent on male partners or family are most vulnerable in such a violently misogynist society. Yet, just like relatively wealthy, dark-skinned people are not immune to the horror of White Australia racism, even financially independent women with good economic prospects can be bowled over in this capitalist society by powerful blasts of misogyny.
Cadet journalist, Amy Taeuber, was cruelly sacked by Channel 7 after she made a sexual harassment complaint against an older male reporter over a series of incidents where he allegedly made disparaging remarks about her marital status and appearance and mockingly labelled her sexual preference. Sexist bullying of women workers is rife in Australian workplaces.
Rozita was not financially dependent on a male partner or other male family members. However, she was in economic terms at the mercy of other men – her male bosses at the architecture firms she worked at. They had the “right” under this system to determine what work she got and didn’t get and the power to sack her. That’s why it took such strong principles on her part to defy them. In a formal sense these bosses were not called “bosses.” In the architecture world, as in many other lofty professions, they were known as “partners” and “directors.” However, the reality is that in big architectural firms, the labour of junior and other non-partner architects like Rozita – in this case their intellectual labour – was exploited by the partners in order to generate profit for themselves. The junior and other non-partner architects are, thus, denied part of the fruit of their own labour. In that sense, those in Rozita’s position are no different to process workers at a factory, construction workers at a building site or mine workers at a mine. Increasingly in today’s economy there are many workers whose main form of labour is intellectual – like many IT help desk and support staff, laboratory workers and CAD draughties – who are exploited just like other workers in the so-called blue collar workplace.
However, there is an important difference between the position of junior and other non-partner architects in big architectural consulting firms and that of, say, factory workers. And that is that many of the non-partner architects have hopes of, one day, becoming a “partner” themselves: that is, a small-scale, capitalist boss. What’s more, they not only have the education to one day become a “boss” too but have, moreover, even some probability of one day “rising” to such a position. It is this – and not their pay levels – which makes junior architects and others in similar positions in other professions more middle class in their reality and outlook. Working class people have a much lower probability – and, hence, less hope – of one day becoming a capitalist profiteer. What working class people do have, however, that most of those in middle class professions often don’t even realise that they are missing, is the very real chance to solidarize shoulder to shoulder in a powerful and organized collective unity alongside their working class comrades. And it is this factor that is the very key to the future of society.
THE UNITED WORKING CLASS – WITH WOMEN WORKERS AS THE SPEARHEAD – WILL LEAD THE STRUGGLE FOR WOMEN’S EMANCIPATION
Ironically, the very same reason that even junior architects are considered privileged and middle class with respect to proletarian workers also makes them, at the same time, more vulnerable to being bullied by their bosses. The hopes of one day becoming a partner in the firm gnaw away at bonds of solidarity between mistreated and exploited junior professionals. Many seek to nudge each other out of the way in their rival bids to reach the top. That is why non-partner architects are not, at this time, in droves forming themselves into unions to collectively fight for their rights. It would not be until a mass working class upsurge emerges for union consciousness to widely seep into these layers of society. The ambitious, middle class outlook of even exploited non-partner architects in the current period meant that Rozita never had anyone to really stand up for her – or even offer meaningful moral support – in all the times she suffered at various architectural firms. This is quite different to what could happen if she was one of a group of proletarian workers at a workplace. Especially if there is a workplace with a strong union presence, workers may well stand together to try and challenge sexual or other harassment of a co-worker by a boss. A genuine class struggle union leadership would be prepared to unleash union industrial action to punish the bosses for any sort of bullying of any worker. If the harassment came from a co-worker they would organise for all the other workers to drag this worker aside and resolutely reprimand and, if necessary, even severely punish him.
Union nurses and midwives march in Melbourne. Women employed in working class jobs are able to unite in unions with each other and with their male co-workers to stand up against both exploitation and sexist bullying and harrassment by bosses.
That is why it is the working class – with women workers at the forefront – that will lead the struggle for women’s liberation. We saw glimpses of this in the hundreds of proud women trade unionists who formed the backbone of the 2017 and 2018 International Women’s Day marches in Sydney. The organised working class will be the spearhead of the struggle for women’s emancipation and not only because workers’ solidarity, expressed through workers’ unions, can stand up to sexist bullying at work and demand equal pay for women workers. The working class’ interests lie in seeing the overthrow of the capitalist system – the system under which workers’ labour is exploited by business owners and under which many workers are condemned to economic insecurity and unemployment – and its replacement with the system that embodies workers’ interests, socialism. In fighting for such a revolutionary change, the working class is simultaneously struggling against the system upon which women’s oppression is based and for a system that will lay the basis for women’s emancipation. Socialism will enable women to win full economic independence by providing jobs for all workers for as many hours as each worker needs and by making the society and community responsible for the crucial tasks of housework and child rearing that are today, still, largely performed by women as unpaid labour. Thus, a socialist society would provide free pre-school education, free 24-hour childcare, free school lunches at all schools as well after-school sports, music and cultural activities provided for free by the state alongside free transport from school to and from these activities. It is simply natural for a socialist society to take these measures needed to enable women’s full participation in social and economic life since that participation maximises production and enriches society culturally. To not utilise women’s full potential is not only unfair and oppressive – it is also a terrible waste! However, the capitalist system does not operate on such rational considerations as the maximisation of total society-wide economic and artistic output. It operates solely on the basis of what is most profitable for the individual private bosses who run society.
The social and industrial power of women workers to fight for both women’s equality and workers’ rights comes as part of a united class that also, of course, includes male workers. However, male workers are shaped by a society whose media, customs, organised religion and social norms are flooded with male chauvinist attitudes. Furthermore, in this class society, where hierarchical relations between people are normalised and even celebrated, many a male worker who is exploited and bullied by his boss at work finds “solace” in being a tyrant to his female partner at home. Needless to say, such male chauvinism within the workers movement is not only poisonous to a working class fight for women’s rights but to the unity needed for workers to fight for their jobs, wages and conditions. There needs to be a determined struggle by the most conscious, enlightened workers to drive out such male chauvinism from the workers movement. This struggle is part of a broader fight to turn the working class from what it currently is – a class shaped by all the backwardness imparted into it by capitalist society – into a class that becomes aware of what it needs to do to liberate itself and all the oppressed and look with clear, unfettered eyes toward a brighter future. It is a struggle to not only purge the workers movement of male chauvinism but also of racism, nationalism and the corrosive illusions in capitalist “democracy.” It is a struggle to build a revolutionary workers party that will unite the working class, make it champion the cause of all the downtrodden and lead it in struggles that will culminate in the overturn of capitalism and the commencement of the construction of a new socialist society. When a future socialist society enables women to have complete economic independence then this will, over time, drastically change society’s attitudes, customs and behaviour.
The revolutionary party of the masses indispensable to this triumph of socialism and women’s liberation will oblige those who take the responsibility of putting themselves in the vanguard of the struggle to stand with the greatest courage, never sell out their principles under pressure and not fear making enormous sacrifices for the cause. We should be confident that many will flock to this task – especially from amongst the most oppressed sections of the masses including women, Aboriginal people, persecuted migrant-derived “ethnic” groups, LGBTI people and the lowest paid workers. As Rozita has shown, there are indeed strong people out there who are prepared to stand their ground in the face of the oppressors and refuse to compromise on their principles.
Justice for David Dungay! Justice for Elijah! Justice for Tane!
Kalgoorlie, 21 July 2017: Anguish and grief from friends, family and supporters of fourteen year-old Aboriginal youth Elijah Doughty after his killer was gifted a very light sentence.
10 October 2017 – Aboriginal people and other anti-racists have staged angry protests throughout the country after the killer of 14 year-old Aboriginal youth, Elijah Doughty, was given an extremely light sentence. The child killer is a 56 year-old white man who the courts have suppressed the identity of. He committed the crime on 29 August last year while driving in his 4WD ute in the WA town of Kalgoorlie-Boulder. The killer chased Elijah, who was riding a small motorbike, down a dirt track. The murderer then ran over Elijah. He rammed into Elijah’s motorbike after having revved up to a speed so much faster than the motorbike that he smashed it into three main pieces and countless smaller fragments while Elijah’s skull was split in two and his spinal cord severed at the base of his brain.
For this heinous crime, the killer was given just a three years sentence. If he is granted parole, which media have reported seems likely, he will be released as soon as next January. This sentence handed down on July 21 by chief judge of the WA supreme court, Wayne Martin, was barely a slap on the wrist for a matter involving the killing of a child. The very light sentence provoked angry protests by Aboriginal people and other anti-racists throughout the country. In Kalgoorlie, where people had gathered to watch a video link to the Perth court proceedings, the verdict and sentence caused terrible grief to Elijah’s family and friends. Hundreds of people then defied the threatening presence of dozens of heavily armed police to march through the streets of Kalgoorlie chanting “Justice for Elijah!” In Sydney, a spirited rally three days later culminated in protesters smearing red ochre on the windows of the NSW Supreme Court building to symbolise the blood on the hands of Australia’s “justice system”. Aboriginal activists throughout the country pointedly asked, “What if the murdered child had been a white-skinned boy and the killer an Aboriginal man?”
Australia’s Racist, Rich-Peoples Legal System Once Again Denies Justice to Aboriginal People
In other words, if police had not racially-profiled Elijah, i.e. if they had not been so racist, he would still be alive today. That was the first of several major injustices from the “justice” system that Elijah, his family and friends copped. Secondly, even though evidence pointed to the killer having deliberately rammed his ute into Elijah’s small bike – with forensics showing the killer traveling over 20 km/h faster than Elijah – the police only charged him with manslaughter rather than murder. Then when hundreds of Aboriginal people responded to this blatant state racism by courageously marching on the Kalgoorlie courthouse and carrying out staunch acts of defiance against symbols of the racist authorities – including police cars, the courthouse entrance and the heavily armed police who were confronting them – police brutally unleashed their batons against the Aboriginal marchers and arrested several protesters. Outrageously, one of the Aboriginal people arrested in this anti-racist resistance has copped a sentence that could see him end up remaining in jail after the killer gets released!
Sydney, July 2017: Protesters over the verdict devaluing Elijah Doughty’s life smear red ochre over the windows of the NSW Supreme Court – one of the institutions of Australia’s blood-stained and racist, rich people’s legal system.
Then there was the verdict in the killers’ trial in Perth. The killer was acquitted of even the reduced charge of manslaughter. Instead, he was convicted of the lesser charge of dangerous driving causing death. Even within the spectrum of the lesser conviction, the sentence that the judge handed out to the killer was light given the circumstances. Here is what the judge, Wayne Martin, argued:
“Martin said while the consequences of the driver’s conduct were severe, his culpability was `in the lower half of what I might call the range of seriousness in the scale applicable to these things”.
So according to Australia’s legal system, running over a child when chasing him with a 4WD ute accelerated to travel over 20 km/h faster than the child’s motorbike is “in the lower half of seriousness” … provided that the child is Aboriginal! The outcome of the trial has left most Aboriginal people, as well as any other decent, anti-racist person who followed the case, completely sickened. However, this injustice did not come out of the blue. It was par for the course for a thoroughly racist injustice system that has very often devalued the lives of Aboriginal children and Aboriginal people more broadly. Let us recall a similar case: the murder of 15-year-old Aboriginal youth, Errol Wyles, in Townsville in 2003. The child was killed after the white male, Scott Hasenkamp, revved up his car and reversed over the Aboriginal child who was riding a bicycle on two separate occasions before speeding off. Hasenkamp was a known white supremacist skinhead who once shouted from his car at Errol Wyles, “We’re going to kill all you n****rs, Errol.” Outrageously, police did not charge Hasenkamp with murder. Instead, they granted him the charge of dangerous driving causing death – the very same charge that Elijah’s killer was slapped on the wrist with. The courts sentenced Errol’s white supremacist murderer to just a 15 month sentence, of which he actually only served two months in prison (the rest on a farm)! Now, chillingly, this filthy, racist murderer could well be wandering the streets somewhere free!
Kempsey: Family members of David Dungay at a rally to protest against the twenty six year-old’s killing at the hands of prison authorities at Sydney’s Long Bay jail.
The most frequent perpetrators of the killing of Aboriginal people are the actual state authorities. In a killing similar to that of Elijah’s, in February 2004 police driving in vans chased a 17 year-old Aboriginal youth riding his bicycle, TJ Hickey, through the streets of the Sydney inner-city suburb of Redfern. Police then rammed the boy’s bicycle causing him to fly onto a fence where he was impaled. Police then violated standard emergency procedure by ripping the child from the fence causing him to bleed to death. However, the coroner completely exonerated the police, even claiming that the police were not even chasing TJ! Instead, he recommended that one of the cops involved in the murder be given a bravery award! This outrage is part of a long line of Aboriginal people being killed by police or prison guards. And in not one instance has a state official ever been convicted over one of these killings. In many cases like those of the deaths of TJ, Eddie Murray, John Pat, Daniel Yock and Mulrunji the police or prison guards outright murdered their Aboriginal victims. In other cases, like that of 22 year-old Ms Dhu and 28 year-old Kwementyaye (Terrance) Briscoe, police killed their victims through a combination of criminal neglect and violence.
Two recent cases where state enforcement authorities have killed young Aboriginal people include the deaths of 26 year-old David Dungay and 22 year-old Tane Chatfield. David Dungay was killed by guards at Sydney’s Long Bay jail on 28 December 2015. The guards violently wrestled him to the ground and held him face down on a mattress on the pretext that Dungay – a diabetic – was eating a biscuit! Dungay repeated yelled out that he couldn’t breathe but guards continued to brutalise him and then prison staff injected Dungay with a strong sedative without even assessing his vital signs or checking his airwaves. Shortly afterwards, Dungay turned purple and stopped breathing completely. As David Dungay’s mother, Leetona, described it: “Straight out murder. They murdered my son…”.
Gumbaynggirr and Gamilaraay man, Tane Chatfield was found hanging in his cell at Tamworth Correctional Centre two weeks ago and died two days later. His case is more than suspicious. Indeed, the fact that NSW Corrective Services had declared the death a suicide with “no suspicious circumstances” just hours after Tane died makes the case all the more suspicious. What is most telling about Tane’s death is that he was photographed in hospital with extensive injuries that have little to do with hanging but a lot to do with being bashed. These injuries include a gash in his lips, lumps in his head and under his ears, bruising on his nose and lips and bruising on his shoulders and legs. Furthermore, another inmate heard him scream out as he was being attacked shortly before he was found unresponsive in his cell. Highly suspiciously, that morning every other inmate was let out into the yard except Tane, who was kept alone in his cell. Moreover, as his family have pointed out, Tane was in good spirits and showed no indication of wanting to kill himself. After spending two years locked up in remand, Tane was confident of being released in two weeks when his trial on an armed robbery charge concluded and in which he was expected to be acquitted. All indications are that Tane was murdered by state enforcement authorities and that this was then passed off as suicide by hanging – as in the infamous killing of 21 year-old Gamilaraay man, Eddie Murray, who was murdered in a police cell in the Northern NSW town of Wee Waa in 1981. Tane was just a year older than Eddie was when he was murdered. Twenty six years after Eddie Murray’s killing nothing has changed. Indeed as the redneck murder of Elijah and the recent state killings of Tane Chatfield, David Dungay, Rebecca Maher, Ms Dhu and so many other people show, racist terror against Aboriginal people is actually intensifying.
29 September 2017: Sydney march demands justice for Tane, David Dungay and the many other Aboriginal people killed by racist police and prison guards while in custody. Right: Twenty two year-old Tane Chatfield appears from all indications to be the latest Aboriginal person murdered by state authorities in Australia.
Australia’s post-1788 state machinery – from the police, to the prisons, to the courts, commissions and military – was, indeed, founded not only to enforce the exploitation of the labouring classes by the rich propertied, capitalist class. The brutal Australian state machine was, of course, also set up for the express purpose of dispossessing Aboriginal people from the land that they belonged to, to turn them into a super-exploited labour force (initially toiling in the agricultural industry and as domestic servants and later, today, often in unpaid work for the dole or other mutual obligation slave labour-like schemes) as well as to repress the resistance of Aboriginal people to their many-sided subjugation. Since the Australian capitalist state’s inception, this targeting of this country’s first peoples and all the foul “traditions” and “culture” associated with their continuing oppression have been passed down to every succeeding generation of state officials. This is further reinforced by every act of racist and anti-working class repression that the state machinery unleashes. And every time that Australia’s racist, rich people’s “justice system” allows someone to get away with killing a black person it gives ultra-racists – both state personnel and rednecks like the murderers of Elijah and Errol Wyles – a green light for yet more terror.
A Racist, Lynch Mob-Incited Murder
The murder of Elijah was not simply the question of an individual heartless man who in a fit of rage over his stolen little motorbikes makes a sudden decision to run over a child riding a small motorbike. Rather, it was a killing that directed all the racist ferment happening in the town into a particular despicable crime. Kalgoorlie-Boulder has long been an especially racist town, in the particularly racist state of WA in the especially racist country that is called Australia. In the whole of WA, Aboriginal children are 53 times more likely to be imprisoned than their non-Aboriginal counterparts!
As with racist hostility to other mainly non-white communities in Australia – like Muslims, East Asians, Africans and South Asians– the main “justifications” given for redneck hatred for Aboriginal people change with time almost like the whims of fashion. The latest fashion in white supremacist hostility to Aboriginal people in the Kalgoorlie-Boulder area is anger at petty thefts – including of motorbikes – allegedly committed by Aboriginal youth. This is despite statistics over the 18 months leading up to Elijah’s killing showing no increase in the rate of such crimes (WA Today, 31 August 2016). In the lead up to the murder of Elijah, two local community Facebook groups, “Kalgoorlie Crimes Whinge and Whine” and “Name Shame Crimes Kalgoorlie” were not only infused with extreme racist bigotry towards Aboriginal people but included calls for violence. The month before Elijah was killed, a contributor to one of the community pages wrote, referring to the gunning down of black people on the streets of America by racist cops: “What about we get some white cops from America …. lol …. Not really funny but might work.” He also wrote: “Things will never change unless there is annual cull.” There was no way that the killer was not influenced by – or perhaps a contributor to – this violent racist agitation. He was certainly aware of it. Indeed, the very day before he killed Elijah, his wife actually posted about their missing bikes on one of these two racist-infested Kalgoorlie crime Facebook pages.
Some of the vile, racist & murderously vigilante-style Facebook entries that were posted in the days leading up to the killing of Elijah Doughty.
Calls from extreme racists within Kalgoorlie for the outright murder of Aboriginal people intensified in the days leading up to Elijah’s killing. A week before his murder, after a woman posted a claim that two Aboriginal youths had broken into a ute, a man replied, “Feel free to run the oxygen thieves off the road if you see them”, while another man wrote, “Everyone talks about hunting down these sub human mutts, but no one ever does.” Then, as racists on the social media pages continued to use derogatory terms to refer to Aboriginal people – such as “darkies” and “non-reflectives” – one user wrote: “How many human bodies would it take to fill the mineshafts around Kalgoorlie? A: We’re one theft closer to finding out!”. This threat of, practically, a genocidal assault upon the local Aboriginal population was made just two days before Elijah was murdered! It is absolutely undoubted that all this extreme racist bigotry fuelled the actions of the killer. Just as a laser concentrates seemingly harmless light of different phases into a single sharp output that can then cut like a knife, the violent outpouring of hatred from racist rednecks was channelled into the ghastly act of the killer when he rammed his 4WD ute into the child.
For Action by the Workers Movement, Aboriginal People & All Anti-Racists to Resist Racist Terror!
The murder of Elijah and his killer’s escape from justice cannot be separated from the increasingly racist political climate that is lurking over all capitalist countries. This is signaled by the growth of violent, far-right groups in Australia and the rise of hard right, extreme racist Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency. Just three weeks after Elijah’s killer got away with a very light sentence, large numbers of neo-Nazis and other white supremacists held a terrifying march through Charlottesville, United States, which culminated in one of the fascists murdering Heather Heyer by ramming his car into her and other anti-racist counter-protesters. Yet as terrible as the situation is in the U.S. we should point out that there is a difference in what happened to the murderer of Heather Heyer and what happened to the murderer of Elijah Doughty. In the U.S., the neo-Nazi who murdered Heather Heyer was at least charged with murder whereas the redneck who killed Elijah was only charged with manslaughter and ended up being acquitted on that charge as well. As racist as things are in the U.S. they are even worse here!
Although Aboriginal people cop by far the worst of racist terror in this country – especially from state authorities – all people of colour can be targets of racist violence. A recent study found 243 reported and confirmed violent or threatening attacks on Muslim people in Australia in just a 15 month period – and this is just the tip of the iceberg. The majority of attacks were on women. Meanwhile, just two months after Elijah was murdered, Indian-born Brisbane bus driver Manmeet Alisher was murdered by a white terrorist who boarded the bus and heinously set the driver alight in what was manifestly a racist attack. The murderer, Anthony O’Donohue, was known to hold fascist views – including conspiracy theories against trade unions. And then a month after Elijah’s killer was acquitted with manslaughter, a white student at Canberra’s ANU university pulled out a baseball bat during his lecture and started attacking other students. Indications are that he specifically targeted Asian students and indeed all the people he hospitalised with injuries were Chinese students. The attack was only stopped when brave international students from China tackled the attacker to the ground. Mainstream Australian media are notorious for covering up the racist nature of racially motivated crimes. However, even they have admitted that ANU student newspaper Woroni had reported that the man “appeared to attack students of Asian appearance” and that other students had reported that word around campus was that “it was Asian girls that were targeted” (The Daily Telegraph, 25 August 2017). The previous month, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group called Antipodean Resistance had posted up, fake-official, “No Chinese Allowed” posters (written in poor Chinese) at Melbourne universities at the start of the new semester.
Charlottesville, USA, August 2017: KKK, Nazis and other far-right filth hold a large hate rally that culminated in one of the white supremacists ramming his car into a crowd of anti-racist counter-protesters (opposite page). One of the brave anti-fascists Heather Heyer was killed as a result. From the U.S. to Australia, decaying capitalism has spawned a multiplying swarm of extreme racists. However, it should be noted that while Heyer’s killer was at least charged with murder, Elijah’s killer who also rammed his vehicle into him was only charged with manslaughter and then acquitted of that charge. As terrible as things are in the U.S., they are even worse here!
The bitter reality is that capitalist rule in Australia has created a very racist society. As in all capitalist countries, the ruling big business-owning class – and the state that serves them – consciously promotes racism and nationalism in order to divide the working class people that they exploit and to divert the downtrodden masses from rebelling against them. Furthermore, in the particular case of Australia, the mining and big agricultural bosses who make up a significant part of the ruling class know that their tremendous wealth comes from the dispossession of Aboriginal people from their land. Thus, they do everything to both perpetuate this injustice and to spread the racist stereotypes that “justify” it. Moreover, the white supremacist sentiments that permeate Australian society are also the ideological reflection of Australian- owned multinational corporations super exploiting labour, plundering natural resources and seizing control of markets in neighbouring predominantly non- white countries like PNG, East Timor, Indonesia, Fiji, the Solomon Islands and the Philippines. Meanwhile, the fact that these darker-skinned peoples subjugated by Australian imperialism have a lower standard of living than Australian workers makes narrow-minded, bought-off elements within the Australian working class spread the false view that Australian masses should be protected from having their relatively privileged position being diluted into that of the neighbouring peoples by xenophobic policies.
As a result, racism creeps so deeply into every pore of this society that there are hundreds of thousands of garden-variety rednecks in this country – if not more – who on a bad day, given the right excuse to feel aggrieved, could commit the kind of crime that Elijah’s killer did. That, certainly, makes such violence hard but, nevertheless, far from impossible to curb! One thing that needs to be done is that every time that far-right racists hold a public event, mass united action of trade unionists, Aboriginal people, other people of colour and all anti-racists must stop them. A taste of the type of action needed was seen in Brisbane on 2 May 2014 when a large
Brisbane, 2 May 2014: Trade unionists form the backbone of an anti-fascist mobilisation – also involving anarchists, Trotskyist Platform supporters and other leftists – that swept the fascist Australia First Party and Golden Dawn off the streets when they tried to rally. We must strive for similar actions that can shut down every event that these and other fascists and racists seek to organise – no matter what the pretext for the event.
contingent of unionised construction workers joined together with anarchists, Trotskyist Platform supporters and other leftists to shut down an attempted march by the fascist Australia First Party and the Australian chapter of the Greek neo-Nazi, Golden Dawn group. Such mobilisations can intimidate racists into realising that turning their bigoted views into action can bring them negative consequences. If there had been powerful actions to drive white supremacists off the streets it may have given the racist skinhead who murdered Errol Wyles some pause. And while the murderer of Elijah may have not himself been a member of a far right racist group, if he had seen and heard reports of extreme racists being trounced throughout the country it may have made him doubt that he could get away with running over an Aboriginal child. It could also have made some of the hardcore racists egging on such crimes on Facebook pull their heads in.
Secondly, every time that an Aboriginal person is killed by violent rednecks, cops or prison guards there needs to be determined protest action to demand justice. It is the fact that cops and prison guards have, on every occasion, gotten away with killing an Aboriginal person that gives encouragement to the violent racist proclivities of the likes of Elijah’s killer. This makes the movement against black deaths in custody – or rather against murder in custody – all the more important. To give this movement the strength that it deserves, the trade union movement must mobilise its power behind it. It was a good thing that there were some members of the Maritime Union of Australia, carrying union flags, at the Sydney protest over the sentence of Elijah’s killer. This union support must be broadened and deepened so that it can be turned into protest industrial action against murders in custody of Aboriginal people. When the corporate bosses who run this country have their fabulous profits threatened by workers’ strike action they – and their servants in parliament – will finally start to rein in their thugs in blue.
Aboriginal protestors bravely face off armed police in Kalgoorlie in August 2016, in the wake of the tragic and violent death of 14-year-old Elijah Doughty.
Such action by the workers movement in defence of Aboriginal people is possible because although most people in this country have a relatively privileged position with respect to most Aboriginal people, this capitalist social order and the state that enforces it is bad for all working class people. It brings unemployment, insecure jobs, a dire shortage of affordable housing, inadequate infrastructure, a growing gap between rich and poor and education and health care that is becoming increasingly user pays. Today, the same state that murderously oppresses Aboriginal people also attacks the picket lines of striking workers, hounds trade union activists in the construction industry and represses campaigners in support of public housing and other progressive causes. Moreover, the system threatens to, in the future, again plunge humanity into a catastrophic world war. It is, thus, in the very interests of the workers movement to stand shoulder to shoulder with Aboriginal people against the injustices of the racist, rich people’s state. Moreover, when the workers movement takes a strong stand against racist atrocities it will help to expel racist sentiments from within its own ranks, which is absolutely essential to building the unity needed to mobilise powerful struggles against the capitalist exploiters.
Thirdly, the racist policies by Australian federal and state governments must be opposed. This means we must oppose the right-wing Turnbull government’s expansion of the patronising “Cashless Welfare” schemes. These measures, whose spread is being driven by greedy billionaire Andrew Forrest, not only attacks all the poor but disproportionately targets areas with high proportions of Aboriginal people and other economically disadvantaged people of colour. We must also fight against other forced “income management” schemes and against the anti-Aboriginal NT intervention. Both of these were started by the Howard Liberal government and then continued and even extended under the rule of the former ALP – and ALP/Greens de-facto coalition – governments. Like the bipartisan policy of imprisoning and deporting refugees, these racist policies incite the sentiments that fuel acts of racist terror – like the murder of Elijah.
That yet more black people are being murdered in custody and that the killer of a 14 year-old Aboriginal child could get away with a sentence so light shows that the situation in this country is indeed desperate for those on the receiving end of racial oppression. Furthermore, the growing racist violence against oppressed first peoples and ethnic and religious minorities in all capitalist countries from Australia, to the U.S., to Germany, Hungary, Russia and Ukraine – and including in ex-colonial capitalist countries like India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Myanmar – points to a future even grimmer than today’s. It points to a future where capitalism descends into its most twisted, cruel and violent form: Nazi-style fascism. That is why we must resist now before humanity is plunged into unspeakable calamities. If the working class and all downtrodden mobilise in mass actions to stop white supremacist groups, oppose racist state murders in custody and stand against discriminatory laws, we will be building up our muscles for a decisive onslaught against the racist capitalist order itself. When we do smash this dog eat dog system and replace it with a socialist system based on shared ownership of the means of production we will be able to bring out the best in humanity and finally consign the horrific products of capitalist rule, like racism, poverty and sexism, to the dustbin of history where they belong.
Above: 3 November 2017 – Delegates to an Australian Services Union delegates conference in WA proudly show their support for the embattled Manus refugees. The growing number of statements of solidarity for refugees from sections of the union movement needs to be turned into protest industrial action. [Photo credit: WA from Unionists for Refugees – WA Facebook page]
Turn Our Union Movement’s Stated Solidarity with Manus Refugees Into Industrial Action That Can Force the Australian Government to: Free The Refugees & Bring Them Here Now!
Enough is enough. End their suffering. Evacuate these men now.
These men are people like us. They deserve to be working people. They are engineers, journalists, artists and former United Nations workers. They are fathers, brothers, uncles and sons.
We have taken their dreams of a better life, and replaced them with an unrelenting nightmare.
ACTU Statement, 10 November 2017
18 November 2017: Refugees on Manus Island are in a desperate struggle. After Australian governments and their henchmen in PNG imprisoned them for years in the island’s hellhole detention camp, Australian and PNG authorities now want them to move to yet another prison in a location where they will be even more unsafe. The refugees have good reason to be fearful. Just seven months ago, navy personnel living on the island attacked them with rocks and knives. The navy staff reportedly even unleashed gunfire against the centre.
So it is completely understandable that some four hundred of the refugees have refused to re-locate. They don’t want to be attacked or even killed. They don’t want another prison! They just want to be free to live like human beings should. The refugees are courageously resisting even after police cut food, water and electricity to the camp. Five days ago, the Australian-puppet PNG authorities once again entered the camp to destroy the water wells and bins that they had used to collect water to drink. These human beings are being starved and forced to live in filthy conditions. They are being tortured!
The Liberal and ALP politicians’ racist savagery against refugees and their fear-mongering against Muslims is emboldening extreme race-hate groups within Australia. A week ago, one such outfit threateningly ambushed Labor senator, Sam Dastyari. The bigots branded Iranian-born Dastyari a “monkey” and a “terrorist” as he sat down for a quiet pub meal. If this is what happens to a well-connected mainstream politician because he doesn’t happen to be white enough for the racist white supremacists, consider the threats that other people of colour face – whether from conscious fascists or from garden variety rednecks. Just two weeks ago, three Chinese high school students were bashed at a bus stop in South Canberra. This was part of a series of racist attacks in the area on the Chinese community.
The fact is that in the capitalist world, fascism is on the rise. Not only did a hard right racist become U.S. president and not only have far-right parties made big electoral gains in Austria, France and Germany but in all these countries as well as in the likes of Sweden, Greece, Ukraine and Russia fascist thugs are terrorising migrants. Far right forces are being emboldened because the more that capitalist rulers prevent working class people from having secure jobs and the more that they slash social services the more they have to scapegoat minority communities for the suffering caused by their own capitalist system of exploitation. Meanwhile the economic insecurity that this so-called system creates is pushing the most backward sections of the middle class into seeking salvation in extreme nationalism. If we do not resist, there is a danger that large parts of the world could end up being ravaged by the horror of Hitler-style fascism. The viciousness of the Australian regime’s treatment of refugees and the concomitant escalation in racist terror on the streets should both serve as warning signs!
Refugees imprisoned on Manus Island bravely protest for freedom and safety and condemn the condemn cruelty of Australian government.
Many people have, indeed, been fighting against the Liberal government’s abuse of Manus refugees. People have held spirited protests and there have been brief occupations of immigration department offices. Some activists have staged audacious media stunts like climbing a crane to hoist the banner “SOS: Evacuate Manus Now!” over Flemington racecourse on Melbourne Cup day. Last Friday, hundreds of us rightly gave a good serve to participants at a Sydney fundraiser for Tony Abbott which also acted as a speaking appointment for the much hated immigration minister, Peter Dutton.
However, what the refugee rights movement is up against was seen by the response of the ruling class to Friday’s protest. Firstly, police aggressively manhandled protesters. Even after we marched off far from the site of the right-wing fundraiser, riot police continued to assault demonstrators. They arrested four protesters – one of whom was charged. Today, another activist was charged, this time over the incident when Abbott’s sister and fellow Liberal party hack, Christine Forster, ran into spirited opposition when she entered Friday’s fundraiser. Meanwhile, mainstream media hysterically condemned the protests and greatly hyped up the trouble that the whingeing sook, Forster, ran into. And it was not just the conservative Murdoch media that was on the charge here. The “liberal” Fairfax media and the ABC joined in too. And the condemnation of our protests from politicians was not restricted to Abbott and his hard line mate, Dutton. Opposition frontbencher, Anthony Albanese, a member of Labor’s so-called “Left” faction, accused us of “intimidation.” This highlights the fact that this is a bi-partisan war on refugees. Indeed, behind the cruel torture of refugees stands the overwhelming majority of the capitalist ruling class as well as their henchmen – from their physical enforcers in the police force to the judges and magistrates providing legal cover for their crimes to their media propagandists and their political servants on both sides of parliament.
Against this overwhelming physical, political, judicial, media and financial power that the bosses wield we need our own power. Actually, we already have it! For our power lies in the organised workers movement and its ability to unleash industrial action to hurt the profits of the rich capitalist businessmen for whose interests the whole state machine has been set up over many years. It is possible to mobilise the working class in defence of refugees because it is in the very interests of the working class to oppose racism since such racism is poison to the workers unity essential to building any campaign for workers rights. Importantly, five days ago, the Australian Council of Trade Unions released a statement calling on “the Australian Government to immediately evacuate people seeking asylum on Manus Island, to end the appalling humanitarian crisis.” This statement now needs to be backed up by industrial action. The workers movement and all its allies must fight to demand that all the Manus and, indeed, Nauru-based refugees be brought here to Australia with the full rights of citizens. Freedom for all people imprisoned in Australia’s hell-hole detention centres from Manus to Nauru to Villawood to Christmas Island! Full rights of citizenship for all refugees, migrants, guest workers and students! Drop the charges against all pro-refugee protesters!
31 October 2017: On the day Manus Island refugees were set to be thrown into a yet more unsafe prison, Manus Island residents organised by the Manus Alliance Against Human Rights Abuse demand freedom for the refugees and their resettlement in Australia.
PNG and Australian Imperialism
The persecution of Manus refugees highlights just how much PNG is under the control of the Australian ruling class. For decades, PNG was an Australian colony. Australia’s rulers treated the PNG masses with the same racist arrogance that they continue to subject Aboriginal people to. After PNG gained independence in 1975, Australian-owned companies continued to loot her mineral wealth without paying much royalty to local people. Today, up to 500 people in the PNG capital are sleeping rough after two Australian-owned developers threw out 2,000 people living in the waterfront Paga Hill shantytown with no resettlement. With the PNG people so badly impoverished by Australian imperialist exploitation, some PNG locals have become resentful of those who, like refugees, are mistakenly seen as competing for scarce goods.
In a classic neo-colonial arrangement, Australian judges, bureaucrats and “advisers” have continued to impregnate PNG’s state organs after the so-called “independence” of PNG was officially declared in 1975. Thus, PNG’s Supreme Court – the same court that last week knocked back an application to restore basic services to the Manus camp – has not one but three Australian judges on its panel! As for the PNG police force, it is advised – i.e. directed – by a contingent of over 70 Australian Federal Police officers stationed directly in PNG. Through a combination of the pressure of these Australian bureaucrats and police officers, through bribery of PNG officials by Australian businessmen and through the economic threats of all-powerful Australian corporations, the capitalist elites living in places like Point Piper, Mosman, Toorak, Vaucluse and Hunters Hill are able to ensure that the PNG state machine serves their interests. In June last year, PNG police opened fire on students protesting against the corrupt, Australian-backed prime minister, Peter O’Neill. Reports indicate that at least four students were shot dead. Earlier from 1989, the PNG military, acting in the interests of Australian-owned miner CRA (which later merged with British RTZ to form Rio Tinto), brutally attacked a brave rebellion by people on the island of Bougainville. The Bougainville people rose up against CRA’s refusal to grant proper compensation – and its arrogant destruction of the surrounding land – from its hugely profitable Panguna copper mine. But, backed up by Australian arms, military advisers and Australian pilots strafing the Bougainville people from helicopter gunships, the PNG military and its Australian godfathers killed over 15,000 Bougainville people through either gunfire or the starvation and lack of medicine that resulted from the blockade that they imposed on the island’s people. Today these same forces are doing a mini-version of that blockade against the Manus refugees – and if they are not stopped the same tragic consequences will ensue!
Meanwhile, Australian governments have pressured PNG authorities to not only privatise PNG public services but even its land held by kinship groups too. This has, obviously, led to greater inequality and a replacement of the local people’s pre-colonial, community-minded outlook with the ruthless rivalries of unrestrained dog eat dog capitalism. Nevertheless, contrary to the Australian media’s attempt to brand all the Manus people as violent attackers of refugees – even as the media, itself, unsympathetically reports on the refugees’ plight – some on the island have been bravely defying the police and trying to pass food through to the refugees in the camp. Furthermore, over three hundred people on the island, organised by Manus Alliance Against Human Rights Abuse, have signed a petition asking for all the asylum seekers to be returned to Australia. Moreover, although in remote and navy-dominated Manus many people do imbibe the Australian government’s hostility to refugees, in urban parts of PNG – especially in the capital with its working class concentration – there have been many instances of brave resistance against the Australian-dictated social order. In 2001, PNG students along with others held mass protests and occupations against privatisation of state assets. Bearing slogans against the Australian government, the IMF and the World Bank that had dictated the privatisation program, they eventually forced the PNG government to back down. This heroic struggle came at great cost – PNG police shot dead four of the anti-privatisation protesters in June 2001.
PNG, June 2001, Left: Students and others courageously protest against the Australian government, IMF and World Bank for dictating a privatisation agenda on PNG. Acting in the interests of their Australian neo-colonial masters, the PNG police responded with fierce repression (Right), shooting dead four protesters. Today, in preventing food, water and medicine getting to the Manus refugees, the PNG police are once again proving to be the henchmen of the brutal Australian imperialist ruling class.
Typical Racist Brutality of the Australian Regime
The horror of what Australia’s rulers are doing to the Manus refugees has driven new layers of well-meaning people into the refugee rights movement. Some of them and others involved in the campaign for a long time have held slogans about the Manus issue like, “This is Un-Australian.” Such sentiments are encouraged by the speeches of Greens politicians at refugee rights rallies who often state that “Australia’s treatment of refugees puts a stain on our proud human rights record.” However, the truth is that the Australian government’s persecution of refugees is all too typical of the “human rights record” of this ruling class. Indeed, the way they are grinding down refugees at the Manus camp right now actually draws attention to the way they have subjected Aboriginal children in the NT and other Australian youth detention centres to unsanitary conditions as well as torture. The death last Christmas Eve of 27 year-old Manus refugee from Sudan, Faysal Ishak Ahmed, after authorities denied him proper medical treatment for his heart and breathing problems has eerie similarities to the August 2014 death of imprisoned 22 year-old Aboriginal woman, Julieka Dhu, who died of a severe bacterial infection after racist WA police murderously refused her medical treatment. And the way that Manus guards and cops bashed to death Kurdish asylum seeker, Reza Berati, in 2014, recalls the brutal bashing to death in Palm Island ten years earlier of the Aboriginal man, Mulrunji Doomadgee, by a racist Queensland cop. Indeed, capitalist rule in this country was founded on the genocidal dispossession of Aboriginal people. Nevertheless, Aboriginal people continue to resist racist state violence, famously during the Redfern resistance actions and Palm Island uprising, both in 2004. The latter brought to prominence the great Aboriginal hero from Palm Island, Lex Wotton. But the killings in and out of state custody of John Pat, Eddie Murray, TJ Hickey, Julieka Dhu, Wayne “Fella” Morrison, David Dungay, Tane Chatfield and hundreds of other people show that Aboriginal people continue to be murdered by racist Australian police and prison guards to this very day.
So the cruel mandatory detention of refugees does not come out of the blue. Indeed, it is an extension of the Australian White Australia Policy that lasted officially up to the mid-1970s. That policy effectively barred most non-white people from entering the country. Even the impunity that detention centre guards have for extreme acts of brutality against refugees is rooted in Australia’s past and present. We only have to note that not a single Australian prison guard or cop has ever been convicted over the death of an Aboriginal person in custody. Or to point to the way that the racist redneck who chased down and ran over 14 year-old Aboriginal youth, Elijah Doughty, in Kalgoorlie was only given a very light sentence for his deadly actions. Meanwhile, the spin of the Australian authorities and media over their atrocities on Manus is all too typical as well. It is like the way they black out the voice of Aboriginal people speaking out against murders of their family and friends in custody or the way they tried to cover up the racist character of the wave of violent attacks on Indian students in Australia in 2009.
The fact is that the filthy rich businessmen who run this country – and their henchmen in the state machine – will do whatever it takes to strengthen their rule and boost their profits. Today, as homelessness is on the rise, Australian governments drive more people into poverty by selling off low-rent public housing. They are also persecuting trade union activists in the construction industry. Indeed, their cruel repression of refugees is an indication of what they will seek to impose on the exploited working class should we mount a serious challenge to their rule. This is no joke, comrades.
Identifying the cruel oppression of refugees as one of the aspects of a profoundly unjust social order opens the door to a united front with Aboriginal people fighting against savage oppression, trade unions struggling against anti-union laws and cuts to working conditions, low income people suffering through the dire shortage of low-rent accommodation as well as ever more stringent restrictions on access to social welfare and the many communities in Australia who bear the full brunt of Islamophobia and other variants of the white supremacist, racist agenda.
The Burning Question:
What Strategy to Free the Refugees?
Over the last 25 years many people have sincerely put great effort into the struggle for refugee rights. But at this critical moment we must consider: is the movement basing itself on a strategy and program that can actually win? Well, certainly, the hard work of thousands of activists over the years has not gone to waste. As a result of all the protests for refugee rights many, many more people are aware of the issue and have become sympathetic to the plight of refugees. However, the movement has not been able to make Australian governments retreat from any of their cruel policies. When one considers how many hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in this country are sympathetic to the plight of refugees then one has to conclude that the strategy the refugee rights movement has pursued up till now has been a wrong one.
So what strategy has the movement been based on? It is true that people from diverse political backgrounds participating in the actions have different ideas about how best to achieve freedom for refugees. However, the prevailing strategy, which reflects the politics of the socialist group, Solidarity, that has control of the Refugee Action Coalition (RAC) is one that’s based on the idea of change through parliament. So, the movement, even while criticising the ALP’s refugee policies, campaigns for the ALP and Greens to be elected to parliament and seeks to pressure the ALP to reverse its anti-refugee policy. Thus, the formation of a future ALP government with a pro-refugee policy or an ALP-Greens coalition is put forward as a means to free the refugees.
The problem with this strategy, however, is that it has not worked. Indeed, it was the Rudd Labor government which in July 2013 brought in the current “PNG solution.” Labor’s Rudd made John Howard’s racist refugee policy even more xenophobic by declaring that, “From now on, any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees.” And let’s not forget it was the Keating ALP government that in 1992 introduced the policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers in the first place.
Unlike the ALP, the Greens have spoken out – sometimes strongly – against the Turnbull government’s brutal war on refugees. However, in 2010 they jumped into a de facto coalition with the Gillard ALP government without demanding even the slightest commitment from that government to ease its war on refugees. During the period of the Greens-ALP alliance government from August 2010 to February 2013, not only did the Greens prop up a government that was maintaining mandatory detention of refugees but that government also significantly intensified its anti-refugee policy. In August 2012, the Gillard government announced that it would resume the detention of refugees in Manus and Nauru that had been paused during the first Rudd government. Even though the Greens opposed the move, they still remained part of the de facto coalition government! That’s hardly a serious commitment to refugee rights!
The reason that all pro-capitalist parties are complicit in the oppression of refugees is that the vast majority of the capitalist bigwigs – whom all these current parliamentary parties ultimately serve – are committed to the war on refugees. To be sure, some in the capitalist class do worry that the brutality of their anti-refugee policies will damage the Australian state’s reputation in the world and thus impede their ability to use the claim of standing for “human rights” to justify their predatory imperialist interventions abroad. However, a bigger section of the corporate tycoons calculate that they need the diversionary and divisive effect of a harsh policy against refugees. And from their ruthlessly greedy point of view they are probably right! Without their governments making the masses think that refugees and migrants are some kind of threat to their wellbeing, how else are they going to make working class people wear the fact that workers’ real wages aren’t rising and workers’ penalty rates are being cut while the capitalists’ own fat profits are ballooning ever higher? How else are the big shareholders and executives of the NAB bank going to stop their own workforce from revolting at the fact that they are throwing 6,000 of these workers out of their jobs even after making a spectacular $5.3 billion annual profit?
Given that the Greens do claim to stand for refugee rights it is not wrong per se for RAC to invite them to speak at their rallies. Nor, given that the pro-capitalist ALP does have a working class base (unlike the openly pro-boss Liberals), is it unacceptable to have speakers from Labor for Refugees in order to encourage pro-refugee individuals within the ALP to take a more outspoken stand. However, what is harmful is for the Solidarity group leadership of RAC to then promote future ALP or ALP-Greens “lesser evil” governments as a means of salvation for refugees.
The left-social democratic Solidarity group’s parliamentarist strategy was especially evident during the federal elections last year when they openly handed out election material for the Greens and called to put the ALP second after the Greens. When pushing these parliamentary illusions, Solidarity are acting to dampen support for the truly militant actions that are needed to win refugee rights even while young Solidarity members, themselves, passionately promote and participate in staunch pro-refugee actions.
Of course, if the refugee rights movement could be re-directed into one that could start to threaten and harm the ruling class’ interests – in particular, their profits – then a section of the capitalist class would be forced to consider backing down. Their more “left” and small-l liberal representatives would then start seriously working towards an overhaul of refugee policy. But this would not be change driven by these pro-capitalist parliamentary parties themselves but, rather, a case of the resistance of the masses forcing a section of the capitalists and the parties that serve them to retreat. That is a huge difference!
What a Working Class Orientation Really Means
To be able to threaten the interests of the ruling class means unleashing the industrial muscle of the union movement. Encouragingly, contingents of unionists from the Nurses and Midwives Association, the MUA, NTEU, Teachers Federation and other unions have taken part in pro-refugee actions. RAC does make efforts to lobby unions to participate in the movement. And the Solidarity group does state that a working class orientation is needed. However, a working class orientation requires more than just motivating unions to support the refugee rights campaign. It means setting the line of the movement itself to a pro-working class direction. In particular, it means making open appeals to workers’ interests, not just in statements given out especially to unionists, but in the actual, official callouts for the entire action itself. That means, for example, featuring as headline slogans in the main action call outs, calls similar to, “Workers: Let’s Build the Unity We Need to Stand Up to the Greedy Bosses – Oppose Racism by Standing with Refugees!” Openly appealing to workers’ class interests in the action callouts is what could win broader layers of unionists to see the refugee struggle as their struggle. It is what will help more conscious union activists who are already involved in the movement to mobilise their co-workers to join in as well.
This could, of course, put off some liberal refugee rights supporters who may be anti-union or unwilling to align with an openly pro-working class movement – people like liberal small business bosses, mid-level managers and managerial level public service bureaucrats who may support the Greens. It is this prospect of a break with such small-l liberals that, no doubt, makes Solidarity – and the other groups prominent in directing RAC like Socialist Alternative and Socialist Alliance – baulk from setting the refugee rights movement on an openly pro-working class direction. But this choice must be made. One cannot effectively appeal to both the rival classes in this society. If one truly believes in a pro-working class orientation – and it is clear that it will take the mobilisation of the working class and its allies to repulse the war on refugees – one has to be prepared to break with pro-capitalist elements. We should add that given that there have been many militant pro-refugee actions over the last two weeks and given the depth of the media/politician witch hunt over the Christine Forster “incident,” those left social democratic groups who have been so careful not to scare off small-l liberal elements may find these types quietly retreating from the movement anyhow or otherwise distancing themselves from militant protests.
Of course, whether the workers movement can be mobilised in defence of refugees depends on not only the direction of the refugee rights movement but on the internal politics of the union movement itself. Currently, the anti-refugee ALP politically dominates the union movement. That’s why challenging this influence of the ALP is key to mobilising the workers movement in defence of refugees.
We need to purge from the union movement not only loyalty to the ALP but something that runs even deeper – support for Labor’s outlook. Unfortunately, most workers currently back the ALP’s economic nationalist agenda. ALP slogans like “Employ Australians First,” by setting up local citizens as job market rivals of foreigners, inevitably creates resentment towards guest workers, refugees and international students. Indeed, protectionism runs so deep that much of the Far Left acquiesces to it even while trying to present it in a “clean” way devoid of open racism. The Socialist Alliance group, Socialist Alternative and the Communist Party of Australia all backed Australia’s largest demonstration to keep out foreign workers: the July 2012 “Local Workers First” rally in Perth. Here we must, however, give credit where credit is due to the Solidarity group. Although, overall, of all the far-left groups, Solidarity panders most to the ALP and Greens, they do take a strong stand against economic nationalism.
Trotskyist Platform is on a campaign to oppose all forms of economic nationalism. We understand that as long as this nationalism remains dominant in the union movement, efforts to mobilise the working class masses in defence of refugees will be greatly undermined. We seek to prove to workers how economic nationalism in all its forms undermines the unity and focus we need to fight for workers rights.
We can only defeat economic nationalist slogans if we provide an alternative program for secure jobs for all workers. Such a program is one of militant class struggle to prevent capitalist bosses from retrenching workers and forcing them to increase hiring at the expense of their fat profits. When the greedy capitalists scream that this will cause their economy to collapse, the workers movement must respond: if you big business owners cannot run the economy in a way that guarantees secure jobs for all workers then we working class people will take the economy out of your hands and place it in our own strong, able and collective hands. A true revolution that brings the working class into economic and state power is, ultimately, what we need. It will ensure secure jobs for all, truly free medical care, education and public housing and, by removing the rule of the exploiting class, it will liquidate the main driver of racist policies. Like the workers state created by the Russian Revolution 100 years ago declared, in its very first constitution, a workers state today would grant asylum to all refugees and give the rights of citizenship to all working class people residing on its soil. Crucially, the overturn of capitalist rule would save us from the real threat that we face, today, of a future triumph of the fascist, hard right form of capitalism.
Yet we do need to do far more than simply proclaim the need for socialist revolution. There are many struggles that we need to engage in right now. A workers revolution can only be built by first uniting the working class and training it to trust only in its own power when that mighty proletarian power is itself united with the power of all other oppressed groups.
History has entrusted our class – the working class – to bring justice to society. We need to mobilise the workers movement in defence of refugees, against racist state terror and as a force that can shut down far-right racist terror groups right in their tracks. The working class must unite across ethnic and national lines in a struggle against racism precisely because we need to train the working class to be the champion of all of the oppressed. So let’s be guided by this perspective during our participation in the campaign for the Manus refugees. Let’s oppose illusions in salvation through the ALP and Greens within the refugee rights movement! Let’s fight to ensure that refugee rights actions are built on openly pro-working class slogans! Let’s struggle to root out economic nationalism in all its forms from our unions! We must intensify the agitation to mobilise working class action in defence of the Manus refugees!
“Australians First” Economic Nationalism Fuels RacistHostilitytoRefugees and People of Colour
It was a video so openly racist that even right-wing senator Derryn Hinch said it “could be an ad for the Ku Klux Klan.” This ALP video saying that it would “Employ Australians First” had visuals where nearly all the Australians shown were white Anglos. The ad which was released two months ago had an unmistakeable racist message: white people had to be supposedly protected from having their jobs taken away by non-white people. Like the Turnbull government’s moves to make citizenship harder to get based on the racist premise that a migrant’s allegiance to values such as respect for women is more doubtful than an existing citizen’s – even though the horrific level of violence against women here is actually much higher than that of many countries like China where migrants are coming from – Bill Shorten’s video can only engender antagonism to refugees and people of colour. Meanwhile, that the ALP chose not to even include Aboriginal people in its image of “Australians” highlights not only the despicable nature of the ad but also the deep oppression that this country’s first peoples suffer under.
The ALP’s advertisement that shamelessly dog whistled to racism. Even when made less blatantly than in this ad, any demands that call for putting the interests of (mainly white) Australian workers over (overwhelmingly coloured) lower paid workers from “Third World” countries will inevitably appeal to and reinforce White Australia xenophobic attitudes as well as “First World” arrogance.
No doubt aware that the Labor Party retains support from working class people from various “ethnic” backgrounds, ALP frontbencher Anthony Albanese called the ad a “shocker.” However, even if the ALP’s “Australians First” video had several peopleofcolourinit,the ad would still be a shocker. For one, given that this country is still majority white in composition and that the majority of visa workers are people of colour, any counterposing of local peoples’ interests against those of foreign workers necessarily incites racist hostility to non-white people from Asian, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, African and Latin American backgrounds – whether those people are foreigners or Australians. Moreover, setting up local citizens as job market rivals of foreigners inevitably creates resentment towards guest workers, refugees and international students. Such xenophobic hostility then flows on towards Australians from coloured “ethnic” backgrounds. Economic-based prejudice is, indeed, the main stem of the noxious weed of racism that is currently overrunning Australia. It is the completely unfounded fear that refugees, migrants and guest workers will take up scarce jobs and affordable housing and use up dwindling public services which is at the root of the racist problem. Such resentment is consciously promoted by the capitalist bigwigs, the media that they own and the mainstream political parties that do their bidding. This exploiting class seeks to divert the masses from identifying them, the filthy rich big business owners, as the real cause of the people’s economic difficulties.
After his video was attacked, it was easy for Shorten to shrug it off by saying “the lack of diversity” in it was “a bad oversight.” However, for many coloured people, such nationalist ravings translate into being vilified and physically attacked on the streets. A report released today by Charles Sturt University detailed 243 verified cases of racist attacks on Muslims in just a 14 month period. Those reported incidents form just a tiny fraction of actual cases. Showing the link between racism and misogyny, the study found that more than two-thirds of those attacked were women.
Although Australia is especially racist, hostility towards minorities and refugees is growing in all capitalist countries. The more their economies falter, the more the rulers promote racist and protectionist “solutions.” Meanwhile, increasing rivalries between the capitalist powers – seen, for example, in heightened trade tensions between the U.S. and the German-led European imperialists – further stoke reactionary nationalism. Yet, even in “Third World” capitalist countries like India racist incidents are on the rise – in the case of India involving Hindu-chauvinist attacks. Indeed, our planet’s one large country not plagued by rampant racist attacks is a socialistic one: China.
The notions behind “Australians First” agendas simply don’t stack up. Refugees and guest workers all spend money here and pay taxes. They, hence, create as many jobs as they occupy. As long as the current social order prevails, no matter how few people there are in the country there will always be a significant rate of unemployment. This is because the rich business owners will – if they are allowed to – only hire as few people as maximises their profits. Whenever unemployment falls these bosses are less able to keep wages down and less able to threaten workers with the sack, making them reluctant to hire any more which in turn pushes unemployment back up. Moreover, the notion that guest workers are the cause of joblessness is ludicrous given that they make up much less than 1% of the workforce! It is true that bosses seek to use severe exploitation of foreign visa workers – as they do with vulnerable local workers like apprentices and casual workers – to undercut overall working conditions. However, that only underscores the need for the union movement to fight to ensure the highest wages, union coverage and, crucially, full rights of citizenship for all guest workers, refugees and overseas students.
Asylum seekers caged up by the Australian regime in its Manus Island detention centre. Economic nationalism helps fuel the popular prejudices that provide support for this savage treatment of refugees.
As well as calling to “Employ Australians First,” the Donald Trump-like ALP ad also promised to “Build Australian First and Buy Australian First.” Such measures won’t save local jobs! For just as politicians can push such schemes here, their counterparts abroad can respond with similar measures which would then hurt Australia’s exports. Indeed, all agendas that counterpose the interests of Australian workers to guest workers ortogoods produced by workers abroad actually harm the fight for workers’ jobs. Forbydividingworkersandbydivertingthem from struggle against the capitalist bossesthey undercut the one fight that can immediately win more jobs – a trade union struggle to forcebosses to increase hiring. Yet, such a struggle that impinges on the fundamental “rights” of the capitalists is alien to the ALP and most of our current, pro- ALP union leaders. The ALP seeks to satisfy its working class base by merely extracting modest concessions from the capitalists while seeking acceptance from the latter. That is why it is left with little to offer on jobs except divisive protectionism. When the Turnbull government, with much fanfare, announced a slashing of the guest worker program, sadly many of our union leaders demanded the measures go further rather than mobilising actions to win equal rights for these workers.
Nationalism from the Labor Party and pro-ALP union leaders is especially harmful since it is they who currently lead the working class – the one class which has a consistent interest in opposing both racism and nationalism since both undermine the unity so crucial to any successful struggle for workers rights. Yet, national chauvinism is far from the preserve of the social democracy. The right-wing Turnbull regime – pushed ever further by Tony Abbott’s hardliners – fiercely oppresses refugees. Then there is the extreme racism of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, the anti-Muslim tirades of Jacqui Lambie and the fervent protectionism of the Nick Xenophon team.
Now the Greens have at least correctly called out some of Labor’s economic nationalist appeals as dog whistling to racism. However, the Greens push their own fervent protectionist schemes including calling for crackdowns on the guest worker program and restrictions on overseas-made steel. Even much of the Far Left acquiesces to economic nationalism. Both the Socialist Alliance group and Socialist Alternative– who have both been active in the refugee rights campaign – and the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) backed Australia’s largest demonstration to keep out foreign workers: the July 2012 “Local Workers First” rally in Perth. The CPA also parrots the “local content” demands of pro-ALP union leaders. Of course, these socialist groups and the Greens advocate a “clean” protectionism which rejects conscious dog whistling to racism. However, there is no “clean” protectionism! Any policy that calls for putting the interests of (mainly white) Australian workers over (overwhelmingly coloured) lower paid workers from “Third World” countries will inevitably appeal to and reinforce White Australia xenophobic attitudes as well as “First World” arrogance. And all protectionist demands divert workers away from the struggle that is actually needed – the one against the job-slashing capitalist exploiters – while pitting local workers against their natural allies: the working class people of the world.
That is why Trotskyist Platform is on a campaign to oppose all forms of economic nationalism. We are seeking to win those involved in the refugee rights movement and the anti-fascist movement to also take up this struggle. Until economic nationalist ideas are purged from the union movement and the Left, anti-racist movements will face serious obstacles. And so will the struggle for workers rights.
We fight to replace the ALP’s nationalist, co-operate-with-the-capitalist program currently ascendant in our unions with a militant class struggle perspective that relies on and values workers’ unity. That means a union movement that would fight for freedom and asylum for imprisoned asylum seekers, full rights of citizenship for all refugees and guest workers and liberation for brutally oppressed Aboriginal people. Rejecting bogus protectionist “solutions,” the union movement that we fight for would mobilise its industrial muscle to stop job slashing by bosses and force profitable companies to increase hiring at the expense of their fat profits. When the greedy capitalist bosses scream that this will cause their economy to collapse, the revolutionary, internationalist party of the working class that we need will respond: ifyoubigbusinessownerscannotruntheeconomyina way that guarantees secure jobs for all workers then we working class people will rip the economy out of your hands and place it into our own able collective hands. Such a socialist economy based on working class rule is what we need! In such a system, the material basis for racism will wither away as there will be no more exploiting class trying to divide exploited masses and no more scarcity and unemployment fueling rivalries between workers of different colours and ethnic backgrounds. Workersofallcountriesunite!
Positive! National Union of Workers (NUW) organisers speak at a Fair Go For Migrants rally in Melbourne on 27 August 2017. They opposed immigration laws that prevent many NUW members from gaining access to permanent residency or citizenship rights. The interests of the workers movement demands that it both strongly opposes all racist laws against migrants AND stands against economic nationalism.
Long Live China’s 1949 Anticapitalist Revolution! Protect the Great Benefits for Workers & the Rural Masses Won through the Revolution: Stop Imperialist Funding for Those NGOs that Seek to Overthrow Socialistic Rule in China
Force Profitable Companies to Increase Hiring – Make Them Wear the Resulting Lower Profits Stop Billionaire Bosses from Retrenching Workers! No to Slave Wage Internships and Work for the Dole! For Fully Paid, Permanent Jobs for All!
Tens of Thousands Protest in Australia
on the Day of Land Theft and Genocide
Rally Attacked by Ruthless Police
21 February 2017: It was the largest Invasion Day protest for many years. The burning issue of extreme racism in capitalist Australia could not be hidden. The capitalist media had to discuss this matter publicly as over 50,000 protested in Melbourne and 10,000 marched in Sydney.
In Sydney, Aboriginal speakers outlined the brutal state murders taking place of Aboriginal people in custody and the continued stealing of Aboriginal children from their families by “community service” bureaucrats. The Sydney rally was also addressed by a representative of the MUA trade union and an MUA contingent joined the rally. Also rally participants loudly applauded members of the Muslim community when they stated their solidarity with the Aboriginal people’s struggle for justice.
There has been greater consciousness on the oppression of Aboriginal peoples amongst a section of the masses. They have made it clear that they do not want to celebrate Australia Day like it presently is celebrated. Trying to get onboard the sentiment, many small-l liberals, Greens, and soft-lefts have called for changing the date to a more broadly “acceptable” celebration of Australian nationalism. Even conservatives are calling to change the date of Australia Day. Ian Macfarlane, a noted conservative and representive for Queensland’s mining capitalists, stated he wants ‘Australia Day’ changed to another day.
But the staunch young activists of Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance – WAR called for the abolition of ‘Australia Day’ altogether, rightly stating that:
WAR does not want the date of Invasion Day
(so called ‘Australia Day’) to be changed. WAR
instead stands for the abolishment of the day all
together… Changing the date will simply allow
another day that Australia can celebrate their
nationalism, their patriotism, their past and
present genocidal acts against our people. https://www.facebook.com/WARcollective/ posts/1245000778928812
In Sydney, police assaulted peaceful protesters towards the conclusion of the Invasion Day rally injuring many protesters. On the videos circulating of the event, big and aggressive policemen are seen without warning charging into the middle of the protest, knocking over many unprepared and smaller framed protesters including the elderly and children. Police tried to justify their violent attack on the rally by claiming they were trying to prevent a young Aboriginal activist from burning the Australian flag – a flag which symbolises colonialist genocide. Burning a flag itself is not illegal but the police came prepared with a fire extinguisher to deliberately harass Aboriginal activists on a day of mourning and protest against systematic racism in Australia. From pictures and videos, at least one young male protester and one young female protester were seen unconscious and in extreme pain after being knocked over by police. It seems the young man fell on his head as he was violently knocked backwards by the rampaging police. The young woman later was revealed to have suffered serious head injuries and had to spend a week in hospital. Showing commendable solidarity, many Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people came to the assistance of their fellow demonstrators who were being attacked. Police outrageously arrested one protestor on the day. FIRE (Fighting In Resistance Equally), the organiser for the Sydney rally, released a statement condemning the reckless police attack and called for the bogus charges to be dropped against the arrested protester. Subsequently, a second protestor has been charged. Trotskyist Platform adds our voice to the call for all the bogus charges to be dropped against all those protesters charged from the Invasion Day march.
Left: Marauding police violently attacked many demonstrators during the latter stages of the march. Right: Police brutalise a young Aboriginal activist after spraying him and other protesters with fire extinguisher during the Sydney 2017 Invasion Day rally.
The police attack on the Invasion Day protest march is typical of the racist and antiworking class police in Australia. We call for our trade unions to mobilise in bigger numbers to support future Aboriginal rights actions. Through the presence of unions playing a prominent role, police and their capitalist masters will think twice before they attack another Aboriginal protest as it could provoke a greater working class and industrial backlash. The participation of the workers movement united with Aboriginal people is integral to the fight for Aboriginal rights and to the fight against racism. Not only should the workers movement be focused on just the workers’ immediate economic issues but also on advancing the overall struggle of the whole working class and all the oppressed as one force against the racist capitalist exploiters.
Sydney, 26 January 2017: Some of the approximately 10,000 people who marched through Redfern and the City in the Aboriginal-led, Invasion Day protest. The intensifying racist oppression of Aboriginal people has pushed a new layer of determined young Aboriginal women and men into anti-racist political activism.
UNLEASH INDUSTRIAL ACTION TO DEMAND JOBS FOR ALL! CAPITALIST “DEMOCRACY” IS A SHAM: ONLY WORKERS UNITED WITH ALL OF THE OPRESSED CAN BRING ABOUT REAL CHANGE
Above: The Handover or Phony Hope Shakes the Hand of Blatant Bigotry. A moment that ought to finally dispel anyone’s lingering illusion that capitalist democracy can ever be reformed into a system that operates in the interests of the working class. Obama prepares to calmly hand the administration of the U.S. capitalist state over to Trump just as George W. Bush did for him eight years earlier. The teetering edifice of the capitalist state requires both left and right pillars to keep it from completely collapsing beneath the dead weight of its own contradictions.
November 9 – Hard right-wing candidate Donald Trump – a billionaire capitalist exploiter and extreme racist and misogynist – will become the next president of the U.S.A. In yesterday’s election, he defeated the candidate supported by the mainstream of the American capitalist class, Hillary Clinton.
Like most far-right demagogues (including Hitler), Trump poses as a “rebel” and “anti-establishment” figure. Actually, he is a tycoon who is very much part of the capitalist ruling class and a key part of his economic program is big tax cuts for the rich. His main beef with the mainstream of the racist establishment is that they are not openly racist and economically nationalist enough for his liking. His blatant racism serves to protect the capitalist establishment by dividing the masses and diverting their economic frustrations and insecurity onto minorities and other groups in society who are made into scapegoats for the mass inequalities that capitalism inevitably creates. Similarly, his protectionism diverts anger about job losses onto overseas workers, thus shielding the capitalist exploiters in the U.S. from any blame and making the masses think that they have a common interest with their own exploiters in protecting American business.
Eight years ago when Obama was first elected, Trotskyist Platform actually predicted that the inevitable failure of a small-l liberal led regime to improve the lives of the masses could well lead to the eventual takeover of hard right forces in America (and, indeed, in his language Obama was the most liberal-sounding U.S. president in decades). Here is an excerpt from the article we wrote upon Obama first taking office:
That the Obama electoral triumph, if anything, dulled workers’ class consciousness means that even the present shift away from the conservative right wing is fragile. Without an understanding that it is the capitalist profiteers who are responsible for unemployment, recession and decay the masses will be vulnerable to right wing demagogy when they see that the new Administration is no more able to satisfy their aspirations than the previous one. The conservatives are waiting in the wing. And they will be able to mobilise right wing activists from amongst the all too many bigoted elements who were horrified that a black person should become President. Hence, there is a real danger that the rise of the liberal Obama could turn out to be just a prelude to a right-wing regime more frightening than Bush’s – perhaps led by a Sarah Palin-like figure. While the left rest on their illusory laurels, the frighteningly fascist right are now surely mobilising their forces, stirred up like a wasps’ nest ready to strike!
Only by mobilising their own power to squeeze concessions out of the exploiters can the working class begin to address the needs of the American masses and stop the re-emergence of the right. The working class can through industrial action force companies to avoid shedding jobs. And its power can be mobilised in a campaign to demand free health care for all. In all such struggles of the American workers movement, black workers will be at the forefront. These workers will join together the multiracial workers’ movement with the ghetto poor in the fight for black liberation.
Although Trump’s views and agenda are certainly fascistic, fascism has not yet triumphed in the U.S (nor does it currently hold sway in any other country). Fascism is not just a government of people with a really right-wing agenda but involves the mass mobilisation of the middle class and some of the unemployed (and even politically backward workers) to violently smash all workers’ organisations – like independent trade unions and left-wing parties – and institute a capitalist regime which dispenses with the formalities of parliamentary “democracy.” Such a regime can only be instituted by physically defeating an inevitable degree of resistance from the politically conscious, working class masses. Nevertheless, Trump’s triumph will greatly encourage fascist outfits in the U.S. and will spur the development of fascist militias. American blacks, First Peoples, Hispanics, Asians, gays, women seeking abortion and leftists will face ever more violent attacks.
Regardless of Trump’s particular policies, the normal workings of the capitalist boom and bust cycles mean that in some four to twelve months there will be an economic downturn in the U.S.A and a consequent rise in the unemployment rate. Given the chaotic state of major capitalist economies, this could turn out to be another serious global economic crisis. In that context, mass struggle led by conscious working class and anti-racist forces could weaken the right-wing regime and undermine support for it. However, in the absence of such struggle, the increased economic insecurity could further fuel the flames of fascism.
Trump’s ascendancy will also embolden far-right and fascist forces here in Australia. Hard-right Liberal politician Cory Bernardi as well as the LNP MP George Christensen openly backed Trump. And Trump’s victory was hailed by the fascistic senator Pauline Hanson of One Nation infamy. Indeed, at a fascist rally in the northern Melbourne suburb of Eltham last weekend against a refugee centre, some of the fascist scum were wearing Trump T-shirts.
Trump’s rise will not only boost organised far-right forces but will also incite violent tendencies amongst garden-variety rednecks in Australia. The latter are people who may not be politically active in an extreme right-wing movement but are, nevertheless, simply filled with racial hatred. A couple of months ago, one such redneck murdered 14-year-old Aboriginal youth, Elijah Doughty, near the Western Australia town of Kalgoorlie. Then late last month, Indian-origin bus driver, Manmeet Alisher was cruelly murdered by being set alight with a fire bomb by a man of white Anglo-Saxon appearance, Anthony O’Donohue. O’Donohue, formerly an accountant, was known to harbour fascistic, crackpot conspiracy theories against trade unions. Although the media and cops have done their best to cover up the racist nature of this Brisbane murder the victim’s family are sure that it was motivated by racism. Several people with origins from the Indian subcontinent have told Trotskyist Platform comrades the same thing. They pointed out that the Indian man was specifically singled out. One man of Indian background, in explaining how Manmeet’s killing was a racist murder, told us that while living in the same multi-cultural Brisbane suburb where the murder took place, Moorooka, he had been attacked by racists and once had to literally run for his life to escape from a white racist who was threatening him.
All this underscores the need to build, here in Australia just as much as in other capitalist countries, a mass mobilisation of trade unionists, Aboriginal people, non-white “ethnic” people and all anti-racists to drive the fascist filth off the streets. This is an urgent necessity of self-defence for all the intended victims of the fascists. Although self-defence action against fascist groups will not directly stop the daily and incessant racist attacks and abuse from the innumerable garden-variety rednecks scattered throughout this country, by landing blows against organised fascists we can send a message to the garden-variety racists out there that they had better pull their heads in. These racists must learn that the organised and united multiracial working class has both the will and the power to stand up and defend anyone who is vulnerable to their racist, cowardly attacks.
On October 28, Indian-born Brisbane bus driver Manmeet Alisher (Bottom Left) was murdered by Anthony O’Donohue (Top Centre). The killer boarded the bus and heinously set the driver alight in what was manifestly a racist attack. The attack by the white terrorist also caused the bus to burn down, threatening the lives of many passengers when the bus (pictured Top Left)was stopped in the multiracial suburb of Morooka. O’Donohue was known to hold fascistic views – including anti-union conspiracy theories. The election of hard right wing racist, Donald Trump, to the U.S. presidency and the ensuing emboldening of far right Australian politicians like Pauline Hanson (Top Far Right – posing for a photo with notorious Sydney Nazi, Ross “Skull” May) will incite further white supremacist terror. Mass moblisations of trade unionists and all the intended victims of the fascists must drive violent racist filth off the streets – such as happened in Brisbane on 2 May 2014 (Bottom Right). On that day a large contingent of unionised construction workers joined tother with anarchists, Trotskyist Platform supporters and other leftists and anti-racists to shut down an attempted march by the fascist Australia First Party.
No to Divisive Protectionism: For a Class Struggle Program of Jobs For All!
Trump’s victory will also encourage various forces here to more rabidly push for protectionism. In fact, economic nationalism was one of Trump’s main points of attraction for the U.S. masses, especially in the Mid-West rust belt. To be sure, when the media reports that working class people in the Mid-West were supporting Trump this can be a bit misleading since, in actual fact, Trump still did not do that well in cities. What they mean by “working class” is people with a lower income rather than in terms of their actual relationship to the means of production. Trump’s support came not so much from currently employed industrial workers as it did from laid-off workers now trying to hustle a living as self-employed contractors or small businessmen or those now in insecure, non-union casual jobs or, perhaps, still unemployed or forced into early retirement. Unionised workers who are brought together at the point of production and united together in unions are, overall, less susceptible to right-wing demagogy than isolated self-employed and unemployed people. And, though it is true that even a portion of unionised workers did vote for Trump, analysis of exit polls actually revealed that the higher the income, the more likely you were to vote for Trump.
We need to firmly oppose economic nationalism here not only because it fuels racism but also because it directly undermines the fight to build actual struggle against the greedy bosses at home. However, we can only successfully oppose protectionism if we counterpose to it a class struggle program of jobs for all – that is, by highlighting the demand that profitable enterprises be forced to increase hiring at the cost of their own profits and then linking this demand to the fight for the ultimate confiscation of the means of production from the capitalist class by the working class. Trotskyist Platform has been emphasising opposition against any form of protectionism and promoting a class struggle program of jobs for all but we will intensify this work by fighting to build more actions promoting this essential perspective.
Unfortunately, much of the Left either themselves embrace economic nationalism – while trying to rid it of it of its openly racist aspects – or just try their best to ignore it. However, any leftist force that capitulates to economic nationalism is an obstacle to the fight for workers’ rights whether it happens to call itself socialist, Trotskyist, Marxist-Leninist, anarchist or any other kind of ist. The protectionist ideology of the pro-Democrats, American union bureaucracy has pushed a section of American unionised workers – and many laid off industrial workers – into the arms of far-right populism. The economic nationalist slogans of the current, pro-ALP Australian union leadership should also not be allowed to push Australian workers into the filthy arms of Hanson’s One Nation and its ilk who, after all, are the most consistent nationalists of all. Challenging the economic nationalist ideology that is currently dominant in the Australian workers movement is key to unleashing a class struggle fightback to defend our unions, protect workers rights and win jobs for everyone.
Implications for the Leninist Program on International Questions
On international policy, Trump has not disguised the fact that he is going to push an even more openly hostile stance towards socialistic China. He wants to draw capitalist Russia into this task by building an alliance with Russia that would bring the world’s two most powerful military powers into a capitalist super alliance. Part of the aim of this perspective is also to weaken the U.S.A’s European NATO allies cum imperialist economic rivals. Additionally, there is ideological affinity between the hard right wing in the U.S. and the Putin government. Putin, as well as being a hero to right-wing , “Third Way” (i.e. “neither socialism nor capitalism”) conspiracy theory types is also a hero to fascist groups throughout the West (the Australian Defence League here, for example, has openly hailed him) as well as to more mainstream right-wing forces (like racist, Islamophobic senator Jacqui Lambi) because of his government’s hard line anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim policies as well as his homophobia.
However, whether Trump and the Far Right’s proclivities for an alliance with Russia will be implemented remains to be seen. Trump’s regime will be, in effect, an alliance of hard line right wingers like himself and more mainstream figures from the right wing of the Republican Party. The latter are less inclined to an alliance with Russia as they believe the U.S. is strong enough not to share its spoils with any emerging power and do not want to allow a new player into the imperialist club. Furthermore, Putin himself would probably play hard to get with Trump since he knows the U.S is a weakening empire. He would also not want Russia to play second fiddle to the U.S. too much and would hold out for as many concessions as possible. Furthermore, the Russian bourgeoisie may be hesitant to be pulled in too brazenly into an anti-China alliance since, despite their hostility to socialism (the Russian government from Putin down were, after all, active in the counterrevolution that destroyed the USSR and brought capitalist class rule back to Russia) they stand to make a fortune from selling oil and natural gas to neighbouring China which has few of these resources itself.
Nevertheless, a U.S.-Russia capitalist super alliance is certainly quite possible and if it does transpire this may affect the position that communist internationalists should take towards events in Syria. Whatever effect a Trump presidency has on U.S.-Russia relations, one thing is pretty certain: the Trump ascendancy will see an intensification of open U.S. hostility to the Chinese workers state. So, despite the bureaucratic deformations and capitalist incursions into China – and we must remember that nearly 60% of her economy is controlled and nearly all of her economy’s commanding heights (that is, the heavy industries, finance, transport, telecommunications etc) are fully owned by the Chinese workers state, a bigger slice of the economic pie than that enjoyed by the Soviet Russian state during Lenin’s time – authentic socialists need to be ready to intensify our struggle to defend socialistic China against imperialist attack and imperialist-backed, anti-communist NGOs.
We live in scary times. The ascendancy of Trump to the U.S. presidency will – in the absence of mass resistance – incite in both the U.S.A and Australia a further escalation of racist attacks on coloured ethnic minorities, Muslims and First Peoples communities. However, we should be aware that the rising of fascistic forces is a sign of the utter decay of capitalism which in its death throes is releasing such noxious fumes. But the system will not die by itself. It needs to be overthrown by the conscious working class-led masses united with all of the oppressed. It is our job to advance the struggle for such a socialist revolution. This is a time when every major capitalist country is seeing the rise of sinister far-right forces: from the U.S.A to Australia to most of Europe to Russia and the Ukraine. In Indonesia a violent racist movement has erupted and targeted the governor of Jakarta purely for his being a member of an ethnic and religious minority. In India a sinister fascistic mass murderer is the prime minister. In fact, the one great socialistic power in the world, Red China, looks rather good by comparison. It is the one large nation where far-right racist forces based on the majority ethnic community are not on the march.
Why, in Australia, must the flower of Aboriginal youth fall victim to murderous, racist rednecks or become prey for a relentlessly systematic kind of brutal “justice” that continues to send young Aboriginal men and women to languish in jail cells or detention centres for years on end or worse? They are victims of the essentially immoral 200 year-old Australian capitalist racket. As are the brave children, women and men who have been held hostage in the Nauru, Manus Island and Christmas Island hellholes. Can anyone seriously argue that if these asylum seekers came from, say, England or Denmark instead of mainly from the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East that they would be treated in the same heartless manner? In fact, the Australian capitalist state’s border control policy provides tacit official sanction to every act of racist violence and xenophobia perpetrated out there on the streets of Australia.
A mighty, radical shift is needed. Any deluded notion of a middle ground that social democrats might be clinging onto is fast falling away beneath their feet and the pieces being greedily gobbled up by the awaiting, wide open fascistic jaws of your Donald Trumps and Pauline Hansons. Now is not the time for sitting on fences. The fence has already collapsed under the combined weight of too many fat, middle class rumps. Increasingly, humanity is faced with a choice between fascism and communism. Behind fascism stands the capitalist, property-rich ruling class which is willing to unleash its nazi dogs as a last resort to protect its ill gotten gains and its global control of immense human and industrial resources. Behind the prospect of communism stands the organised, international working class which is willing and able to seize control of the world’s business from the tiny minority of capitalist owners in the name of all the people and then commence work towards a collective, humane and socialistic organisation of society. A handful of countries have already – bravely and with sometimes seemingly intolerable sacrifice – embarked on the road to a communist future despite the perpetual harrassment and often bloody resistance put up by the imperialist powers. We workers of Australia must offer our sincere respect, our immense gratitude and, most of all, a comradely – critical if necessary but always helping – hand to these frontier workers states because our futures are inextricably linked. Let’s work hard to advance the struggle for communism here too! Let’s promote a class struggle fight for jobs for all workers! Let’s fight to unite the working class masses right around the world by uncompromisingly standing against both racism and economic nationalism! You’d have to be blind now not to see capitalist democracy for what it really is – a filthy, rich man’s game. But the riches of the world have always really belonged to the working many and not to the exploiting few. The exploiters can choke on the racism, hatred and division they sow. The fruit of our labour is of a different sort altogether. Already the workers of the world have begun to unite in order to form a community of kindness which can embrace all of our common humanity without exception. From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. Friends, the time to mobilise and to strike back is now.
Five days ago, a 55 year-old white man murdered a 14-year-old Aboriginal youth, Elijah Doughty in Boulder, just south of the Western Australia town of Kalgoorlie. The horrific murder was followed by a racist outpouring by rednecks on social media celebrating the killing and threatening Aboriginal people with murder and rape.
Outrageously, police only charged the killer with manslaughter rather than murder. Hundreds of Aboriginal people responded to this blatant state racism by courageously marching on the courthouse and carrying out staunch acts of defiance against symbols of the racist authorities – including police cars, the courthouse entrance and the heavily armed police who were confronting them. Police responded with typical brutality unleashing their batons against the Aboriginal marchers and making several arrests. Meanwhile, the WA Police Minister and Attorney General have rushed to viciously condemn the brave stand taken by Aboriginal people in Kalgoorlie.
The whole series of events highlights the murderous racist oppression that Aboriginal people face throughout the country.
The trade union movement and all anti-racists must stand by the Aboriginal community of Kalgoorlie – and indeed the whole country – at this critical time. We must condemn the downgraded charge that the killer of Elijah Doughty received and must call for the immediate dropping of all charges against the Aboriginal people arrested for their brave acts of resistance on Tuesday.
