Above: Hundreds of people march through the street’s of New Zealand’s Auckland to protest against racist attacks on Asian background people.
Photo Credit: Zhao Gang/Xinhua
Unite the Workers Movement with All Anti-Racists to
Resist Anti-Asian Hate Attacks!
Oppose the Cold War Campaign against Socialistic China
That Goes Hand in Hand with Anti-Asian Violence
22 April 2021: Over the last 14 months, racist rednecks in Australia have assaulted and verbally abused thousands of people of Asian background. Politicians who blame China for the pandemic are inflaming hatred against people of Chinese background and anyone else who could look Chinese to an ignorant racist. It is not just the vile Donald Trump who is guilty of this. Here, the entire capitalist establishment – from the Liberals, to the ALP, to the Greens, to all the mainstream media – is waging a Cold War propaganda campaign to demonize socialistic China and any Chinese background person who has any sympathy for the PRC. The result of their campaign is reflected in the fact that a survey conducted by the Asian Australian Alliance collected reports of over 500 incidents of COVID-19 related racism in just the last year alone.
To blame a particular ethnicity or a country for a virus is both disgusting and anti-scientific. Viruses carry no passport! Moreover, the pandemic’s spread into Australia did not at all come from China. Socialistic China contained COVID so effectively that, according to data from Australian institutions, the number of COVID infected people that arrived here from mainland China numbered at most just 22. And as arrivals from China were closely monitored, this tiny number of people did not cause any community spread within Australia. By contrast, by April last year, 1,460 infected people had already entered from Europe. Because the Morrison government wanted to maintain travel restrictions specifically focused on China for as long as possible – in order to whip up suspicion of Red China – they allowed people from the virus-plagued lands of Italy, the U.S. and Britain to enter during the early period of the pandemic with little screening. As a result, it was arrivals from Europe and America who brought COVID into Australia. This was, of course, no fault on their part. But this fact makes a mockery of both the overt racists who have attacked Asians for COVID and the covert white supremacists in parliament and in the media who have pushed people onto this anti-Asian, racist path by dishonestly blaming China for the pandemic.
Where Do All These Hate Crimes against People of Asian Background Come from?
In the three years before the pandemic even began, there was a horrific series of violent attacks on Chinese students and Asian Australians. So, why all these hate crimes? Firstly, Australian society is extremely racist. After all, the current “order” was founded on the murderous, racist dispossession of Aboriginal people. As in all capitalist societies, the ruling elite and those who serve them whip up racism to divert the anger of the masses that they exploit – anger over the serious lack of secure jobs and the dearth of affordable housing – onto racial minorities. It is not only the right-wing Coalition who do this. Previous NSW ALP leader, Michael Daley, incited this kind of hatred when he disgustingly blamed young Asian migrants for taking local jobs and pushing young people out of Sydney. The result of all this is that while Aboriginal people suffer the most extreme oppression, other non-white communities are also targeted: from Asians to Muslims to Africans. Attacks on Asians are especially severe due to the reality that – because of this land’s natural wealth and because Australia’s capitalists exploit workers in our region even more cruelly than they exploit workers here at home – this country is a relatively rich, white-dominated enclave neighbored by billions of poorer Asians. This allows Australia’s rulers to manufacture fears that the white masses’ standard of living will be diluted by the entry of huge populations from neighboring Asia.
The second driver of anti-Asian hatred is economic nationalism. Politicians call for “protecting Australian jobs” through restricting imports. Such protectionism inevitably fuels racism as the white masses are pushed to lump locals from Chinese, Korean and Indian backgrounds with their compatriots abroad who are blamed (wrongly) for “taking Australian jobs.” More than even the conservatives it is the ALP, the Greens and, sadly, the current leaders of our trade unions who most promote protectionism. With no program based on actual struggle and industrial action to win jobs they resort to these schemes that set workers here against their counterparts abroad. Yet all that protectionist measures “achieve” is to set off reciprocal measures abroad so that, in the end, no one’s job is saved while local workers are left divided from their crucial worker allies abroad.
Right now, the biggest cause of anti-Asian attacks is the imperialist Cold War against socialistic China. Western populations are being bombarded with constant anti-China propaganda: from lies about the pandemic to the completely hysterical claim that China is “brutally oppressing” her Muslim Uyghur minority (a claim that most Muslim-majority countries have rejected – instead praising China’s treatment of Uyghurs). The result of this propaganda is that there has been a sharp spike in anti-Asian violence in countries at the forefront of the Cold War from the U.S. to Canada to Australia. To be sure, the politicians and media promoting anti-China hate say that they are only opposed to communist Chinese and not to all Chinese. But they know full well that they are dog whistling to anti-Asian xenophobia in order to strengthen their anti-communist campaign. Meanwhile, the “academic” who has provided the “intellectual” cover for the campaign, Clive Hamilton, has openly placed Chinese Australians in the cross-hairs of rabid racists by claiming that many Chinese migrants are part of a pro-communist network that is secretly “invading” Australian politics and “civil society.”
It is not only right-wing forces who have been spearheading the anti-Red China charge. Pro-establishment “progressives” have been just as rabid. One of the most fanatical is NSW Greens MP, David Shoebridge, who has spearheaded the campaign to kick out of Australia the China-connected Chinese language institute, the Confucius Institute. Meanwhile, right-wing Chinese groups like Falun Dafa and Hong Kong pro-British-colonial outfits have, out of shared hostility to Red China, been supporting racist forces attacking Asians: from Trump to white supremacist groups. For their part, several left-wing groups – like Solidarity, Socialist Alternative and Socialist Alliance – while rightly campaigning against anti-Asian attacks have simultaneously fed into the anti-China campaign that has incited these attacks by themselves retailing anti-China propaganda over the pandemic, Uyghurs and Hong Kong. They, of course, say that they oppose the Chinese state and not the Chinese people. But ever since China’s 1949 anti-capitalist revolution, hostility to Red China and “Yellow Peril” racism have been very closely intertwined. This is because racism and opposition to socialistic China are both agendas that serve the same capitalist rulers – the latter to stop their own masses from being infected with anti-capitalist ideas. That is why, regardless of their intentions, those who feed into anti-communist propaganda against China – whether over the pandemic or over bogus “human rights” violations – are helping to fuel violence against East Asian background people. This was shown last month when, as part of “hosting a debate” over China, Socialist Alliance, in keeping with their bending to the anti-China campaign, legitimised (as a view for leftists to consider) the views of arch, “red-Chinese-under-the-beds” inciter Clive Hamilton by choosing to give space in their newspaper Green Left Weekly for Hamilton to publish an attack against those who call out anti-Chinese racism.
Fightback against Racist Attacks!
Given that the capitalist rulers are responsible for the frightening rise of anti-Asian hate, it is clear that they are not going to be the force to resist it. Nor should we expect protection from their “justice” system. In capitalist countries, all state enforcement organs from the police to the courts exist to enforce the rule of the rich exploiters over the working class. Given that racism is a key tool used by their capitalist masters to keep the exploited masses divided and weak, these organs themselves administer racist injustice. Here, police and prison guards have killed countless numbers of Aboriginal people. And look at what happened in the U.S. last month after a white man screaming “”I’m going to kill all Asians” shot dead six Asian women. The police captain overseeing the “response,” a racist who had promoted t-shirts blaming China for the coronavirus, despicably alibied the murderer by saying that the shooter was having “a really bad day.”
Fortunately, there is a powerful force that we can look towards not only as an ally but as a spearhead of the movement and that is the organised working class. For although the working class, like all classes, is currently infected with the prejudices promoted by the capitalist rulers, the multi-racial working class has an especially strong interest in combating racism. For it is essential for workers to build the unity needed to fight back against capitalist attacks on workers’ rights and job security. A taste of what the union movement can do was seen on 2 May 2014 in Brisbane when unionised construction workers joined with other anti-fascists to drive a violent white supremacist group off the streets. To make such events the norm rather than the exception, genuine class-struggle internationalists within the workers movement must campaign for the workers movement to champion the struggle against racist attacks, while simultaneously opposing the protectionism and anti-communist hostility to China promoted by the current pro-ALP leadership of the working class.
We in Trotskyist Platform call for the most politically aware sections of the workers movement to unite with Aboriginal people, all people of colour and all anti-racists to wage the following program of action:
- When violent hate groups hold a public provocation, we should unite to sweep the scum off streets. Most race hate attacks are taking place at random by a large number of disparate racists. But by dealing severe blows to the most extreme racists we can encourage the more numerous, garden-variety rednecks to pull their heads in.
- Oppose racist attacks on not only East Asians but on Aboriginal people, South Asians, Africans and Muslims! Any attack on one targeted community spreads the white supremacist virus that will eventually hurt other communities. For mass protest leading to union industrial action to oppose state killings of Aboriginal people!
- No to protectionism! Fight for secure jobs by forcing bosses to increase hiring at the expense of their profits!
- Resist the Cold War drive that is fueling anti-China violence! Oppose the Australian regime’s military buildup against socialistic China! Dispel the anti-China lies over the pandemic, “foreign interference” and bogus “human rights” violations! Defend Chinese Australians and others persecuted for expressing sympathy for China!
We will only be able to throw racial hatred into the dustbin of history when we consign the capitalist system that fuels such prejudice into the same dustbin. Working class people and oppressed racial groups can advance towards that goal by strengthening our organisation and resolve through fighting back right now against racist attacks. Drive violent racists off the streets! Say no to economic nationalism! Resist the Cold War propaganda drive against socialistic China!