LET’S MAKE WORKING CLASS UNITY STRONGER & STOP THE FAR RIGHT FROM DIVIDING OUR WORKING CLASS. SHUTDOWN THE RACIST RALLY!
The 2nd of May 2014 Brisbane anti-fascist action brought construction workers from the CFMEU, BLF and ETU unions together with anarchists, Trotskyist Platform, Socialist Alliance and other anti-racists. This action was important as xenophobic propaganda from the bosses’ media and far-right racists often tries to put a divide between workers especially those of different nationalities, religions, and races. In Australia countering divisive racism is the recipe for uniting the workers in the class struggle.
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On July 19, various far-right groups calling themselves “Reclaim Australia” will be holding a rally in the heart of Sydney. Their slogans will incite yet more attacks on Muslims. However, these groups which have been busy spreading hate against Aboriginal people, Asians and Africans, see this as but a tactic to whip up violence against all people of colour. Anti-racists and trade unionists are mobilising a counter demonstration to this white supremacist rally. The counter-demonstration is scheduled for 10am – half an hour before the start of the fascist provocation. We add our voice to the many others building the counter-action and urge proud working class people and all the intended targets of the racist thugs – Aboriginal people, Middle Eastern people, Asians, Africans, Muslims, Jews, gays and lesbians and other members of the LGBTI community, feminists and leftists – to join us. We say that what is needed is not simply to protest against the fascists but to shut their racist violence- manufacturing demonstration down. Contingents of trade union members must take the lead. Let’s be there at 10am on Sunday, July 19 at Martin Place between Pitt and Castlereagh Streets to sweep the racist filth off our streets. Let’s emulate the victory that was scored in Brisbane on May 2 last year when over a 100 construction workers (members of the CFMEU, ETU and other unions) were the vanguard of an anti-racist action that drove a neo-Nazi rally off the streets of Brisbane.
The 2 May 2014 anti-fascist action brought construction workers from the CFMEU, BLF and ETU unions together with anarchists, Trotskyist Platform, Socialist Alliance and other anti-racists.
PROVOCATION BY VIOLENT RACISTS CRUSHED IN BRISBANE
UNIONS UNITED WITH LEFTISTS & OTHER ANTI-RACISTS GOT THE JOB DONE!
This was a taste of the power of the organised working class. It was the workers movement at its best. On 2 May 2014 in Brisbane, over a hundred construction workers from the BLF, CFMEU and ETU trade unions formed the core of a demonstration of 200 anti-racists that successfully shut down an attempted march by the fascist Australia First Party (AFP).
The violent, white supremacist AFP had planned a march in support of its larger, Greek neo-Nazi counterpart, the Golden Dawn party. However, when they showed up for their provocation they found a multiracial group of construction workers and other anti-fascists facing them down. The Queensland police, of course, came to the defence of the extreme racists. However, the cops were not able to push around this anti-racist rally the way they often do. The contingents of trade unionists embodied strength in numbers, the inherent collective ability to act in tight unison and the threat of retaliatory industrial action if the police attacked them. As a result, despite a police line protecting the fascists, the anti-racist mobilisation was able to surround the neo-Nazis at various times.
Most construction workers appeared to be self organising, although there was at least one CFMEU organiser there. They were very well aware of what danger open Nazi organising in their own town meant for them as well as for everyone else. The construction workers, supported by other anti-fascists, made sure the Golden Dawn supporters could not march anywhere. When they managed to reach the city by car, to set up in front of the Greek consulate, the mass anti-Nazi action prevented them from doing this also. At this point, the Nazis were compelled to jump in taxis and hot-foot it out of there. Some of the fascists also ended up being taught a literally painful lesson by the construction workers. Brilliant – the workers united will never be defeated!
We congratulate all those that took part in this anti-fascist victory. Trotskyist Platform is proud to have joined the unionised construction workers anarchists, anti-racist students and other anti-fascists in participating in this action and to have actively built the mobilisation. In the days leading up to May 2, we mass distributed a leaflet in working class suburbs in Brisbane calling for trade unionists and other anti-racists to join the action.
What the union participation in the May 2 anti-fascist mobilisation was based on is the understanding that the violent racism of the likes of the AFP – incited by the “civilized” racism of the Abbott conservative government – is a threat to the unity of the working class, unity without which the workers movement cannot win strike struggles to defend their rights. In joining the May 2 anti-racist mobilisation, these trade unionists proved that they are at the forefront of the workers movement and are workers who really understand the often chanted slogan at union rallies: The Workers United Will Never Be Defeated! Unfortunately, there is also another, quite opposite, consciousness that is deeply prevalent in the workers movement – a nationalist consciousness promoted by the pro-ALP union tops that portrays overseas workers as rivals for jobs with Australian workers. This Laborite ideology see the union movement using divisive slogans such as “Stop exporting Aussie jobs overseas” and “Keep out overseas guest workers.” Such slogans go against the principles of unionism and workers unity as they pit local workers against their overseas sisters and brothers. It sees one group of workers – local workers – looking to cut a separate deal with the bosses at the expense of another group of workers – overseas workers. Not only is this divisive but it harms the struggle for workers’ rights. Politically savvy trade unionists know that even if the boss at a particular workplace is using the employment of one group of especially exploited workers (like young workers) to try and undercut working conditions, it is always destructive to workers’ rights for the remaining workers to demand that the business owner favour them at the expense of the others. This only allows the boss to divide workers and distract them from the boss’ sole responsibility for the workers’ grievances.
2 May 2014, Brisbane: Neo-Nazi filth (wearing a black shirt and leather jacket) cower in the face of the mass trade union centred mobilisation. The workers when truly united – and conscious of their collective class interests – can never be defeated.
Instead, politically advanced trade unionists know that what is needed is for all workers to unite against the capitalist boss and to demand that the conditions of the most exploited workers be brought up to that of other workers. Only this will, ultimately, stop the corporate bigwigs from undercutting workers’ rights. This applies both at a national and international level. The union movement must unite local, 457 visa and international workers to stand up together against the capitalist exploiter both here and abroad while simultaneously demanding that the conditions of 457 Visa workers and the employees of Australian- owned corporations operating overseas be brought up to that of local workers.
May 2, Brisbane: Staunch trade unionists teach one of the violent fascists a lesson in workers’ power. The organised working class has the power and interest to decisively crush the fascists.
The construction workers’ role in the May 2 victory pushes against the stream of divisive nationalism that the pro-ALP, current leaders of the working class pump into the workers movement. By enhancing workers’ unity across racial lines and by also giving workers greater confidence in their own power as a class, the May 2 anti-fascist action increases the workers movement’s ability to stand up to the myriad attacks it is facing today – from the anti-working class, anti-poor Abbott/Hockey budget to the developing ruling class offensive against the union movement. The fact that the capitalist rulers’ anti-union campaign is targeted in the first place against construction workers’ unions makes the May 2 anti-racist mobilisation all the more important.
The working class needs to build a new leadership that can clarify and spread the lessons of struggles such as the 2 May 2014 Brisbane mobilisation to the entire union movement. Such a workers’ party would use powerful internationalist- minded struggles such as the May 2 action to help drive out the influence of divisive Laborite nationalism from the workers movement. This would, in turn, make the working class more politically prepared to mobilise against the fascist threat. As the 2 May 2014 events in Brisbane showed, it is the organised working class that must spearhead the fight against fascism and racism. The workers movement will be at the forefront of this fight because the interests of their class demands that it be so, because their power to shut down production gives them the ability to deter police attacks against anti-racist mobilisations and because their collective toil at common workplaces gives workers a unique ability to organise and to act in disciplined unanimity. Most crucially, it will be when the working class lead all of the poor and oppressed in sweeping away the rotting capitalist system that fascism and racism can be swept away from this planet for good.
Below is reprinted the leaflet that Trotskyist Platform distributed to help build the May 2 anti-fascist mobilisation in Brisbane. The leaflet was titled, “Crush the Violent Racists’ May 2 Mobilisation! Unions United with Aboriginal People, “Ethnic” Minorities & Leftists Can Do the Job! Drive Out the Fascists from Brisbane to Athens!” The center and front of the scalp thus faces baldness, however, due viagra cheapest online to unknown reasons, in most men the hair at the back of the scalp and prevent severe hair fall. Echt and his team at the Prostate Seed Institute offer the extremely refined methods of radiation therapy available in the United States, levitra generika 40mg equal to that found in major medical centers and academic settings. Erectile dysfunction is a problem where a man uses the flowing by abstinence then cycled 20mg levitra canada again they reach their goal. Origin and implementation: This cordyceps sinensis fungus was accidently discovered by some 5mg cialis online of the yak gazers in the Tibetan region. Vietnamese student Minh Duong was savagely bashed in Melbourne by three Neo-Nazi skinheads in June 2012. The racist scum kicked and punched him 70 times, stabbed him, smashed a brick over his head so hard that it broke in two and then left him for dead. Fascists cannot be debated but must be crushed by mass action.
Some people may have believed that the Second World War definitively put an end to the evil of fascism. Yet on 2nd May in the heart of Brisbane, a neo-Nazi group, the Australia First Party, will hold a march in support of its larger Greek fascist counterpart, the Golden Dawn. The Australia First Party was among the extremist forces that incited the December 2005 white supremacist rampage at Cronulla Beach against Arab, Asian and other non-white people. Just three months ago, the Brisbane Australia First Party attacked the January 26 Invasion Day Aboriginal rights march. Members of their Golden Dawn fascist colleagues in Greece are notorious for murderous attacks on dark-skinned people, leftists and anti-racists including the January 2013 stabbing murder of Pakistani migrant Shehzad Luqman and the September 2013 murder of anti-racist rapper Pavlos Pyssas. That the fascists plan to openly parade on 2nd May is an immediate physical threat to Aboriginal people and to the Asian, African, Middle Eastern and Islander communities of Brisbane. It will embolden every violent racist out there to commit yet more attacks – like the Neo-Nazi skinheads who in June 2012 savagely bashed Vietnamese student Minh Duong on the streets of Melbourne and left him for dead. The 2nd May fascist mobilisation is also a direct threat to the multiracial working class of Brisbane. Like Hitler and Mussolini, if fascists took power again they would exterminate real trade unions and all independent working class and leftist organisations. Yet long before they get anywhere near government, the fascists’ racist violence is already threatening the workers’ movement. For their actions sow the division, distrust and fear that is so harmful to efforts to build workers’ unity – the unity that is so crucial for workers’ rights struggles to succeed. The union movement must draw around itself all the intended victims of the fascists in a mass action to stop the 2nd May neo-Nazi threat. Indeed, a counter-mobilisation to the fascist march has been called and already hundreds have committed to this urgent action. Anti-fascists will gather at 11am, outside the Greek Club at 29 Edmondstone Street, South Brisbane. We call on trade unionists, Aboriginal people, Asian, African, Middle Eastern and Islander communities, Muslims, Jews, gays and lesbians and all anti-racists to be there on 2nd May to stop the fascist parade and drive the violent racists off the streets.
What is needed on 2nd May is not simply a protest against the Australia First Party and Golden Dawn but an action so overwhelming and determined that it will physically stop the fascist parade in its tracks and decisively disperse the violent racists. Fascism must be stopped! Fascism cannot be defeated by arguments or by debates or by ideological struggle alone. Because fascism uses physical force to “win” its battles, it must be confronted and overcome by a physical force that is far greater than itself. This force is the organised working class. In fact, it is the working class that has the most to lose if ultra-racist ideas take hold. In the long run, the working class is unable to win any gains for itself while elements of racism persist. Yet racism and fascism can be quashed if workers are mobilised in a disciplined and united manner.
Racism in Australia is undoubtedly being fed by the major parties in government, especially via their inhumane actions towards refugees and asylum seekers. Capitalist governments are acutely aware of their need to divide workers during a protracted recession. Such extreme racism from capitalist governments, however, can only proceed in the absence of class struggle and, particularly, in the absence of struggle led by the Trade Unions. If the working class does not mobilise to challenge mass unemployment and social decay – and the faltering capitalist system that causes it – then masses of disillusioned unemployed and semi-employed people and struggling sections of the middle class can fall prey to fascist movements of the ilk of Golden Dawn in Greece today.
The grotesque anti-human actions taken by fascist groups such as Golden Dawn inevitably lead to some with genuine intentions to call for Golden Dawn and/or Australia First to be banned, to have them made illegal. We are certainly not going to get in the way of the mainstream capitalists reining in their fascists guard dogs for a while. However, we absolutely should not be making any appeals to mainstream capitalists to act against their fascist counterparts. For the masses mustn’t be lulled into a false sense of security and fall into the fatal illusion that the capitalists can be trusted to keep their vicious fascist killers caged.
In reality, they are just throwing them pieces of meat, making sure that they are ready to be truly unleashed when the need arises. If we in the workers and left movement are not ready for this and have failed to put down the fascist animals ourselves – instead, leaving these dogs’ leashes in the hands of the capitalists – then, ultimately, we may well get devoured! The Australian capitalist state is itself founded on racism. It is based on the continued dispossession of the Aboriginal people of this land and racist oppression of other communities as well, most specifically seen in the barbaric treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. The capitalist state in Greece certainly has jailed some Golden Dawn leaders – but Golden Dawn continues to flourish there virtually unchecked. In fact, there are many cases where Greek police have literally stood by while Golden Dawn have beaten and assaulted immigrants and anti-fascist activists. Indeed, it is claimed that up to 60% of the police in Greece politically support Golden Dawn!
Make no mistake about it, the Australian capitalist state is no less racist and no less anti-worker than the Greek capitalist state. Here, the Australian government is leading an unremitting drive against the Union movement, in the form of Royal Commissions and page after page of anti-Union legislation stripping away workers’ rights won through over a century of struggle. In Queensland workers and community groups have lost the right to association with any group being able to be declared “illegal” at the stroke of a pen. The capitalist state is not neutral, it will not stop the fascists and does, in fact, often enough aid them. For example, in January 2011, when anti-racists mobilised to protest against a racist mural in the Sydney suburb of Newtown, the police attacked and arrested eight anti-fascist activists. Moreover, it is the capitalist state itself which creates fascism via the corporate media and corporate politicians whipping up racist hysteria in order to distract workers from their real enemies such as the banks and mining magnates who cream obscene wealth from the labour of toiling people.
Brisbane, 2 May 2014: Trade unionists and anti-racists pursue the Australia First Party and Golden Dawn fascists.
What we need to defeat the fascists is united front action. That means the broadest unity in action of the different tendencies in the workers movement and in the Left – all of whom are targets of the fascists – while at the same time each group completely maintains its own banner and program. Though we in Trotskyist Platform have sharply differing political views to the anarchist who runs the Slackbastard blog and who has initiated the 2nd May counter- mobilisation to the fascist threat, we applaud the initiative he has taken and are thus actively building this action. Strong united front action can indeed stop the 2nd May fascist provocation.
If such a victory is the result of a union-centred action it will strengthen the unity of the working class, increase its confidence in its own power and encourage it to rely only on the methods of mass struggle rather than the dead end of parliament and the courts. In short, a victorious workers-centred mobilisation to crush the fascist parade on 2nd May will give a badly needed shot in the arm to the struggle to smash the capitalists’ escalating attacks on workers’ rights and their assault upon basic social services and the poor. Unite all the working class, poor, Aboriginal and “ethnic” forces in the struggle against fascism! Crush the fascists’ May 2 mobilisation!
Staunch, multiracial construction union workers gather at the anti-fascist counter rally in Brisbane on May 2. Sharing the conviction, expressed in a clear way in the Trotskyist Platform banner, that the organised working class in alliance with Aboriginal people, “ethnic” minorities and anti-racists of all colours could put the racist, neo-nazi threat to flight, groups of workers streamed in from all directions to join and, in effect, take command of the anti-fascist action. This points the way to the future and demonstrates how courageous workers can refuse to be bullied into inaction by the federal government’s lousy current anti-union drive.
A home in Kfar Derian in Syria’s western Aleppo province destroyed by U.S.-led air strikes. The imperialist bombing has already killed dozens of Syrians.
DEFEND SYRIA AGAINST WESTERN IMPERIALISM & ITS “REBEL” PROXIES!
WORKERS CAUGHT IN THE CROSS HAIRS OF CAPITALISM: DON’T LET THE JINGOISTIC BEAT OF WAR DIVERT YOU FROM JUSTIFIED ANGER AT THE EXPLOITERS & THEIR BUDGET
ABBOTT/SHORTEN’S WAR AND “ANTI-TERROR LAWS” ARE BAD FOR WORKING CLASS PEOPLE
October 1 – The most fearsome force on the planet is once again slamming missiles into the Middle East. Over the last few weeks the U.S. imperialists have bombed Iraq. Last week, they and their Saudi, Qatari and other lapdogs started bombing inside Syria. That was done without Syrian government consent – a violation of Syria’s sovereignty. Shortly after this attack, the Syrian Foreign Minister asserted that: “We have already stated that we consider any violation of Syria’s sovereignty as aggression.”
Australia’s capitalist rulers could not wait to get involved. The Liberal government– with 100% support from the ALP “opposition” – deployed troops to the Middle East to join the U.S. before any other country. These forces include 200 special forces troops as well as a RAAF group with eight Super Hornet fighter- bombers. Today, Abbott announced that these forces would start operations. Continue reading U.S./AUSTRALIA: HANDS OFF IRAQ AND SYRIA!→
Protestors chant “Drive out the fascist filth!” at the successful 2nd May 2014 antifascist counter protest in Brisbane which brought construction workers from the CFMEU, BLF and ETU unions together with anarchists, Trotskyist Platform supporters, members of the Socialist Alliance and other anti-racists.
Build Mass Mobilisations of Trade Union Contingents, Muslims, Aboriginal People, “Ethnic” Communities and All Anti-Racists to Shutdown the “Reclaim Australia” Race Hate Rallies
28 March 2015 – That man really is a disgusting, racist coward – the one who shoved and kicked a Muslim woman last Monday night on a train between Sydney’s Central and Town Hall stations. His attack began after he looked at the woman’s Islamic head dress and yelled: “you people get in our way.” Meanwhile, last month, a man of Anglo-Celtic appearance, Ben Davidson, walked into a Hungry Jacks in Adelaide’s Rundle Mall and racially abused coloured workers at the store. The redneck customer insisted that, “I want it [his food] made by a white person” and then, after the workers rightly refused to heed, launched a threatening tirade against the workers and against Asians and Africans in general.
The really frightening thing is that these incidents are but a tiny proportion of the hundreds of racist attacks reported in Australia over the last few months. And then there are the hundreds of thousands of similar attacks that go unreported! The ruling class establishment’s racist fear mongering against Muslims, its continued subjugation of Aboriginal people and the hysteria it breeds over refugees have all served to encourage racist sentiments. Furthermore, there are far-right groups that are not only fanning the flames of racism but are consciously seeking to recruit for the purpose of racist violence. These fascist groups, including the Party For Freedom and the Australia Defence League, are behind racist so-called “Reclaim Australia” rallies that will be held across Australia on April 4. The rallies aim to incite hatred and violence against Muslims by stoking the hysterical notion that Australia is about to be brought under Islamic Sharia law and by stirring up a storm in a stupid, racist tea cup about the availability of Halal meat. The white supremacists behind these proposed hate parades have tried to appeal to people outside their right-wing extremist circles by claiming that the rally will not be racist, adding that it is fine to oppose Muslims since they are not a race. Perhaps the openly as well as the closet neo-Nazis in the forefront of organising these actions will also quietly claim that Hitler’s horrific holocaust was non-racist too … because Jews aren’t a race either! Continue reading SHUTDOWN THE RECLAIM AUSTRALIA RACE HATE RALLIES→
Racist Scapegoating of Refugees and 457 Visa Workers Is Aimed at Attacking Workers’ Rights
Trade Unions:
Win Freedom for Refugees!
Defend 457 Visa Workers’ Rights!
Perth, July 2012: A setback for workers’ unity and the struggle against racism. Demonstration called by union tops demands Australian workers be put ahead of 457 Visa workers. Although rally leaders stressed they were not against immigration, pitting Australian workers against their overseas counterparts can only fuel hostility to migrants and refugees as well. Yet many left groups, like Socialist Alternative, hailed this divisive July 2012 rally.Asylum seekers in Nauru protest against their cruel detention.March 2012: Police attack and arrest protesters at the Nyoongar Aboriginal Tent Embassy in WA. As refugees, guest workers and non-white migrant communities are attacked by the racist establishment spewing hysterical claims that these immigrants are “flooding the country,” this same ruling class establishment conducts vicious racist oppression of this country’s first peoples. Unlike refugees and other migrants who come to this country merely to seek a better life, the British colonialists that established capitalist Australia came with the purpose of conquering the Aboriginal people and plundering their land. The Australian capitalist rulers’ continued racist assaults on Aboriginal people are, just like their attacks on refugees, aimed at scapegoating vulnerable communities for the poor social services and other hardships caused by their system and additionally at justifying their ongoing conquest of Aboriginal people’s land.Trotskyist Platform banner at Sydney May Day 2013 rally opposes competition for jobs between local and 457 Visa workers and calls for local and 457 Visa workers to unite to take industrial action to force bosses to increase hiring.
July 10: “Nauru Same as Guantanamo!” Referring to the notorious U.S. jail and torture site at Guantanamo Bay, that was the chant of asylum seekers locked up in Nauru during desperate protests earlier this year. Whether imprisoned in Nauru or in the malaria-infested Manus Island camp or on mainland hellholes like Villawood Detention Centre, asylum seekers fleeing to Australia are today being treated every bit as inhumanely by this ALP government as they were by the former Howard government … and then some! Continue reading Win Freedom for Refugees! Defend 457 Visa Workers’ Rights!→
IMMEDIATE ASYLUM IN AUSTRALIA FOR ALL REFUGEE ARRIVALS!
Sydney, 20 July 2013: Protestors in Sydney join others all around the country in the first defiant response to Kevin Rudd’s announcement of his cruel and racist “PNG Solution.”Official figures show that as of 10 June 2013, there are over 1,850 child refugees being detained in Australia.Sydney, 20 July 2013: Protestors in Sydney join others all around the country in the first defiant response to Kevin Rudd’s announcement of his cruel and racist “PNG Solution.”Heroes face court. Some of the, over 150, refugees arrested over the July uprising in Nauru, face court. Nearly all the 540 asylum seekers imprisoned in Nauru took part in the struggle which saw the hellhole detention complex burn to the ground.
It is all about what suits you more order viagra cheap or what you feel more comfortable with. Over the years, man has tried to discover the constituent components that make the body work against cancer cells. buy cialis soft http://deeprootsmag.org/2015/06/11/wondrous-incandescence/ The Psychological causes it involves: Tense and stress due to burden purchase generic levitra of work or family responsibilities Unease with sexual activities unhappiness/apprehension unsettled sexual placement problem past traumatic sexual or physical involvement body image & self-esteem complications The Physical causes it involves: diabetes Cardiac syndrome liver disorders kidney related complication gone through pelvic surgery injury to the pelvic area or trauma neurological problem Causes of certain side-effects due. They help to sort out your mental worries with a more http://deeprootsmag.org/2013/03/13/the-luxurious-perfection-of-chanticleer-35-years-of-clear-singing/ cialis 5 mg positive and stronger manner. The Australian Left and trade union movement must call for the immediate dropping of all charges against the arrested refugees and for the granting of immediate asylum to them and all the other asylum seekers. The Australian workers movement could do well with the injection of people with the audacity and defiance as those who participated in the courageous July 2013 Nauru resistance struggle.
July 20 – Many of us know that Liberal shadow immigration minister Scott Morrison is whipping up hardline racism against refugees. Yesterday, ALP Prime Minister Kevin Rudd totally trumped him. Rudd yesterday announced a scheme that is considerably worse than anything the racist Howard regime ever implemented and more extreme than what Abbott’s right-wingers have up till now been proposing. Under the Rudd plan, all asylum seekers arriving by boat will be processed at the malaria-infested camp on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island or elsewhere in PNG. More significantly, all those granted refugee status will have to settle in PNG. No asylum seeker arriving by boat in Australia will be allowed to settle here. This filthy racist measure would even make a European fascistic group, like the British National Party, proud. Continue reading Smash Rudd’s Racist Scheme!→
Horrific Racist Savagery: After shooting Aboriginal youth Troy Taylor in Sydney’s Kings Cross, police drag and bash the teenager as he bleeds to within an inch of death. -Sunday Telegraph
Oppose Police Terror against Aboriginal People, “Ethnic” Youth And All The Poor!
Don’t Allow Business as Usual – Build Mass Actions Backed by Trade Union Power!
May 11 – Enough is enough! How many more mothers and fathers must grieve over a child killed by Australian police? How many more close friends must agonise over a dear one whose life hangs in the balance because they were attacked by cops? Police are getting ever more vicious. They must be opposed! Recent events have made this all too clear.
On March 21, six Sydney cops viciously killed Brazilian student Roberto Laudisio. After having identified Roberto as having allegedly stolen, of all things, a packet of biscuits, the cops hounded him as if he was the target of a hunting expedition. They smashed him against a shop window, capsicum sprayed him and then, in what resembled an horrific game of cat and mouse, repeatedly tasered him to death. Continue reading Oppose Police Terror against Aboriginal People, “Ethnic” Youth And All The Poor!→
October 16, Parramatta Mall: Tisha’s mother Patricia Hickey speaks at a rally condemning police attacks on her family as participants intently watch a big screen showing video footage of the violent police raid on her daughter’s birthday party. Standing on the Left is Patricia’s cousin, rally chair, Bowie Hickey.
October 16, Parramatta Mall, Sydney: Demonstrators stand in defence of the persecuted Riverstone Hickey family, oppose racist and anti-working class police violence.
Racist Authorities Forced to Back Off a Bit After Outrage in Western Sydney at Persecution of Aboriginal Family
… But Rich People’s Legal System Still Shows its Injustice
Sydney, January 16: Police attack protesters demonstrating against a racist mural in Newtown.
Drive Violent Racists Off The Streets Now!
On January 16 one hundred anti-racists of all colours held a determined anti-fascist rally in Newtown. Starting from the Hub opposite Newtown railway station, demonstrators marched upon a shopfront racist mural on Station Street. The anti-Muslim mural has become a magnet for extreme white supremacists. Continue reading Drive Violent Racists Off The Streets Now!→
February 2008: During last September’s APEC summit, thousands of anti-war youth and leftists participated in demonstrations. The actions centred on opposition to the invasion of Iraq and, to a much lesser extent, Afghanistan. The protesters were a diverse bunch but many saw themselves as anti-capitalist. But while these actions were occurring there were also other rallies taking place in Sydney with a quite different purpose. Right-wing forces had seized on the APEC visits of the leaders of China and Vietnam to hold a series of anti-communist events.
These anti-communist actions mainly consisted of people from the right-wing portions of the Chinese and Vietnamese communities. They held a rally at Sydney’s Belmore Park on September 8 around the same time that the anti-war APEC protest was marching from Town Hall to Hyde Park. The main Vietnamese group involved is called the Vietnamese Community of Australia. This organisation is dominated by those who were directly involved in, or supported, the blood-soaked former U.S. puppet regime of South Vietnam and who fled when the Vietnamese masses liberated the country from imperialism and capitalism. They long to reverse the result of the Vietnamese Revolution and campaign here in Australia to have the defunct flag of the former South Vietnamese regime flown at official events. Similarly, the Chinese groups involved in the anti-communist actions represent the interests of those descendants of the pre-1949 Chinese exploiting classes that still want to be able to rule China like their ancestors once did. Also central to the whole project are privileged elements within the Chinese community that have ties to the big business ruling elites in the likes of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. These forces know that, while Beijing has allowed capitalism to make significant inroads into China, capitalists do not have a free hand there as they are constrained by a workers state that is based on the still existing communal ownership of the majority of China’s key industries, banks, infrastructure and land.
The Chinese political groups that have been orchestrating the local campaign against the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) include “Free China,” Falun Gong and the Federation of Democratic China. These organizations are despised by the pro-Peoples Republic and working class sections of the Australian Chinese community. Particularly hated is the Falun Gong, the most active anti-China, anti-communist force. “All bullshit,” angrily says a Chinese man passing a Falun Gong poster. Indeed! Falun Gong specialize in making lurid claims that their members are being killed in China to “harvest organs.”
So what is this Falun Gong. They pose as a spiritual group that is supposedly being persecuted in the PRC because of its harmless religious views. But they are no more a simple religious group than are the actively right-wing Christian political forces in America. To get a sense of what these and other anti-PRC organizations are about you only need to look at who their backers are in the West. One of the most active supporters of the “rights” of Falun Gong is one David Kilgour. Kilgour is a right-wing ex-member of the Canadian parliament and the former Canadian Secretary for the Asia-Pacific. He is the co-author of the “Report into allegations of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China,” a work which follows in the long tradition of “disinformation” practiced by North American imperialism.
Kilgour was the featured “honourable” speaker at the anti-PRC, anti-Vietnam events that were held in Sydney by Falun Gong and co. during APEC week. Let’s take a look more closely at who this David Kilgour is. One of Kilgour’s main agendas is to promote the imperialist intervention in Afghanistan in the face of widespread opposition to it in Canada. “Canada Should Stay in Afghanistan, Despite the Costs,” was the headline of an article he wrote in the Embassy Magazine (Ottawa) on July 4 last year. He is also a staunch opponent of the rights of gay and lesbian people. Indeed, Kilgour even left the Canadian Liberal party in 2005 because he was too bigoted to stomach a bill that they introduced giving certain rights to same-sex couples. In his explanation “Why I Left the Party” (National Post, 19 April 2005), Kilgour concludes that “the government’s same-sex marriage bill (C-38) represents a clear departure from the Liberal’s successful tradition of moderate liberalism …. “
Kilgour’s political positions bring him into a natural alliance with Falun Gong. From its main book of “law,” Zhuan Falun, onwards Falun Gong too promotes bigoted “values.” The group raves that the Communist Party government in China has been soft on homosexuality. In the Zhuan Falun Fajie (1997), Falun Gong founder and leader Li Hongzhi who the group claims has supernatural powers writes that: “All varieties of messed up and depraved things are taking place in China and abroad: homosexuality, ‘sexual liberation,’ drugs, gangs – everything.” Li Hongzhi also advocates inflammatory ideas on racial “purity.” He describes children born of mixed-race relationships as “defective persons” and when he toured Australia in 1996 he even claimed in a speech in Sydney that heaven itself is segregated: “the yellow people, the white people, and the black people have the corresponding races in heaven. Anybody who does not belong to his race will not be cared for. This is the truth, and it is not that I’m making up something here. What I am telling everyone are heavenly secrets.”
Like Kilgour, Falun Gong also champions the invasion of Afghanistan. For example, when Australian troops departed for Afghanistan’s Oruzgan Province last March, the Falun Gong newspaper Epoch Times reverberated the lying imperialist pronouncements that the military’s role would be to “aid in rebuilding war-torn settlements.” It declared that “Australian soldiers have been part of an international coalition against terrorism in Afghanistan since October 2001” (Epoch Timeswebsite, 6 March 2007, by Epoch Times Sydney staff). Similarly, the editorial line of Falun Gong publications has been to support the U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq. Following the second anniversary of the Iraq takeover, a featured Special to the Epoch Times (website, 4 May 2005) piece titled, “Taking Stock Two Years After Iraq’s Liberation” [!] expressed the hope that the occupation forces “will finally win the central front of the global war against the terrorists.”
Not surprisingly, then, Falun Gong has won solidarity from the U.S. Congress and from none other than the chief imperialist “human rights” advocate himself, George Bush. The group is also known to get support from U.S. intelligence agencies. The organisation is certainly well supplied financially – putting out free newspapers and masses of glossy colour posters, hosting flashy entertainment shows and even sponsoring major Chinese New Year events in Sydney.
It is not, however, simply the ultra-conservative social “values” of Falun Gong that attract support from U.S. and Canadian ruling class politicians. Mostly, it is the fact that the group is politically committed to the destruction of Communist power, in any form, in China. For the purposes of fostering capitalist counterrevolution in the likes of China and Cuba the Western powers utilize a range of forces. Earlier, in order to undermine the USSR and the (deformed) workers states in Eastern Europe, the imperialists had supported a range of “dissident” forces in those countries from monarchists and fascists to liberal “democrats” to bogus “labour rights” advocates and social democrats. Today, Washington and co. do not seriously think that right-wing crackpots like Falun Gong could take power in China. But they do know that the campaigns that this group wages can injure the Peoples Republic. Falun Gong’s incessant slanders against the PRC gives those Western middle class elements looking for a rationale to hate Red China some “valid reasons” for doing so and furthermore deters would-be leftist supporters of the PRC from following through on their political impulses.
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The U.S. and its allies hope that the weight of anti-PRC sentiments in the West will have a bearing on the outcome of factional struggles within China itself where the situation is precariously balanced between forces seeking to maintain the PRC’s socialist-type foundations and elements pushing towards capitalist restoration. Backing anti-Red China groups is, of course, just one aspect of a multi-faceted strategy that the imperialist ruling classes are using to try and weaken Chinese pro-socialist forces. So what are some of the other aspects? Well, for one there is the constant demand by U.S. government officials and visiting businessmen for the PRC to “liberalise” and privatise its majority state-owned banking system. Then there is the behind-the-scenes support that Western capitalist politicians are giving to campaigns to boycott the Beijing Olympics. And then there are the brazen efforts (mostly unsuccessful) by Western corporate organisations like the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai to scuttle China’s new pro-worker labour law, a law that cracks down on abuses of workers rights, especially in the private sector.Don’t Buy the Bush/Cheney/Falun Gong Right-Wing Agenda Against Red China!It is hardly just U.S. and Canadian conservative forces that are supporting the anti-communist crusade against the PRC. Australian politicians like former Victorian Liberal Party parliamentarian Victor Perton have also been very active in supporting the likes of Falun Gong. But it is not just right-wing politicians who are involved. Some Labor Party figures, the Democrats and the Greens Kerry Nettle and Bob Brown are also hard-core supporters of anti-communist Chinese exile groups. The China policies of the latter group of politicians reflect the prejudices of pseudo-progressive layers of the Aussie middle class. They are comfortable layers living in a feel-good environment where people are at pains to flaunt how broad-minded they are but in practice are reluctant to challenge the essential features of the current Australian political system. The people in these social strata hate China because they hate to acknowledge that workers states actually exist. No, to accept that would rob these “socially conscious” people of their favourite excuse for refusing to break out of their cosy political habitat: that “there is no other choice” but to “very grudgingly” accept Australia’s capitalist order.
Regrettably, some of the far-left here have also lined up behind the anti-PRC, anti-communist agenda. The Solidarity and Socialist Alternative groups in particular were supportive of the anti-PRC campaigns during APEC and tried to meld them in with the main, leftist anti-war APEC protests. Why did they do this? Why would leftists who have been building demonstrations against the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions and who are actively against homophobia and racism end up being staunch defenders of a group like Falun Gong that supports the imperialist occupations, that equates homosexuality with murder and whose leader advocates racial segregation? Of course, these anti-PRC leftists would claim that they are merely standing up for “human rights” and “democracy.” But these same socialist groups correctly expose imperialist-backed “pro-democracy” forces in Iraq and Afghanistan so why line up behind such forces in China – especially when these Chinese pro-Western organisations have an agenda so heavily focussed against communism? The unfortunate answer to that question is that “socialist” hostility to the PRC is a form of capitulation to middle class, small-l liberal views. You see, socialists who are overly worried that their less radical friends and potential recruits think them too left-wing can say: “Look, we are not only against capitalism here but we are against the Communist Party dictatorship in China too.”
The all too convenient “theoretical justification” that some leftists use for an anti-PRC stance is that China is simply “another capitalist country.” One of the harmful effects of this false analysis is that it paints a very demoralising picture of the world to anti-capitalist activists. It makes out that in no country in the world have the toiling masses been sufficiently effective to retain state power. All the leaders of the APEC countries are the same, capitalism is all powerful. Now, if that were actually true then of course we would have to face that reality squarely. But why write off 20% of the world’s population (ie. in China) as being under capitalist rule when the imperialists themselves realise that this is a major part of the world that they do not actually have under their thumb? Indeed, the fact that China is not part of the imperialist fold gives the oppressed of the world a breathing space in which to organise resistance. It is, for example, a key reason why, to date, Iran has not been massively bombed. For in contrast to other powers like Britain, Germany, Japan and Canada, China has to some degree obstructed the U.S. and Israel’s war drive against Iran. Indeed, one of the demands that U.S. officials were making around APEC is that the PRC be more aggressive towards Iran (Associated Press, 6 September 2007.)
In fact, if you look behind all the diplomatic niceties of the APEC conference, you will see that the events actually showed that APEC is not simply one seamless bloc of 21 leaders with all the same agenda. Right on the very Saturday morning of APEC, Bush, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and former Australian PM John Howard made a swipe against China. The three government heads held a meeting to strengthen their countries’ trilateral security arrangements – arrangements that are widely known to be directed against the PRC and North Korea. The Australian government’s participation in that provocative trilateral summit showed its true agenda with respect to the PRC. Aware that China’s massive mineral purchases are holding up this country’s economy, Canberra is careful to maintain the appearance of friendly relations with Beijing. But the Murdoch media and some members of the Australian foreign policy bureaucracy have been pushing to adopt a more openly hard line against the PRC. So has the U.S. government. When Dick Cheney visited Australia last February his main aim was not only to reconfirm Howard’s support for the Iraq occupation but to also strengthen U.S./Australia cooperation against China. Washington’s policy continued through APEC as well. On the Wednesday before APEC, Bush arrogantly berated the PRC over its financial policy and over “dissidents.” Washington was determined to pursue this anti-PRC agenda no matter how much the Chinese leadership adhered to its (ultimately futile) policy of building friendly relations with capitalist governments. Bush continued with his anti-PRC attacks on the Thursday before APEC when he held a Sydney meeting with Chinese leader Hu Jintao. The Commander in Chief of the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqis – and of the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp – criticised the PRC over “human rights.”
Those who oppose imperialism ought to stand against the imperialists’ hounding of the Chinese workers state – no matter how far China may currently be from a “model socialist” society. Fortunately, there are already sections of the Australian left that do in some way stand against the anti-PRC, anti-communist crusade. For example, in an article written soon after APEC by its General Secretary, Peter Symon, the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) correctly stated that:
“Many [Australian people] have been brought up on the White Australia policy and respond to the anti-China media campaigns and the policy of excluding refugees which clearly has a racist basis. Some of the left echo the media hype and keep on stoking the campaigns of Tibetan and Taiwanese independence. These are already lost causes and have no basis in historical fact. Then there is the religious Falun Gong campaign which is quite active in Australia. It is promoted by the political right-wing in a number of countries and is nothing more than an anti-communist campaign parading in a religious garb. There are quite a few on the left who are also caught up in the media campaign which asserts that China is ‘going back to capitalism’. They don’t even ask themselves the question: why should the media object to China going back to capitalism if that were really true?”
Guardian, 12 September 2007
At the big September 8 anti-war APEC rally itself, Trotskyist Platform (TP) carried a placard that appealed: “Fellow Anti-Capitalists: Do NOT buy the Dick Cheney/Bush/Falun Gong Right-Wing Agenda Against Red China – Defend the World’s Largest Workers State!”
Of course, among the groups that do oppose anti-communist attacks against the PRC there are many differences in viewpoint. For example, TP does not subscribe to the CPA’s beliefs that it is possible that the foreign policies in the world could ever be guided by the classless doctrine of “non-interference in the affairs of another country.” The reality in this globalised world is that all countries necessarily affect what happens in other countries. The actual question is not interference or “non interference” but this: will the imperialist countries be able to get away with subjugating poorer countries and fostering counterrevolution in the non-capitalist states or will it be the workers movements of different countries and the workers states that are able to gain the supremacy in the global class struggle by effectively giving solidarity to the toilers’ struggles in other lands. In other words, the question is not “interference” or “non-interference” but capitalism or socialism.
Nevertheless, despite these different stances amongst the communist left, there exists a basis here for building a united-front campaign to solidarise with China against capitalist threats. Such a campaign should include the CPA, Trotskyist Platform and pro-communist immigrant groups and would seek to broaden out to win a section of the Cuba solidarity movement as well as Marxist activists within the union movement. To build the movement will take much patient and persistent work. But the need for such a campaign is critical. As a TP leaflet distributed at the APEC anti-war protests stressed: “We must never allow the allies of imperialism to destroy the anti-capitalist revolutions in China and Vietnam! ♦
