SHUT DOWN the JULY 19th RACE-HATE RALLY!

For a UNITED MASS ACTION by the WORKERS MOVEMENT, COLOURED PEOPLE & LEFTISTS to CRUSH the VIOLENT FAR RIGHT RACISTS

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July 12 – Four weeks ago in the U.S.A, a young white supremacist murdered nine black people when he opened fire on worshippers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Reloading his gun five times as he murdered the black church goers, the white supremacist chillingly yelled out, “you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” This racist terrorist had been emboldened by the activities of eighteen known fascist groups operating in South Carolina, including two chapters of the Ku Klux Klan and several openly Neo-Nazi groups.

Unofficial attack dogs of official racism and xenophobia, such violent racist groups are active here in Australia too. Over the last year, these Neo-Nazi forces have grown, egged on by the bi-partisan fear campaign being whipped up against Muslims, the thinly veiled racism of a new set of draconian “anti-terror” laws and, perhaps most tellingly of all, the recent formation of the paramilitary-style Australian Border Force: a new set of black shirted jackboots whose job, as we can surmise from its website, is to patrol and enforce the continuum of the Australian border, both external and internal, in order to produce a “cohesive society” where, presumably, elements that don’t fit into their skewed, racially-charged vision (like asylum seekers and persecuted young Muslim Australians that end up angrily incoherent) are summarily shipped out.

Not surprisingly then, the growth of fascist sentiments has been accompanied by a rising tide of violent, racist assaults. In one of several reported attacks last month – each of which represents hundreds that go unreported – a 21 year-old Middle Eastern refugee was left with serious facial injuries after being attacked outside a youth centre in Wollongong on June After first being racially abused, he was then bashed by two youths who pushed him onto a motorbike. The owner of the motorbike then arrived and joined in the heinous racist assault – punching and kicking the victim. Just four days later on June 8, a 15 year old girl of Asian origin was racially abused and then bashed by an adult while on a train approaching Lidcombe station. The white attacker punched the girl several times in the face and kneed her in the body. Meanwhile, at a park in Lidcombe, two Sudanese boys going to Under 8’s soccer training were disgustingly told by an adult racist bully to get out of the park because they were not welcome there.

Capitalist rule in Australia, a brutal regime constituted by two acts of both explicit and implicit violence – the ongoing genocide of this continent’s first peoples and the White Australia Policy exclusion of neighbouring Asia-Pacific peoples – has created such a racist society. In fact, there are countless garden variety racists who could on a bad day physically lash out against a person with dark or so-called coloured skin. Yet it is also a fact that, especially in country towns, Neo-Nazi and KKK-imitating rednecks have attacked and in several cases actually murdered Aboriginal people –as in Townsville where, in 2003, a known white supremacist murdered a 15 year-old boy, Errol Wyles, by deliberately reversing his car to run over the Aboriginal youth twice. This chilling crime – and the deliberate hit and run murder of Yasman Rae Sturt eight months earlier by a white driver who dragged her with his car 100 metres – are part of a series of horrific hit and run attacks on Aboriginal people and Islanders by racist rednecks in Townsville. Meanwhile, in big cities, fascist gangs going on “Asian-bash,”“Indian-bash” and “African-bash” rampages have committed many barbaric racist attacks. Just as dangerous as the threat of such direct assaults and murders by the fascists are the many more, often unreported, attacks that their violent hate speech incites. These far-right racist extremists need to be crushed! By crushing the organised, ultra-racists we will also be sending a message to the more numerous garden variety bigots that acts of racist violence and abuse from them will not be tolerated!

On July 19, various far-right groups calling themselves “Reclaim Australia” will be holding a rally in the heart of Sydney. The organisers, quite absurdly and with seemingly no sense of irony about the fact that they are standing on stolen Aboriginal land, say that they want to “Reclaim Australia” from Muslims and multi- culturalism. Their slogans will, sadly and inevitably, lead to yet more attacks on Muslims. However, these far right 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. Proud 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 the 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 right off the streets of Brisbane.

CRUSHING VIOLENT RACIST SCUM IS PART OF BUILDING THE WORKING CLASS UNITY THAT WE SO BADLY NEED

Every day greedy bosses are threatening workers’ hard won rights. To help them do this, corporate thugs and their lapdogs in the governments of Australia are attacking our unions. Meanwhile, Liberal and ALP federal and state regimes alike are slashing public sector jobs and undermining the services that working class people need the most like public housing and public hospitals. To defeat this many-sided offensive, we need our side to be absolutely united across different trades, ethnicities and nations. Indeed, it is only through such unity that any rights have ever been won at all.

The capitalist bosses and their politician mates know this well. That’s why they have been deliberately whipping up racism to divide the ranks of the working class and divert their fire. They have been demonising refugees and Muslims and ever more viciously vilifying and locking up Aboriginal people. Serving the exploiting class in this agenda are several extreme right-wing groups. These outfits, including open Neo-Nazis, don’t simply want to spread prejudice. They actually want to incite and unleash violent racist attacks.

The rabid racist groups are the most extreme enforcers of the current capitalist order. That is hardly surprising. Any real unionist knows that the most racist person in the workplace is almost always anti-union and betrays fellow workers. The cowardly racist is often seen attacking and picking on minorities to pit worker against worker and siding with the boss when workers voice concerns in the workplace. In the same way, far right groups fanatically hate not only non-white people but also leftists who they understand are the most avowed supporters of that force which ultimately stands in the way of their fascist agenda: workers’ unity and the trade unions. The extreme right wingers follow in the footsteps of the Old Guard and New Guard organisations that had big numbers in the 1920s and 1930s and would go around attacking strike pickets and trade union activists.

It is true that the fascists, right now, do not have the strength that they had in the days of the Old and New Guards. However, their Neo-Nazi counterparts in Europe have been breeding at an alarming rate feeding off the huge unemployment and insecurity caused by decaying capitalism and its severe economic crises. Right now, white supremacist outfits are succeeding in whipping up more and more violent racist attacks on coloured individuals. Working class people cannot allow non-white members of our class to be terrorised in this way. We cannot afford to allow people from a non-white background to be so intimidated that they will be unable to undertake the crucial role that they have often played in the struggle for all of our collective rights. We cannot and will not allow Hitler-loving lunatics to divide our side with racism.

However, to date and albeit with a very small number of important exceptions, the leadership of the union movement has not seriously mobilised the workers movement to stop the fascists. This is despite union activists being amongst those at the top of the fascists’ hit list (need anyone be reminded of Anders Breivik’s murder of 69 members of the Norwegian Labour party’s youth league to demonstrate that it is not only the far left that is the political target of these insanely violent neo-Nazis). Instead, the pro-ALP union bureaucrats hope that the state will one day intervene to stop the fascists. However, the key state organs – the police and courts – have inevitably sided with the violent racists during stand-offs with anti-racist demonstrators. In Melbourne on May 31, police not only allowed the violent racist group, United Patriots Front, to march upon (in the end rather unsuccessfully) an anti-racist rally gathered outside Richmond Town Hall but actually escorted the Neo-Nazi-led outfit as they moved threateningly towards the anti-racists. In contrast, when three dozen anti-fascists attempted to march towards a rally of the extreme white supremacist Australia Defence League in July 2011, police would not allow any anti-racists to get within 100 metres of the sinister racist provocation. Meanwhile, after Neo-Nazi Scott Hasenkamp murdered Aboriginal youth Errol Wyles in Townsville in 2003, the courts sentenced the Neo-Nazi murderer to just a 15 month sentence, of which he only served two months in prison! The same pattern exists in all other capitalist countries where significant fascist forces exist. In Greece, it has emerged that members of the armed forces have been training hit squads of the Neo-Nazi, Golden Dawn party. Media reports in Greece have further exposed that the head of the police’s special forces, internal security, organised crimes, firearms and explosives divisions have been assisting Golden Dawn’s criminal activities.

The fact is that the police and judiciary in capitalist countries have far, far more in common with the racist and anti-union, far-right than they do with anti-fascists. Here in Australia, police have perpetrated the outright racist murder or manslaughter of countless young Aboriginal people in custody over the last three decades including Eddie Murray, TJ Hickey, Mulrunji Doomdagee, Kwementyaye Briscoe and Julieka Dhu. The legal system for its part – from coroner’s inquests to royal commissions – has whitewashed each of these racist crimes. The police – backed by the courts – are also notorious for harassing Asian, African, Islander and Middle Eastern youth living in working class suburbs. And the way that police have assaulted union picket lines and the manner in which the ongoing Royal Commission into Unions is squarely attacking the entire union movement is what the far right thugs are inspired by and seek to emulate in a more extreme fashion. In a capitalist society like Australia, the state and its key organs have been built up to maintain the rule of exploitation of the capitalist class over the working class – and that includes enforcing the ruling class’ racist divide-and-conquer tactics. Thus the police, courts, army and prisons serve the same exploiting class as the thugs of the far-right extremist movement. Although the bulk of the Australian ruling class don’t want to right now openly identify with such extremists, the capitalist rulers know that the far right outfits are on their side. The oh-so-civilised corporate elite wash their hands of the crude race-hatred of the far-right extremists as they know that openly associating with it is harmful to their lucrative trade and investments in Asia. Yet secretly they grin at how the far-right bigotry is helping to divide the working class and divert mass opposition away from themselves. Meanwhile, the more far-sighted of the capitalists and their political think-tanks cannot help but realise that the iron fist of the fascists are a vital force to have in reserve should the big con of parliamentary democracy lose its power to keep tricking the masses into submission. That is why so few politicians from any of the pro-capitalist parliamentary parties have been prepared to make even strong verbal denunciations of the “Reclaim Australia” racist movement.

The far-right extremists can only be effectively combated through the united mass action on the streets of all the intended victims of the fascists. Such an anti-fascist movement must be spearheaded by the organised working class – the class with both the interest and the power to stamp out the Neo-Nazi threat. When an anti-fascist mobilisation is, as is frequently the case, confronted by a large police presence defending the violent racists, it is the participation in the anti-racist movement of union contingents that can compel the police to stand aside because the trade union presence signals the threat of retaliatory industrial action should the police attack the anti-Nazi action.

PREPARING ANTI-RACISTS FOR A COUNTER-DEMONSTRATION AGAINST VIOLENT FAR-RIGHT THUGS

There has been much debate amongst leftists and other anti-racists about how best to counter the upcoming far-right mobilisation. Various small-l liberals, including many supporters of the Greens as well as the left groups Solidarity, and Socialist Alliance want a rally that protests against the views of “Reclaim Australia” but rules out, beforehand, any action to shut down the white supremacist mobilisation even if the forces exist to do so. This strategy is wrong. Even if there is a large anti-racist rally that demonstrates widespread community opposition to the “Reclaim Australia” movement, if an attempt to stop the fascists is ruled out then the white supremacists will still be emboldened since, at the end of the day, they will have gotten away with openly fomenting their extreme race hate right in the middle of inner-city Sydney, in the case of the upcoming July 19 rally. Hardened, but presently unorganised, racists watching at home will then in turn be radicalised and encouraged to become active fascists (as some were after the first Sydney “Reclaim” rally on April 4 was not shut down). Hearing media excerpts from nice speeches by participants at the anti-racist rally will make little difference to them – they have been incubated against left wing rhetoric by the venom of the racist ravings of Alan Jones-style shock jocks as well as the barely disguised prejudice of mainstream politicians. Instead, seeing the active white supremacists get away with controlling space in an area in the very heart of Sydney – effectively making a big section of Martin Place a no-go area for coloured people, just like the Cronulla Beach riots sadly did to Cronulla Beach – this is exactly what will embolden them to commit acts of racist violence. To tell anti-racist activists to confine themselves to explaining what is wrong with racism in the face of a movement that perpetrates and incites violence is to disarm and damage the anti-racist struggle. It is following the road of the leaders of the German Social Democratic Party – then and now the biggest party within the German workers movement – who in the lead up to Hitler’s seizure of power were saying that so long as the Nazis do not quit the ground of legality, there is no room for an on the streets struggle to physically stop them!

Unfortunately, this stance is also held by the party which in this country covets the proud title of Lenin and Trotsky’s party which not only led the world’s first successful socialist revolution in Russia in 1917 but whose USSR workers state that they led the creation of inspired the Soviet people to heroically and with great suffering withstand and ultimately crush the greatest fascist behemoth ever arrayed against the multiracial working people of the world, that is the enormous Nazi army led by the genocidal maniac Adolf Hitler in World War 2. We are, of course, referring to the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) which, in their article “Lessons from Reclaim Australia protests” by Peter Mac in their newspaper The Guardian, decry the April 4 counter-action in Melbourne for being “violent” and denounce statements by an unnamed group (who happen, incidentally, to be us in Trotskyist Platform) that `the neo-Nazis … must be swept off the streets’ and that we must `drive the violent white supremacists out of stolen Aboriginal land!’ The CPA stance is representative of that of the whole liberal-pacifist wing of the anti-fascist movement. For the CPA and the small-l liberals the model anti-fascist strategy is exemplified by the pacifist April 4 anti-”Reclaim” rally in Adelaide led by the good pastor, Brad Chilcott, and his “non-violent `subtle and symbolic’ strategies”, some of which, somewhat tellingly, he “had to abandon … because of public safety concerns“ (The Guardian, 22 April 2015) It is true that the counter-demonstrators in Adelaide were indeed “peaceful” even though it has to be noted that this Chilcott-led rally was the weakest of all the anti-Reclaim events in the capital cities on April 4 with the anti- racists outnumbered ten to one by the far-right racists. However, that does not mean there was no violence. Far from it! What the CPA did not report (and to be fair they were likely not aware of) is that following the Adelaide April 4 “Reclaim” action, some of the invigorated fascists followed a group of indigenous activists participating in the counter-protest back to their home and assaulted them. Meanwhile, the emboldening of the “Reclaim” participants – and the bigots “watching at home” – by the fact that they were able to get away with openly spewing extreme racist filth in the heart of Adelaide can only lead to more racist violence on the streets.

Fortunately, at planning meetings for the Sydney July 19 anti-racist rally those promoting the pacifist line have been outvoted by others – including Socialist Alternative supporters and anarchists – who rightly argued that the action should seek to undermine the hardcore racist demonstration by taking over the space that the white supremacists plan to gather at prior to the scheduled start of their “Reclaim” rally. However, the official call for the anti-racist action – for example on the Facebook Event page – remains flawed. For one, at the insistence of Socialist Alternative, the call insists that the anti-racist demonstration will be “peaceful.” Of course, it would be wrong to say that our action will be “violent” – it is the far-right who are the creators of racist violence while the police often use violence to attack progressive struggles – like anti-racist actions and union picket lines. But to insist that a counter-demonstration against those who are inciting, threatening and perpetrating violence against coloured people and anti-racists will be “peaceful” is like telling the Palestinian people to be “peaceful” in the face of the Israeli military’s murderous terror. Mainly white, reformist socialist groups may think that they have the luxury of decreeing that an action against violent racists shall be “peaceful,” however socially-aware coloured people know that they have little hope of deciding when or where their reality is going to be peaceful or not. Politically conscious coloured people know that they face the danger at any time of being attacked by rabid racists while on the streets, in public transport or at nightspots – not to mention when in the far more fraught situation of participating in a demonstration against extreme racists!

Today’s issue of Melbourne’s The Age newspaper reported that social media discussions amongst fascists showed that they planned to bring weapons to the Melbourne race-hate rally next weekend. Thus, for anti-“Reclaim” organisers here to lull people who are planning to join the counter-demonstration into a false sense of security that the action will necessarily be “peaceful” is highly irresponsible and potentially catastrophic. It might mean that rally attendees do not take precautions when coming to the rally. Instead of organising to come to the rally in groups with friends as they should, anti-racists may be lulled into thinking it is safe to rock up as an individual wearing anti-racist badges and t-shirts and all – a practice that could set them up to be attacked on their way in by a Neo-Nazi gang (themselves on their way to the same location for the rival mobilisation). When at the rally site itself, participants who, convinced by the rally call that the demonstration will be “peaceful” and having illusions that the police will intervene to protect them should any threat emerge, may decide to stand around in a very geographically dispersed area rather than in a tight pack with their fellow anti-fascists. This could open them up to being picked off by far- right thugs itching to unleash violence against anti-racists.

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MASS WORKING CLASS-CENTRED ACTION TO STOP THE FASCISTS

A militant strategy to stop fascism should be guided by the perspective of mass action centred on the working class rather than small gangs of committed anti-fascists attempting to deal blows to the racist thugs in a series of isolated clashes. Currently, some of the most sincere, dedicated and brave anti-fascists lean towards the latter strategy. Sometimes their actions succeed – something which all anti-fascists can only celebrate. However, the Neo-Nazis, obsessed as they are with weapons and combat training, are also capable of clever tactics. Should anti-fascists suffer a defeat in a small scale clash or be arrested by police, this would not only take out from the movement (for some period at least) some of the most committed anti-fascists but news of the setback would be seized on by small-l liberals and reformists to discredit any perspective to physically stop the far-right scum.

There is, however, a bigger problem with the specialised anti-fascist, commando- like group perspective even if the participants are fortunate enough to suffer no serious defeats. That problem is that this strategy sidesteps the working class masses whose most politically conscious layers may not even be aware that the clashes are taking place. This perspective does not seek to mobilise the working class masses but rather to substitute for the masses the heroism of the anti-fascist activists. Yet it is the working class masses that have the power to consistently deal defeats to the fascists in open confrontations – as occurred on May 2 last year in Brisbane. And although it is a blow to a Neo-Nazi to be taught a lesson by a small anti-fascist gang while walking on a street or on their way home, it is far more demoralising for the fascists – and those bigots watching at home on their TV sets – to see themselves being trounced in the open by a large crowd spearheaded by the muscle of the organised workers movement. However, those focussed on attempting to deal blows to the extreme racist thugs through small- group actions must believe, in various kinds of ways, that the working class is currently too backward to mobilise against fascism or that it takes too long to build up such mass worker mobilisations or that they themselves are personally too isolated from the workers movement to help mobilise working class-based anti-fascist struggle. Thus, these determined anti-fascists end up believing that they must forge ahead of the politically advanced layers of the working class and launch their own actions separately from any section of the masses. In effect they believe they must act as a kind of vanguard of anti-fascist action – although most of them would hate such a self-description.

In the context of a working class-centred mass movement to stop the far-right fanatics, some degree of “black ops” activities against the Neo-Nazis can play a useful supplementary role. However, right now all our energies must be devoted to building up the mass anti-fascist movement. If the very serious anti-fascists currently focussed on the hardcore, small anti-fascist group perspective were to instead immerse themselves in the workers movement and use their considerable energies and talents to winning their fellow workers to an internationalist program – a program that necessarily includes mass action to crush fascism – the anti-fascist struggle would receive a decent boost. The activists involved would have to make the leap from being the vanguard of militant anti-fascist action to being a different type of vanguard – one that does not believe it is better than the masses and rather than seeking to forge ahead of the masses seeks to bring the best layers of the masses with the This perspective will require the activists involved to clarify their own outlook into a very precise revolutionary, internationalist program as they will be stepping into an intense battle with Laborite social democracy for the hearts and minds of the workers. It will require them to undertake work that is more tedious, more patient and far less glamorous than the perspective of small group confrontations with the fascists. Nevertheless, especially now that the far-right forces have grown in Australia so much and are increasingly receiving open support from some sections of the mainstream establishment, it is only the working class that has the clout to decisively crush the fascists.

FOR A UNITED, INTERNATIONALIST & STRONG WORKING CLASS THAT WILL SMASH FASCISM FOR GOOD

Mobilising the working class against the far-right threat is not simply a matter of contacting union officials. Organisers of most anti-fascist actions have always attempted to do this. Nor is it simply a matter of distributing anti-fascist rally leaflets to rank and file union members at worksites although this is certainly essential work. To be effective in mobilising the working class, rally calls must openly appeal to the interests that workers have in opposing the extreme racists. Unfortunately, the official call for the Sydney July 19 anti-racist action does not make such an appeal to the class interests of workers. Anti-fascists often recoil from such a call even though they nominally accept the importance of the workers movement to the anti-fascist struggle. They fear that open appeals to workers class interests will put off some middle-class liberal anti-racists and sympathetic, trendy café owners (who want to be seen as progressive but don’t like unions because they fear that the workers that they exploit might one day join one!) But if appealing to workers’ class interests offends such layers, so be it! It is the working class and not small-l liberals and “small business” bosses that is the strategic force that will defeat fascism.

Encouragingly, a section of anti-fascist activists seem to be increasingly understanding this point. One stream of anarchists have issued a powerful poster building for the July 19 mobilisation, signed “Anti-Fascist Action,” that in calling to “Shutdown Reclaim Australia” clearly appeals to workers’ class interests in the fight to “Smash Fascists!” and “Drive Them Off Our Streets.” The poster explained that the fascists’ “hateful ideology is an attempt to divide the working class and help the bosses and landlords.”

Appealing to workers class interests is one part of the struggle to mobilise the working class against fascism. The second crucial part is the political struggle that internationalist-minded workers need to wage within their workplaces and unions against nationalist sentiments within the workers movement itself. Right now the CFMEU construction union is waging a divisive nationalist campaign raising fears that local workers will lose out because Chinese companies investing in large projects under the China Australia Free Trade Agreement may be able to bring in Chinese workers. To be sure the social democratic nationalism of the CFMEU bureaucrats is not the same as the violent racism of the fascists. The CFMEU is, after all, the union whose members were at the forefront of the powerful action in May last year that trounced the fascist Australia First Party in Brisbane. However, the economic nationalism of the pro-ALP union leadership does feed into the mainstream nationalist climate that nurtures the far-right extremists. Furthermore, by promoting in more moderate form the local worker versus overseas worker rivalry that the far-right forces spew in extreme form, the union bureaucracy is to some degree legitimising the far-right and thus diluting workers’ inherent hostility to the fascists.

Instead of the divisive and ultimately losing strategy of setting local workers up against their overseas counterparts, our unions must fight to unite all workers in the fight for improved conditions and more jobs for all workers. The fight for jobs means first and foremost an industrial action-based struggle to stop the greedy Australian capitalist bosses from retrenching workers to boost their profits. Yet bowing to the anti-union laws and chained to a strategy of relying on parliament to affect progressive change, it is precisely militant industrial action that the present union officialdom recoils from. And the more the social democratic, current union officials step back from class struggle, the more they are left with having to advance economic nationalism as the “solution” to unemployment. The struggle to purge the union movement of poisonous economic nationalism must go hand in hand with a fight to unleash the power of the working class against attacks on workers’ jobs and conditions. To fight for such a perspective an internationalist, revolutionary current within the unions must be built to challenge the failed policies of the current Laborite leadership. The growth in influence of such class-struggle union caucuses would see the union movement start to unleash its power against unemployment and casualization and thus begin to cut the ground from under the fascists. A revolutionary current within the unions, linked to a multi-racial revolutionary workers party, would also seek to unify the workers movement across racial lines by fighting to mobilise it to support Aboriginal resistance to the forced closure of remote Aboriginal communities, to ensure victory for the Redfern Aboriginal Tent Embassy struggle, to free the refugees and to revoke the racist anti-terror laws. In this way, by starting to dig out the racist soil that this society is built on, working class anti-racist actions like these will necessarily start to uproot the fascist filth from the putrid ground in which they are allowed to otherwise fester and grow.

Yet as today’s despicable acceptance of anti-working class austerity by the left- wing Syriza government in Greece proves, as long as the capitalist class still hold state power then the conditions of unemployment, inequality, poverty and insecurity can never be decisively swept away. No matter how left-wing or radical the government sitting in parliament is. Only the overthrow of capitalist rule through workers’ revolution and the establishment of a collectivised economy on a worldwide scale can ensure that fascism is finally consigned to where it truly belongs – the dustbin of history.

HUMANITY’S FUTURE: FASCISM OR COMMUNISM

To see how capitalist economy nurtures fascism it is enough to note that in Australia a large part of the working age population are either unemployed or working far less hours than they want to or else in insecure casual jobs or worried about being retrenched. The far-right seeks to appeal to these people by offering blatantly false but simplistic analysis blaming immigrants and overseas producers for their plight. However, although unemployed and underemployed people make up some of the personnel of Neo-Nazi gangs, the main social base of the far-right are the most reactionary sections of the middle class as well as smaller scale capitalist business owners. The far-right groups aim to recruit insecure, self–employed service providers and tradies buffeted by the wild fluctuations of the capitalist “free-market” by insinuating that competition from migrants and overseas producers are undermining their businesses. Those capitalist business owners whose businesses are struggling are also open to such demagogy. That is why it is in the crisis-ridden capitalist economies of Europe where the fascists are most alarmingly gaining strength and most openly getting the backing from sizeable chunks of the big capitalists.

In capitalist society, both the middle class self-employed and capitalist small business owners are ground down by capitalist banks and big landlords as well as the tyranny of big corporate business. They are fearful of being dragged down – often back down – into the working Middle class individuals can either be won to siding with the working class against the capitalists that oppress them or, alternatively, will follow the capitalists in their push to ever more exploit the working class. Fascism is, in the main, a movement of middle class individuals fanatically mobilised against the working class whom they fear being dragged down into and whose class struggles they fear will either challenge their relatively privileged position or will challenge them in their roles as henchmen (managers, foreman, security guards etc) for the capitalists. Fear of coloured people, LGBTI people and the “other” in general naturally goes hand in hand with fear of the workers movement and its powerful, multi-racial character.

Although most of the Australian fascists revere Hitler, many of them realise that since Australia was on the opposite side to the Nazis in the bloody imperialist squabble that was World War II (with the big exception of the Soviet workers state’s heroic resistance against Nazi invasion), it does not sit well with Aussie nationalist mythology and militarism to outwardly shown any allegiance to Nazism. Today, with the mainstream pro-capitalist parties stirring up fear of Muslim people, the far-right see a chance to push their broader agenda using anti-Islam as a battering ram. They promote the notion that Australia is being taken over by Islam and Sharia Law as well as other cultures and needs to be “reclaimed” by white people. This is, of course, ridiculous. It is the Aboriginal people whose land was stolen and culture decimated – not by people coming to the country seeking to contribute to society as part of making their own lives better as today’s migrants do – but by murdering, brutal colonial conquerors. As for the notion that non-white people have taken over the economy (and there is no reason that white people should control the economy anyway!) it is worth noting that of Australia’s 50 richest people, just two, that is a measly 4% are coloured.

With just 2.2% of Australians being Muslims the idea that Sharia Law could be imposed in Australia is also complete bonkers. In fact, the real threat to secularism is from Christian fundamentalists. Not a single advocate of Sharia Law holds any elected position in state or federal parliament. In contrast, in NSW the balance of power is held by the Christian fundamentalist zealot, Fred Nile. Nile wants mothers confined to the home so much that earlier this year he railed against child care centres as “day orphanages.” Nile and his Christian Democratic Party denounces homosexuality, opposes the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, opposes giving parents the chance to allow their children to opt out of scripture classes at school and fanatically opposes women’s right to abortion. The first, non-state, terrorist murder in Australia this century was perpetrated by a far-right, Christian anti-abortion bigot, Peter Knight who in July 2001 shot dead an employee at an East Melbourne abortion clinic in what he planned would be a massacre of all the staff and patients at the clinic. Today, members of the Right to Life movement that Knight was part of as well as other cowardly, Christian-based bigots continue to harass women seeking abortions outside clinics.

Although the current main focus of the far-right is against Muslims, the ultimate main target of fascist agitation and pogroms will be Asians. Fascism is built on fear and after the white capitalist ruling class “dealt” with the “threat” from Aboriginal people by committing genocide and completely dispossessing this country’s first peoples, the main theme of racist White Australia xenophobia has been the fear of Asians – especially Chinese people. This is the fear that immigration from the populous masses of Australia’s Asian neighbours will dilute the relatively privileged economic position of resource rich and sparsely populated Australia or even threaten white domination of this country. Thus, alongside brutal prejudice against Aboriginal people, anti-Asian xenophobia has dominated Australian racism from the 1861 anti-Chinese violence on the Lambing Flats goldfield to the anti-Chinese laws of the late 1800s to the formal introduction of the White Australia Policy in 1901 and right up to today’s anti-China hysteria.

Already, the most prominent fascist parties, the Party for Freedom and the Australia First Party, devote much of their attention to opposing Asians and the Peoples Republic of China. Last month, the Party for Freedom held a rally outside the Chinese embassy opposing Chinese nationals buying real estate and blaming them for exorbitant house prices. Yet the facts show that Chinese investors spent approximately just 2% of all the money spent on purchasing residential property in Australia and most of this was spent on developing new dwellings. Indeed, for all the hype, official figures from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade show that despite having 20% of the world’s population, investment in all areas from China makes up only 1.3% of the total stock of foreign investment in Australia – 20 times less than that from the U.S.A (http://dfat.gov.au/trade/topics/investment/Pages/which-countries-invest-in-australia.aspx).  Indeed, Chinese investment in Australia is nearly matched by Australian investment in China. China does not even make the top five of foreign investors in Australia and even tiny Switzerland and the Netherlands have more investments here! There is, however, no agitation here against foreign investment from the big, white investing countries: the U.S., Britain, the Netherlands and Switzerland (nor should there be, in fact). It is bleeding obvious then that the hysterical far-right opposition to Chinese investment and the media hype directed against it is based on racist bigotry.

However, there is another aspect to the anti-China crusade. Singapore is also an ethnic Chinese majority country and investment in Australia from Singapore is almost twice that from mainland China. Why then do we not see agitation against investment into Australia by Singapore? Because Singapore is a capitalist country while the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) has a socialistic system administered by a Communist party. Hostility to the PRC from both the mainstream of the ruling class and from the far-right fanatics thus combines racism with anti-communism. That is why much of the mainstream opposition to Chinese investment is focussed on the fact that most of it is from state-owned companies. Although the wavering bureaucracy that administers China has treacherously allowed a fair deal of capitalism to penetrate the PRC, in the PRC socialistic state-owned enterprises continue to dominate all the key sectors of the Chinese economy (unlike in capitalist Australia where public enterprises have only ever played a supplementary role to support a system which is based on wealthy private individuals owning the bulk of the economy).

It is worth noting that the white supremacist Party for Freedom has recruited hardline anti-communist Chinese individuals from the Falun Gong group. There is, of course, a similarity between the fascist agenda of the Party for Freedom and the ideology of the ultra-right Falun Gong group with its fascistic belief in racial purity, its disgusting notion that people of mixed race are inferior and its virulent homophobia. However, what mostly allows the white supremacists to grit their teeth and allow ethnic Chinese members into their party is their shared, extreme hostility to Red China. Fascists see communism as the greatest obstacle to their agenda. That is why the Reclaim Australia breakaway, the United Patriots Front, made its first action (on May 31 in Melbourne) a “rally against communism.

Should the fascists continue to grow, they will offer themselves up to the ruling class as the force that can stand up to Communist China just as Hitler advertised himself as the force that could destroy the USSR. And just as it took Hitler to attempt to realise the capitalist dream of wiping out the USSR, it may well take a fascist regime in the U.S. and Australia to crush the workers movements in these countries savagely enough to allow the ruling classes in these countries to launch what would necessarily be an extremely bloody war on Red China. That anyone could countenance such a catastrophic war seems insane. However, the fascists are not sane. Furthermore, even today the mainstream of the U.S. and Australian ruling classes are seeking to put military pressure on China and to begin to make war preparations, which is why there is the U.S. “pivot to Asia” and why U.S. troops are being stationed in Darwin. This drive to conflict with socialistic China is driven by the very logic of capitalism. As capitalism bounces from one economic crisis to another, the capitalist rulers fear the masses in their own countries seeing any example of workers’ rule – even one like in China that is, admittedly, bureaucratically deformed and weakened by capitalist intrusion.

Furthermore, the only way for capitalists to avert their economic crises is to open up new areas of the world to capitalist exploitation (or else to grab existing neo- colonies from their fellow, imperialist rivals). However, one in five people in the world live in a country, China, where the U.S., Australian and other capitalists’ “right” to exploit is severely restricted. Being a country with a per capita GDP several times lower than Australia (due to the resource poor country being burdened by enforced backwardness from its days of colonial subjugation which it only began to catch up from after the 1949 anti-capitalist revolution), wages in China are necessarily lower than in Australia. However, wages in China are much higher than what they would be should China have been capitalist. Thus, Chinese wages are the second highest of the developing countries in Asia. The relatively better conditions of Chinese workers relative to capitalist societies with similar per capita GDP is especially evident if one considers the high social wage Chinese workers receive – including cheap public transport, free cultural facilities and extensive low-rent public housing. Of course, in a huge and complicated country one could also find many a horror story of exploitation of workers in the private sector – especially light manufacturing industries in the Southeast region bordering Hong Kong which are dominated by foreign, private investment. However, that is increasingly becoming old news. In 2008, the PRC enacted a pro- worker Labour Law that gave workers rights unheard of for workers in Australia (such as a guarantee that long-time employees within five years of retirement cannot be retrenched for any reason). Meanwhile, a government-supported unionisation drive has seen the rate of trade union membership in China balloon. China has the fastest growing workers’ wages in the world – wages there have grown by an average of close to 12% per year over the last few years, well above the rate of growth of GDP in China. Many Western manufacturing corporations like Nike and Adidas have completely abandoned their operations in China for lower wage countries even though the infrastructure in China is much better. So, the only way left for Western capitalists to turn the world’s most populous country into the huge sweatshop for exploitation that they want and, indeed, need it to be in order to relieve the crises in their own economies – is through smashing socialistic rule in China. Far-right forces are promoting themselves as the hardcore anti-communists who can get this job done.

As the socio-political climate in Australia lurches towards one that could see new, terrifying, Cronulla-style mass racist riots, it is worth dwelling on the fact that the fascists – the most radical defenders of the current racist and exploitative social order – see communism as their main political enemy. This is because communism – a society based on collective ownership of the economy where each would contribute according to their ability and receive according to their need – would see the creation of a society where exploitation of human by human would be non-existent and discrimination on the basis of race and gender would be things of the past. Such a society, where the eventual dissipation of all class differences would also see the state itself start to wither away, would bring out the very best in humanity. It would enable all humans to live in friendship, enjoying themselves as they pick out what they want from a rich smorgasbord of cultures.

Increasingly, we are faced with the choice of either fighting for this kind of communism or being plunged into the abyss of fascist-ruled capitalism that will bring yet more racist violence, hatred, oppression of workers and catastrophic wars. The first step in the fight for a communist future is the overthrow of capitalist state power and the construction of worker states. These states would protect the newly established socialist system from the counterrevolutionary efforts of the overthrown exploiters and guide the former middle class to shake off the selfish, capitalistic spirit that they were haunted with from the previous times and, instead embrace the collectivist values of the new epoch. However, to accomplish the revolutionary seizure of state power is not an easy thing. The working class must first be trained both ideologically and practically in a series of partial struggles. An important part of this training involves the working class gaining confidence in its own power through flexing its muscles while unchaining itself from any political ties to capitalist institutions and pro-capitalist political parties. A great way to flex those muscles is to mobilise its own power – united with Aboriginal people, coloured ethnic communities and other anti-racists – to shut down the looming, far right threat. Then, using the confidence we gain from such struggles, we can launch a badly needed counter-offensive against all the greedy, exploiting bosses.