Dozens of people rallied on November 29 in the inner-western Sydney suburb of Ashfield to oppose the U.S. and Australian military intervention in Syria and Iraq. The united front action was held under the main slogans, “Obama, Abbott and Shorten’s Military Intervention Is Bad For Working Class People – Oppose the U.S. & Australian Ruling Class and Down with Their War in the Middle East!” The demonstration called to “Defend Syria against Western Imperialism and its `Rebels!’”
In introducing the demonstration, rally chair, Sarah Fitzenmeyer, who is also the chairwoman of Trotskyist Platform, demolished the various “rationales” used by ruling class politicians to justify their war drive:
“The rulers of Australia, the United States, Britain and other Western powers are slamming bombs into Iraq and Syria. To save the world from a deadly threat or so they say. But why should working people even think of believing them? Look at what these `great leaders,’ these rulers are doing here!
“… Slamming the poor by making them pay for doctors visits.
“Increasing the cost of going to university.
“And they want to leave jobless people up to the age of 30 with absolutely no financial support whatsoever for six months every year that they’re unemployed!
“And low-income single-mothers will never forget how the last Labor government cruelly and treacherously slashed their parenting payments.
“Meanwhile, the ruling class is using a Royal Commission into our trade unions as a precursor to a full-blown union busting attack.
“In this country there is the shocking fact that not one murdering police enforcer has ever been jailed for the hundreds of Aboriginal people that have been killed in custody. In America right now our Black and Hispanic working class sisters and brothers are under a state of siege. They are under siege by a heavily militarized police force. A couple of days ago, The Sydney Morning Herald ran a picture of Ferguson, Missouri looking like some kind of snowy Fallujah at the height of the Iraq War. National guardsmen are patrolling the streets of this American mid-West town in combat gear. All in order to repress the 100% justified acts of outrage after the murder of an unarmed Black teenager, Michael Brown, and the subsequent exoneration of the racist white pig police officer, Darren Wilson, who murdered the boy.
“Sisters and brothers, the fact is that the governments involved in the U.S-led bombing campaign do not serve the interests of ordinary working class people. Capitalist institutions are the enemy of workers and the oppressed. They are the servants of the big business owners – the lackies of the capitalist big end of town. And there is no bigger, more brutal lackey and one that is more dangerous to the working people than the military machine of the capitalist state, armed to the hilt with its monstrous weapons of mass destruction.
“The war that the U.S. and Australian rulers are waging in the Middle East is not in the interests of working class people. It is in the interests of the Andrew Forrests, the Gina Rineharts, the Packers, Lowys, Murdochs and all the other corporate bigwigs. This war is against the interests of working class people, Aboriginal people and all of the oppressed.
“When the U.S. and Australian regimes act abroad, they act with the same hostility to the interests of all working class people as they do at home. But they act with even more brutality. They have arrogant contempt for the masses of the so-called `Third World.’ The big business owners, who the Washington and Canberra regimes actually serve, exploit workers at an even greater rate in the poorer, ex-colonial countries that largely make up what’s known as the `Third World.’ `Fighting terrorism’ is the pretext for looting natural resources and subjecting these countries to the tyranny of debt bondage. To further the imperialist plunder in the Middle East is the reason why they are bombing in Syria and Iraq. Enforcing their predatory, neo-colonial goals is their MAIN aim.”
The theme of the demonstration was that standing against the U.S. and Australian capitalist rulers’ war in the Middle East is part of fighting against their attacks at home on the working class, Aboriginal people, coloured “ethnic” communities, public housing tenants and all the poor. As the rally chair explained:
“It goes without saying that it is the people of the Middle East who will suffer the most from this war. But every bomb landed by the U.S.A and Australia in the Middle East will reverberate at home too. When the capitalist ruling class wages a bullying imperialist war abroad it means they also wage a war at home, a war against our trade unions, against Aboriginal people, against refugees, against single mothers and in fact against all the poor.
“Already, the war fever and the “terrorism” hysteria has helped Abbott to churn up a rabid nationalist and racist climate that has helped him to divert mass frustrations away from his government’s anti-working class budget.
”There have been so many grotesque attacks on Muslim men, women and children ….
“Racism is poison to the unity that working class people need to stand up to their exploiters. Racism is absolute poison to workers unity: an evil brew that the capitalist class likes to concoct and stirs up so intently, practically every passing hour of the working day, in order to try to divide and conquer the working masses. For the working masses of Australia, in fact of the whole world, are a people of a myriad creeds and colors who, by a singular turn of the wheel of history, now find themselves working side by side on the production line. Just as, arms linked – black to white to yellow to white and back to black again – they are fighting together on the picket line, fighting for their common rights as workers. This is the multi-racial, multi-national and united working class that the capitalist robber barons fear the most. Racism is the capitalist class’ final key, a knife that they intend to use to cut this multiracial unity of workers into countless irreconcilable, squabbling and ultimately warring pieces. Right now the bosses are gearing up for a full-scale union-busting attack on the proudly multi-ethnic CFMEU construction workers union as well as other unions. Only a united union, undivided by the scourge of racism and its nasty twin, nationalism, can hope to withstand the union-busting storm that’s on its way. The ruling corporate class wants to wage imperialist war abroad not only for their predatory search for super-profits and world domination of resources and markets but because it helps them to stir up racism and nationalism and thus to suppress the working class and anti-racist movements at home.
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“That’s why we must mobilise the working class and all the downtrodden in mass action against this latest neo-colonial war. Today marks the very beginning of the struggle to build a pro-working class movement against the neo-colonial intervention by the U.S. and Australian ruling classes in Syria and Iraq.”
In motivating the need to oppose this latest U.S.-led predatory war, rally chair Sarah Fitzenmeyer stressed that
“… a major aim of their latest intervention is to push for the overthrow of the Assad government in Syria. The Assad government is itself a capitalist government – except that it is too independent from the Western imperialist powers for the USA and its coalition of the greedy and the ruthless to tolerate.”
This latter point about how the Western powers are using the pretext of opposing ISIS to manoeuvre towards imposing regime change in Syria was explosively underscored just eight days after the Ashfield rally when Washington’s Israeli attack dogs unleashed fighter aircraft to bomb targets inside Syria including the international airport in the capital Damascus.
Addressing the November 29 rally, Behrooz, spokesman for the Supporters of the Iranian People’s Fadaee Guerrillas, also powerfully rebuffed media propaganda that the U.S.-led military intervention in the Middle East is about “fighting terrorism”:
“Is this action in response to terrorism and stopping the reactionary ISIS group, or is it a plan to dominate the Middle East by redeploying its forces in Iraq and occupying Syria?
“United States in the past three and half years actively mobilised and trained all reactionary opposition groups in Syria in cooperation with totalitarian regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, UAE and Turkey. These murderers have free movement in all of the above mentioned countries and military bases with active support of the army and full support from the USA.
“The Liberal, National and Labor governments in Australia unconditionally have supported the invasion of Iraq and destruction of Syria, Australia has aligned itself with the most jingoistic warmongers in the USA; ignoring the loss of lives and devastation of many countries such as Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, these are just a few examples in only the past few years.“
Representing the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) at the November 29 action, Wayne Sonter, Secretary of the Sydney District Committee of the CPA, convincingly took on the arguments he has heard from what he called a “Right Opposition” within the Western Left and the expatriate Syrian community. These people justify their refusal to campaign against the U.S.-led airstrikes with the argument that the Syrian government has not attempted to shoot down the Western fighter aircraft. Sonter pointed out, for one, that Syria is not in a military position to take an action which would trigger a direct war with the U.S. and its lackeys. The fact that Syria has not at this point tried to shoot down NATO aircraft does not make the U.S. empire’s blatant violation of Syrian sovereignty any less a threat to Syria and its independence. And this is a fact regardless of the Syrian government’s immediate stance towards this Western intervention. The CPA representative especially skewered those refusing to oppose the U.S.-led war drive from a seemingly opposite direction to the “Right Opposition.” He emphasised that left groups such as the Cliffite Socialist Alternative are cheerleading for imperialism when they cheer for the imperialist proxy Syrian “Rebels.”
The weekend prior to the Ashfield rally, some of the groups backing the pro-imperialist “Rebels” in Syria that the CPA spokesman referred to held a protest in Sydney’s Town Hall Square that opposed the bombing of Iraq but was pointedly silent on the imperialist intervention in Syria. These groups – like Socialist Alternative, Solidarity and Socialist Alliance – do not want to squarely oppose the imperialist intervention in Syria because, for one, a major part of that intervention is the U.S. government’s scheme to greatly increase arming and training of the pro-imperialist Syrian “Rebels” – the same ones that these left groups back. Secondly, after having said little in solidarity with the secular, Syrian-based Kurdish groups for two years when those Kurdish parties were in a defacto alliance with the Assad government against the religious fundamentalist “Rebels,” now that Syrian Kurdish factions have descended into an alliance with the U.S.-led imperialists against ISIS, the reformist left have suddenly re-discovered the cause of the Syrian Kurds and have rushed to join “Solidarity with Kobane” rallies in Australia. Not wanting to alienate their new found Kurdish allies, the soft-on-imperialism socialist groups thus refrain from opposing the U.S.-led airstrikes in Kobane and Syria more generally. Thirdly, even though some healthier gut-level impulses to oppose the U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria may exist within individuals inside these reformist left groups, they are so tainted by their years-long support for the imperialist-proxy “Rebels” in Syria and so exposed and embarrassed by the fact that NATO backing for these “Rebels” has become even more blatant that they would rather not even talk about Syria. In fact, they’d probably prefer that the very word “Syria” wasn’t mentioned in polite company at all!
The November 29 Ashfield demonstration was thus the very first action – and unfortunately as we go to press thus far the only action – in Australia to oppose the entire U.S./Australia imperialist intervention in the Middle East: from their bombing campaigns in both Iraq AND Syria to their arming of proxies in Syria. Yuri Gromov, editor of Trotskyist Platform, outlined the necessity to take such a consistent, anti-imperialist stance when in the course of motivating the need to defend Syria against imperialist-imposed regime change, he demolished the arguments used by those refusing to oppose the entire imperialist intervention:
“… most nominally left wing groups in Australia have, while correctly opposing the bombing of Iraq, failed to oppose the imperialist intervention in Syria. These groups, many of whom falsely claim some connection with the glorious program of Trotskyism, are tainted by their years-long support for the Western-backed `Rebels.’
“Unfortunately, some who have laudably defended Syria against the pro-imperialist `Rebels’ are also refusing to oppose the U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria. On this, they ironically take a similar stance to the pseudo-Trotskyist groups and use a similar rationale for their position: that is that `we can use imperialism.’ But imperialism cannot be used for progressive purposes. Never ever! There are no exceptions! If you allow imperialism to strengthen it is more readily able to carry out its predatory goals. Those who think that imperialism can be used to bolster Syrian independence by weakening ISIS are like a person in a tiger-infested village who thinks he should guide a hungry tiger to eat his cruel, hated neighbor. Except that the hungry tiger then gets a taste for human flesh … and guess who will be up next on the tiger’s menu? If the Western imperialists succeed in their current campaign it will only embolden them for an open attack on Syria. It is worth recalling that what deterred the U.S. rulers from a planned invasion of Syria ten years ago were the blows that their military was taking from insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq. The historical irony that all the insurgents striking those blows in Afghanistan and some of the ones involved in Iraq were religious fundamentalist reactionaries quite similar in ideology to the Syrian proxies backed by the West today does not change this fact. That is why it is in the interest of the Syrian people’s struggle against neocolonialism to see the U.S. and Australian regime suffer setbacks in their war that is nominally against ISIS.
“We must stand for the defeat of the U.S. and Australian capitalist rulers in their war in both Syria and Iraq. We must fight for the defence of Syria against Western imperialism and its `Rebels.’ If the imperialist-imposed regime change drive is defeated in Syria then it will spur on the Arab masses to depose the Western puppet governments in places like Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. It will encourage the Syrian working class itself to say: now that we have defeated imperialism and its open agents, we should also take away power from the half-baked, neither here nor there Baathist rulers who are themselves economically dependent on imperialism.”
Also addressing the Ashfield demonstration was Samuel Russell, a trade union activist who happens to be the UNSW Branch Secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union. Speaking at the event in a personal capacity, Russell emphasised the role that the Australian working class movement and the trade union movement in particular must play in opposing this war. He noted that there has been mass opposition to other imperialist wars. In the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq there were huge protests. In that case they were not able to stop the invasion but Russell stated that the Great War (World War I) which just had its centenary was stopped largely due to workers’ strikes and mass actions in many countries – including Russia, Germany, Britain and in the colonies of the European imperial powers.
The speakers at the Ashfield demonstration were listened to by working class people who joined the rally from Western Sydney suburbs like Auburn and Parramatta as well as local people from multiracial, working-class Ashfield, Trotskyist Platform supporters and other anti-imperialist minded leftists. There was no presence at all from people from the middle class and university-based left groups/left milieus. The participants, instead, were mainly working class and/ or from Asian, Middle Eastern, African and South American backgrounds. Many locals from Ashfield passing the rally stopped to listen and take leaflets and several expressed sympathy with the action.
The important thing now is that we take the message emphasised in the Ashfield action out to people in our workplaces, trade unions, activist milieus etc and start preparing for the actions that we must build in the future to oppose the warmongering imperialists and to defend Syria against neocolonialism. As the Trotskyist Platform spokesman, Yuri Gromov, concluded in his speech, the only way we can achieve these tasks is through the methods of the class struggle:
“Some say that the problem with this war is that Canberra does not pursue an `independent foreign policy.’ However, the problem is actually much deeper. The Australian ruling class backs Washington in the Middle East because it relies on the might of its U.S. godfather to defend its own looting and jackbooting in neighbouring countries from Fiji to East Timor to PNG. Simply put, Australia’s imperialist rulers are supporting Obama’s war because it is in their interests do so. They cannot be won over to take another road. To defeat their war we need to mobilise the class whose interests lie with opposing their military adventures: the working class.
“And the interests of the exploited masses really do lie in defeating Abbott and Shorten’s war. Every bit of blood that the regime here draws in the Middle East will make them more savage in their attacks on the oppressed at home: More vicious in their bashing of our unions; still more cruel in their violent attacks on Aboriginal people; more ruthless in cutting public services like public housing, public education and women’s refuges….
“Sisters and brothers, we must understand that unleashing wars is not simply a policy decision for the greedy ruling classes. For it is part of their very DNA. They must seek out new territory to loot in order to make up for the crumbling of their capitalist system at home. From their point of view, unleashing predatory wars is something that they simply must do just as attacking our unions is also something that they must do. But from our point of view, we must wage class war on the capitalist rulers’ wars abroad just as we must wage class war on their attacks on the toilers and downtrodden at home. From the storming of Canberra’s parliament house in 1996 by trade unionists and Aboriginal people to the courageous multi-racial protests in the U.S. against the racist whitewash of the police murder of Michael Brown, we certainly see potential for such struggle. Let’s today build mass working class sentiment to the point that there can be trade union political strikes in opposition to Obama, Abbott and Shorten’s military expedition. Let’s stand for the defence of Syria against neocolonialism. Let’s reject the capitulations of ALP social democracy and Greens progressive liberalism to build a real alternative, that is a revolutionary socialist alternative, to the murderous capitalist order!”