Photo Above: Shaoquett Moselmane with students and teachers from a Riverwood language school
Condemn the Witch-Hunt of NSW
Upper House MP Shaoquett Moselmane
Cold War Repression in
Australia Gets Even More Vicious
26 June 2020: Today, Cold War repression in Australia dramatically escalated. Around a dozen officers of Australia’s ASIO secret police and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) made an hours-long raid on the home of NSW Labor Party upper house MP, Shaoquett Moselmane. The raid was made under the ridiculous claim that “Chinese government agents” had infiltrated his office and were using him as part of a “foreign interference” operation. Moselmane has not been charged and the claims against him are completely fabricated. Moselmane is being witch-hunted because he has had the temerity to praise China’s achievements in poverty alleviation and because he more recently dared to speak positively about China’s successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic and to rightly call out the Australian media for inciting racist attacks on people of Chinese background.
Sources say that today’s terrifying raid took place with Moselmane’s wife and son at home in the residence. The duration of the ASIO/AFP attack went over a period of some 12 to 16 hours. Today’s raids are a despicable attack on democratic rights and a further constriction of the right to progressive dissent in Australia. These raids, made with the assistance of draconian “foreign interference” laws imposed two years ago with bi-partisan support, are designed to intimidate anyone from speaking positively about socialistic China or to advocate socialist solutions to the grave problems faced by the working class masses and oppressed Aboriginal and other non-white communities in Australia.
All trade unionists, supporters of workers rights, defenders of civil liberties and opponents of racism and all genuine leftists must condemn these raids! We must cry: down with the witch-hunt of Shaoquett Moselmane!
Outrageously, NSW Labor leader Jodi McKay wasted no time in joining the attack on Moselmane. She has suspended him from the ALP.
The mainstream media and right-wing politicians, with the acquiescence of Moselmane’s Labor colleagues, had been building up towards today’s authoritarian attack. Several weeks ago there was a hysterical witch-hunt against Moselmane that saw him driven from his post as the deputy president of the NSW upper house. Below is the article that we wrote in response to that witch-hunt. Given today’s raid, all the conclusions made in this article are magnified many times over in their urgency.
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6 June 2020: The ruling classes in the capitalist world are rather nervous at how much dissatisfaction there is within their own countries. Working class youth are frustrated that they are likely to only get insecure, casual jobs where they are often arrogantly bullied by their bosses. Lower income people are angry that affordable rental accommodation is so hard to find. After COVID-19 hit, huge numbers of workers are seething that they have lost their jobs after the very company owners who had made fortunes out of their workers’ labour did not hesitate to retrench these workers as soon as there was any drop in business revenue. Now, the brutal police murder of an unarmed black man in America, George Floyd, has ignited explosive anger amongst black people and other people of colour throughout the Western world at the all-sided racist oppression that they endure. In the U.S., there have been huge, sometimes militant, protests with elements of an uprising. Today in Australia, there were massive solidarity protests with America’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations. These marches focused on opposition to the horrific killings of Aboriginal people by racist police and prison guards.
At least until the recent Black Lives Matter protests, mass grievances have not led to a left-wing radicalisation within Western countries. Instead, in Australia for example, the capitalist rulers have to some degree succeeded in shifting mass frustrations into blaming immigration, guest workers, Aboriginal people, Asians, African youth, Muslims, refugees, unemployed people, climate change concerns and militant unions. Yet the capitalist exploiters remain worried that eventually sizable sections of the working class masses will again look to communism as an alternative to their current predicament. Compounding these fears is the reality that while their own economies have barely been treading water since the late noughties global recession, the world’s biggest socialistic country – the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) – relentlessly grows in economic strength, continues to lift her own people out of the poverty of China’s pre-1949 capitalist days and steadily gains greater prestige and diplomatic clout in the former colonial countries of Africa, South America, the Middle East, Asia and the South Pacific. The richer capitalist powers are not only worried that this is “interfering” with their “right” to “freely” super-exploit their former colonies. They are terrified that some of their “own” masses will start to look favourably upon socialistic China and thus conclude that capitalist rule in their own countries needs to be deposed. As a result, across the capitalist world the rulers and their media have been churning out an anti-communist, China-bashing propaganda campaign.
In the U.S. and Australia, this new Cold War campaign has also involved intimidation and even repression. In Australia, this often takes the form of the witch-hunting of any public figure, and increasingly anyone else, who has any contact with social organisations with even the vaguest links to the PRC; or who dares to make any comment praising the PRC. Such witch-hunting has intensified over the last few years and has reached new levels of hysteria since the COVID-19 pandemic struck. The latest victim is NSW Labor upper house MP, Shaoquett Moselmane. Now Moselmane is no communist. He is, after all, a member of the anticommunist, social democratic ALP. However, Moselmane was witch-hunted for pointing out what is demonstrably true: PRC authorities and her people had taken “timely and effective countermeasures” that had “fought and contained” the COVID-19 threat. For having the temerity to state these plain facts, Moselmane was subjected to a shrill campaign of denunciations and insults from the mainstream media, right-wing politicians and leaders of his own Labor Party. Media shock jocks branded Moselmane a “jerk”, “a train wreck”’, “a lunatic”, “a low filthy bludger” and more. They even made despicable slanders about his wife, lying that she has a material interest in him making positive comments about China. Encouraged by all these insults, rednecks and far right idiots made chilling threats against Moselmane on social media. To his credit, however, in the face of all this intimidation and demands that he resign from parliament, Moselmane has thus far refused to “apologise” for saying what he knows to be completely true. As a result, on April 6, he was forced to step down from his position as assistant president of the NSW Legislative Council. Moselmane had been elected to this position, signifying that he was the highest-ranked ALP upper house MP in NSW, less than a year earlier.
Pilloried for Telling the Truth
So what did Shaoquett Moselmane exactly say that so infuriated Australia’s ruling class establishment? The campaign against him cranked into high gear after the 30 March issue of the Sydney Morning Herald attacked him for writing on his personal website that China had made an “emphatic” and “decisive” response to the COVID-19 threat. Moselmane pointed out that China needed “tough, unswerving leadership, focused on the mammoth task ahead” in order to contain the virus’ spread. The Labor MP explained that: “For the Peoples Republic of China, President Xi stepped up and provided that leadership. He mustered the resources of the nation and together with the great people of China – fought it and contained it…. The combined phenomenal effort of the state and the people in the fight to contain the virus was breath taking.” Moselmane also contrasted China’s effective response to “the slow, and at times baffling and confused messaging by the Morrison federal government.”
What Moselmane said was simply fact. Despite being the first country in the world to detect the new virus and despite having a rapid spread of the deadly virus in Wuhan before their own scientists or any other country in the world understood the coronavirus or could ascertain just how deadly it was, the PRC so effectively responded to the threat that the proportion of China’s huge population that have died from the virus is significantly lower than Australia’s. Moreover, while Australia is just starting to open up again following stay-at-home measures and now faces the risk of a second-wave, the PRC so effectively suppressed the virus and reduced new cases to such tiny levels that for the last two months her tourist spots, cafes and restaurants have been gradually filling up with people and her streets and public transport networks are again buzzing with lively crowds.
Although Moselmane focuses a fair bit on Xi Jinping’s leadership, we understand that the main factor behind the PRC’s breath taking response to the virus was the country’s socialistic system. It was this system in which public ownership plays the backbone role and in which the economy is controlled by a state under workers rule that enabled the PRC to concentrate resources so effectively for the pandemic response. Thus, the PRC was able to, in a matter of days, both build brand new infectious disease hospitals and to convert other facilities into makeshift hospitals. It was also this people’s control of the economy that enabled the PRC to provide space suit style protective gear for her medical workers and janitors as well as large quantities of urgently needed ventilators, testing kits, infra-red thermometers and masks. Meanwhile, the PRC’s economic system – in which collective ownership and control plays the basic role – has created a more collectivist outlook in the Chinese masses that led them to, on the one hand, be overall more willing to comply with pandemic response restrictions than their counterparts in, say, the U.S. and Australia and, on the other hand, be more motivated to mobilise in grassroots campaigns to conduct pandemic response measures.
Nevertheless, leadership was also a factor in determining how countries responded to the COVID-19 threat. Just as the likes of Scott Morrison, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Boris Johnson and Vladimir Putin are shaped by their role at the head of states designed to serve the capitalist big end of town, Xi Jinping’s actions are shaped and, indeed, constrained by his role at the head of a workers state that was created to ensure the interests of working class people. That meant that while the leaders of the capitalist countries put the fate of their stock markets and corporate profits first, China’s president Xi, for all his faults, did put the interests of people first in responding to the virus outbreak. So Moselmane is quite factually correct when he stated that “President Xi stepped up.” Within hours of Chinese scientists confirming that human to human transmission of the virus can occur, Xi made a high profile order on January 20 for Communist Party of China (CPC) committees and governments at all levels to put people’s safety and health as the top priority and take effective measures to curb the spread of the virus. Chinese state media reported on the same day that:
“Xi ordered all-out efforts to treat patients, identify the causes of the virus infection and spread at an earlier date, strengthen monitoring and standardize treatment procedures.
“Xi spoke of the need for the timely release of information and the deepening of international cooperation.”
The PRC acted early. At the time Xi made this announcement, just three people had died of the virus in a country with a population of nearly 1.5 billion people. Overseas countries then reported just a total of four cases, two in Thailand, one in South Korea and one in Japan. Just two days after Xi’s orders were broadcast, Wuhan took the unprecedented step of announcing that from the following morning all public transportation in the city of 11 million people would be suspended, all movement out of the city through airports and railway stations would be temporarily cut off, all large-scale activities were suspended and everyone was ordered to wear masks in public. These and additional decisive measures taken by the PRC in the ensuing days became a template for the social distancing measures that many other countries, albeit often very belatedly, took.
At the time that the PRC shut down Wuhan, Australia had not confirmed one single case of the new virus. Yet, by contrast to the PRC’s quick response, it took the Australian government a whole 50 days from the time that the first coronavirus case in this country was detected on January 25 until the first – and rather limited – social distancing measures were implemented on March 15. This despite having already seen how deadly the virus had been in other countries. The only early “measure” that the Morrison government took was to enact a travel ban on non-residents entering from China – which had more to do with encouraging fears of Red China than being a genuine health measure – and then enacting later bans on arrivals from Iran and then South Korea. Yet, even after China had effectively suppressed the virus, the Morrison regime maintained its politically-motivated, China-specific travel ban while for several weeks enabling people from the U.S., Italy, Spain, France, Germany and cruise ships to enter without proper testing and quarantining even after the pandemic had spread like wildfire in those places. As a result, not only was the virus allowed to spread within Australia through infections brought in overwhelmingly from the U.S., Europe and cruise ships but those infected people from these regions were not given the timely diagnosis and treatment that they needed.
Indeed, Moselmane’s comparison of the PRC’s excellent response to the new virus with “the slow, and at times baffling and confused messaging by the Morrison federal government” is actually rather understated. That has not stopped the Morrison government and this country’s top health bureaucrats from endlessly praising themselves. They have only been able to get away with this because the “response” in the likes of Trump’s America, Johnson’s Britain and Bolsonaro’s Brazil have been so frighteningly disastrous and because the mainstream media have done their best to hide and distort the successful response by the PRC and to minimize coverage of the successes of other countries that have taken effective measures to curb the virus spread, like socialistic Vietnam.
Peter Costello’s Sydney Morning Herald Leads the Charge,
Hard-Right Shock Jocks Follow
It is little surprise that it was the Sydney Morning Herald that cast the first stone in the attack against Moslemane. This paper had been targeting Moslemane ever since he made a 2018 speech hailing China’s lifting of 800 million people out of poverty. In that speech, Moselmane spoke of the need for China to gain greater influence in the global media given that this media is currently in the hands of China’s Western opponents. Moslemane pointed out how the Arab world has seen the power of Western propaganda in manipulating the public, leading to death and destruction. Alarmed that a mainstream politician had the audacity to so openly challenge the Cold War drive against the PRC and to so bluntly call out the pernicious role of Western mainstream media, the SMH looked for a way to discredit Moselmane. The best exposé that they could come up with was one seven months ago that in classic Cold War McCarthyist shock-horror fashion “exposed” how a staffer who works one day a week for Moslemane’s office once attended a training course at the Chinese Academy of Governance which the SMH says also “trains senior cadres of the Chinese Communist Party.” Big deal! What are they going to dig up next: that one of Moslemane’s staffers once ate at a Chinese restaurant where a member of the Chinese community, who had once met with a visiting Chinese Communist Party leader, once also ate at?
Led by its fanatically anti-communist Political and International editor, Peter Hartcher, the SMH has, in fact, been spearheading the Cold War fear campaign against socialistic China. It is ably assisted in this by its sister media organisations like Channel 9 and the hard right radio “news” station 2GB, all of which are part of the very same corporation that owns the SMH: Nine Entertainment Limited. The biggest stake in Nine Entertainment is held by filthy rich media mogul Bruce Gordon, with other major shareholdings owned by various wealth management funds and private equity groups. Needless to say, a media organisation owned by ultra-rich capitalists is inevitably going to produce content favourable to the political interests of the capitalist exploiting class and, thus, hostile to socialistic China. And in case anyone falls for the “balanced”, “independent” pretensions of the SMH, it is worth pointing out who the chairman of this corporation that runs it is: none other than the Treasurer in the right wing, former Howard government, Peter Costello!
The SMH journalists working under editor Peter Hartcher delight in buttressing their China-bashing propaganda by “unofficially” quoting as “sources” their mates in ASIO and other sinister Australian spy agencies. Meanwhile, Hartcher works closely in promoting anti-China hostility with Beverley O’Connor’s The World program on the ABC News channel. Peter Costello’s boy, Peter Hartcher, is also a Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute, the right-wing think tank that has a major influence in shaping Australian public opinion. Formed and led by Australian billionaire, Frank Lowy, and with a Board of Directors dominated by Lowy and his sons, as well as other capitalists like the chairman of the ANZ bank, the Lowy institute naturally promotes the interests of Australia’s big end of town exploiting class and, thus, is known for aggressively promoting an anti-China and broadly war-mongering agenda.
With the Lowy Institute providing the academic “expertise” and the likes of Peter Hartcher’s SMH and Beverley O’Connor’s The World providing overall political direction and a “centrist”, “liberal” cover, right-wing politicians, the Murdoch media and 2GB shock jocks are then all stocked up to sell the masses the anti-PRC agenda in sensationalist and extremist forms. And so it was with the campaign against Moselmane. In the days following the SMH’s
exposé, the anticommunist uproar against Moselmane that Peter Hartcher and Co. had hoped for duly erupted. Egged on by rabid right-wing presenters Alan Jones and Ray Hadley from 2GB and Peta Credlin from Sky News, extreme right wing politicians queued up to denounce Moselmane. Federal Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton demanded Moselmane’s removal from parliament. NSW leader of the far right One Nation party, Mark Latham, attacked Moselmane’s stance as “disgusting and indefensible.” Credlin and Hadley basically accused Moselmane of treason for simply praising another country’s response to the virus threat and for criticizing the Australian prime minister’s response. The Murdoch print media and the Daily Mail soon joined the witch-hunt too, of course. So too did hardline supporters of Israel’s genocidal oppression of Palestinian people who saw an opportunity to go after an MP known for his sympathy for the Palestinian liberation struggle. Moselmane was born in South Lebanon, the part of the Lebanon that has suffered most from the Israeli regime’s expansionist aggression.
However, it was not just the hard conservatives who went after Moselmane. The most extreme attack on him came from a minister in the former Rudd government, Stephen Conroy. Speaking on Peta Credlin’s Sky News program, Conroy branded Moselmane “an absolute disgrace to the Labor Party,” adding that it is “astonishing he’s still in parliament.” Meanwhile, NSW Labor leader Jodi McKay stabbed her upper house colleague in the back by not only refusing to defend Moselmane from the witch-hunt but, instead, fully joining in. In an interview with 2GB’s Ray Hadley, McKay viciously attacked Moselmane:
“I can assure you… he will never be in the shadow cabinet….
“His actions have been appalling, I can’t say that to you enough.”
Moselmane’s factional ally in the ALP, shadow minister for transport and corrections, Chris Minns, and Labor shadow treasurer, Walt Secord, also both joined in the attacks, respectively branding Moselmane’s comments as “inappropriate” and “extremely stupid.”
Top Scientists and Public Health Officials
Sing the Same Tune as Moselmane on China’s Response
The way that the “centrist” SMH set up Moselmane to be savaged by the Hard Right can be compared to that of the villain in an action movie who inflicts a wound on a captive and then leaves them to bleed in shark-infested waters knowing that the victim’s blood will attract killer sharks. While their sharks did their expected savaging, the SMH pretended to be serious in their coverage. To try and give authority to their attacks on Moselmane, they claimed that, “China has been widely criticised by academics and health experts for downplaying the extent of the outbreak in Wuhan.” Of course, academics and health experts are like everyone else subject to political influences. Being a middle class layer, scientists, doctors and top level academics, like other middle class layers in these reactionary times, can be quite conservative and many identify their interests with those of the ruling capitalist class. Thus, mainstream media seeking to attack Red China would no doubt always be able to find a few health experts willing to sing the tune that they would like to see amplified. Yet many serious scientists are driven by dedication to their work and to their areas of research. As a result, contrary to the misleading assertions of the SMH, the truth is that, in the face of anticommunist pressure, the majority of top Western infectious disease scientists and public health specialists have actually praised China’s response to the virus outbreak. On 19 February, 27 eminent scientists, academics, infectious disease specialists and public health officials from the U.S., Britain, Australia, Germany, The Netherlands and other regions published a “Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19” in the prestigious, peer-reviewed British medical journal, The Lancet [1]. The statement lauded China’s efforts to suppress the COVID-19 threat:
“We have watched as the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China, in particular, have worked diligently and effectively to rapidly identify the pathogen behind this outbreak, put in place significant measures to reduce its impact, and share their results transparently with the global health community. This effort has been remarkable.”
This, too, was the finding of a WHO investigation into China’s response to COVID-19 led by Canadian epidemiologist, Bruce Aylward, and consisting of 25 international experts from the U.S., Germany, Japan, Singapore, Nigeria, China, South Korea and Russia. The report by the investigative mission found that [2]:
“In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history.
“Achieving China’s exceptional coverage with and adherence to these containment measures has only been possible due to the deep commitment of the Chinese people to collective action in the face of this common threat. At a community level this is reflected in the remarkable solidarity of provinces and cities in support of the most vulnerable populations and communities. Despite ongoing outbreaks in their own areas, Governors and Mayors have continued to send thousands of health care workers and tons of vital PPE supplies into Hubei province and Wuhan city.”
Indeed, in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, ABC News reporters were constantly disappointed as they posed leading questions to infectious disease specialists inviting them to attack China’s response only for the experts to respond with praise for China’s pandemic suppression efforts. Thus, the Australian government-funded broadcaster was forced to hop from interviewing one medical expert to the next in search of someone who would feed into their Cold War agenda. Yet the Australian government’s own top health bureaucrats also lauded China’s efforts. And let’s note that these are highly-paid government bureaucrats who have worked closely with the right wing Morrison government and have supported most of the Liberal government’s pandemic response strategies – including its initial politically-directed travel bans specifically focused on – and restricted to – the Australian regime’s adversaries. So they are hardly communist sympathizers! Yet, in a media conference on January 30 alongside health minister Greg Hunt, Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paul Kelly, responded to a journalist’s question about whether Australia’s case numbers would stay at the then low level by saying [3]:
“It depends a lot on what happens in relation to China getting this under control, and they are doing a marvellous job at the moment and it’s a very different approach to what we experienced with SARS some years ago.”
Australia’s chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, also hailed China’s efforts to stem the virus spread in an interview the following day [4]:
“Clearly, it is not yet contained in China. But they are making Herculean efforts to do so.”
Of course, Australia’s capitalist media ensured that the live interviews where these comments were made were the first and last time that these statements were aired. And they sure weren’t going to report on these comments praising China from Australia’s top public health officials! Yet it was not just senior public health officials and infectious disease specialists who were saying the same things that Moselmane would later say about China’s response to the coronavirus. None other than U.S. president, Donald Trump, the person who has most viciously been trying to blame China for the pandemic over the last few weeks and the man who is the talisman of the extreme right-wing shock jobs who savagely attacked Moselmane, heaped praise on China in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak. Thus, in a tweet on January 24, Trump said [5]:
China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!
So why did Trump praise China and President Xi’s response to the coronavirus in late January and why was Moselmane witch-hunted for giving similar credit to China and Xi just two months later? Well, when Trump was commending China’s response, not only he but nearly the entire capitalist ruling classes in the U.S., Europe and Australia believed their own propaganda that their social system was superior to China’s and, thus, they would be little affected by the virus then ravaging China. They expected that the damage caused by the coronavirus in China would hurt her prestige, undermine the credibility of her socialist system and weaken her economy. Trump believed that he would be facing a weakened PRC opponent in political conflicts and trade disputes and it would, therefore, pay him to sound magnanimous. Two months later the reality turned out very different. The virus caused far more death and economic damage per capita to the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Australia than it did to China. China, on the other hand, had been able to suppress the virus spread so effectively that she was now giving huge amounts of aid to developing countries to assist them with their pandemic response. This infuriated the rulers of imperialist countries like the U.S. and Australia. For it reinforced a trend where China’s mutually beneficial relations with countries in the South Pacific, Asia, Africa, South and Central America, and the Middle East was enabling these countries to eke out some greater independence from the plundering Western powers. Moreover, far from showing the relative weaknesses in the PRC’s system, the much more successful response of China to the virus threat in comparison with the capitalist countries has shown the superiority of her socialistic system. As far as the capitalist elite in the West are concerned, for anyone to point this out is taboo. For one it would make it harder to sell to their own masses their Cold War drive to “contain” and strangle socialistic rule in China. Furthermore, for anyone to highlight China’s superior response to the pandemic touches off the greatest of all fears of the rulers of Australia and other capitalist countries: that the masses in their own countries will draw the conclusion from this that they need to get rid of the capitalist system and bring socialism to their own countries. Thus, by late March, for Shaoquett Moselmane or any other high-profile person to praise China’s response to the pandemic simply became intolerable for the capitalist ruling classes. Just as significantly, those who sought to score political points against China over the pandemic hoped that by late March, the population would have forgotten all the praise heaped upon China’s response two months earlier by scientists, Australia’s top public health officials and, of all people, Donald Trump.
“Revelations” of Moselmane’s Calling Out of White Australia Racism
Takes Witch-Hunt to White Heat
A week after their original exposé of Moselmane’s statements lauding China’s effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the SMH had a new revelation. They reported that in a February 5 opinion piece for the East China Normal University, Moselmane had attacked the Australian mainstream media for having “publicly played racist cards, offending and insulting many Australian citizens, especially Chinese residents” in actions that “further deepened the already great suffering of the victim.”
“Today, the obsolete scum of ‘white Australia’ is once again flooding, and the theory of yellow fever has once again surfaced,” Moselmane wrote.
“Some mainstream media have bred and spread these racial viruses in our multicultural community with the purpose of inciting hatred.
“Today, media xenophobia and full-scale war against China have become the norm.”
Again Moselmane’s statements are a rather accurate description of what is happening on the ground. One has to be blind to reality or in complete denial to not know that Chinese and other East Asian background people in Australia have been subjected to numerous horrific racist attacks by “the obsolete scum of ‘white Australia’” over the last few months. People of Chinese appearance have been bashed in the streets, at supermarkets and on public transport. They have had threatening racist graffiti scrawled on their homes, had rocks thrown through their house and shop windows, been verbally abused, spat and coughed on and been ordered out of shops and other public places [6] [7] [8]. Racist scum have even abused nurses, doctors and other essential service workers (like bus drivers) of East Asian background and in some cases stalked them in a threatening manner [9] [10] [11]. It is therefore very understandable – and indeed completely necessary – that China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism last night issued an urgent alert warning Chinese tourists not to travel to Australia. The alert correctly informed that “racial discrimination and acts of violence against Chinese and Asians in Australia have increased significantly.”
Resist the Despicable Racist Attacks against Ethnic Chinese People!
It is undoubtedly true that the attacks on Chinese and other Asian people have been fueled by the mainstream media and by the anti-China rants of the likes of Peter Dutton, Pauline Hanson, far right Coalition MPs George Christensen and Andrew Hastie (both of whom have previously spoken at racist rallies infested by Neo-Nazis and other white supremacists and anti-Semites) and rabid anti-PRC Labor MP, Anthony Byrne. This is proven by the fact that many of those committing racist attacks on the streets have done so while repeating the same anti-Chinese and anti-China diatribes as the right wing shock jocks and the rabid anti-China politicians [12] [13] [14].
Yet it is not only the most rabidly anti-China politicians and the most openly racist-inciting media presenters that bear responsibility for the renewed escalation of racist attacks on Asian background people over the last few months. The more “moderate” politicians in the Liberal Party and the ALP, who largely all support the Cold War drive against the PRC, and the “centrist”, liberal media who promote hostility to Red China, like the SMH and the ABC, are also guilty of breeding and spreading racial viruses. There have always been broadly two types of white supremacists in Australia. The first type are the openly rabid ones that can scarcely hide their hostility to all non-white skinned people. The second type are the more disguised types. They claim to be, or even consider themselves, non-racist and describe themselves as “centre-right”, “liberal” or even “progressive.” Many of them even like to make themselves feel good by expressing sympathy for people of colour when the latter are victims of racism. Yet, when a non-white people organise themselves into a militant anti-racist resistance force or into a powerful country, like the PRC, that challenges Western domination of the world then they think that this is absolutely unacceptable and you see all their latent prejudice oozing out. The “liberal” and “centrist” Australian media and the mainstream Australian politicians are of this second type of white supremacist. Of course, the mainstream media and politicians attacking China are not simply driven by racism. An even bigger factor is their hostility to socialistic states. Yet ever since the 1949 Chinese Revolution brought the toiling masses to power, hostility to China in the U.S. and Australia has combined anti-communist Red Peril fears with racist Yellow Peril xenophobia.
ABC and SMH journalists nevertheless insist that being anti-PRC does not mean that one is anti-Chinese. They are fond of claiming the authority of “experts” to push their Cold War agenda against the PRC. Yet many of the world’s leading scientists have drawn a direct link between the recent political attacks on China over the coronavirus and the racist attacks on Chinese people on the streets. Thus, a strongly worded editorial titled, “Stop the coronavirus stigma now” in the 7 April issue of the British scientific journal, Nature, the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, stated [15]:
“US President Donald Trump has repeatedly associated the virus with China. Brazilian lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro — the son of President Jair Bolsonaro — has called it `China’s fault’. Politicians elsewhere, including in the United Kingdom, are also saying that China bears responsibility.
“Continuing to associate a virus and the disease it causes with a specific place is irresponsible and needs to stop….
“Failing to do so has consequences. It’s clear that since the outbreak was first reported, people of Asian descent around the world have been subjected to racist attacks, with untold human costs — for example, on their health and livelihoods.”
Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese and the “centrist”/liberal SMH and ABC have been just as guilty as Trump, Bolsonaro and many British politicians in promoting the “China’s fault” theory. They are, thus, just as guilty for inciting racist attacks on people of Asian descent. Of course these politicians and journalists would react with outraged denial if they were confronted with this truth. Yet they know full well that when they incite hostility to socialistic China they are doing it in a way that appeals to – and hence breeds – Yellow Peril racist fears. Afterwards they rub their sullied hands thoroughly with liberal doses of hand sanitiser and then, with all the “honesty” of Donald Trump, smugly express “shock” and “anger” when the rabid rednecks that they have just incited carry out racist attacks. But let us not be fooled by the “moderate” pretensions of the likes of SMH’s Peter Hartcher or the ABC’s Beverley O’Connor. Alongside their shock jock counterparts, the ruling class Australian politicians and the inherently divisive, dog-eat-dog nature of the capitalist system, these liberal media commentators share much responsibility for the terrifying rise in racist attacks on people of Chinese appearance over the last few months. Individually each of them may be personally responsible for just one or two percent of the racist attacks that have taken place. Yet given that there have been literally thousands of such attacks (most racist assaults and verbal threats are never reported but one Asian-Australian site collected details of over 300 separate attacks in just 5 weeks), each anti-China journalist or politician can be personally blamed for causing many individual attacks that would not have occurred had they not made their own contribution to the total dose of Red Peril and Yellow Peril hysteria. Put another way, several racist attacks would not have taken place had, say Peter Hartcher, not added to the incessant anti-PRC, “China is to blame” propaganda. We should keep this in mind when determining the methods by which we must resist these filthy, anti-China scum in the mainstream media.
Yet when Moselmane exposed media xenophobia against China and how Australia’s mainstream media “have publicly played racist cards”, he put his finger on a really raw, infected wound. Although capitalist rule in Australia has created one of the most racist societies on the planet, the ruling class insists on denying this. One reason is that they are well aware that their rule over this land was established through genocidal dispossession of this country’s first peoples, the Aboriginal people. They know that this truth is recalled whenever people like Moslemane, regardless of the context, speak too starkly about the reality of racism in Australia. They know that recalling this truth in turn damages the “legitimacy” of the Australian nationalist myths that they so depend on to bind the working class masses that they exploit to their self-seeking, ruling class agenda. Secondly, unlike their Western European counterparts, the immediate overseas neighbours of Australia’s ruling class are hundreds and hundreds of millions of non-white skinned peoples in the Pacific and Asia. These are the people that Australia’s imperialist rulers need for both trade and for labour to be exploited by Australian-owned multinational corporations. Any exposure of racist xenophobia within Australia damages the corporate elite’s lucrative business operations in the Asia-Pacific and their imperialist meddling in this region. For these reasons, the ruling class considers it almost as much an act of “treason” for a mainstream politician to bluntly call out White Australia racism as it is for a politician to make comments favourable to the PRC workers state. So when Moselmane’s comments attacking the mainstream media’s role in inciting racial hatred were publicised, the witch-hunt against him reached white heat. Within hours, Moslemane was forced to step down from his position as deputy president of the NSW upper house. He remains a seated member of the upper house.
The Years-Long Re-Emergence of Cold War McCarthyism
Today’s anti-China witch-hunt is, if anything, even broader in who it targets than the 1950s McCarthyist witch-hunt in the U.S. and Australia against anyone suspected of pro-communist sympathies. One does not even have to be branded a communist to be attacked today, as Moselmane found out. One has only to be a public figure who says anything positive about socialistic China. Two and a half years ago, former Labor federal senator Sam Dastyari was driven out of parliament following a 17 month-long witch-hunt for simply once saying that the South China Sea issue is an internal issue for China. However, whereas Moselmane has, to date, courageously stood by his factually correct statements applauding China’s pandemic response success, Dastyari apologised for saying what is true about the South China Sea issue and today cravenly condemns his past actions as he seeks to climb his way back into the political establishment. Yet Dastyari’s apologies at the time were not enough to stop the rabid anti-communists from howling him out of his senate seat.
Last year, there was an even more bizarre witch-hunt. The target, Gladys Liu, a Hong Kong Chinese woman is someone who is not only not a communist but actually a member of the conservative Liberal-National federal government; and a person with some pretty reprehensible right wing views to boot. Liu’s supposed “crime” is that she had once been a member of Chinese community organisations in Australia which apparently have members who are also members of other organisations that have loose ties to the Communist Party of China. For this she was viciously attacked by the media and by the ALP – the very same party that stabbed Moselmane in the back. Indeed ,the witch-hunt became so intense that members of the right wing, rabidly anti-communist Morrison government, eager to preserve their thin parliamentary majority, were able to correctly brand the ALP’s attacks on Liu as being racially-motivated and even McCarthyist.
In this stultifying anti-PRC atmosphere it is hardly just politicians who are being targeted. The capitalist media and politicians have been attacking any Chinese social organisation perceived as being sympathetic to the PRC or, otherwise, including members who are fond of Red China. In reality this means that just about any community organisation consisting of immigrants from mainland China could be targeted since the majority of migrants from mainland China are sympathetic to the PRC.
Last year, Cold War witch-hunting increasingly targeted international students from the PRC. Especially attacked were those Chinese students who dared to express their sympathies for Red China, especially in regards to the Hong Kong events. These brave students were slandered by the mainstream media. Rabidly anti-communist academics even called for those international students that too strongly promote solidarity with China to face academic disciplinary proceedings. Then, last spring, in a move squarely aimed at silencing through repression the voice of pro-Red China international students, the Australian government announced the creation of a new taskforce to look into “foreign interference” on Australian campuses.
What do all these attacks on Australian-Chinese community organisations, pro-Red China international students and the likes of Moselmane say about the supposed “right to free speech in Australia”? Actually, attacks on dissent and whistleblowers in Australia extend beyond the persecution of those accused of being soft on socialistic China. Today, a former Australian spy, known only as “Witness K,” is facing imprisonment for having revealed that Australia had planted huge numbers of listening devices in East Timorese government buildings in order to give the Australian government the advantage in a dispute with East Timor over gas resources [16]. The Australian regime is also prosecuting Witness K’s lawyer, Bernard Collaery, and two weeks ago Collaery faced a sinister, secret pre-trial hearing [17]. Yet another whistleblower that the Australian regime is persecuting is former military lawyer, David McBride [18]. McBride faces up to 50 years in prison for leaking to the ABC details of horrific war crimes by Australian troops in Afghanistan – including the murder of unarmed civilians and children. Last June, the Australian Federal Police even raided the offices of the tame, government-funded media channel, the ABC, simply because the ABC had publicised the information from McBride [19]. It is clear that the “right to free-speech” in Australia exists in name only!
Ironically, the extreme right wing media commentators who attacked Moselmane most savagely claim to be the most strident defenders of “free speech,” especially whenever the Racial Discrimination Act is brought up. Yet the “free speech” that these people want is only the “freedom” to vilify Aboriginal people, Africans, Muslims, Asians, LGBTI communities and women’s rights activists. They want the “freedom” to incite racist riots the way that Alan Jones incited the horrific December 2005 white supremacist riot at Cronulla Beach. At the same time these shock jocks want to completely silence anyone who dares to say anything positive about socialistic China.
The truth is that the “right to free speech” in Australia has become more like the “right” to say what is tolerable to the capitalist ruling class. True, theoretically one can say what one wants… as long as one is not a whistle blower! And for people whose voice is not heard by too many people, this right can even sometimes exist in practice. But for people with a high enough profile that their voice will be heard by many, anything that they say that cuts against the exploiting class’ interests too sharply – for example, by praising socialistic China or calling out White Australia racism too bluntly – will see them vilified, threatened, hounded and ultimately driven out of their positions. Look at the way that not only Moslemane has been witch hunted but the way that Sudanese Australian media presenter, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, was abused and hounded out of this country three years ago after she made an ANZAC Day post linking the phrase “Lest we forget” to the horrific oppression of refugees in Australian detention camps at Nauru and Manus and to the brutal oppression of Palestinian people.
In many ways, the “right to free speech” in this country exists in much the same way as “democratic rights for all” does. Theoretically, everyone has an equal vote and say in “democratic Australia.” Yet in practice, under this country’s capitalist system, it is the ultra-rich big business owners who are able to mould “public opinion” and control society through their ownership of the media, through their ability to disproportionately fund political parties, pay for political advertising, finance think tanks and hire lobbyists and through their numerous ties to the upper echelons of all key state and bureaucratic institutions. And whenever their domination meets a significant challenge, they don’t hesitate to throw out any coverings of “democracy” and rely on naked state repression. This is just like how their American capitalist counterparts are today unleashing riot cops and the National Guards to viciously attack those taking part in the ongoing anti-racist resistance there.
At the same time, in a society where workers are exploited and Aboriginal people, ethnic minorities, women and LGBTI communities face such oppression, it is vital that we defend whatever limited democratic rights that we do actually have. For it is the working class masses united with all the downtrodden that is the only force that can fight against exploitation and oppression in this country. That is why it is high time that we confront the growing McCarthyist madness and rebuff the attacks on basic democratic rights. Let us say: Down with the witch-hunt of Shaoquett Moselmane! No to the targeting of Australian-Chinese community organisations! Stop the persecution of pro-PRC Chinese international students! The right to free speech must include the right to praise – and indeed support – socialistic countries like the PRC! Drop all charges against whistle blowers David McBride, Witness K and Bernard Collaery!
Racism and Anti-PRC Witch-hunting
As with almost everything else that is negative in Australian society, anti-Red China witch-hunting feeds off and accentuates White Australia racism: that very same racial virus infecting Australia that Moselmane dared to identify. So how did this racial virus spread? For starters, one should understand that the disease of racism is actually widespread within most capitalist societies. Exploiting classes breed racism to divide multiracial working classes. They also inflame racism in order to divert mass frustrations onto racial minorities and, thus, away from the capitalist rulers themselves. Moreover, in imperialist countries like Australia, a racial superiority mentality is transmitted in order to enlist the population behind ruling class acts of military intervention, plunder and paternalism in the poorer “Third World” countries. In Australia there is also a big additional factor spawning racism. That is the fact that capitalist rule here was founded on the genocidal dispossession of this country’s indigenous first peoples, a crime that could only be organised and “justified” by spreading the most extreme form of white supremacist prejudice imaginable.
Today, it is telling that the three politicians who have been most intensely witch-hunted in recent times for supposedly being soft on China – Shaoquett Moselmane, Gladys Liu and Sam Dastyari – are all among the very few politicians in this country from people of colour backgrounds. People who are not white simply have less leeway in this racist society. While hardcore white supremacists are opposed to all people of colour all the time, the more insidious, mainstream form of white supremacy embraced by the bulk of the ruling elite sees non-white people as acceptable until they do something which is deemed “wrong”, in which case all the prejudice gushes out and they will be attacked far more severely than a white person doing the same thing. Yassmin Abdel-Magied certainly copped that when she was cruelly driven out of the country in a barely disguised, racist and misogynist witch-hunt.
All this shows the limits of “multiculturalism” as it is practiced by the ruling class. In their warped version, people from non-Anglo backgrounds are free to practice their own cultures as long as they all accept Western domination of the world and the current social order in Australia where the capitalist big end of town rules and Aboriginal people remain dispossessed. Any non-white person who does, or even says, anything even slightly contradicting this status quo is deemed disloyal and “ungrateful.” We let you into the country so the least you could do is to… such is the attitude of ruling class-created “public opinion” towards people of colour who dare question, in even the most minimal way, the myths of the current social order. All the while this mainstream still claims to stand by “multiculturalism.” This shows that, in practice, the official form of Australian “multiculturalism” sees people of colour confined to a second class status. It is far, far from a genuinely egalitarian and anti-racist multi-racialism.
The same implicit, underlying racism that added to the severity of the campaign against Moslemane has also been evident in a vicious campaign against WHO leader Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, again for having the temerity to praise China’s effective response to the coronavirus outbreak. Dr Ghebreyesus, a microbiologist of Ethiopian background, is the first WHO chief from Africa. As far as unashamed racists are concerned, Africans are not meant to hold such senior positions in international organisations. More liberal, mainstream racists could tolerate Dr Ghebreyesus in this role as long as he did not do anything that contradicted Western imperialist agendas. When Dr Ghebreyesus simply stated the facts by praising the PRC’s response to the virus, all the underlying racism gushed out and he was subjected to incredible abuse and death threats. Although the WHO is an agency under the imperialist dominated UN, Dr Ghebreyesus has shown considerable courage to stand up to racism and colonialist attitudes. When two of France’s most senior doctors despicably called on national TV for testing COVID-19 treatments on Africans [20], Dr Ghebreyesus rightly slammed the remarks as “racist” and a “hangover from a colonial mentality” [21]. Just like when it was revealed that Moselmane had called out White Australia racism, Dr Ghebreyesus’ strong stand against racism only intensified the attacks against him. Yet he stood firm against these racist attacks too and called them out:
“I can tell you personal attacks that have been going on for more than two, three months. Abuses, or racist comments, giving me names, black or Negro. I’m proud of being black, proud of being Negro.
“I don’t care, to be honest … even death threats. I don’t give a damn.
Dr Ghebreyesus also called out that many of the attacks had been associated with supporters of Donald Trump’s favourite regime, Taiwan [22]:
“Three months ago, this attack came from Taiwan. We need to be honest. I will be straight today. From Taiwan.
“And Taiwan, the Foreign Ministry also, they know the campaign. They didn’t disassociate themselves. They even started criticizing me in the middle of all that insult and slur, but I didn’t care.”
Angered by all the attacks on Dr Ghebreyesus, the African Union came to his defence [23]. A statement released by the African Union on the very same day that Dr Ghebreyesus called out Taiwanese racism, emphasised that:
“… the Chairperson of the African Union and President of the Republic of South Africa, HE Cyril Ramaphosa reaffirms his appreciation for the exceptional leadership of the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, from the very earliest stages of this unprecedented global health crisis.
“The African Union has also commended the management of Dr Tedros in leading the global response to the pandemic.”
As an aside, we must note that it should be little surprise that many of the racist attacks on Dr Ghebreyesus should come from supporters of the Taiwanese regime, with the implicit support of the regime itself. Taiwan was created as a de facto state when leaders of the right-wing former Kuomintang regime and members of the deposed landlord-capitalist exploiting class of China fled that country’s 1949 anti-capitalist revolution and set up base in Taiwan. Since then, the Taiwanese regime has been a stalwart of support for reactionary causes. Taiwan was one of the strongest supporters of the former Apartheid regime in South Africa. Backing the Apartheid regime against those fighting for black liberation, Taiwanese ambassador to Apartheid South Africa, H. K. Yang, stated that: “South Africa and my country are joined in the fight against communism. We are in favour of free enterprise, democracy and freedom” [24]. Taiwan, the former Apartheid rulers of South Africa and the murderously racist Israeli regime established a triangular axis of collaboration on developing nuclear weapons [25]. Taiwan was instrumental in enabling the former Apartheid regime to acquire nuclear weapons.
Cold War Witch-hunting Will Lead to
Greater Repression of All Progressive Forces
The Australian ruling class has already harnessed its drive against those accused of being “soft” on Red China to power its push to constrict the rights of broader sections of society. Thus, two years ago, under the cover of contrived fears about “Chinese interference” and the supposed “threat” posed by the activities of pro-PRC members of Australia’s Chinese community, the Liberal government, with ALP support, rammed through two new laws targeting “foreign interference” that will provide pretexts for Australian regime crackdowns on protest movements and media reporting. Then, in the midst of the Australian ruling class spearheading outrageous attacks on China over the virus outbreak, last month Peter Dutton introduced into parliament the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill 2020. The proposed new laws will give the regime the “right” to prevent a person under ASIO investigation from contacting their lawyer, allow ASIO to expel an interrogated person’s lawyer if they deem the lawyer to be “interrupting questioning”, gives ASIO the power to question 14 year-old children and grants them the “right” to track people without the need for a warrant [26].
The Australian regime’s drive against Red China and those deemed to be sympathetic to her at home has fuelled a “national security” obsession that has in turn made it easier for the Australian regime to target dissenters who have no direct connection with Cold War issues. It is telling that although those who blew the whistle on the Australian state’s spying in East Timor were first raided in 2013, the Australian regime did not feel that it could get away with actually laying charges on the two whistle blowers – Witness K and Bernard Collaery – until a whole five years later. Although the anti-China crusade and the suppression of those exposing the crimes of the Australian regime in East Timor are not directly connected, it is undoubted that the “national security” fixation created by the escalation of anti-PRC witch-hunting over the last few years made the government feel more confident to pursue the prosecution of whistle blowers in 2018 than they did in 2013. It is notable too that the very same Peter Dutton who demanded Moselmane’s removal from parliament was just weeks later demanding the sacking of Victoria’s Deputy Chief Health Officer, Dr Annaliese van Diemen, for merely making a very insightful tweet comparing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic to the suffering of Aboriginal people caused by colonial invasion [27]:
“Sudden arrival of an invader from another land, decimating populations, creating terror. Forces the population to make enormous sacrifices & completely change how they live in order to survive. COVID19 or Cook 1770?”
The obsession with “protecting national interests” that the Australian ruling class have whipped up through their Cold War drive is also being used by them to justify repressive measures and laws targeting workers’ industrial action and more militant unions, both of which are branded as harmful to “national interests.”
More insightful people, even those who do not necessarily have sympathy for socialistic China are starting to see the threat of broader repression posed by Cold War witch-hunting. Thus, although no mainstream politician from any party and not a single journalist, that we know of, from the main media outlets have had the courage to publicly defend Moselmane, there were prominent community voices that did protest against his witch-hunt. Prominent left-liberal Stuart Rees, an Emeritus Professor at the University of Sydney and the founder director of the Sydney Peace Foundation issued a statement condemning the witch-hunt [28]. In it, Rees insisted that:
“Mosselmane was the victim of character assassination for questioning anti-Chinese sentiment and for praising Chinese leadership’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan.”
An article in the April 10 issue of the Australian Muslim Times newspaper also condemned the witch-hunt of Moselmane [29], noting that:
“The weak-kneed response of this onslaught against a colleague by the NSW Labor leader Jodi McKay MP is highly disappointing and shown to be a leader incapable of standing up for her colleagues and for what’s right.”
The article also quoted a protest letter to the NSW ALP leader by Chinese Community Council of Australia’s Dr Anthony Pun, where Pun stated that:
“…we are indebted to the Hon Shaoquett Moselmane MLC, who have shown empathy and compassion to our difficulties, particularly to racists taunts, racially vilification and hate speech…. We are aware of the recent media attempting to discredit him and saying that his remarks on China was inappropriate was unwarranted and simply wrong.”
The Australian Muslim Times article also reported on the statements of others who opposed the witch-hunt of Moselmane:
“Mr Bashir Sawalha, President of United Australian Palestinian Workers Association (UAPWA) has condemned the spiteful media attacks on Mr Moselmane and has also criticised the lack of support for him by Ms McKay.”
We welcome the fact that such a broad range of voices have condemned this McCarthyist witch-hunt. There needs to the broadest possible united-front push back against the Cold War persecution of people who make positive comments about the PRC or express support for her. And we need to the resist the broader attacks on democratic rights that such McCarthyist persecution is driving.
Ditch the ALP – Let’s Build a Workers Party That
Will Actually Stand Up to the Capitalists and their Media
Despite being stabbed in the back multiple times by his own ALP colleagues, Shaoquett Moselmane has reaffirmed his commitment to the Labor Party. He released a statement that, while expressing deepest gratitude to those who offered solidarity with him against the recent attacks, asserted that “it is through the Australian Labor Party that we can advance the wellbeing and welfare of all Australians” [30]. Yet many of the supporters of Moselmane, who is rather popular amongst working class communities of Middle Eastern, African, Asian and South American origins, may have other thoughts. They would have been horrified at how the ALP leadership joined in the witch-hunt of the person they see as the spokesman for their concerns and would have noted how few – perhaps none (!) – of his Labor parliamentary colleagues actually publicly came to his defence in a forceful, high-profile manner.
Some of Moselmane’s supporters are likely amongst the many working class people who support the ALP through gritted teeth. Such people have long ago lost faith in the Labor Party’s commitment, let alone ability, to deliver meaningful social change. Many of these people have seen Labor Party leaders time and again betray promises privately made to them to make greater efforts to reduce inequality, ease the shortage of affordable rental accommodation and genuinely oppose racist attacks on non-white communities. Nevertheless these people, many from migrant backgrounds or lower-paid workers, cling on to the ALP because they hope that a few good people there can at least make some headway in changing the ALP’s stance, however minimally, on a few issues: perhaps make the ALP take a stronger stand on opposing job slashing by bosses, more truly stand for genuine multiculturalism, curb its strident support for Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine and wind back its fulsome adherence to the U.S.-led Cold War drive against China. Yet, as the witch-hunt of Moselmane again confirms, these have proven to be false hopes. Despite the sincerity of rank and file ALP supporters who hold these illusions, the truth is that the ALP has never sought to curb the “right” of even profitable companies to slash jobs whenever that is what it takes to further boost their own filthy profits. And the Labor Party is just as rabid in supporting Israel’s murderous oppression of Palestinian people as the Tories are and just as fervent in lining up behind the Cold War drive against socialistic China. And as for the type of “multiculturalism” envisaged by the ALP, one has only to look at the actions of the previous two leaders of the NSW ALP. At a meeting in the Blue Mountains in September 2018, former ALP leader Michael Daley incited racial prejudice when he disgustingly blamed migrants – especially from Asia – for taking local jobs and pushing young people out of Sydney [31]. Four months earlier, Daley’s predecessor Luke Foley also inflamed hostility to people of colour by despicably claiming that refugees are swamping Western Sydney leading to a “white flight” of Anglo families from these suburbs [32]. Meanwhile, just last month, the last ALP NSW premier, Kristina Keneally, now a senior member of federal Labor’s shadow ministry, was blowing out of the same dog whistle to racism as Daley and Foley as she called for a cut to migration and for local workers to get a “first go at jobs” [33].
To all those disillusioned with the ALP because it fails to actually stand up to the big end of town and refuses to fully shed its own white nationalist prejudices let alone challenge these notions, we say that it is high time to throw the ALP into the non-recyclable bin. The ALP is useless as an instrument for progressive change. And the problem is not merely that the ALP has lost its way. The bitter truth is that the ALP was never on the right track. Let’s remember that the Labor Party was founded on the principle of the White Australia Policy exclusion of Asian and other non-white immigrants. It is true that in certain periods – like the Whitlam years – the ALP oversaw some progressive reforms. But these were only ceded because the ruling class was in a weakened position –it was losing the Vietnam War to the heroic Vietnamese communists during the Whitlam period and facing a resurgent left and workers movement – and needed to grant the masses some concessions. These measures were taken by the ALP in order to stave off a much more deep-going working class radicalisation that could have conquered still greater gains for the masses. Yet, even at the best of times, the ALP’s approach has always been to try and make some piecemeal reforms for workers while retaining the acceptance of the capitalist bigwigs. This program has been a failure because the interests of the working class and those of the capitalist business owners are completely counter-posed. Every time that ALP leaders kowtow before the capitalist class and their media, they make this ruling class stronger, which in turn puts the ALP under even greater pressure to prostrate before these bigwigs. Such is logic of the ALP’s irreversible spiral downwards. For example, by pandering to the Murdoch and Fairfax media and the likes of Hadley and Credlin in their attacks on Moselmane, NSW ALP leader Jodi McKay strengthened the authority of these capitalist media outfits. So when the Murdoch media went on a crusade against today’s Black Lives Matter protests, McKay was under more pressure to bow to the wishes of Murdoch’s media than she otherwise would have been. This she duly did. Yesterday, Jodi McKay attacked Liberal premier Gladys Berejiklian from the right for not having then banned the planned protest. “Is (Premier Berejiklian) really giving her approval for a mass rally with potentially thousands of participants, when the maximum number of people allowed to visit a private home remains just five,” McKay told Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph [34]. It was this white supremacist-pandering attack by the NSW Labor leader on Berejiklian’s supposed softness on the protest that then pushed the conservative premier to move to ban today’s antiracist demonstration.
What we need is a workers party that in direct contrast to the ALP is not interested in gaining the approval or even the tolerance of any section of the capitalist class. Such a party would be based on the understanding that the interests of the working class masses can only be advanced through consistent opposition to the entire capitalist class. It would fight to restrict the “right” of capitalist bosses to slash jobs and fight for laws that would force company owners to increase their hiring of permanent workers at the expense of their profits. The workers party that we need would understand that advancing the masses interests can only come through building genuine workers unity. That means replacing the ALP’s hypocritical platitudes to “multiculturalism” and “reconciliation” with a merciless war against all outbreaks of white supremacy. It would fight for mass union/Aboriginal/Asian/Muslim/African mobilisations to crush violent redneck attacks, for the immediate jailing of all police and prison guards responsible for the deaths of Aboriginal people in custody and for the granting of all the rights of citizenship to all refugees, guest workers and international students. Such a party would also stand by all the peoples of the world subjugated by the same Australian capitalist class that exploits workers here at home, by the peoples subjugated by Canberra’s Washington big brother ally and by all those downtrodden by the reactionary regimes supported by these U.S. and Australian imperialists. That means it would oppose Australian imperialist plunder and paternalist bullying in the South Pacific and would demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. and Australian troops from Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf and all of the Middle East. It would also oppose all U.N. and U.S. economic sanctions on the peoples of North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran. A true workers party would also demand the removal of all Israeli troops and settlers from all of the West Bank and Gaza and fight for the destruction of the racial-supremacist Israeli state and its replacement by a bi-national, secular workers state where Jews and Palestinians will live together in socialist harmony. Most crucially, the international policy of a party that truly defends workers interests would emphasise the unconditional defence of socialistic rule in China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and Laos against imperialist military pressure, lying propaganda campaigns and Western-backed anti-communist forces. This policy is essential despite the bureaucratic deformations and capitalist intrusions that distort socialistic rule in these countries. In short, what we need is a party that will defend the states where workers have achieved power abroad while fighting for workers rule here in Australia.
From causing a growing gap between rich and poor to its inability to provide secure, permanent jobs to its flawed response to the pandemic to the racist state brutality that it administers, capitalist rule is every day making life more miserable for the masses. The widespread revelations of racist state terror against black people and the brutal response of police to Black Lives Matter protests not only shows the true nature of capitalist “democracy” but exposes the blatant hypocrisy of capitalist regimes when they make allegations against the PRC, DPRK and other socialistic states over “human rights”. Now in the U.S., many working class people are questioning their faith in capitalist “democracy” and for the first time in a long while have begun to take the political offensive. Here in Australia, today’s mass anti-racist protests are a sign of the potential to turn around the ruling class’ decades-long offensive against Aboriginal people, other people of colour and the broader working class masses. Yet, as we look to possibly move onto the front foot, we need to guard our rear against attack. The more that we resist, the more that the exploiting class will fear the spectre of communism and, thus, the more that they will resort to Cold War witch-hunting and propaganda campaigns. That makes it doubly important to resist the Cold War attacks on those who sympathise with, or praise, the PRC and other socialistic countries. Let us condemn the witch-hunt of Shaoquett Moselmane and demand: No to the targeting of Australian-Chinese community organisations! Stop the persecution of pro-PRC Chinese international students! Rebuff the all-sided attacks on democratic rights that the McCarthyist anti-PRC witch-hunt is fuelling!
References
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