Remain firmly opposed to Zionism, anti-Semitism and all forms of racism

Written by: Nick G. and Alice M. on 11 December 2024

 

(Above: Nasser Mashni denounces synagogue arson at last Sunday's rally)

Ever since the start of the current Zionist Israeli aggression against Gaza, on October 7, 2023, attempts have been made to equate criticism of Israel and Zionism with anti-Semitism.

The Zionist lobby in Australia is particularly vociferous and influential in using allegations of anti-Semitism to attack supporters of the Palestinian people and critics of Israel’s genocide, many of whom are Jewish people. 

People in the media and politics who have defended “Israel’s right to defend itself” by committing wholesale genocide have rushed to condemn any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism every time the Zionist lobby has demanded it. They have sent their police to harass and arrest demonstrators against Zionist crimes.

The arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne’s South East is a case in point. 

This was real anti-Semitism at its worst. 

It is a hate crime just as was the mass killing of Muslim worshippers in New Zealand. There is silence surrounding other hates crimes targeting Muslims in our community.  A replica bomb was left on a car in the driveway of a house flying the Palestinian flag in Sydney.  

The family home of the founder of the Burgertory chain, Palestinian activist Hash Tayeh, was firebombed last April in Melbourne, the second time in the past five months that arsonists attacked a property connected to him. 

A driveway of a Melbourne house, displaying Palestinian flag and calls for a ceasefire, was graffitied with abusive language.  There are many unpublicised political and racist acts against Palestinian supporters.

Last Sunday night a school bus belonging to Adelaide Islamic school IQRA College was set on fire and badly damaged in a blatant act of Islamophobia.  It was parked outside bus driver’s house, and deliberately lit before midnight.

Quite correctly, the Muslim community and supporters of Palestine have denounced the synagogue attack.

The Islamic Council of Victoria said it was “saddened” by the attack, and “reiterates that the right of Australians to practice their faith and worship without fear must be upheld, and that places of worship should be respected as spiritual and community havens.”

Hash Tayeh, angered by the double standards surrounding treatment of hate crimes in Australia, nevertheless tweeted “My heart breaks for the synagogue that was firebombed, and I want to help rebuild it.”

At the Palestinian solidarity rally on December 8, Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni addressed the crowd, condemning the attack. “Whoever set fire to that synagogue is a racist, is a fascist, is a Nazi,” Mr Mashni said. 

The message to anyone who took part in the firebombing who may have come from the ranks of Palestinian supporters was clear: “Piss off!”

At all pro Palestine rallies held every Sunday since 7 October 2023, Mashni and other speakers repeatedly condemn anti-Semitism.  “Anti-Semitism and all forms of racism have no place here!” they loudly proclaim to thunderous applause and cheering by tens of thousands.

There is little point speculating about who may have been involved: Nazis, or those who mistakenly think that they can show support for Palestine by using Nazi methods.  

The act itself was wrong and only plays into the hands of Zionists by lending credibility to their accusations of anti-Semitism and calls for what are essentially protections of Zionist advocacy.

It is provocation and lays the ground for calls to ban Palestinian rallies, roll out more so-called “anti-terror” powers for the state and armed forces, and jailing protestors.  Most of these state powers will continue to be used against the people in many struggles.

From this it can be expected that there will be further surveillance and harassment of those who denounce Zionist aggression and genocide. 

As Communists, we have always condemned anti-Semitism and racism in all its forms and disguises.  

In the 1930s, and in the shadow of Nazi attacks on Jews, many political leaders of the day were asked to denounce anti-Semitism. Most were silent. Only Stalin made the statement that Jews wanted to hear.

Replying to an Inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States, on January 12, 1931, Stalin said: “National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

“Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.

“In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.”

No other major world leader made such a forthright condemnation of anti-Semitism or explained its dangers to working people. Not only did Stalin strongly condemn and denounce anti-Semitism in words, the USSR was the only country to open its borders to persecuted Jewish people fleeing Nazis occupations, pogroms and the holocaust.  No other European country would let in Jewish people seeking escape from the Nazi holocaust.

Rather than pandering to the Zionist lobby, the authorities must take the lead in treating all racist hates crimes with the severity they deserve. 

Supporters of the Palestinian resistance cannot be silenced or intimidated.

They are firm in their opposition to Zionist aggression.

They are firm in their opposition to anti-Semitism and all forms of racism.

Film review: White Riot, a documentary by Rubika Shah

 

Written by: (Contributed) on 27 March 2021

The release, in Australia, of the film White Riot has provided an important contribution toward our understanding of the forces of reaction and the ability of ordinary working people to organise effectively to combat the menace of racism.

The forces operating behind the main theme of the film are extremely historically important; they provide many insights into the age.

Originally released in the UK in 2019, the film White Riot showed how a younger generation were mobilised by the Rock Against Racism movement, which operated in conjunction with the Anti-Nazi League (ANL). It mobilised hundreds of thousands of people between 1976 to the early 1980s when both organisations were quietly shelved having served their purpose. The political climate, by the early 1980s, had changed dramatically with the election of the Thatcher administration in 1979; other political and trade-union campaigns were prioritised.

Rock Against Racism was largely a cultural movement composed of alternative rock bands together with reggae and punk counterparts which was established following racist statements from Eric Clapton and David Bowie. Both performing artistes were known to hold far-right political views. (1)

The ANL was a broad-based popular political organisation composed of progressives and left-wing groups which held together in an alliance over the single issue of combating the far-right. The Trotskyite Socialist Workers' Party was one of the original organisers of the ANL although other anti-fascists also contributed to the ANL. It was responsible for distributing huge amounts of left-wing propaganda couched in simple, easy to understand terminology for ordinary people; one broadsheet, for example, used official government statistics to show how for every immigrant into the UK, nearly two other people emigrated often to countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

The ANL were responsible for organising huge rallies with personnel from Rock Against Racism which included the Clash, Tom Robinson Band, Sham 69, Steel Pulse and many others who would play to crowds of over 100,000 supporters in London Parks. Many of the rallies and marches to the concerts attracted easy to identify supporters from across a wide political spectrum; it was often fascinating and historically of immense importance to watch young punk-rockers closely associated with anarchist political view-points, marching alongside older trade-union members, communists who had been associated with the anti-fascist rallies against Mosley's Blackshirts in the 1930s.

The music and culture of the period mirrored other dominant factors in UK society.

The period 1976 to the early 1980s was period of immense social upheaval; unemployment, which had not been a problem in the UK since the mid-1930s, started, once again, to become commonplace, particularly in large northern cities with traditional industries. The cities had also attracted first generation immigrants in search of a better life in the heartlands of the British Commonwealth. Those who were white and native-born were in competition for jobs and subsequently targeted by far-right political groups including the National Front and British Movement with white supremacist standpoints; crude arguments about sending black and Asian people back to their countries of origin were used to divide the working class.

Other significant factors, in the background to the period, also came into play and were to have a major bearing upon the problem.

The earlier period, 1970-74, had seen the dramatic wave of industrial disputes which included the 1972 and 1974 miners' strikes, which eventually toppled the Edward Heath-led Conservative government. It is, therefore, not surprising those who identified with the business-classes and that Conservative government sought to divide the opposition to the Tories. Racism was a convenient way of conducting their political business. And in the UK, with its colonial past, it is not difficult to find supporters of a racist disposition, including those in influential and government positions.

Enoch Powell, a prominent right-wing M.P. in Westminster, for example, had fanned the flames of racial hatred earlier with calls to end black and Asian immigration. His demagogic speaking style was clearly aimed toward incitement although sympathetic media outlets always presented Powell as a credible parliamentary figure.

Secondly, the incoming Labour administrations of 1974, were thrust into the forefront of two major confrontations with Apartheid South Africa, which was actively supported by the UK far-right. In May, 1975, the Wilson government took a major position along with Australian counterpart Gough Whitlam at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, to condemn Apartheid and white supremacism in Southern Africa. The termination of the Simonstown Agreement by the Labour government the same year, was, likewise, a major blow to the defence and security of the Apartheid government in Pretoria which was already under siege following the Portuguese military coup the year before which effectively removed the buffer protecting both South Africa and Rhodesia.

Both developments set the Wilson labour governments on a collision course with the business sectors, which benefited from favourable trade with South Africa. The economic considerations were accompanied by intelligence operations. The publication, Inside BOSS, South Africa's Secret Police, by Gordon Winter (1981), has revealed the large-scale intelligence operations conducted in the UK at the time on behalf of Pretoria. They used many fellow-travellers to rally support for Apartheid in South Africa and the far-right in the UK. Covert funding operations also took place, as the subsequent Muldergate scandal revealed; the Apartheid regime funded front-organisations to conduct nefarious agendas in many countries, often using very subtle techniques. South African government officials were responsible for manipulating huge flows of finance for clandestine use through supporters, often for psychological warfare operations conducted through media outlets and sympathetic journalists.  

Harold Wilson, decades later, continued to accuse the Apartheid regime in Pretoria of covert operations in the UK designed to undermine his governments.

It is important, therefore, to establish the lineage of the far-right, from the puppet-masters behind the scenes to their front-line bully-boys and thugs.

The UK National Front and British Movement rested upon far-right organisations from earlier in the Cold War. It is not difficult to establish their links with Apartheid South Africa and their intelligence services. The National Front and British Movement, for example, evolved out of the League of Empire Loyalists, itself linked into the British League of Rights, with parallel organisations elsewhere in the British Commonwealth, the US and Southern Africa. (1)

The Australian connection to the League was conducted through the Australian League of Rights (ALOR), whose leader, Eric Butler, had been employed as a trainer of the South African Security Police in the late 1960s. (2) Butler was a regular visitor to Southern Africa and responsible for developing extensive far-right organisations; it was noted, nevertheless, 'Mr Butler places importance on his contacts with Christian figures and others in a position to lend him platforms and a cloak of respectability'. (3)

It should be noted as highly relevant that the Apartheid Police were specialists in unconventional warfare techniques when dealing with adversaries, particularly those who challenged white supremacist standpoints. No doubt Butler taught his Security Police students well: the repressive techniques included electrical torture, sexual molestation, prolonged jail – without trial - and, on a routine basis, savage beatings. (4)

Whether these techniques were later deployed to kill ANL member, Clement Blair Peach, a New Zealand special needs teacher employed in a London Primary School who was attending an anti-fascist rally in April, 1979, which was savagely attacked by a special police unit, has never been legally proved. A subsequent 130-page government report, however, led to an official conclusion he had 'almost certainly been killed by police'. (5) An official raid on a local police station by government investigators revealed the special unit concerned had amassed a large collection of unconventional warfare weapons including clubs designed to hide outer symptoms of massive internal brain damage.

The initial political flashpoint in the UK, however, took place earlier in 1977.

The National Front contested numerous council seats for the 1977 Greater London Council elections. They won 120,000 votes with a manifesto of forced repatriation of black and Asian immigrants. Following meetings between various left-wing groups in a House of Commons Committee Room, the ANL was established. It went into immediate operation; branches were founded in most towns and cities, attracting widespread support.

Part of the political work of ANL activists was networking sympathetic groups and ethnic minorities and establishing telephone trees for mobilising supporters at short notice. Many ANL supporters soon became political activists. One example of the extent of the networking took place in the lead-up to the 1979 general election and a National Front meeting in Bradford, an area of the north of England with a high density of immigrants from the Asian sub-continent. The proposed meeting, in a school building, was regarded as provocative, to say the very least.

In nearby Huddersfield an ad hoc committee of ANL supporters took over the student union premises for a couple of hours the afternoon of the proposed National Front meeting that evening. They successfully mobilised over 1,500 people for a counter-demonstration using personal contacts and telephone-trees. After the Police provided security for the seven neo-Nazis to enter their election meeting, the counter-demonstration prevented them from leaving the premises for hours afterwards.  

Elsewhere, all over the UK, similar demonstrations and counter-demonstrations took place on the regular basis.

Following the dissolution of Rock Against Racism and the ANL, many of those associated with them moved into other related areas of political activism, including anti-discrimination bodies, the Anti-Apartheid Movement and solidarity work with Central and Latin America to name but a few, together with usual trade-union and political work.

White Riot is recommended viewing for all progressive Australians!

With the far-right gaining ground in Australia the film will provide some practical ideas about how the forces of reaction can be combated: ordinary people can change the world!

*****

The author was an active member of Huddersfield ANL and an under-graduate at the local Polytechnic where he studied for a B.A.(Hons) in Politics, Philosophy and History. He attended many of the national and regional protests and demonstrations against the far-right during the period. He also lived in a predominantly immigrant suburb and was invited to join the local West Indian Community Centre in recognition of his work for the ANL.

Throughout the 1980s the author worked in the Manchester district as a teacher in the post-school sector and rose through the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) to the National Council before leaving the UK to work overseas.

On becoming an immigrant into Australia in 1994 the author returned to the shop-floor and blue-collar trade-unionism and is still a union delegate.

1.     Facing the music in sobering 70s note,The  Weekend Australian, 20-21 March 2021, has provided statements from Clapton and Bowie glorifying far-right positions on the race issue.

2.     The Australian League of Rights, A Study in Political Extremism and Subversion, Andrew A. Campbell, (Victoria, 1978), Appendix C, page 170.
3.     Eric Butler training SA Security Police, Front Page, The Star (South Africa), 15 July 1967.
4.     Voices of Hate, A study of the ALOR and its director Eric D. Butler, K.D. Gott, (Melbourne, 1965), page 44.
5.     The Spy in the Newsroom, Gordon Winter, Australian Playboy, June 1982, pp. 111-116.
6.     Blair Peach killed by police, The Guardian (U.K.), 27 April 2010.

 

Full support for Australian Black Lives Matter/Deaths in Custody protests

Written by: Nick G. on 3 June 2020

“I’m here for my people, and for our fallen brothers and sisters around the world…. What’s happening in America shines a light on the situation here."

These comments came from a 46-year old Indigenous woman attending a Black Lives Matter rally and march in Sydney. With her daughter and two nieces, she was amongst a 3-4000 strong crowd showing solidarity with US anti-racism protesters, and taking a stand against police brutality and deaths in custody in Australia.

The ugly epidemic of police beatings and neglect of the physical and mental health of Australian First Peoples held in police cells and prisons led, some three decades ago, to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

However, a 2015 report by law firm Clayton Utz found that the bulk of the commission’s 339 recommendations remained unimplemented or only partially implemented by State and Territory governments.

So much hope was born of the Commission, yet so little changed. First Peoples are entitled to feel cheated of a major opportunity to begin to feel safe and secure in their own country. Since the handing down of the Commission’s recommendations in 1991, there have been a further 430 Aboriginal deaths in custody.

Issues surrounding these deaths are still raw.

The case of Ms Dhu, who died after inhumane treatment suffered while in police custody in South Hedland, WA in 2014 still incites anger, as does the case of David Dungay Jnr, a 26 year old Dungatti man, who died on December 29, 2015 in Sydney's Long Bay Prison Hospital. Six guards held him down in a prone position, administering a sedative while nursing staff and four other guards looked on. He called out twelve times that he couldn't breathe before losing consciousness.

Very rarely has action been taken against police and prison guards.  However, last year the police shooting of Kumanjayi Walker at Yuendumu in the NT, and of Yamatji woman Joyce Clark of Geraldton WA who died in custody after being shot by police, led to murder charges being levelled at the two officers concerned. The extraordinary outpouring of protest within 24 hours of the death of Kumanjayi Walker cannot be overlooked in the decision to quickly charge the officer involved.

However, racist attitudes still surface daily when police deal with First Peoples. Last year, a South Australian policewoman was driven to resign from the force after she began dating an Aboriginal man. She had been assigned to Operation Mandrake, a part of the force dealing specifically with young Aboriginal offenders. Other members of the task force repeatedly referred to Aborigines as “Davids”, a contraction of the cricketer David Boon’s name which had become rhyming slang for the racist term “coons”. She said she had fellow cops “come up to me in the workplace and say, ‘oh does your mate even work, or does he just steal cars for a living?’”  

The social media footage of a 17-year old Indigenous youth being arrested by police in Surry Hills, Sydney, on June 1, further illustrates the daily brutality meted out to First Peoples by police. Footage showed the officer approach the youth, turning him around and holding his hands behind his back.  The youth does not resist, but the cop suddenly kicks the boy’s feet out from under him and slamming him into the ground. The boy’s head took the brunt of being slammed into the hard ground. The cop places his knee into the boy’s back while a female cop kneels on his lower legs. Take a moment to mentally rewind the footage, and then imagine the cop in a brown Nazi stormtrooper’s uniform and the 17-year old with a yellow Star of David sewn on the front of his clothing. That is a fitting parallel to the unrestrained and arrogant brutality of the episode. It is also a reminder of the 1938 protest by the Aborigines Advancement League against the Nazi persecution of Jews, one of the first expressions of Australian opposition to racist Nazi thuggery.

The Sydney Black Lives Matter rally was first proposed by First Peoples’ leaders in Sydney, but the police refused them the right and they cancelled it.

Members of the newly-formed Australian Communist Party (ACP) decided not to let police dictate the right to protest and went ahead with the rally’s organization. A spokesperson of the CPA (M-L) contacted the ACP and congratulated them on their initiative.

A Black Lives Matter/Deaths in Custody rally of several hundred people also took place in Perth.

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) will continue to support the just struggles of Australian First Peoples.

Fully support the US people’s struggle against racist oppression

Written by: Nick G. on 2 June 2020

Racism, which is structurally embedded in US society, arose with the invasion and theft of the lands of northern American First Peoples and the enslavement and transportation to Southern cottonfields of Africans.

On August 8, 1963, at the request of Afro-American leader Robert Williams, Mao Zedong issued a “Statement Supporting the American Negroes In Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism”.

After referring to a recent series of repressive measures against black Americans, ranging from the 1957 Little Rock, Arkansas, struggle against the barring of black children from public schools, to the June 12 1963 murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, Chairman Mao said, in part:

"The fascist atrocities of the U.S. imperialists against the Negro people have exposed the true nature of so-called American democracy and freedom and revealed the inner link between the reactionary policies pursued by the U.S. Government at home and its policies of aggression abroad…. The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people."

Afro-Americans have yet to win their complete emancipation.  Fascist atrocities against people of colour continue.

Now, nearly 50 US cities are burning or are convulsed in what is inaccurately called “race riots”. Four thousand have been arrested and five shot by police.  Another seven were shot in a protest against the police killing of innocent 26-year old black emergency health worker Breanna  Taylor a few days ago in Louisville, Kentucky. No-one has been charged and suggestions are made that white supremacists and neo-Nazis are inflicting their own violence against protesters.

Trump blasts State Governors for being weak in the face of the protests and threatens to unleash “the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen” on protesters outside the White House, and to call in the US army if the police and National Guard cannot “dominate” the streets.

We should really thank Trump for exposing the reactionary and racist thinking of the US ruling class. But we should also issue a warning: You are lifting a heavy rock only to drop it on your own feet, Mr Trump.  Mao quoted this Chinese folk saying to “describe the behaviour of certain fools…The reactionaries of all countries are fools of this kind.”  Repression by Trump will only lead to better, wider and more intense resistance, lifting it from a spontaneous, “movementist” character to a more conscious and ideologically aware character.

As Trump bemoans the awakening of the US people and the united struggles of white and coloured people, whinging that it is “terrible, it’s terrible”, we raise Mao’s banner that such struggles, for any faults that might be levelled at them are “fine, they’re fine”!

 

Anning speech: racism and division must not be allowed!

(Contributed)

On the 14th of August 2018, Fraser Anning, senator and Katter's Australian Party member, gave his controversial maiden speech to an almost universally negative reaction.

This is largely due to his abhorrent comments regarding the nature of immigration, calling for a “final solution”, a plebiscite with which the Australian public would decide whether or not we return to the “predominantly European immigration policy of the pre-Whitlam consensus”. It was essentially calling for a return to the White Australia Policy though using more palatable rhetoric.

Anning, a self-described “Australian nationalist”, used the rest of the speech as a means to attack the economy and state of Australian industry, spout repulsive white nationalist talking points, and blame these problems on Muslims and “Gramsci-inspired radicals” or “Cultural Marxists”.

 

In this speech, Anning stated that ethnocultural diversity is known to undermine social cohesion and called for a dramatic cut of immigration intake to maintain this cohesion and national identity. He continued, “We as a nation are entitled to insist that those who are allowed to come here predominantly reflect the historic European Christian composition of Australian society and embrace our language, culture and values as a people”. This appears to be an attack on not only immigrants, but First Nations peoples as well, ignoring Australia’s long history prior to the imperialism of the British. He then goes on to attack Muslims, stating that they are “the least able to assimilate and integrate”, saying that they were behind Australia’s first “terrorist attack”, and that and that “while all Muslims are not terrorists, certainly all terrorists these days are Muslims”. According to the ABS’ 2016 census, 2.6% of Australians identify as followers of Islam. Anning’s comments are a disgusting, divisive slap in the face to this large minority that is already constantly under the attack of rigorous propaganda from the media.

 

A question remains, however. Given that many reactionary, racist, and divisive remarks are often made in parliament by members of other parties, would this speech have received such a large response had he used less offensive language? We can see that these ideas are not new in parliament. They come not only from members of the LNP or Pauline Hanson, they are also clearly reflected in Bob Katter’s response to the speech in question, which is as follows: “I love it. Our phones are on fire. Ninety per cent of Australia have been waiting for someone to say it and believe it. Absolutely 1000 per cent I support everything he said. His speech was absolutely magnificent. It is everything his country should be doing. It was solid gold.”

 

When Anning wasn’t blaming Muslims for all of Australia’s problems, he shifted the focus towards “cultural Marxists” instead. He accuses “cultural Marxists” of “degeneracy”, subverting society and values through the power of institutions; and blames them for the existence of the Safe Schools Program (which is intended to cater to the safety of LGBT+ students). He conflates Australia’s political trajectory from Whitlam’s prime ministership onwards (his emphasis on Whitlam) with Marxism, of which he has absolutely zero understanding. The Labor Party, of which Whitlam was a member, is, and has historically been a party of capitalism. While it has made some progressive decisions, it still serves capital before any other interests. We can see this in Ted Hill’s “The Labor Party?” booklet, written during Whitlam’s prime ministership. Anning’s conflation of Marxism with the current Australian political system is incredibly erroneous, though factually incorrect arguments such as these are consistent with the rest of his speech.

 

Anning has responded to the backlash, remarking that ““If that offends anyone then that’s the way it has to be,” and “I don’t regret anything.” This signals that Australia is in for even more unapologetic racism and other targeted attacks of groups in parliament for the foreseeable future. Australia must not allow such unacceptable behaviour to continue.
 
Full text of speech: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/full-text-senator-fraser-anning-s-maiden-speech
Katter quote and Anning response: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/both-sides-slam-anning-over-final-solution-speech-that-praised-white-australia-policy
ABS: http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/mediareleasesbyReleaseDate/7E65A144540551D7CA258148000E2B85