En Passant

So have you noticed any letters in the Australian critical of the racist Wilders? Any articles attacking him for what he is – a member of the extreme right? No. I tried. I sent 3 letters to the editor, not in any expectation of publication because when it comes to free speech Rupert holds all the cards, not me. Free speech in Australia is for the billionaires and those who agree with them or fit into their agenda.

From Corey Oakley, a member of Socialist Alternative’s National Executive: There have been reports in the media and comments online implying that Socialist Alternative was backing the now-cancelled protest that was planned for this Sunday. This is not the case. Socialist Alternative was very much opposed to calling a protest in the current climate of [...]

Those who call themselves progressive might note that a certain Karl Marx followed the Great Indian Rebellion closely. While he acknowledged and decried the excesses of the rebels, he declared these were ‘only the reflex, in a concentrated form, of England’s own conduct in India.’

In other words, Marx, one of history’s more famous atheists, stood firmly with the ‘ignorant’ sepoys against their ‘enlightened’ opponents.

Let me be disrespectful and disparaging. After the revolution Alan Jones will be made to clean toilets. It shouldn’t be too much of a change for him. After all he deals in horseshit every day. The other end of the chaff bag you might say. The right wallows in hate; the currency of the Left is hope.

The right wing, and I include the Labor Party leadership in this with its threats to deport people, are using the demonstrations, especially stupid and reactionary placards about beheading those who insult the Prophet, to justify a wave of hate and ultimately recriminations that could shift Australia to the extreme right and will make the lives of all Muslims much worse.

There has been almost no discussion of the context for these protests – decades of U.S. imperialist intervention in the Muslim region. In reality, the film has become a symbol of the contempt with which the U.S. government holds the people of the Middle East and North Africa.

In short, leftists who support strikes only if there are no picket lines to fight off the cops and keep out the scabs, who support Indigenous people only if they don’t offend, who support Muslims only if they have acceptable signs and let the police attack them, are not worthy of the name. To those who ask why we haven’t criticised the demonstration, we in turn ask: “Why have you lined up with the cops and the ruling class against an oppressed minority?”

The current demonisation of the Muslim demonstration in Sydney is part of this wider Islamophobia, racism and vilification of all things Islamic to entrench imperialism.

Socialist Alternative in Melbourne is holding a meeting this Thursday 20 September at 6:30 at the Victorian Trades Hall Council: Challenging anti Muslim bigotry: Why the left needs to defend the Muslim protests

As well as unleashing more Islamophobia and racism across the country, the police attack on Muslim demonstrators in Sydney will be used as cover for the further brutalisation by the O’Farrell Government of lives across New South Wales.

We need to build a political movement that fights against racism and the other forms of oppression, including religious repression, which flows from capitalism itself. That means building a fight against the economic exploitation at the heart of the system and joining with all those who resist capitalism in its many manifestations, economic, political and social.