En Passant

Louise O’Shea in Red Flag writes that the powerful are protected no matter what they do. Child abuse, whether it be in religious institutions, orphanages, through forced poverty or in immigration detention centres, is acceptable so long as it is carried out by the powerful. Seen in this context, moral panics about protecting children have nothing to do with concern for children. They are rather a cynical pretext for attacks on people’s rights and the demonising of minorities.

The problems are systemic and require systemic solutions, not band-aids. All capitalism can give us, given the importance of the police and religion to the system and the power they have, is band-aids and Royal Commissions.

Until the privileged position and power of the police and priests is overthrown there will be more deaths and injuries at the hands of police and ongoing abuse of children by priests and others.

One-sided accounts of the weakness of the working class by left wing writers, even if motivated by sympathy for workers, only reinforce the power of the bosses and the state by making it seem as if resistance is useless. Such analyses are a godsend for the union bureaucracy, which likes nothing better than a seemingly left wing argument to justify its own passivity. They are, therefore, a dangerous diversion and need to be vigorously challenged wherever they appear.

The Chaser team should do a skit on those kids Rudd’s troops have killed or whose deaths Rudd ignores as imperialism around the world (of which Australia is an integral part) destroys their lives.

We invade the Northern Territory to ‘protect’ children. We outlaw bikie gangs for alleged crimes. Why not the same for the Catholic Church?