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Check out the text of a leaflet we distributed at the ‘Stop Abbott’s attacks on Muslims’ rally in October.
No justice on stolen land
Any notion of ‘justice’ in a nation founded on the genocide and continuing dispossession of Australia’s First Nations is a joke. Let’s not pretend that this Team Australia bullshit is new, it’s just the latest in a long line of ruling class mythologies that seek to create a loyal ‘us’ and a subhuman ‘them’. From Terra Nullius and the White Australia Policy to ‘children overboard’ and the Northern Territory intervention, the logic has not changed. Australia is a settler colonial state. It has been a white supremacist regime since 1788, and continues to be to this day.
Letting the boss off the hook
White supremacy doesn’t mean that every white Australian has it easy. Even though we live in one of the wealthiest countries on earth, ever increasing numbers of us struggle to access basic human needs like housing, education and healthcare. Blaming immigrants and minorities is not only racist, it obscures who is really to blame. Nationalism is poison because it seeks to convince us that other working class people are to blame for the greed of our bosses and their lackeys.
No war between nations. No peace between classes.
The overblown clash of civilisations rhetoric spurting out of Canberra would be hilarious if it wasn’t so dangerous. The ideology of the so-called Islamic State is directly attributable to decades of Anglo-US conquest in the Middle East. The “barbarism” the political class condemns pales in comparison to the unacknowledged history of genocide on this continent. Less than 100 years ago white colonists hunted and murdered First Nations people across central Australia, and beheading Aboriginal warriors was a favoured practice of murderous white colonists. In the twentieth century across the Islamic world, the United States, Britain and their favoured client states have used fundamentalist political Islam as tool to prop up autocrats and dictators against revolutionary movements and national liberation struggles. The idea that our foreign military adventures are humanitarian is nonsense. They are about securing the economic interests of the American empire.
Resistance to all Oppressors
It’s not just that our politicians are racist, although they are. Racism has an important political function for the ruling class. Racism and nationalism are used to divide the majority into tiny warring faction, and to stop us recognising our common interests. To overcome this, we need to connect our struggles. Solidarity is our weapon, and true solidarity means listening to those who experience racialised oppression and acting to support them. We must work alongside people oppressed by racism and Islamophobia, not on their ‘behalf.’
Racism violently impacts people of colour in Australia every day. It is both structural and deeply personal. Any effective form of anti-racism therefore must also be every day. We must act to stop white supremacy in its tracks whenever and wherever it occurs. Whether that’s on the streets, by act of state or through the racist fear-mongering of the corporate media, we must stand in solidarity with those oppressed by white Australia. Racism is not only peddled by the government and the media, it has been internalised by large sections of the working class. It’s time for us to clean up our own back yard.
Solidarity with Aboriginal resistance.
Solidarity with the Muslim community.
Solidarity with migrant workers, refugees and asylum seekers.
