From Vietnam to Palestine: students are right to revolt
In 1968 I was a Year 11 student at a Catholic girls’ school in suburban Melbourne. The events of that momentous year—including the Tet offensive in Vietnam and the growing anti-war movement, the student revolt and general strike in France, the civil rights movement in the US, and the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia—convinced me that the world was seriously fucked up.
More than anything though, like many of my contemporaries, I was inspired by those who were fighting back. After the stultifying conservatism of the 1950s, a new and exciting process of mass radicalisation was taking place, especially among young people and students.
Determined to be part of it, I chose to study at Monash University, at the time the most radical campus in Australia. The Vietnam War was a defining issue for my generation, and Monash was at the forefront of the anti-war movement.
In 1967, radical students there had begun collecting money for the National Liberation Front—an act condemned as treason by the media and the establishment, but which shifted the entire anti-war debate to the left. Simply opposing the war on a pacifist basis became the soft, moderate position; if you were left-wing, you supported those fighting the imperialist aggression of the US and Australia.
Any genuine mass movement involves a wide range of people and organisations. Anti-war groups sprang up everywhere—in the suburbs, at workplaces and in unions, on campuses and at high schools—reflecting a range of political opinions and engaging in a variety of activities.
Along with large mobilisations like the May 1970 Moratorium there were innumerable smaller and often more militant actions, such as assaults on the US Consulate, occupying National Service Centres, dramatic stunts by draft resisters, handing out anti-war leaflets in the city in defiance of by-laws, and much more.
In response to the growing militancy, arrests and police violence were common, but far from deterring activists, this only further radicalised many people. In the end, the movement was vindicated, and US imperialism suffered a major setback. A minority were won to revolutionary socialist politics in this period, including the tiny group that eventually became Socialist Alternative.
In the 50-odd years since, there have been occasional eruptions of mass struggle, such as the anti-capitalist and Occupy movements, the huge protests against the war in Iraq and Black Lives Matter, but there has been nothing anywhere near as deep and sustained as the movement against the Vietnam War. Until now.
Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza has given rise to an international solidarity movement with Palestine which is unprecedented, but in some ways strikingly reminiscent of the Vietnam movement.
Every week for seven months, many thousands have taken to the streets in enormous protest rallies. As well, there have been a host of smaller actions, such as blockading Israeli ships, picketing companies that produce materials for the Israeli war machine, confronting pro-Israel politicians and agitating to get local councils to take a stand against the genocide. A number of new solidarity groups have sprung up, while existing organisations such as Students for Palestine have found a new and wider audience.
Once again, students have been at the forefront. Indeed, we are currently witnessing one of the most serious outbreaks of national student protest since the Vietnam era. The strikes and walk-outs by university and high school students were a great start. And now, with camps established on numerous university campuses, demanding the severing of ties with Israel, students are the radical cutting edge of the broader protest movement.
The camps are centres of both activism and political discussion. This, again, is reminiscent of campus activism in the ’70s. Teach-ins for example were a feature of the anti-Vietnam War movement, arming participants with the facts and arguments to counter the lies and propaganda of the other side. Discussions about why the world’s most powerful military was invading a tiny third world country led many to an understanding that the war was not an isolated act of aggression, but the inevitable product of capitalism and imperialism.
Another similarity is that the brutal repression of the camps in the US (which Liberal and some Labor politicians want to see happen here) has not only failed to intimidate Palestine activists but, like the police violence of the ’70s, has exposed the role of the state and contributed to the movement spreading.
There are differences of course. The stakes for imperialism are higher than they were in Vietnam. The US will not abandon Israel, which is vital to its strategic and economic interests. Liberating Palestine will require the building of a mass, working-class movement throughout the Middle East to overthrow the treacherous and reactionary Arab leaders, such as we saw during the Arab Spring of 2011.
It also requires challenging and fighting the whole system of imperialism, and the international solidarity movement can play a role in that. As with Vietnam, the intervention of socialists will be crucial to winning arguments that can not only take the movement forward, but convince as many people as possible to commit to the anti-capitalist struggle for the long term.
It’s a big ask, but we’re better placed to do that than in the 1970s, when the left was still dominated by dead-end Stalinist politics. Significant numbers of a new generation have been propelled into political activism, leading to the emergence of a vibrant and sustained solidarity movement. It’s incredibly inspiring for those, like me, who were part of the Vietnam-era student revolt, and provides an all too rare opportunity to build the forces of the revolutionary left, both quantitatively and qualitatively. It’s an opportunity we can’t let slip.
