Media hysteria shows high schoolers are right to protest Pauline Hanson

There’s one thing I’ve learned organising the nationwide student walkout against Pauline Hanson, and it’s something they don’t tell you at school: If you’re a student protester, you cop more criticism from the establishment than if you’re a far-right politician who supports mass deportations and abortion bans.

Since we announced that we’re walking out of school on Thursday, there’s been a flood of hit pieces in the right-wing press, furious debates on talkback radio, and denunciations from politicians. The response just confirms why it’s so important for us to stand up—because the capitalist media and politicians aren’t going to. They’re up to their necks in complicity with Hanson’s rise, and they want to demonise anyone who has the guts to call her out.

The arguments against our strike are mind-bogglingly stupid. It’s funny to be lectured about staying in school by some of the dumbest people in Australia.

Liberal Party nepo-baby and 3AW shock-jock Tom Elliot, who graciously had me on his show, mused to his listeners: “Why underage students, who can’t even vote, are so worried about Pauline Hanson, I just don’t know”.

That’s a head-scratcher. We don’t enjoy even the very limited democratic rights afforded to adults, but we’re already seeing the way the rise of the far right is going to change our lives for the worse. We’ve been watching Trump’s rampage in the United States, as he’s slashed social services, threatened entire nations with annihilation and used immigration Gestapo thugs to terrorise and deport residents. We’ve watched as far-right riots have spread across the European continent and throughout Britain. But, according to Tom Elliot, what is there to worry about?

Plenty of journalists have said we need to stay in school and focus on our grades. Lucy Zelic asked in the Daily Telegraph, “With NAPLAN results sinking, why are we preaching Hanson hate in class?”

Let me spell it out. Hanson’s not going to put her racist rampage on pause until we all get our university degrees. The Victorian state election is in three months, and One Nation is building a far-right organisation to go out and win seats. She’s shaping politics right here, right now—putting migrant bashing, misogyny and attacks on workers at the centre of the discussion. If this is what we’re seeing already, what will it be like in five years when we’re entering the workforce?

The condescension echoes what we heard throughout the Palestine solidarity movement, when Premier Ben Carroll, who was then the education minister, warned us to leave politics up to our parents, and stay in school if we want to change the world.

These people clearly missed a few history lessons. Students have been central to movements for social change forever—from the high-schoolers who challenged segregation in the US South in the 1950s, to the heroic school kids who were massacred in the Soweto uprising in South Africa, to the role that school students have played across the world in the global Palestine solidarity movement. Those of us who have actually studied this history know you change the world by organising together, not by becoming soulless career politicians like Carroll.

In the Herald Sun, Andrew Bolt said that we are being “played” by socialist agitators, “extremists manipulating [us], with violence on their mind”.

High schoolers don’t need to be told what to think about Hanson. It’s pretty obvious that it’s racist to call for monoculture. It’s pretty obvious that it’s sexist to blame women for domestic violence. It’s pretty obvious that she’s backed by a coterie of rich creeps who want to roll back workers’ rights and line their pockets further.

I’m a member of the High School Anticapitalists in Melbourne, who identify Hanson as a hard-edged outgrowth of capitalist politics, in lockstep with the priorities of competition, nationalism and profit.

Although the high school walkout was initiated by High School Anticapitalists, it’s spread far and wide, to places where we have no members. Students from Bendigo to Geraldton to Tasmania are organising their own local walkouts, painting banners, and getting in touch with our group.

But it shouldn’t be surprising that socialists are behind the strike. The only political party that has wholeheartedly backed what we are doing in Melbourne is the Victorian Socialists. I think socialist politics is about standing on the right side of history, not cow-towing to what’s considered “reasonable” and “respectable” in our detestable political system.

So why is our school strike important? Just ask Rowan Dean, editor-in-chief of the conservative Spectator. He warns: “You’ve got these school kids linking Pauline Hanson, oligarchs, fascism ... linking that to billionaires, linking that to Gina Rinehart. It’s really dangerous, it’s really sinister, it’s radicalisation of our youth.”

That’s exactly right, Rowan. I think it’s time for high school students to draw the links between Pauline Hanson, billionaires and fascism. When Hanson argues against maternity leave, and to make it easier for bosses to fire “lazy” employees without notice and pay, she’s fighting to make it easier to exploit workers and step down upon the oppressed.

We refuse to just adapt to the new “normal” of Hansonism. We’re gonna call a fascist a fascist, because we’re not about sitting back to watch a far-right movement grow in this country. We recognise we’ve got a serious fight ahead of us. That’s why we are building a movement to combat these politics into the future. If One Nation eventually forms a government, we won’t look back on this moment and say, “We should’ve stayed in school”. We’ll look back and say we should’ve built harder; we should’ve brought more people out.

We’re living through a defining moment in Australian politics. There’s nothing more important for students to do on Thursday than strike. If there’s any time to rebel against all these far-right freaks and come into the streets, it’s right now. So join your nearest demonstration on Thursday 13 August (and if you are in a regional area, check your social media as local demonstrations are being called as the momentum grows):