More than 100 people met at Victorian Trades Hall on Thursday 18 June, for a panel discussion: “Fighting back against fascism and the far-right – then and now”.
Organised by Socialist Alternative, the meeting heard about Australia’s often ignored history of fascist organising, the rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in the 1990s and the shape of today’s far right.
Writer and commentator Jeff Sparrow said that Hanson’s focus on “Asian culture” helped pave the way for the Islamophobia of today. He argued that public protests against Hanson played a “major part” in her organisation’s disintegration.
“Rather than pictures of Hanson looking like an ordinary person, we have pictures of crazy skinheads with swastikas tattooed all over their face. The media and the political class turned [against Hanson], and the demonstrations played a big role in that”, he said.
Vashti Kenway, a member of Socialist Alternative and the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, said that Islamophobia is “breeding in a swamp that has been created by the Australian ruling class and the international context”.
She stressed the importance of anti-racists spreading the word about the next national mobilisations against Reclaim Australia over the weekend of 18-19 July.
