When riots erupted last month across France in response to the slaying of a French teenager by a police officer, Europe’s far right wasted no time <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/europes-far-right-seeks-to-capitalize-on-unrest-in-france/">capitalising on the unrest</a>. 
Nicola Molteni from the far-right Lega Nord in Italy <a href="https://www.ilgiornale.it/news/europa/francia-dimostra-fallito-modello-delle-porte-aperte-2175594.html#:~:text=La%20preoccupazione%20c'%C3%A8:%20">called the French events</a> “a certification of a failure, that of uncontrolled immigration, but also a warning for Europe”. Poland’s prime minister, from the far-right Law and Justice Party, <a href="https://twitter.com/MorawieckiM/status/1674784863214538757?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1674784863214538757%7Ctwgr%5Ea1af8d9091c1940527afde77581bb3f4a2913071%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https://dorzeczy.pl/opinie/456477/morawiecki-komentuje-zamieszki-we-francji-stop-nielegalnej-migracji.html">painted a picture of chaos</a>—“Shops looted, police cars set on fire, barricades in the streets”—before reaffirming his support for “the principle of voluntary admission of immigrants” and stopping irregular migration. 
French youth, particularly those of Middle Eastern and North African descent, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/world/europe/france-police-shooting-paris-nanterre.html?name=styln-france-unrest&amp;region=TOP_BANNER&amp;block=storyline_menu_recirc&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Article&amp;variant=undefined">rose in June</a> against the racist shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk by a police officer in the working-class neighbourhood of Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris. These were the largest protests against racism and police violence in France since 2005, and they extended well beyond the suburbs of Paris, engulfing cities and towns across the country and even prompting <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/paris-protests-spread-switzerland-belgium-30374405">protests in Belgium and Switzerland</a>. The far right seized the opportunity to link supposed anxiety about the uprising to fears about immigration and national identity.
“There is a Europe threatened by mobs of anti-Europeans who destroy police stations, burn libraries and stab to steal a cell phone, who are not willing to adapt to our way of life and our laws and who think that we are the ones who have to adapt”, <a href="https://elpais.com/espana/elecciones-generales/2023-07-02/abascal-usa-los-disturbios-en-francia-para-lanzar-un-ataque-contra-la-comunidad-musulmana.html">said Santiago Abascal</a>, leader of Spain’s far-right Vox party. While not identifying the race or religion of the protesters, it’s clear from Abascal and other far-right European leaders’ responses who their rhetoric was targeting: the Arab-Muslim illegal immigrant bogeyman of Europe, decades in the making.
In Spain’s recent snap elections, Abascal led one of the most racist campaigns the country has seen. Vox <a href="https://english.elpais.com/spain/2023-04-21/spanish-far-right-party-vox-campaigns-on-illegal-immigration-using-manipulated-data.html">manipulated data</a> to claim that half or more crimes in Spain—including violent robberies and sexual assaults—were carried out by foreigners. They resurrected a 2021 campaign poster featuring the false claim that an unaccompanied minor receives €4,700 a month in government support while “your grandmother” only receives €420 a month in pension. While other social and cultural questions—such as attacks on LGBTIQ+ and women’s rights, anti-“wokeism” and so on—have become increasingly prominent, immigration continues to animate the far right.
The dominance and persistence of immigration and national identity in European politics is on display as a conservative wave sweeps the continent and the far right makes serious gains. In Sweden, Finland and Italy, far-right parties either support governing coalitions or, in the case of Italy, lead the government. Elsewhere, far-right parties have come out of the shadows and into the mainstream, outpolling establishment parties to become the third, the second or even the most popular parties nationally. 
The German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germanys-far-right-afd-wins-vote-lead-district-first-time-2023-06-25/">recently won a district election for the first time</a>. Its victory in the town of Sonneberg, on top of national polling of 19–20 percent, has given the far-right party the confidence to nominate a candidate for chancellor in 2025. AfD has overturned a national taboo—held since the end of the Second World War—of supporting far-right parties, in a country where the experience of the Holocaust and fascist atrocities are still in living memory. 
When French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen entered the second round of the 2002 presidential elections, the shock of a fascist candidate coming so close to the presidency prompted a wave of mass demonstrations across the country, leading to his centre-right opponent’s victory with more than 80 percent of the final vote. 
When his daughter Marine Le Pen entered the second round in last year’s presidential elections, she only narrowly lost, winning 13.2 million votes (41 percent of the total cast)—the French far right’s highest tally to date. Known for her <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34324335">incendiary statements against Muslims and immigrants</a>, she toned down her own rhetoric while relying on forces further to her right—such as the anti-Muslim candidate Éric Zemmour—to <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/eric-zemmour-france-human-rights-top-eu-court-upholds-conviction-discrimination-muslims/">inflame</a> <a href="https://www.leparisien.fr/seine-saint-denis-93/la-seine-saint-denis-enclave-etrangere-sous-le-regne-dallah-troussel-traite-zemmour-de-guignol-et-menacer-de-porter-plainte-10-09-2021-VB7IYZUU2NBTLMFFZF7A7I33QA.php">the</a> <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220324-far-right-zemmour-threatens-to-seize-african-leaders-assets-if-they-don-t-take-back-immigrants">electorate</a>.
Europe’s “centrist” political parties must be held accountable for opening the door to the far right through their rightward drift on immigration. They have adopted increasingly reactionary positions on immigration, emboldening and normalising the far right, which <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/niche-party-success-and-mainstream-party-policy-shifts-how-green-and-radical-right-parties-differ-in-their-impact/AEF265EED2CAA81C35A3808F47F5908A">in turn has put more pressure on mainstream parties to adopt even more far-right positions</a>. 
The administration of French president Emmanuel Macron is illustrative of this phenomenon. When Macron first ran for president in 2017, he avoided any anti-Muslim rhetoric and even denounced France’s colonial past <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/87d6f430-f521-11e6-95ee-f14e55513608">as a “crime against humanity”</a>. Over his two terms, under electoral pressure from a far right growing in popularity, his government <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/france-election-muslims-face-islamophobia-five-more-years">has run viciously Islamophobic campaigns</a>, including making repressive state-of-emergency laws permanent in the form of anti-terror legislation, forcing France’s Muslim organisations to adopt a so-called “charter of principles”, and dissolving anti-racist organisations like the Collective Against Islamophobia in France.
Further, the media have worked hard to mainstream right-wing ideas around immigration. For example, the <a href="https://mdpi-res.com/societies/societies-13-00108/article_deploy/societies-13-00108-v2.pdf?version=1684835684">Swedish media have increasingly accommodated the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD)</a>. Whereas once SD talking points on immigration would have been identified as racist, since 2015 the Swedish media have tended to present the party’s anti-immigrant views as simply part of general social attitudes.
The European political landscape looks bleak, but there are always bright spots. While the far right in France has been the main political beneficiary of the recent unrest, far-left groups such as La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”) have stood against state racism and violence—an important step in rebuilding trust with oppressed communities that have been betrayed and abandoned in preceding decades. In Spain, where Vox was predicted to enter government after the recent election, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/23/spainish-election-conservative-party-ahead-but-unlikely-to-win-majority">the party and the centre right went backwards</a>, a sharp rebuke of their blatantly racist and right-wing campaign. 
The necessity of building a left that stands in solidarity with oppressed ethnic minorities and migrants, and against racism and fascism, becomes ever more urgent in resisting far-right normalisation.

Alan Gomez

European far right’s immigration bogey

Now entering its third month, the French workers’ movement against the government’s pension changes continues to gather steam. On 25 March, 2 million workers around the country took part in the tenth national day of protest called by the coalition of trade unions leading the fight.
While the turnout was a slight but expected dip from the peak experienced during the February demonstrations, the movement has been reinvigorated recently by wildcat strikes, spontaneous nightly demonstrations and—importantly—the entrance of university and high school students into the struggle, with their general assemblies, occupations and street protests.
Sentiment against President Emmanuel Macron’s law increasing the retirement age from 62 to 64 remains solid: less than a third of the population support the change, and <a href="https://www.tf1info.fr/politique/sondage-70-des-francais-soutiennent-la-mobilisation-contre-la-reforme-des-retraites-2252332.html">70 percent continue to back the demonstrations and strikes</a>. The pension reform has become a symbol for Macron himself and his presidency, underscoring his perception in the public eye as “president of the rich”.
The increase in the retirement age will disproportionately affect the lowest paid and least educated sections of the working class, often concentrated in manual labour. It will also affect women workers, who are more likely to take time out of the workforce to have and raise children. When Macron says that the changes are “necessary”, workers understand that he means they’re the ones who need to make sacrifices, while the profits of French companies go untouched.
Significantly, however, the struggle against the change has moved beyond a simple economic question: it embodies Macron’s willingness to ride roughshod over democratic processes, and the dictatorship of capital at the heart of the French state. 
To pass the reform, Macron and his prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, resorted to using the so-called 49.3—an article in the constitution that allows the president to pass laws by decree, bypassing parliament altogether. This undemocratic lever has been used 100 times since the current constitution was put in place in 1958; Borne has used it eleven times since her government was formed in May 2022, the second-highest of any French leader in 64 years.
By deploying 49.3, Macron showed his hand. Not only did he lack the confidence to cobble together a majority in the National Assembly. Immediately after the decree, a vote of no confidence in the government was lost by only a handful of votes. With Macron and Borne’s legitimacy in tatters, 49.3 was like kerosene to the burning anger of French workers and youth, who have since escalated the frequency of wildcat strikes and nightly demonstrations.
In a widely viewed television interview, <a href="https://www.parismatch.com/actu/politique/emmanuel-macron-ne-peut-accepter-ni-les-factieux-ni-les-factions-223384">Macron tried to paint these spontaneous protests as “seditious”</a>, even going so far as to compare French protesters to the 6 January 2021 rioters who stormed the US Capitol, or Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters who trashed the Brazilian government complex when he lost the last election. In the same interview, Macron went on to argue that the pension change must be allowed to “follow its democratic path”.
Safeguarding the “democratic path” is one of the largest mobilisations of the police since the anti-Macron yellow vest movement of 2018-19. Since 49.3 was used on 16 March, there have been several instances of police violence, such as <a href="https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/manif-du-28-mars-percute-par-une-charge-policiere-un-homme-a-ete-hospitalise-en-urgence-relative-20230329_GGUEA2Q5DJA5NGU36JBBZOLXDA/">a man being hospitalised</a> after the most recent day of action, and a 13-year-old with bruises all over his body, including where <a href="http://www.apple.com/au/">a tear gas canister hit just beneath his eye</a>. 
On the most recent day of action, 13,000 police were deployed in Paris alone. Worryingly, there has been an increase in arbitrary arrests, some of which seem pre-emptive. At one rally in Paris, there were <a href="https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/gardes-a-vue-un-collectif-davocats-depose-une-centaine-de-plaintes-contre-les-detentions-arbitraires-20230331_I2RWCD2JPVHS3HLF5ZIZAJN7VQ/">a whopping 292 arrests</a>, including <a href="https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/arrestations-lors-de-la-manifestation-a-concorde-lambassade-dautriche-intervient-pour-la-liberation-de-deux-ados-20230321_BLKEGCCVENAN7IASFUCQ66F2SE/">two Austrian children on a school trip</a>. Of the arrested, 238 were released and only nine charged.
This blatant disregard for democracy—including large-scale repression of protests—while claiming to champion democracy, is motivating key sections of the working class to keep mobilising. One such section is refinery workers, whose strikes and blockages have caused widespread fuel shortages nationwide. At the TotalEnergies refinery in Donges, in the west of France, workers have voted to renew their strike for the fifth consecutive week.
As <a href="https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/fil-dactualites/310323/la-greve-la-raffinerie-de-donges-entre-dans-sa-5e-semaine?utm_source=global&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=SharingApp&amp;xtor=CS3-5">one of their union delegates said</a>, “The ‘democra-tatorship’ put in place by Borne-Macron isn’t making us back down, nor does it undermine our determination: the strike continues”.
Strikes have plagued a variety of industries with visible effects: garbage piling up in Parisian streets due to garbage collectors striking, school closures, cancelled flights, even the Louvre being shut for a day. Yet as French activist and sociologist <a href="https://www.contretemps.eu/mouvement-janvier-mars-2023-theses-politiques/">Ugo Palheta points out</a>, the sections of the workforce on strike are still concentrated in a few areas of the economy, namely the public and semi-public sectors. Despite the popularity of the mobilisation against the pension reform and the mass attendance at days of protest, many workers continue to work, especially in the private sector, where fear of losing pay can limit some workers’ willingness to take part.
So while the union days of action continue to provide calendar events for the movement to work towards—the next being 6 April—the spreading of the movement to other sectors is vital if victory against Macron and his law is to be realised. Turning the anti-Macron sentiment in French society into a deep and wide strike wave has the potential not only to block the pension reform but perhaps even to bring down Macron’s presidency altogether.

France in revolt

“Work. Metro. Grave.” Macabre but astute, the slogan has adorned banners and placards carried by millions of French workers demonstrating against President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to increase the official retirement age from 62 to 64. The slogan distils into three words how French workers feel about having two years of rest and leisure stolen from them and handed over to the bosses.
“I don’t want to retire when I’m six feet under”, Rose, a 60-year-old housekeeper at a February demonstration in Albi, southern France, <a href="https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/economie-et-social/160223/en-attendant-de-mettre-la-france-l-arret-les-syndicats-ont-enfievre-albi">told a reporter</a>. “How could I do this job at 64?”
Marianne, a cook from Marseille, <a href="https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/economie-et-social/110223/marseille-certains-bastions-syndicaux-sont-prets-la-greve-generale">told media at another protest</a>: “We are not radicals, but we think everything should be blockaded because, despite the demonstrations and strikes, we’re still not being heard. In our jobs, we can’t do them at 64 or over”.
Workers from across unions, sectors and industries have been striking and demonstrating since Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne’s 10 January announcement that the government planned to increase the retirement age by two years. At the movement’s recent peak on 11 February, 2.5 million workers demonstrated against the changes in hundreds of cities and communes across France. Now, the movement has its eyes on a general strike, planned for 7 March.
Airports, railways and logistics have been disrupted, refineries have been shut, schools closed and some universities occupied. Indeed, not only workers but also high school and university students have formed contingents and marched in the demonstrations. In the first week of February, 200 high schools and fifteen universities mobilised, and many more have protested since. A popular slogan on the young people’s placards is: “You give us 64, we’ll give you May 68”, recalling last century’s revolutionary student and worker rebellion.
A clear majority of people, 67 percent, oppose Macron’s attacks, according to media outlet CNEWS, up from 61 percent in a survey in January. Another poll taken by independent media outlet Politis showed that 68 percent support lowering the age of retirement to 60.
As the bill for increasing the retirement age is debated in the National Assembly, Macron and his ministers are saying that this “indispensable” change is about fairness and pragmatism: if everyone chips in an extra two years of work, the government can avoid a €150 billion deficit, which would not only bankrupt the French pension system but also, potentially, threaten to derail the French economy. 
Yet, as many commentators note, the cumulative deficit is vastly overestimated, and rumours of bankruptcy are greatly exaggerated.
If the proposed retirement age change was about balancing the books, there are other options, such as redirecting funds from other expenditure towards the pension system. For example, the French state provides about €200 billion a year to the private sector. Paring back the concessions and handouts to capitalists would more than make up for any pension deficit.
The battle over the increase in retirement age is more about shaping the world of work and instilling a “work-metro-grave” attitude among French workers. Take Macron’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, who <a href="https://www.leparisien.fr/politique/gerald-darmanin-la-nupes-ne-cherche-qua-bordeliser-le-pays-28-01-2023-EWPFIELDORAM7FP2EJKJGD52YM.php">accused the left</a> of having a “deep contempt for the value of work”. He railed against “those who think we must work less and less and defend the right to laziness”. Darmanin also singled out left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who he claims calls for “a society without work, without effort”.
France is renowned for its protection of workers’ rights and conditions, from its 35-hour work week to its relatively low retirement age. Yet those gains, fought for by the labour movement in the past, are being undermined and chipped away, if not by law then by employer pressure. For many French workers, the 35-hour working week is a myth. Most put in 37 to 40 hours per week, if not more. 
From outside France, it might seem curious that a two-year increase to the retirement age would inspire some of the biggest demonstrations in recent history. Compare the situation with Australia, for example, where the retirement age for everyone will be raised to 67 in July, a move that has provoked hardly a whisper of opposition from the Australian Council of Trade Unions.
What France shows is that a combative union movement, with a history of struggle and determined in the face of official opposition, has the potential to inspire masses of workers to fight back. In 2019-20, French workers pushed back another of Macron’s proposed changes to the pension system, the pandemic forcing both workers and government into a stalemate. Before that was the “yellow vest” movement, which won modest victories against a Macron proposal to increase the price of fuel.
Notwithstanding its show of militancy, there is debate on the way forward for the current movement. With a noticeable decline in the number of striking workers at the most recent 16 February demonstration, some are pessimistic that the 7 March mobilisation will be a success. While the union leaders back the demonstration, they have stopped short of calling for a broad, ongoing general strike.
Yet ongoing stoppages, strikes and blockades are precisely what’s needed to force Macron to pay attention. “The state doesn’t care about demonstrations. Now you have to blockade”, Laurent, a rail worker at a Paris demonstration <a href="https://www.revolutionpermanente.fr/16-fevrier-une-journee-pour-quoi-faire-Construisons-la-reconductible">told a reporter</a>. Macron and Borne’s strategy is to ride out this wave of discontent and marshal enough votes in the National Assembly to get the pension attack through.
But it’s not yet a done deal: Macron’s party lost its majority in the last election. The left parties are united in their opposition, and the extent of public hostility is forcing even the centre right—which raised the retirement age the last time it was in office—to reconsider its support.
France continues to serve as a reminder of the power that workers hold. When workers move, society stops. France also shows how demonstrations and strikes create confidence and a sense of collective purpose. As 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature recipient Annie Ernaux <a href="https://mondediplo.com/2023/02/14pension-strikes-ernaux">wrote in Le Monde diplomatique, a French monthly newspaper</a>:
“[Those] demonstrators in January 2023—so numerous that they struggled to get out of the Place de la République—reminded me once again of Paul Éluard’s lines: ‘They were only a few/ On the whole earth/ Everyone thought they were alone/ They were suddenly a crowd’. I would like to thank them. Let’s stop lowering our heads.”

French workers raise their heads, again

In the early hours of Thursday morning, following the shameful passage of the Religious Discrimination Bill through the lower house with ALP support, <a href="https://twitter.com/AlboMP/status/1491468213321814019">Labor leader Anthony Albanese tweeted</a> the “breaking” news that Labor had “been successful in protecting LGBTQI school children from discrimination”.
Did they use their numbers—along with the Greens, independents and rogue Liberal MPs—to vote against the government’s religious discrimination bill, a concession to the conservative right after the resounding victory of same-sex marriage in Australia in 2017? No. As <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/10/coalition-religious-discrimination-bill-passes-after-marathon-all-night-sitting">Greens MP Adam Bandt said</a> after the vote, every single ALP member supported “Scott Morrison’s hate bill, saying it’s all terrible but then voting it into law”.
Even Labor MP Stephen Jones, whose stirring speech in defence of LGBTI kids went viral in the days leading up to the vote, voted for it. Jones had earlier indicated he supported Labor’s commitment to voting for the bill even if various amendments failed to get up, on the basis that “[Labor] don’t have the numbers to kill it”. This convoluted logic—you vote for the thing you’re against because you don’t have the numbers to stop it—is bad enough. But as it turned out, Labor did have the numbers to block the bill, but just decided not to—turns out they are just as concerned to placate religious bigots as are the Liberals.
And while the party was quick to pat itself on the back for getting behind independent MP Rebekah Sharkie’s amendment to protect trans kids from being expelled from school, what Labor made less of a fuss about was the fact that, behind closed doors, it had used its clout to force Sharkie and the five dissident Liberal MPs to weaken the proposed amendment. The final amendment repealed only sub-section 38(3) of the Sex Discrimination Act, while the initial proposal was to repeal the entire section (which gives broad powers to religious schools to discriminate against students, teachers and contractors).
Labor has always tied itself into knots on the question of LGBTI rights. The party has been happy to put itself at the head of the movement for equality when it’s been popular and politically expedient to do so. Yet at other times, Labor has lined up with some of the most reactionary, conservative forces to oppose LGBTI rights, calculating that the need to win conservative votes is more important than taking a principled stand against LGBTI oppression.
The Religious Discrimination Bill is a case in point. It was the product of the Ruddock Religious Freedom Review—itself a concession to conservatives after the historic “yes” vote for marriage equality. Yet rather than name the review and resulting bill for what it was, the ALP affirmed its support for the bill. <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-07/labor-election-review-blames-loss-on-bill-shorten-unpopularity/11678324">The party’s own 2019 autopsy into its election loss</a> of the same year sheds light on their motivation: it found that “particularly devout, first-generation migrant Christians” were moving away from the ALP. For Labor, chasing socially conservative votes is worth the price of throwing the LGBTI community under the bus.
This dynamic was most clearly at work in the thirteen-year struggle for same-sex marriage. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/sep/08/australias-politicians-are-late-to-the-marriage-equality-party-but-they-are-finally-arriving#:~:text=Labor%20backed%20Howard%E2%80%99s%20amendment,%20reluctantly.">Labor supported the then</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/sep/08/australias-politicians-are-late-to-the-marriage-equality-party-but-they-are-finally-arriving#:~:text=Labor%20backed%20Howard%E2%80%99s%20amendment,%20reluctantly.">Howard government’s ban</a> on same-sex marriage in 2004. Labor continued to affirm its opposition to same-sex marriage when it took power in 2007. Even when Labor’s Julia Gillard, who was technically on the left of the party, became Australia’s first female prime minister, the party still opposed same-sex marriage. In 2011, <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/robstott/julia-gillard-marriage-equality#:~:text=">Gillard told Sky News that she found herself “on the conservative side in this question</a> [of same-sex marriage]”. She went on to declare “traditional” marriage as possessing a “special status” and being one of “some important things from our past that need to continue to be part of our present and part of our future”.
Indeed, in 2013 when Gillard’s government sought to strengthen the Sex Discrimination Act to better protect women and LGBTI people, her government refused to repeal the homophobic and transphobic section 38.
Perhaps most perversely, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/brown-horrified-at-wongs-antigay-marriage-stance-20100726-10rwj.html">openly</a><a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/brown-horrified-at-wongs-antigay-marriage-stance-20100726-10rwj.html"> </a>gay Labor Senator Penny Wong in 2010 expressed her opposition to same-sex marriage and her support for the ALP’s position that there was a cultural, religious and historical view of marriage being between a man and a woman, even when many suspected it was wholly disingenuous.
Only after a campaign lasting more than decade, and victories for marriage equality internationally that made Australia’s ban seem out of step with the norm, did the ALP swing behind the demand. The party later claimed some credit for the victory, despite having spent most of the years leading up to it systematically undermining equality in parliament.
Today, the Labor Party are at it again, congratulating themselves for amending a homophobic and transphobic bill that they had declared themselves willing to support just the day before, and that was still a win for bigotry in its amended form.
We need to remember this the next time Labor paints itself as a friend of the LGBTI community, and not sink into the amnesia Labor relies on to curry support with LGBTI people.

Never forget Labor’s record on LGBTI rights

I’m a socialist gay activist, so I’m used to being attacked for my politics. You learn to take it in your stride. But one of the most dumbfounding denunciations I ever received was issued by a few other apparently progressive queer activists, who slammed me in May 2017 for the heinous crime of speaking at a protest against the Liberal Party.
Back then, I worked full time as the national LGBTI officer for the National Union of Students (NUS). My job was to run activist campaigns that advocated for the rights of LGBTI students nationally. That same year, Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal government announced a series of attacks on higher education funding in its May budget. Naturally, as a representative of the national student union, I spoke at the Melbourne protest against these attacks. As the day of the protest coincided with the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), I spoke from the platform about how neoliberalism and austerity disproportionately and acutely impact the LGBTI community. All in a day’s work for a student unionist.
Yet a week later, I was denounced by representatives from my university’s student union. At a meeting of the Monash Student Council, one elected student representative after another lined up to condemn my “shameful and disrespectful” conduct. One representative lamented that I had forced her to “choose between her queer family and her union family”. Another questioned whether I “actually cared about queer students” at all.
Why? According to the councillors, attending a protest against the Liberal government on IDAHOBIT “took away allies”, leaving queers “isolated and not engaged with the wider community”. One argued that my conduct left queer people more likely to be exposed to violent, homophobic attacks, as “allies present at events like IDAHOBIT acted as a means of protection” and on that fateful day, no straight ally was to be found. All this because I spoke against fee increases at a student demonstration—and used my platform to attack homophobia.
Within these attacks against me, basic concepts like solidarity were tossed out and replaced with a narrative of victimhood. A scan of the queer collectives and spaces in universities across Australia shows that the politics of the Monash queer reps—emphasising victimhood and looking for excuses to opt out of activism—dominates these spaces.
Yet the gay liberation movement in Australia was propelled by students who were uncompromising and unafraid to fight on all fronts. Ken Davis, who participated in the first Mardi Gras in Sydney in 1978, says that in era of ’70s youth radicalisation, “we were angry at the whole system”. Participants were motivated to fight for gay liberation, but also to take part in the movements against the Vietnam War, for environmental protection and for Aboriginal land rights.
Marxism was influential on campuses. Anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist politics infused the burgeoning movement for gay rights. Monash, where queer representatives denounced me merely for speaking against Liberals’ attacks on public services, was a pioneer for socialist gay activism. In 1976 the “Manifesto of the Socialist Homosexuals” was published in a special edition of Monash student newspaper Lot’s Wife. It explicitly condemned “attempts of the capitalist Liberal-National Country Party Government to lower the living standards of the working class through wage freezes and ‘social contracts’”. The manifesto attempted to use Marxism—in particular the work of Friedrich Engels on women’s oppression and the nuclear family—to connect gay oppression to the oppression of women and to class exploitation. It would have been a no-brainer that gay activists would organise against Liberal Party attacks on the working class and the poor.
Locating gay oppression in the nuclear family—a bedrock of capitalism—meant the anti-capitalist authors of the “Manifesto” saw that their oppression linked up not only with that of women but also the working class and other social layers oppressed by capitalism. “Here and now in the struggle against exploitation and oppression, solidarity with each other’s struggles provides the basis for tomorrow’s unity on the barricades”, they wrote. The gay movement benefited immensely from seeing itself, not as an isolated struggle, but one that could strengthen and be strengthened by other radical struggles.
Gay student activists influenced by Marxism looked to the working class as an important ally. In 1973, Jeremy Fisher, a student at Macquarie University, was kicked out of his residential college for being gay. Fisher went to the Macquarie University Student Council, which in turn took the issue to the construction workers on campus, organised within the militant Builders Labourers Federation. After some debate, the BLF unanimously voted to down tools and refuse to continue any work on campus until Fisher was reinstated.
The first Mardi Gras was a protest against the “pink dollar” that now reigns supreme at that event. According to Davis, what began as a nighttime march of about 500 protesters drew people out of the gay bars along Oxford Street and into direct confrontation with the police The bars were run by organised crime. The police saw this march as a threat to the relations between criminal gangs and the police. When activists marched down Oxford Street, police responded with violence and arrests. Police brutality only invited more militancy: the next night, there was another demonstration outside the police station were activists were being held. Activists from around the country descended on Sydney to take part in rallies, meetings and assemblies to coordinate a response. There were debates about the way forward, but a common commitment to radicalism and militant action prevailed.
But the next decade was marked by a shift to the right in society. The elections of both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were followed by efforts to roll back the gains of the ’60s and ’70s. The dawn of neoliberalism meant a retreat on university campuses from the revolutionary ideas of Marxism to the faddish ideas of post-Marxism and postmodernism. The AIDS epidemic laid waste to gay communities across the world, with tens of thousands of gay men cut down while governments and health bureaucrats were unable or unwilling to help. That was met with resistance: the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was one such organisation that resorted to direct action tactics to highlight the plight of LGBTI people dying as a result of government inaction. But gay politics could not resist society’s overall shift to the right.
In the ’90s, a new kind of politics emerged associated with the concept of “queerness”. In the United States, groups like Queer Nation formed, based on a sort of counter-cultural identity politics. Early adherents of this queer politics engaged in some militant direct direct action, but they took their theoretical cues from Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, not the socialist movement.
These queer activists saw gender and sexuality as socially constructed categories and were critical of the coopting of a minority of LGBTI people within the state and corporations. But, with no coherent class-struggle strategy in their politics, many have become senior queer bureaucrats and bosses themselves. Queer academic Annamarie Jagose writes that “queer describes those gestures or analytical models which dramatise incoherencies in the allegedly stable relations between chromosomal sex, gender and sexual desire”; she’s now the course-cutting dean of arts at the University of Sydney.
Queer theory presented itself as anti-system and critical of capitalist “heteronormativity”, but it was hostile to Marxism as a “totalising” system of thought. Queer theory observed how artificially gender and sexuality were constructed, but it emphasised performance and the allegedly radical potential of “queer” identity. It counterposed lifestyle changes to solidarity, mass struggle and total human liberation.
From 1999, a new student movement in Australia was born influenced by the anti-corporate movement taking place across the world. Events like the 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization and the 2001 Genoa protests against the G8 summit created a sudden radicalisation in Australian students. LGBTI students played a notable role as the queer collectives radicalised. Theirs was an anti-capitalist politics influenced by a number of different strains: Marxism, anarchism, feminism and, of course, queer theory. Mark Pendleton, the NUS queer officer in 2001, describes the politics of queer student activists at the time: “The new anti-capitalist queer groups base their action on an explicitly anti-capitalist and implicitly Marxist analysis of queer oppression. Their core belief is that homophobia is perpetuated by the economic system of capitalism. That being said, there are certainly remnants of an identity politics within the anti-capitalist queer movements”.
Queer blocs participated in demonstrations such as the 2000 Melbourne protest against the World Economic Forum. Campus-based groups like Queers United to Eradicate Economic Rationalism (QUEER) formed. In Sydney, a similar group called Gays and Lesbians Against Multinationals (GLAM) formed, later to become Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH), a group that was key in organising protest action for marriage equality years later.
But the influence of queer theory kept creating problems. In targeting the mainstreaming of gay identity, queer student activists often rejected reforms, such as marriage equality, on the grounds that they “privileged” monogamous relationships that conformed to mainstream standards, undermining alternative relationship structures like polyamory. But fighting for legal equality helps build mass movements in solidarity that can go on to win further gains; abstaining intensifies the division and separation of oppressed groups. While queer theory was against essentialist explanations of gender and sexuality, its adherents often upheld so-called lifestyle politics and ultimately retreated to demanding “safe spaces” for queer students.
“Safe spaces”, despite representing a retreat from struggle and public life, once encountered hostility from state and university administrations. In 2004, the University of Wollongong queer collective Allsorts occupied their queer space when the university kicked the collective out of the space in order to build a new bar. Fast forward to today, and the picture at Wollongong is quite different. Allsorts still exists but without a modicum of that militancy. A witness to the collective’s 2017 “Wear It Purple” picnic—an initiative aiming to increase visibility of young LGBTI people by wearing purple clothing—reported that the Allsorts collective had invited the local police also to “wear it purple”. Whereas in 2004 police dragged queer activists from their space, in 2017 purple-clad riot police picnicked with the collective on the lawn.
National queer student conferences like Queer Collaborations have descended into poorly attended social gatherings, featuring “workshops” on foot (and sock) fetishes, autonomous meetings for a seemingly endless array of sub-identities such as asexuals/aromantics and people in polyamorous relationships. These conferences, like queer spaces on campus, are totally devoid of any attitude towards collective organising.
This mirrors the poverty of politics within student organisations more broadly. As recently as 2014, student unions were able to launch and coordinate national campaigns against neoliberal attacks on higher education, as well as social campaigns against war and militarism, for refugee rights and others. Yet today, student unions around the country, under the direction of members of the Labor Party, have turned fighting unions into service provision bodies better at organising a barbecue than a speak-out for student rights.
It doesn’t have to be like this: when socialists have been able to take a lead, positive things have happened. Despite being criticised by student politicians throughout 2017, I was able to help coordinate student participation in the successful campaign for marriage equality. This built on the work of previous socialist LGBTI students, who had collectively spent 13 years fighting for this basic right. Socialist LGBTI students in recent years have led campaigns against gay conversion therapy, for the rights of trans and non-binary students to use the bathrooms of their choice and, most recently, against a bill in NSW that would prevent teachers and school staff from teaching pupils about trans issues, among other contemptible measures.
Australia has a rich history of radical LGBTI students leading struggles for their own liberation, emphasising collective action and Marxist theory that empowers people to care not only about their own struggle but also the struggles of others. Rebutting the myopic focus solely on queer issues and on moderation, Davis argues that the “problems faced by queer employees aren’t solved when their company puts on rainbow flags or whatever the fuck they are doing. Instead of demanding symbolism, we’ve got to look at the big issues, like labour rights, migration, housing, health care, or who runs schools or welfare. Those are the key issues for queers—not whether your boss is openly homosexual”.

Whatever happened to campus queer politics?

As French politicians and parties swing into campaign mode a year out from the 2022 presidential elections, polls strongly suggest that the final round runoff will be between current President Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader of Rassemblement National (National Rally, RN) Marine Le Pen. Compared to the last time these candidates faced each other, the margin between them has narrowed significantly: in 2017, Macron defeated Le Pen 66-34; <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/32dbb571-c4b7-4a9b-8d92-e7b7c98b0571">a recent poll by Harris has Macron winning 53-47</a>.
With the growing threat that France might elect a fascist president next year, the so-called republican front strategy has been dusted off once again and broadcast by a range of political and media figures. Le Monde’s : “The republican front must be revived”. Christophe Castaner, current MP and former interior minister under Macron’s administration, also called for a republican front against the RN, <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2021/05/26/regionales-christophe-castaner-prone-le-front-republicain-contre-le-rassemblement-national-parti-raciste_6081571_823448.html">stating in an interview</a> that his party’s job “is to show what the National Front [the former name of Le Pen’s party] really is and that, in view of the presidential elections, their ‘fresh coat of paint’ is a facade that doesn’t match their reality”.
The republican front is the standing agreement among French political parties that aims to prevent the far right from taking power. In the French two-round electoral system—in which the two most popular candidates from a first round of voting compete in a second-round runoff—if the far right makes the second round, the republican front demands that all candidates and parties, regardless of political colouring, support the non-far-right candidate. The republican front helped defeat the fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father, when he ascended to the final presidential round in 2002 against conservative Jacques Chirac. The republican front swept Macron to victory against Le Pen junior in 2017. And Macron and his party La République En Marche! (Republic on the move, LREM) will count on that same commitment to keep Le Pen out and clinch victory again next year.
Yet the tightening of the margin between Macron and Le Pen shows that this commitment may not be as sturdy as in say, 2002 when Chirac defeated Le Pen senior in a landslide 82 percent to 18 percent. Castaner addressed this hesitancy, criticising those considering not voting for either Macron or Le Pen: “Those who plead ... neither–nor [neither Macron nor Le Pen] have neither courage nor honesty”.
Honesty is an interesting virtue for Castaner to preach. As interior minister, he lied to the media about anti-government Yellow Vest protesters violently attacking a hospital in 2019. (Fact check: the Yellow Vests <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2019/05/03/affaire-de-la-pitie-salpetriere-castaner-sous-le-feu-des-critiques_5457698_823448.html">were seeking refuge in the hospital</a> from the rubber bullets and tear gas that Castaner had ordered police to unleash on their protest.) More than Castaner’s hypocrisy, his implication that Macron presents not just an alternative but a bulwark against the far-right threat belies the president’s record in welcoming far-right ideas into the mainstream.
Macron and his administration have spent the last eighteen months running a vicious, Islamophobic campaign against France’s Muslim population, under the guise of fighting “political Islam” and “separatism”. When a school teacher was murdered by a teenager for showing racist caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in a classroom in 2020, Macron weaponised the killing to accelerate a campaign against Islam he had been running since at least the year before, when he called for French society to unite against the “<a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/macrons-new-radical-approach-terrorism">Hydra of Islamism</a>”. Macron has long recognised that his main competitor is the far-right Le Pen: instead of choosing to battle the far right by opposing its bigoted positions on Islam and immigration, Macron and his team have championed the far right’s talking points and normalised its ideas.
Indeed, in a televised debate with Le Pen in March, Macron’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/4050f02f-0cf7-4c72-a03a-7804f8113129">attacked Le Pen for being too “soft”</a>—softer, Darmanin said, “than we could ever be” on the question of Islam. In November, Macron and Darmanin dissolved the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF). Described by Darmanin as an “Islamist office against the republic”, the collective was actually a liberal civil liberties organisation that defended the rights of Muslims in France and noted that they routinely are targets of police and state repression.
Macron’s political attacks haven’t stopped there. Anyone who attended a protest against Islamophobia was labelled an Islamo-leftist. The Higher Education Minister Frédérique Vidal went further, announcing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/02/22/france-macron-islamo-leftism/">a “probe” into the extent of Islamo-leftism’s apparent grip on French universities</a> and academics. Darmanin professed to be <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/gerald-darmanin-france-complaint-religious-food-aisles-sparks-criticism/">“shocked” at separate aisles for halal and kosher food</a> in supermarkets, implying that separate aisles breed separatism itself. Macron’s party even <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/12/macrons-party-bans-muslim-candidate-for-wearing-hijab-in-poster">banned a Muslim LREM candidate for wearing a hijab</a> in a local election campaign flyer. 
The national student union was the focus of media ire for holding autonomous meetings of people of colour as hysteria about “anti-white racism” gripped the airwaves. Macron’s education department banned the use of gender-neutral language in schools—less a defence of the French language’s integrity, more a dog whistle to the far right, for whom any attempt to undermine traditional gender norms is creeping “cultural Marxism”.
While the French establishment has a long commitment to Israel and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-antisemitism-idUSKCN1QA1GL">routinely accuses the country’s critics of anti-Semitism</a>, the Macron administration recently went further. Last month, Darmanin made the extraordinary decision to <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/13/france-asks-police-to-ban-pro-palestinian-protest-in-paris">pre-emptively ban Palestine solidarity protests planned in Paris</a>. The police arrested the head of a France–Palestine solidarity organisation for his role in organising a protest.
Macron’s illiberal march <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/23/why-france-islamist-separatism-bill-controversy-extremism/">culminated this year in the so-called law against separatism</a>. The president’s office says that the law, which comfortably passed both the French National Assembly and Senate, is not about targeting Muslims but those “who in the name of a wrong or reconstructed vision of a religion behave in a way contrary to the republic”. Yet rarely does the word “separatism” leave Macron’s lips without the word “Islamist” accompanying it. 
The law clearly scapegoats France’s Muslim population, with measures such as banning “virginity certificates”—a humiliating gesture that paints Muslims as misogynistic and illiberal. More worryingly, civil servants and even contractors working for the civil service are prohibited under threat of fine or prison from expressing any political or religious opinion—including the wearing of religious garments like the hijab.
The law also allows for the shutting down of places of worship that “preach hate”. Recently, construction on a mosque in Strasbourg after the Turkish organisation building it, Milli Gorus, refused to sign the “Charter of French Islam”, another pillar in Macron’s campaign against separatism. Darmanin launched a legal challenge to the mosque’s construction and against the Greens-led Strasbourg city council for financing an organisation that “supports political Islam”.
<a href="https://www.liberation.fr/politique/olivier-faure-macron-a-choisi-lextreme-droite-comme-son-faire-valoir-20210228_IROJWE5Q6FGVBLW7R2BF6WRYBU/">Paraphrasing Socialist Party head Olivier Faure</a>, Macron’s rampart against the far right is a bridge. Macron takes votes on the left for granted and tries to undermine Le Pen’s growing base by adopting classic far-right stances. Yet, evidently, this has not dented Le Pen’s popularity. Even young people <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/94eab3dd-1edb-4fc6-bc65-43ba145edc09">are moving towards the far-right leader</a>, with 30 percent of those aged 25 to 34 supporting her, up from 23 percent in 2017.
Macron’s bridge not only welcomes Le Pen: it extends to a more generalised far-right backlash brewing in French society. A group of retired generals <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/3284fe31-a2f6-479e-8372-e2ef9d94501d">penned an open letter</a> decrying the “disintegration” of France due to political Islam and immigrant “hordes” on the outskirts of cities. CNews, a right-wing network critics label the French Fox News, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/28/popularity-far-right-topics-france-cnews-election-concern">has hit record ratings</a> and right-wing provocateurs such as Éric Zemmour are given a soapbox to denounce migrants and Muslims. 
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/world/europe/france-police-protest.html">A reactionary march</a> last month by police officers against violence on the job was as much a reaction to last year’s Black Lives Matter movement and its spotlight on French police brutality as to the recent killing of a police officer. Statistics consistently show that support for the far right is higher within the police force, a fact that surely motivated Darmanin when he <a href="https://www.thelocal.fr/20210506/french-police-officer-killed-in-drugs-bust-was-hero-in-the-war-on-drugs/">exalted the slain cop as a “hero in the war on drugs”</a> and conferred upon police the noble title of “soldiers”.
Despite all of this, the logic of the republican front demands that the victims of Macron’s anti-left, anti-Muslim, anti-worker rampage should still vote for him in 2022—to keep out the far-right threat. Without underplaying the severity of what a Le Pen victory would mean, for many of France’s oppressed, the illiberal society Macron is supposed to be protecting them from has already arrived under his leadership. If Le Pen wins, it will not be despite Macron’s efforts—it will be because Macron and his administration did everything they could to prove they weren’t “soft”.

Not a barricade but a bridge: Macron, Le Pen and the ‘republican front’ trap

In a recent post-inauguration op-ed titled “The case for Biden optimism”, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote: “Just by who he is, Biden sets the stage for a moral revival. His values cut across the left/right, urban/rural culture war we’ve been enduring for a generation. This will begin to heal a broken and ungovernable nation”. 
Brooks’ case for Biden optimism is that Biden has the right agenda, one that transcends the toxic, left-versus-right culture wars that have dominated the last four years. Biden will lower the “emotional temperature” of the nation, spreading some much needed “political apathy”. In short, Biden’s agenda is about the “redistribution of dignity”.
Four years ago, another liberal politician’s election to head of state inspired similar gushing on the other side of the Atlantic. Emmanuel Macron was the first French president in the history of the Fifth Republic to come from outside the traditional parties of the left and right when he was elected in 2017. So transcendent was Macron in the eyes of the political mainstream that the Economist magazine’s cover in June that year depicted him as the Messiah, walking on water beneath the headline “Europe’s saviour?”
The magazine cover’s question was rhetorical. For the Economist, Macron was Europe’s saviour and more: “an optimist”, “a different kind of rebel”, “a Renaissance man” whose future legacy would be “a real French revolution”. As with Brooks’ Biden-generated optimism, the Economist’s confidence in Macron hinged on his “new politics that ditches divisions between left and right”.
Without straining the analogy, there are parallels between Biden 2020 and Macron 2017 that are worth remarking upon. Both were viewed as sitting in the “sensible” centre of politics, rising above the passions of the extreme left and the venom of the extreme right. Both built a broad coalition of supporters from different sides of politics, and both won an election against a far-right candidate who the mainstream considered unsupportable. Importantly, both promised a new way of doing politics compared to what had come before: intelligent and decent.
But Macron’s time in office illustrates how quickly the pretence of decency can give way to the familiar tropes of the neoliberal status quo, in Macron’s case repression in the face of a challenge from workers.
Macron won in 2017 against Marine Le Pen, candidate of the far-right Front National (FN). On the campaign trail, Macron insisted that the FN was “the party of hatred” and that he wouldn’t “accept people being insulted just because they believe in Islam”. That year, Le Pen won a record 7.6 million votes in the first round, outstripping the number of votes her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, also of the FN, won in the first round of the 2002 presidential election, the first and only other time a fascist candidate made it to the second round run-off. Macron easily defeated Le Pen junior on a platform that seemed more open and more liberal than the FN’s: where Le Pen was anti-Islam, Macron championed Muslim integration. To Le Pen, France was being submerged by a “flood of immigrants”; to Macron, France had a duty to offer asylum to those seeking it, and he championed the free movement of people.
Yet one of the first pieces of legislation passed under Macron in 2017 was an anti-terrorism bill that codified in law measures that had previously been introduced under a rolling state of emergency enacted by former President François Hollande in 2015. Critics likened Macron’s anti-terror law to the hated US Patriot Act, giving the police the power to conduct random stop-and-frisk searches, greater capacity to raid homes and to place suspects under house arrest with limited judicial oversight. Macron’s law also empowered local authorities to close “places of worship in which are disseminated the writings, ideas or theories that provoke violence, hatred and discrimination”.
While other religious institutions—say, the Catholic Church—would easily qualify for closure under the criteria proposed by Macron’s anti-terror law, to all apart from the wilfully ignorant it was clear that, with the law’s passage, Macron was continuing the French presidential tradition of vilifying Muslims and restricting their freedoms. 
“This the first time since the age of de Gaulle that French law will enshrine a provision that will de facto target French minorities”, said Patrick Weil, French constitutional scholar. The Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) pointed out that since the rolling state of emergency was first imposed in late 2015, Muslims have been disproportionately targeted for house arrest.
Nowadays, with the next presidential election scheduled for 2022 and Le Pen’s far-right party again threatening to enter the run-off, Macron has veered sharply towards Islamophobia and nationalist drum-beating. He weaponised the tragic murder of teacher Samuel Paty in September 2020 in order to launch an offensive against France’s Muslim population, appealing to a “nation united” to fight “the Islamist Hydra”. Shockingly, his administration is, by decree, dissolving the CCIF—a non-profit civil liberties watchdog that has been labelled an “enemy of the Republic” that has “consistently carried out Islamist propaganda”. However, as Human Rights Watch points out, CCIF’s main work has recently been to criticise the Macron administration’s counter-terrorism measures as racist, and equating the organisation’s work with terrorist propaganda sets a dangerous precedent.
Perhaps the terrain where Macron’s veil of decency fell away quickest has been in his confrontations with the French working class. Not that Macron’s stance was ever a secret: he had been a minister for the economy under the previous Hollande administration and was the architect of a much hated change to the French labour code. This “reform” stripped historic, hard-won conditions of the French working class such as the 35-hour working week, and it inspired a year-long struggle in 2016 by French workers and students. What was shocking, however, was the repressive lengths Macron would go to as president in order to pass such laws and suppress discontent.
The gilets jaunes, or yellow vest movement, was launched in November 2018 as a protest against Macron’s proposed increase to the diesel tax. When it started, about 300,000 people around France took part in national days of action, blocking roads and highways, congregating on roundabouts, donning the yellow vest that is compulsory for all car drivers to carry in their vehicle. Yet what began as a protest against a fuel tax hike grew to become a movement that would threaten Macron’s political stability.
The gilets jaunes staged weekly protests not only in Paris but in smaller cities and towns around the country, attracting hundreds of thousands to mobilise each week against not only the fuel tax—Macron ditched this as a concession to the movement very early in the piece—but for an increase to the minimum wage, for a more democratic society and, importantly, against police violence. Between 5,000 and 8,000 police were routinely deployed onto the streets of Paris, many more thousands around the country, to crush the gilets jaunes.
In March 2019, Macron toured the country using the national spectacle of a “great debate” to demonstrate that he was listening to the people, all the while deploying not just greater numbers of police but also the military onto the streets to quell the protests. The New Statesman reported that a year after the first protest, 24 people had lost an eye due to police violence, five protesters had lost a hand and there had been at least two deaths due to the actions of the police.
The struggle of the gilets jaunes in late 2019 fed into the movement of workers striking to bring down Macron’s plan to reform the pension system. Like the labour code Macron had attacked under a different administration three years earlier, the French pension system has been the product of working-class struggle and has routinely come under attack by French governments. Despite the widespread strikes and demonstrations proving the unpopularity of Macron’s neoliberal pension reform, his administration attempted to ram the plan through in early 2020.
None of this is to say that Biden will behave exactly like Macron. We don’t examine the tea leaves of Macron’s presidency to divine what path Biden will take. However, the comparison serves as a useful reminder of the enthusiasm that the political mainstream had for Macron the reformer. Social liberalism was put forward as the antidote to the far right and a means to bring legitimacy back to the political establishment; yet Macron’s time in power has seen him denigrate workers and the oppressed in the interests of French capitalism just as those before him have done, and the far right has remained strong.
Biden too has been put forward as someone who can deal with the menace of the far right and clean up the mess left by Trump. But this mess—an economic and health crisis that has left more than 400,000 Americans dead from COVID-19 and more than 21 million claiming unemployment compensation—is a different and more acute crisis than the crisis of political legitimacy that Macron inherited in 2017. Unlike Macron, who had a neoliberal rolling back of the French welfare state in mind, the crisis facing the US president today demands the kind of spending—US$1.9 trillion on top of the record spending passed by Congress in 2020—that Biden is promising in order both to combat the virus and to handle its economic fallout. And while Macron’s claims to being an outsider were always cynical—he was a product of the political establishment even if he never held elected office before being president—Biden is a veteran of US politics and the Democratic Party and in that way is more of a continuation of the status quo. Even if Americans become $1400 richer once Biden’s package passes—though this looks unlikely without watering down the bill—the crisis is much more deep seated. Both politically and economically, the US has never been more polarised, the pandemic and the long-term environmental crisis exacerbating social disparities. How can Biden’s timeworn calls for “unity and healing” even begin to address these social problems? They can barely scratch at the itch.
The other important difference between the societies whose governments Biden and Macron took control of is the size and role of the forces of resistance, that is, workers and the left. For example, despite Macron vying for power against the bona fide fascist Le Pen, people and institutions identifying with the left correctly assessed what kind of candidate Macron was: “the pure and simple representative of capital” in the words of philosopher Jacques Rancière. The majority of those in 2017 who voted for far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round refused to vote at all in the second round.
“I will definitely not vote for Le Pen, but I’m not sure I will vote for Macron”, Eddy, a local government worker from Dijon, told the Guardian. “His politics will only bring more social injustice, and help the Front National get even bigger.”
A similar set of politics that ties fighting the far right with building a movement outside bourgeois control that can challenge any attacks that come from the bourgeoisie is what the US sorely needs. Yet sadly, throughout 2020, representatives of the US left put forward the opposite framework. The Democratic Socialists of America, for example, gave unconditional support to Biden’s candidacy. In a New York Times column titled “You’ve probably heard socialists won’t vote for Biden”, Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara desperately reassured liberals that socialists would indeed be voting for Biden, supporting candidates running on the Democratic ballot line and refusing to “play spoiler” by building an independent left-wing alternative to the bourgeois Democratic Party.
More than just voting, workers’ institutions like trade unions have given Biden their uncritical support in the hope that the new president might offer them a line into the administration and halls of power. In addition, many in the unions and on the left have positioned themselves as advising Biden rather than criticising him. Not only does this fail to improve the declining membership and clout of US trade unions, it disarms workers, putting them in a position of subservience, relying on scraps that might fall from the table rather than fighting to improve their conditions and defending against potential future attacks.
While the US left should be vigilant and prepared to fight any future growth of a Trump-inspired far right, the lure of anti-Trumpism inflated the material threat Trump posed and convinced progressives and the institutions they represent that they had no choice but to get behind a Biden presidency, rather than preparing to battle with whichever bourgeois candidate was elected.
Last year’s Black Lives Matter movement showed it is possible to build a broad, left-wing struggle for racial justice outside the control of bourgeois institutions like the Democratic Party. The prolonged struggle against Macron in France shows why that independence is necessary.

Hollow optimism: what Macron’s presidency means for Biden-mania

Someone needs to order Victoria’s bosses a round of babycinos: these guys never stop whinging. Last weekend, 78 “members of Victoria’s business community” <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/business-leaders-unite-to-blast-andrews-government-coronavirus-incompetence/news-story/f43f046122fed5a41c98288edc180997">took out full-page ads in all the Sunday papers</a> decrying the “Orwellian nightmare which Victoria has become”. This week, Sorrento hotelier Julian Gerner will <a href="https://amp.theage.com.au/national/victoria/hotelier-appeals-to-high-court-to-end-melbourne-s-lockdown-20201011-p5640q.html?utm_medium=Social&amp;utm_source=Twitter&amp;__twitter_impression=true">take the Victorian government to the High Court</a> over its denial of “our basic freedoms”.
“This is not what we signed up for and is inconsistent with a free society, representative democratic government and civilised living,” Gerner said in a statement about his case.
Yet, as was pointed out by researchers at the Burnet Institute in August 2020, the bosses’ “Orwellian nightmare” of lockdown and restrictions in Victoria <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-04/melbournes-coronavirus-lockdown-worth-it-burnet-institute-data/12521434">prevented an additional 20,000 coronavirus cases</a> in this state, as well as three to four times more deaths than the current toll.
Yet for bosses like Gerner, thousands of deaths is a reasonable price to get his businesses up and running again. Gerner is one of dozens of signatories to the <a href="https://www.broadsheet.com.au/national/city-file/article/open-letter-premier-victoria-business-owners-unlock-hospitality-industry-now">“Unlock Hospitality Now!”</a> campaign. Melburnians might have seen their pink signs plastered across cafes, bars and restaurants around the city.
The signatories are some of the state’s wealthiest and best-known restaurateurs and hospitality bosses. In a September 2020 open letter to the premier Daniel Andrews launching the campaign, these bosses assure us that they don’t take the health of Victorians lightly. They just believe—in defiance of the state’s public health recommendations—that they can open sooner.
Never mind the fact that the latest research from around the world <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/08/pubs-restaurants-do-scientists-think-covid-closures-curfews-work-virus">shows that small indoor venues like pubs and bars are more conducive</a> to the airborne virus’ spread: these bosses want indoor dining on the menu.
<a href="https://changevictoria.com.au/">In a video statement</a>, one of the signatories Paul Dimattina says, “Hospitality workers are suffering. Sixty-eight thousand people have lost their jobs.” Excuse me if I take Dimattina and co’s concern for their workers’ welfare with more than a flake of Maldon sea salt.
One campaign signatory, Teage Ezard, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/wage-strife-at-ezard-eateries-20190214-p50xrc.html">was found in 2019 to have been “significantly underpaying” staff</a> through unpaid overtime. Chefs across his restaurants regularly worked more than 60 hours per week. Another “Unlock Hospitality Now!” signatory, Chris Lucas, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/restaurant-empire-behind-chin-chin-underpaid-staff-leaked-audit-20190919-p52szg.html">was found to have underpaid staff by $340,000 in a single year</a>. While the millionaire Lucas was building his seventh restaurant, one of his former employees <a href="https://www.megaphone.org.au/petitions/malcolm-turnbull-take-wage-theft-off-the-menu">describes being underpaid $9,500</a> through regularly working 20 unpaid overtime hours a week.
Dechlan, a Melbourne chef and Hospo Voice union member, told Red Flag he was equally skeptical of the bosses’ “Unlock Hospitality” campaign: “The ‘Unlock’ campaign is really about bosses wanting to get back to exploiting workers. They couldn’t give two shits about the people they employ”.
For Dechlan and hospitality workers like him, the pandemic has only exacerbated existing issues within the industry: “The majority of the jobs lost won’t be coming back just from reopening. In my case at least, the pandemic has not only highlighted the insecurity of the industry, but has heightened it… [with] people accepting worse or little pay just to try and stay employed when we reopen.”
Indeed, the “Unlock” campaign does nothing to address the livelihood of workers beyond having venues open. In fact, it takes place as workers experience a reduction in JobKeeper and JobSeeker, while the Victorian government has just announced $3 billion in business support, specifically targeting the hospitality industry.
So what is behind this campaign? A group calling themselves “Change Victoria” is said to have “partnered” with “Unlock Hospitality”. Yet “Unlock” has no independent online presence of its own: all links lead back to Change Victoria’s website and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/changevictoria_/">social media accounts</a>.
Who is Change Victoria? They claim to be a new not-for-profit association that “believes in more jobs, greater prosperity, smaller government, less regulation, and support for the important role of the private business sector in our state”. <a href="https://changevictoria.com.au/#about">Scroll down</a> the page, however, and you’ll find Change headed up by Deborah Henderson and Stuart Eaton—both Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) alumni.
The IPA is an ideologically hard-right think tank associated with the Liberal Party. They have campaigned hard against both the lockdown and the Andrews government, as well as championing other right wing touchstones like climate scepticism, opposition to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, and the battle against the so-called nanny state.
Yet for hospo bosses and their friends from the IPA, some freedoms are more important than others. Their freedom to generate profit through exploiting their workers outweighs the freedom of ordinary people to live safely and prevent the risk of contagion of a deadly virus in the community.
Of course, left wing people can and <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/7305">should</a> criticise the Andrews government for its role in managing this pandemic. But this bosses’ campaign to open up ahead of time is just plain cooked.

The 'Unlock Hospitality' campaign is cooked

The communism of the Black Panther Party

Make no mistake: the 3,000 public housing tenants in Melbourne who are now under house arrest are paying the price for the state Labor government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Premier Daniel Andrews buckled under pressure from the political right to reopen the state before it was safe to do so. Worse, instead of employing health professionals to oversee and administer quarantining of returned travellers – including many who were active COVID-19 cases – they offloaded this responsibility to private security firms.
Reports are now emerging that security guards working at quarantine sites complained to the state health department over lack of training and protective equipment, while those quarantined were not isolated and were allowed to use communal spaces, thus spreading the virus among non-infected travellers and staff. One guard told the Today show that he <a href="https://www.perthnow.com.au/lifestyle/fitness/security-guard-breaks-gag-order-reveals-major-breaches-inside-melbournes-quarantine-hotels-ng-316b19f1a347e84822ef2e4cd6ab0214">received only five minutes of training</a> before beginning his work at a quarantine hotel.
On Saturday afternoon, without even the 24-hour notice afforded to residents in other locked down suburbs around Melbourne, residents from nine public housing towers in Melbourne’s inner north-west were told they would not be allowed to leave their flats for at least five days. Some tenants found out via short, uninformative text messages. Some found out via media reports. Others found out when they returned home to find hundreds of police deployed at the entrances of their estates.
The deployment of a permanent 500-strong police presence at the estates in Flemington and Kensington is deeply troubling. Victoria Police has a long-documented track record of racial profiling and racist policing practices within that community in particular.
The Police Accountability Project, run out of Flemington &amp; Kensington Community Legal Centre, has found that young Africans living in the area have been 2.5 times more likely to be stopped by police than any other group. Many young Africans, including six who were part of a federal court case against Victoria Police over racial profiling, report being subjected to random stops and searches. Their belongings, like mobile phones and CD players, were confiscated if they didn’t have receipts proving they owned them.
I’ve seen first-hand the brutal treatment of the area’s migrant community by Victoria Police. In December 2017, I helped organise a protest against local neo-Nazi and white nationalist crowds who had descended on Flemington to hear far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos speak at a venue just across the road from the biggest public housing estate. 
I was deeply moved when <a href="https://redflag.org.au/index.php/node/6129">public housing tenants and sympathetic locals</a> joined our protest against the far-right rally taking place on their doorsteps. They chanted side by side with us and confronted the right wing immigrant-haters who’d come to Flemington to hear Yiannopoulos speak.
But Victoria Police had a different response. As night fell, riot police began terrorising the residents and anti-racist activists with batons, shields and capsicum spray. They chased the residents into their homes and into the night. That night. when fascists visited Flemington, Victoria Police joined the fascists in intimidating local residents, mostly of Muslim religion and African background.
We know that migrants, refugees, the elderly and disabled disproportionately make up the resident populations of the flats in Flemington, Kensington and North Melbourne. During this “hard lockdown”, some pleaded with police stationed on every floor to be allowed to get basic essentials like bread, milk, baby formula or medication: they were told they would not be allowed out for any reason.
We know from residents themselves that since the beginning of the pandemic, scant information or support was given to those living in public housing. Health advice often went untranslated into community languages. Community leaders were rarely consulted on how to approach locking down such densely packed accommodation. At one tower, a single bottle of sanitiser was placed on the building’s ground floor. When it was used up seven days later, the bottle was simply left empty, not replaced.
Awatif Taha, a public housing resident, wrote in the Guardian: “[Suddenly] we are locked down but they should have been aware when the virus was coming that this is a crowded area and needed more attention. So we have been scared, and we have thought that the government had forgotten us. We have had no way of being heard”.
Yet now that a coronavirus outbreak threatens to rip through accommodation where some of the city’s poorest and most vulnerable residents live, Daniel Andrews – true to form – sent in 500 police officers to turn these people’s homes into prisons. The residents of these towers have already had more than enough intimidation from Victoria Police. Instead of sending cops to lay siege to their homes, Andrews could have announced that the towers were being flooded with translators, health care professionals and cleaning teams.
We can only assume that, over the coming period, the virus will continue to revive, causing more local outbreaks. Social distancing measures and lockdowns have proven effective in countering the virus’s spread, and they should be a part of any public health response. But the virus doesn’t affect all of society equally.
It’s no coincidence that public housing tenants face grave risk: these are teachers’ aides, security guards, community and health workers, hospitality workers, Uber and food delivery drivers. While many white collar workers have had the option of staying at home, many tenants in Flemington, Kensington and North Melbourne haven’t been afforded that right. Instead, they have had to continue to interact with the public in the midst of a deadly pandemic and return home to overcrowded public housing, where run-down facilities and lack of resources make social distancing difficult, if not impossible in some cases.
This “hard lockdown” in Melbourne’s public housing isn’t the natural, inevitable result of a recent spike in cases. It is the product of systematic neglect by successive state governments, infected by a neoliberal logic that would sooner pour billions into police and prisons over building new public housing stock or improving the homes that exist.

European far right’s immigration bogey

France in revolt

French workers raise their heads, again

Never forget Labor’s record on LGBTI rights

Whatever happened to campus queer politics?

Not a barricade but a bridge: Macron, Le Pen and the ‘republican front’ trap

Hollow optimism: what Macron’s presidency means for Biden-mania

The 'Unlock Hospitality' campaign is cooked

The communism of the Black Panther Party

I've seen how cops act in Flemington's public housing. Sending them in is a disgrace

Other Media

Shop

Conferences

Manage Your Subscription

Contact Us