First, they came for the migrants. Then, they murdered Renee Good.
Bit by bit, for decades, repeated hysterias about migration have brought us here. Official politics has pushed what can acceptably done to the poor and oppressed further and further. 
It has had many justifications: stopping terrorism, preventing crime, protecting jobs, putting citizens first. These days, migration is supposedly why we can’t afford housing.
For decades, both sides raced to outdo each other on persecuting migrants: Republican and Democrat, Liberal and Labor in Australia. 
Donald Trump didn’t invent racism or border controls. He took the tools built by the mainstream parties of capitalism and pushed them to the extreme.
Racism is constantly used by the ruling class to lower the bar for how everyone in society is treated. Once an injustice becomes normalised against one section of society, it’s easier to extend it to others. 
In Australia, Islamophobia was used to justify repressive anti-terror laws after the 11 September attacks in 2001. These laws laid the basis for draconian powers to be used against unionised construction workers. 
The racist Northern Territory intervention introduced welfare quarantining debit-cards for Aboriginal communities, which was later rolled out to working-class communities in Western Sydney.
American society was told the crackdown against migrants was just about criminals who are supposedly in the country “illegally”. Then all of a sudden it wasn’t just the undocumented. “Safety” suddenly required greater surveillance powers, more restrictive laws, more weapons for the cops already killing Black people with impunity, and now armed right-wing thugs are running rampage in US cities. 
Renee Good was a US citizen. She was white. But she was working class. And she stood up for those she was supposed to hate, against her own rulers and their armed thugs. To the system, that was her greatest crime. 
In some way, racism has always been about fear. But it’s not about the fear we have of each other; it’s about the fear our rulers have of us.
Ordinary people have always been the spanner in the works for our rulers and their system’s rapacious and violent drive for profit. 
Workers have fought and pushed back against the greed and exploitation of our bosses, winning better conditions and pay. The struggles for women’s and LGBTI rights have won things our rulers were determined to deny us. Mass movements and revolutions have ended wars and brought down brutal regimes. 
Six years ago, that same solidarity Renee Good embodied became a raging storm when George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police just a few blocks away. 
The city rose up. Millions of people took to the streets across the US. Solidarity demonstrations swept the world. The sheer power of the movement even forced Democratic politicians, who had spent decades building these same racist systems, to cynically take a knee so they could co-opt the movement. The authorities were forced into taking action against Derek Chauvan, Floyd’s killer, to put the genie of mass struggle back in its box.
In the last two years, the torch of global anti-racist solidarity has been taken up by the Palestine movement. Millions have defied their governments attempts to deny and excuse a genocide. The general strikes by Italian workers in solidarity with Gaza have been unprecedented, in a country run by a far-right government after decades of intense Islamophobia.
We have seen past the racist dehumanisation of Palestinians in the face of growing repression and persecution. We have taken to the streets for 2.3 million people somewhere else in the world—people we have never met, and who the media and our governments have encouraged us to ignore, hate and fear.
What’s most dangerous of all is not any individual struggle, but the fact that opposition to injustice and oppression brings us together. It shows us who the real enemy is and who our allies are. It builds our confidence. 
Working-class people don’t spend our lives fixated on increasing profits by grinding other human beings into the dirt. We don’t have wealth or power in this society. We get through our days only by working together and taking care of each other. Collectivity and solidarity are part of who we are.
But the biggest reason our rulers fear us and our capacity for solidarity and the potential power it could unleash.
Black Lives Matter in 2020 gave confidence to the activists who went on to unionise in Amazon’s warehouses. Before that, the civil rights movement gave confidence to Black workers who brought their militancy to unions in the public sector and the auto industries. Standing up to racism doesn’t just improve the lives of people of colour, it builds the fighting capacity of the working class as a whole.
If together, US workers refused to work until immigration agents were driven out of their communities, the loss of profits would be unbearable for the corporations and governments who have collaborated with them. If workers everywhere shut everything down like they did in Italy, the entire global economy would be thrown into chaos. If workers took over the economy and collectively ran everything ourselves, the power of capitalism itself could be ended. 
Jeff Bezos couldn’t pack every Amazon package, Gina Rinehart couldn’t haul all that iron ore by herself. They need us. We don’t need them.
That is why every racist attack on one section of the working class is an attack on the working class as a whole. Without unity, neither white nor black or brown workers can use our collective power. We need each other.
Racism is not natural; it is manufactured. It is cultivated by those with wealth and power to hold down those of us who are denied any say over the world whose wealth we work to create. 
But despite the billions spent on weapons, borders and propaganda campaigns to try and get us to turn on each other, even in these darkest of times, they’ve never managed to completely stamp out our humanity.
The people of Minneapolis hurling snowballs to drive immigration agents out of their neighbourhoods, and the thousands now mobilising around the US, are the latest to take up the torch of solidarity in the face of racism. 
All power to them! Their fight is crucial to pushing back against the racist brutality of Trump and rebuilding the kind of working-class power and confidence we’re going to need in the years ahead—to fight racism, war and the system built on profit that oppresses us all.

Vinil Kumar

Racism is about oppressing the working class

Sussan Ley’s Liberals will back Labor’s proposed changes to hate speech laws, which would introduce a new offence for “aggravated hate speech”, targeting religious “hate preachers” who incite violence, and another offence for “serious vilification” on the basis of race. But only as long as they focus exclusively on her areas of interest. 
“I want to be very clear, tackling hate speech is not a licence to go after free speech”, Ley told a press conference in Sydney. “There are clear issues that this legislation needs to address. It needs to be targeted to the threats that we face, and those threats are radical Islamic extremism and antisemitism.” 
It’s a great relief to hear from Ley, Australia’s most credible oppression umpire, that Islamophobia, homophobia and anti-Indigenous racism are all sorted. Only one form of bigotry remains to be knocked out. 
This fits with a well-worn pattern of selective outrage on the political right. For the last two years, the proudest racists in the country have worked double shifts, promoting hostility toward Muslims and migrants in the morning, and then mouthing concern about rising antisemitism in the evening.
Former Liberal Attorney-General George Brandis provides one of the crudest examples. He once famously defended attempts to water down the racial discrimination act by praising the “right to be a bigot”—but is now one of most vocal advocates of tougher penalties for antisemitism. 
Why is antisemitism the one form of bigotry that the political right vocally opposes? The answer is simple: When they say “antisemitism”, they don't really mean antisemitism. They mean any expression of pro-Palestine sentiment or opposition to Israel’s war. When it comes to the real antisemitism, which is overwhelmingly found on the racist right, they turn a blind eye. 
Look for yourself: try to find a statement from George Brandis condemning the National Socialist Network’s vile antisemitic rally outside NSW parliament last November. Try to find a Liberal who says we should cut ties with the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/05/14/nx-s1-5387299/trump-white-house-antisemitism">Nazi-infested</a> Trump administration. They couldn’t care less 
This episode also exposes the free speech hypocrisy of the right. Just a few years ago, the Liberals were posing as free speech warriors, facilitating a review into a “crisis” of free speech on university campuses and threatening to penalise universities that censored students and staff. Now they advocate withdrawing funding from universities that fail to censor criticisms of Israel. 
From banning marches to banning specific slogans, there’s been no area of political expression they won’t trample on when it comes to Palestine. But Sussan Ley still shamelessly cites “free speech” as a reason not to include protections for LGBT people. Who at this point takes the free speech rhetoric of the right seriously, when it so clearly only pertains to their pet concerns? 
The debate also shows the limits of hate speech laws as a means to challenge bigotry. As the Albanese government announced its plans to rework hate speech laws in December, the ABC reported that just four people had been charged under the new laws across the year. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke says this shows the need to tighten the legal framework, because they’ve been unable to stop hateful speech that sits “just below the threshold” of prosecution. 
But the lack of charges just reveals how ineffectual these legal frameworks are for challenging the real roots of bigotry. In our legal system, biased toward the capitalist class and the right, hate speech laws are never used to challenge the bigotry of the elite. 
And there’s been no shortage of elite bigotry to confront. Last year, the Murdoch press, sections of the Liberal Party and well-funded conservative groups like Advance Australia promoted marches of thousands across the country that called for mass deportations and hosted Nazis on their speaking platforms. 
In the aftermath of the Bondi shooting, Bob Katter, a sitting MP, claimed that migrants in Australia live in “radical ethnic enclaves” and warned that white people are “eradicating themselves from the gene pool”—an invocation of the fascist “great replacement” theory. 
No capitalist legal framework for criminalising “hate speech” is ever going to challenge any of this, because promoting racism, scapegoating and social division are core elements of capitalist politics. 
The qualified support the Liberals have given to Labor’s proposed law just shows the cynicism at the heart of the current debate about tackling antisemitism. It’s not an anti-racist campaign. It’s an operation by the political right to attack their enemies and silence legitimate criticism of Australia’s support for Israel.

Luca Tavan

Liberals’ hate speech hypocrisy after Bondi

In the aftermath of the Bondi massacre, nothing says “social cohesion” quite as emphatically as sacking an invited Palestinian-Australian guest from the country’s premier writers’ festival. At a time when the prime minister and political leaders are appealing for unity and calm, they are turning a blind eye to blatant and obvious anti-Arab racism.
This is the only conclusion we can draw from the decision of the board of the Adelaide Festival to “dis-invite” writer and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah from the writers’ festival on the grounds that she has previously made comments that might make people uncomfortable. It is worth letting the festival board speak for itself:
“We have today advised scheduled writer Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah that the Board has formed the judgment that we do not wish to proceed with her scheduled appearance at next month’s Writers’ Week.
“Whilst we do not suggest in any way that Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’s or her writings have any connection with the tragedy at Bondi, given her past statements we have formed the view that it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.”
This is a shameful position for the board of a leading cultural festival to take; to argue that removing a Palestinian speaker promotes “community cohesion”.
It’s not clear what the festival organisers were hoping to achieve, but it is clear that board members were pressured into taking this decision. South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has made clear his opposition to the Palestine movement and support for Israel. While he is legislatively prevented from directly intervening in festival matters, he has made his distaste for Randa well known through extensive media appearances and statements.
In the wake of the Bondi tragedy and the announcement of a royal commission into antisemitism, we can expect the right and pro-Israel politicians to push for more pro-Palestinian voices to be silenced. It is clear that this is what politicians like Josh Frydenberg and the Murdoch media have been pushing for in their relentless campaign for the royal commission.
It is also clear, <a href="https://overland.org.au/2026/01/universities-and-the-arts-after-bondi-from-definitions-to-ambient-antisemitism/">as David Brophy writes at Overland</a>, that the push to censor pro-Palestine voices will be extended across the arts sector and higher education this year. Brophy notes the chilling new phrase “ambient antisemitism” that animates the sinister push to clampdown on cultural and academic activism. Apparently, according to its authors, “ambient antisemitism” is whatever makes a pro-Israeli Jewish person uncomfortable. This is exactly the sentiment behind the Adelaide Festival decision to sack Randa.
In this climate, it would be easy for people to duck and cover. But this is not what has happened. On 8 January, within hours of the board publicising its ban on Randa Abdel-Fattah, <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/statement-from-the-australia-institute/">the Australia Institute</a>—a left-liberal think-tank—announced it was withdrawing its sponsorship and participation. By late that day, over 35 participants also withdrew their participation. Within 48 hours, it had grown to more than 50, including several prominent international guests.
Among them are well-known feminist Jane Caro, Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis, English author Zadie Smith, journalist and academic Peter Greste, Indigenous writers Amy McQuire and Evelyn Araluen, journalist Amy Remeikis and many others. Significantly, high-profile Russian writer and Putin critic Masha Gessen also withdrew.
Gessen was previously cancelled for comparing <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/in-the-shadow-of-the-holocaust">Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Nazi holocaust</a>. In December 2023, in another ironic action, <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/uk/german-foundation-withdraws-from-awarding-jewish-journalist-hannah-arendt-prize-over-new-yorker-essay/">the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought was snatched back from Gessen</a> for criticising Germany’s support for Israel and the suppression of the Palestine movement at home.
It is fantastic that so many writers and artists have joined a protest in solidarity with Randa. It shows we can fight back against the heavy repression and intimidation that pro-Israel forces are trying to impose on us. 
Writers’ week staff have also voiced their opposition to the board’s decision in an email to the guests who have withdrawn. The festival workers are members of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, and the union issued a statement condemning the censorship of Randa. But the MEAA could take this further by calling union members working at the festival to take industrial action.
However, while it is worth celebrating that the Adelaide Festival’s attempted censorship of Palestinian voices has blown up in its face, it is not enough. It is vital that we continue our public protests, our union organising and all other forms of solidarity with Palestine. We can take heart from Randa’s own strong statement in the face of censorship:
“This is a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship and a despicable attempt to associate me with the Bondi massacre ... Australian arts and cultural institutions continue to reveal their utter contempt and inhumanity towards Palestinians ... I remain confident that the writing community and the broader public will ultimately respond with principle and integrity.”
We must repay Randa’s confidence with our actions, just as we must recognise that the right will be pushing hard to silence us so that Israel can continue its genocide in the shadows. It is time for all of us to step up. Let’s take the great example of the writers who are standing in solidarity with Randa and build a movement that won’t go away at the first signs of intimidation.
There’s never been a better time to “globalise the Intifada”.
Marty Hirst is the author of <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Theres-no-good-news-Journalism-crisis-and-philosophy-of-praxis/Hirst/p/book/9781032758817">There’s no good news: journalism, crisis and philosophy of praxis</a> (Routledge, 2025).

Marty Hirst

Adelaide Festival reaction shows we can push back the anti-Palestine repression

For more than two years, in a population less than half that of of Sydney, the equivalent of 45 Bondi massacres have been carried out, on average, every week. More than 71,000 murdered and more than 9,000 missing, presumed dead and buried under rubble. The scale of the crimes committed by Israel in Gaza is incontrovertible.
<a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds">The United Nations</a> charges Israel with genocide.
<a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/8668/2024/en/">Amnesty International</a> charges Israel with genocide.
<a href="https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide">Israeli human rights group B’Tselem</a> charges Israel with genocide.
<a href="https://www.phr.org.il/en/genocide-in-gaza-eng/">Physicians for Human Rights</a>, another Israeli organisation, charges Israel with genocide.
<a href="https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IAGS-Resolution-on-Gaza-FINAL.pdf">The International Association of Genocide Scholars</a> charges Israel with genocide.
<a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/12/19/israels-crime-extermination-acts-genocide-gaza">Human Rights Watch</a> charges Israel with the crime of extermination and acts of genocide.
The International Criminal Court charges Israeli PM <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/netanyahu">Benjamin Netanyahu</a> and former Defence Minister <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/gallant">Yoav Gallant</a> with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And yet, within our midst in Australia are racist scum who support, justify or provide aid to the terrorist murderers carrying out atrocity after atrocity in Palestine. Instead of a royal commission into who exactly is complicit in these crimes, who exactly is giving succour to terrorism, who exactly is preaching genocide, the federal government has extended an invitation to Israel’s president to visit and is carrying out a royal commission into the opponents of genocide.
We are governed by sickos. 
Randa Abdel-Fattah, whose people have been starved and exterminated, has been <a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/news/2025/adelaide-festival-board-statement">cancelled by the Adelaide Festival board</a> because “it would not be culturally sensitive” for her to appear at its upcoming writers’ week. Imagine Gary Foley being cancelled because some racist whites wouldn’t like what he has to say about what this country has done to Aboriginal people. It is unimaginable. But not for a Palestinian in Australia today.
Embedded in every institution of Australian capitalism, even the ones of purported “high culture”, are racist filth for whom Palestinian lives don’t count for shit. Those who aren’t racist scum are cowards who won’t speak up. These middle-class liberal toads are worse than the Andrew Bolts of this world. 
They say all the right things around their dinner tables with all their “sophisticated” friends and their fair-trade coffee beans that give a few extra cents on the dollar to poor Ethiopian farmers. They tut-tut about Donald Trump’s vulgarity and about the bad things that happened in the past—all of them on the right side of history on political questions that were long ago settled. 
They’re anti-racist only when it’s safe; only when anti-racism is officially sanctioned; only when its sponsored by official society and a bunch of NGOs.
You can bet they turn up to Invasion Day marches—now that that’s a popular thing to do, not when it was only handfuls of outcasts—and applaud and sob and nod along. You can bet that they talk admiringly of Nelson Mandela and love how Desmond Tutu was so cheerful, so forgiving. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UTHTszgg1Q">Tutu said more than a decade ago</a> that the situation in Palestine was “in many instances worse” than what he experienced in South Africa. Well, it is now infinitely worse. 
But when it counts, when push comes to shove, Australia’s cultural, political and business elites are siding with Israeli apartheid, with the genocidal ethnostate. 
Polite society? What a scam. A casually racist, cowardly scam. White Australia never really died. It just became more sophisticated. It became social cohesion. It became culturally sensitive. It became a royal commission. It became the Adelaide Festival board.

Ben Hillier

Forty-five Bondis a week in Gaza. Where’s the royal commission to root out Australia’s genocide supporters?

Since the Bondi massacre, the right-wing press has been saturated with vile slanders against the Palestine solidarity movement and the left. Racist pig Pauline Hanson led the charge, but she’s been followed by a slew of political figures and editorialists blaming the Palestine solidarity movement for the murders. Even former PM John Howard is part of the chorus. Howard savaged the Australian working class and led the country into the criminal invasion of Iraq, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. That the corporate media still take this war criminal seriously says it all.
Some are using language that wouldn’t have been out of place in Hitler’s Germany. In one piece for the Australian, John Carrol contrasted the clash of civilisations he claims is at the root of the Bondi shooting with “monocultural Japan, which has preserved its ethnic and cultural purity, helping make its cities today, clean, orderly and smoothly running”. 
Left-wing people must stand up to the vitriol and the disgraceful, cynical slanders. The people and institutions going after us have spent decades stoking racism in Australian society, torturing refugees—or justifying it—and punching down and attacking the vulnerable. For the last two years, they have backed the genocide in Palestine. Those trying to make political capital from the Bondi attack were baying for blood in Gaza as bombs rained down and as people starved. 
Their goal is to shift public opinion hard against the Palestine movement. They want to strike a blow against the political left and the Labor Party—which has backed the genocide, but apparently hasn’t been enthusiastic enough in its support for Israel or open enough in its racism. They want to make up the political ground that they lost over the last two years.
From 7 October 2023, the political right and supporters of Israeli apartheid lost a series of debates on the Palestine question. The depravity of Israel’s genocide has drawn hundreds of thousands into the streets and has shifted broader public opinion against both Israel and the US. Two years into Israel’s offensive, <a href="https://apan.org.au/media_release/poll-finds-australians-back-sanctions/#:~:text=New%20poll%20finds%20widespread%20opposition,without%20being%20attacked%20or%20penalised.">polling showed that</a> 57 percent of Australians supported sanctions on Israel and 58 percent said a genocide was taking place. 
In August last year, despite two years of the right smearing all those who stand with Palestine as antisemites, demonstrations flowered in even the smallest country towns as more than 300,000 took to the streets in the <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/australia-rises-for-palestine">largest Palestine solidarity mobilisation in Australia’s history</a>. NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns, arguably Australia’s most pro-Israel premier, was defeated twice in the courts by Sydney’s Palestine Action Group and definitively in the streets when 300,000 defiantly marched across the Harbour Bridge. 
Now, he’s joining the right’s crusade to turn the tide. Minns has introduced a law allowing the state government to temporarily ban demonstrations. Antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal and her deputy Greg Craven have taken specific aim at students, claiming that university-based protests contributed to a climate of hatred which led to the massacre. This is the same antisemitism envoy who failed to issue any statement when a Nazi organisation took centre stage at mass racist protests last year.
Segal has used this moment to again insist that the government adopt a raft of anti-democratic measures that would lead to a severe crackdown on freedom of speech in universities, including proposing that she be given the right to block funding to universities and arts organisations. 
We cannot let them turn the political tide. Gaza is strewn with broken concrete and smashed homes, under siege from every direction by the Israeli military. Underneath the rubble are an estimated 9,000 bodies. Tents perch on stretches of land that form valleys surrounded on all sides by shelled buildings. The people are starving; even the animals are going hungry. One mother told news outlet Electronic Intifada: “I stay awake all night guarding my children from the dogs”. 
Israel is refusing to let in anywhere near adequate aid, and has revoked the operating licences of 37 aid groups delivering some relief, including Doctors Without Borders and the Norwegian Refugee Council. But Gaza is not chaos. The Israeli government is a skilled social architect, using the most brutal methods to physically and psychologically torture the entire population. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/17/israeli-military-calorie-limit-gaza#:~:text=13%20years%20old-,Israel%20used%20%27calorie%20count%27%20to%20limit%20Gaza%20food%20during%20blockade,needed%20to%20sustain%20the%20population.">From the beginning of the siege in 2007</a>, for example, the military limited the number of calories allowed into the territory to a bare minimum as part of a campaign of economic warfare. 
In November, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir <a href="https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-ministers-debate-shooting-gaza-children-near-yellow-line#:~:text=Israeli%20ministers%2C%20including%20Ben-Gvir,Mute">reportedly urged troops</a> to shoot “children and donkeys” who stray near the newly established “yellow line”, which has cut Gaza in two and allows Israel to occupy 60 percent of the land. This is what the so-called ceasefire looks like.
As Palestinians suffer through a freezing winter, we must continue to fight for Palestinian liberation. This means standing up to an emboldened and rabid political right, and to any and all attacks on the right to demonstrate for justice in Gaza.

Jasmine Duff

Supporters of Palestine must stand up to the post-Bondi right-wing offensive

Will the Bondi massacre result in a new wave of anti-Muslim and anti-migrant racism? Australia’s right-wing politicians certainly hope so. The murders took place on a Sunday evening. The right-wing response was clear within hours. 
By Monday, Liberal MP Andrew Hastie had published a short video manifesto: “The prime minister has failed this country ... What we need to talk about is immigration”. The same day, Pauline Hanson claimed on Sky News that her decades-long attack on “multiculturalism” had been <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm6fyDoy98s">vindicated</a>, demanding a “hard look at our immigration”. On Tuesday, she and her new party comrade Barnaby Joyce toured the crime scene like Winston Churchill inspecting wreckage of the blitz. They, two of Australia’s most brazen professional racists, were welcomed as heroes.
Bondi has not been Australia’s Charlie Hebdo, its Bataclan or its Manchester arena. The traditional response to a terror attack—the stifling atmosphere of national unity, in which all dissent is smothered and some kind of patriotic liberalism becomes mandatory—has not been in evidence. Instead, Australia’s broad right-wing political networks have seized the opportunity to supercharge anti-immigrant sentiment and turn it against the Labor government.
The ground was already shifting. Polling indicates a surge in anti-migrant sentiment in Australia in the last five years. For much of the 2000s, only about a third of Australians thought there were too many migrants, but that number is <a href="https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2025/12/immigration-panic-comes-in-waves-data-shows-who-worries-most-and-when">now more than 50 percent</a>, with a steep climb since COVID.
When it comes to racism, Australia is in a peculiar position. Despite the deep roots of racism in official Australian politics, the country has not yet seen the full development of a Trumpian, supposedly “anti-establishment” nativism on a mass scale. For years, Australia’s right-wing politicians have struggled to find a way to initiate a shift like it, and ride it to electoral success.
The lag is sometimes attributed to Australia’s unusual electoral system, which does tend to prop up unpopular but broadly tolerable centre parties. The fact that both major parties, Labor and Liberal, tended to uncritically adopt extreme anti-refugee policies also meant that far-right challenges sometimes seemed superfluous. Trump himself has a strange impact: his success in the USA inspires right-wing co-thinkers around the world, while his conduct in office exposes the disturbing reality behind his demagoguery, as Peter Dutton found out to his disappointment when his Trumpian campaign fizzled after Trump’s second inauguration.
But the biggest factor was likely economic. Australia, almost uniquely in the wealthy capitalist countries, was never seriously affected by the financial crisis. Around the world, the centre-left and centre-right parties alike faced a rising tide of genuine hatred. Australia’s politicians have never faced the same rage that ultimately consumed the Clintons, Bushes and Blairs of the world. Left- and right-wing populism rose throughout Europe and the USA in 2015-16; in Australia, these were the years of Malcolm Turnbull. Australia had neither a Sanders nor a Trump. The neoliberal consensus had a reprieve.
But the logic of capitalism has caught up. The grinding impact of decades of neoliberalism, combined with post-COVID inflation, have created a crisis-like sense of unsustainable pressure on living standards. 
Even before Bondi, right-wingers sensed an opportunity. In early December, polling by the Nine media empire indicated that an astonishing 64 percent of Australians would support a complete ban on all immigration “until our housing situation has caught up”. That poll was, in effect, political research on behalf of the Liberals: the question itself is an anti-immigration slogan, suggesting that housing would “catch up” if migration were stopped. But it proves that a majority might assent to even the most extreme anti-migrant position if they’re told it will improve the housing situation. Around the same time, <a href="https://archive.is/N3EMC">poll</a> after poll showed support for the far-right One Nation surging. At the time of the Bondi massacre, the Liberals were preparing to unveil a new immigration policy focused on “<a href="https://archive.is/EtfiQ">turbocharging deportations</a>”.
Little surprise, then, at the spring in One Nation’s step and the open opportunism of the Liberals in the post-Bondi days. It is a disgrace and a warning that Pauline Hanson, the most consistent extreme racist in the Australian parliament, could claim to be the defender of Australia’s Jewish population when she attended the site of the massacre. Barnaby Joyce—never a model of restraint—felt bold enough to call an anti-migrant rally in defiance of the inevitable calls for calm and national unity.
How far can they go? Joyce’s racist rally, like others called on the same day, was small. It’s less than a year since Dutton’s Trumpian election campaign failed. You don’t need to be a seasoned politico to know that Hanson, Joyce and their gang of creeps are not to be taken seriously.
But whether or not their immediate campaign succeeds, the future is clear. Australia’s conservative politicians want the new brand of ultra-extreme, violent, “populist” racism to dominate political life here, as it does elsewhere. They think the time is near, and they’ll stoop to any low, seize on any tragedy, if it helps them build that project. Whether it’s Hanson, Hastie or some unknown figure who emerges as its leader, the conditions for a hardened racist movement are falling into place.
Around the world, centre-left political forces have collapsed in the face of this onslaught. Yet the Trumpian argument is not hard to beat. Living standards have been run down thanks to decades of policies favouring the wealthy, employers and big corporations. Scapegoating migrants and racial minorities serves those same interests. Anti-immigrant populism can be defeated, but not by mealy-mouthed neoliberal “multiculturalism”: it takes a real attack on the capitalists who make all our lives harder while turning us against each other.
And that is not exactly the Labor Party’s speciality.

D. Taylor

Australia’s right-wingers want a post-Bondi racist movement

The news of the massacre at Bondi piled horror on horror. As the narrative developed, every awful fear was confirmed: yes, there were deaths. Yes, there was a Jewish festival nearby. Yes, in fact, the festival was the target: the attack was motivated by antisemitism. Yes, the death toll would continue to climb: and yes, at least one child was killed. At that point, it seemed hard to imagine how things could get worse. But then Tony Abbott, Jillian Segal, Sussan Ley and Benjamin Netanyahu opened their mouths.
Right-wingers wasted no time in using this massacre for their political ends, facts be damned. There was no need to understand the worldview or motivation of the attackers—the long-term advocates of anti-Muslim, pro-genocide politics began grandstanding with no concern for empirical reality or political logic. 
Australia’s anti-immigrant right wing flooded the internet with anti-Muslim and anti-Arab propaganda of the vilest kind. Defenders of Israel’s genocide immediately blamed the massacre on the pro-Palestine movement. Many right-wingers did both, like Abbott, who blamed the massacre on “terrible marches ... across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and elsewhere” and declared that “we just have to be much more determined not to import hatred from overseas”.
Abbott knows something about importing hatred from overseas. He and his hard-right faction in the Liberal Party have spent a decade trying to radicalise anti-migrant sentiment, inspired by the models on offer from European neo-fascists and the MAGA movement in the US. It is unsurprising that he and his co-thinkers would imply, or declare, that immigration is to blame. 
Equally unsurprising, and equally unacceptable, is the rapid reemergence of figures like Australia’s discredited “antisemitism envoy”, Jillian Segal, seeking to use this massacre to peddle their anti-Palestinian political agenda. The facts: in the hours and days after the massacre, little was known about the attackers’ worldview except a potential years-long interest in ISIS. That interest long predates the emergence of the large-scale global Gaza solidarity movement—Australia’s spies were investigating the younger attacker in 2019.
ISIS and their international supporters oppose the Palestinian national struggle, have perpetrated abominable crimes against Palestinian refugees in the areas they control, and have an implacable hostility to the worldview and methods of the international solidarity movement. Although they may opportunistically refer to Palestine at times in their propaganda, they do so as part of a fundamentally counterposed project that seeks to expose the solidarity movement as a dead end that must be replaced with militarised sectarianism. They denounce the cause of Palestinian liberation as an “idol” and view even the most religious advocates of Palestinian national self-determination as apostates. So it is rather hard to see how, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims, the Australian government’s symbolic recognition of a Palestinian state has led to the massacre of Jews in Sydney. Likewise, one struggles to understand the relevance of Segal’s Trumpian proposals to tie Australian university funding to political discipline.
Even more absurd are the widespread attempts to blame the Palestine solidarity movement in general, and the epic Sydney Harbour Bridge march in particular. Dave Rich, a purported expert in “left-wing antisemitism”, conceded in the Guardian that “we are yet to discover the detailed motivations of the Bondi attackers”. But this didn’t stop him from directly blaming the Palestine solidarity movement for the massacre: “[T]his movement has generated and sustained a political culture in which violence is both conceivable and enacted”. 
In fact, the political culture of the Palestine solidarity movement is the direct opposite of the sectarian religious violence of the Bondi attack. The Palestine movement transcends religious boundaries and national borders. It is not based on violence, but collective protest. The mass demonstrations in Sydney, the general strikes in Italy, the multinational aid flotilla to Gaza, and the countless peaceful sit-ins and occupations by enormously courageous anti-Zionist Jews in the United States are just a few examples of actions that could only take place on the basis of anti-racist solidarity.
The Palestine solidarity movement is motivated by opposition to racist violence. Its methods are those of peaceful mass action. One of its central claims is the need to distinguish between the Jewish people and the Zionist political project. The Bondi attackers, just like the state of Israel itself, represent the rejection of these ideas and methods.
In truth, many of the publicists and whitewashers of Israel’s genocide know this, and that is why they are so desperate to slander the movement and jump at any opportunity to repress it bureaucratically. Their attempts to reframe the oppression of Palestinians on sectarian lines—the implication that Jews, by virtue of their religious or ethnic background, are effectively identical with the Israeli government’s oppression of Palestinians, and to oppose that oppression is to hate Jews—reinforce the logic of communal violence. 
That many Jews believe that all Palestine solidarity is an expression of anti-Jewish hatred is a tragedy, and one that opportunistic political forces are seeking to intensify and exploit to break down solidarity between Jews and the Palestine movement. But around the world, more and more Jews like me have reacted with revulsion to this propaganda, and have rejected the idea that being Jewish means supporting genocide against Palestinians, and opposing it is antisemitism. 
The reality is that much of the world today is in a death spiral of racist oppression and violence. Western politics is increasingly dominated by a discourse asserting that any and all forms of violence—from arbitrary imprisonment to assassinations—are justified in the struggle against migrants, minorities, drugs and subversion. Some lost souls are drawn to the apocalyptic mirror image of sectarian murder-suicides.
The conditions have been created for sectarian and racial violence in every direction. Jews and Muslims alike have been the victims of massacres by neo-Nazis, religious sectarians, and state actors. Across the world, the forces of reaction are trying to extinguish the principles of internationalist, anti-capitalist solidarity.
The Palestine movement has been a shining light of solidarity and cooperation in a world increasingly darkened by racist and sectarian brutality. Those who opportunistically use the Bondi massacre to slander that movement should hang their heads in shame, and the activists of that movement must redouble their efforts to assert the importance of internationalism, cooperation and resistance to this unending nightmare.

Shame on those using the Bondi massacre to slander Palestine solidarity

From the federation of the Australian colonies in 1901 until the government of Gough Whitlam in 1973, the “White Australia” policy was in place. Following earlier restrictions enacted by individual colonies, under White Australia, all non-white immigration was in effect banned. Around 7,500 Pacific Islander people who already resided in Australia before 1901 were also deported, many having been kidnapped or misled into servitude on Queensland’s sugar cane fields.
Adopted unanimously by the new Australian parliament in 1901 as one of its first legal enactments, the Immigration Restriction Act was the cornerstone of White Australia. The act used a dictation test in a “European language” at the discretion of the Immigration Department to bar anyone not deemed white enough. The Australian Labor Party, far from opposing White Australia, was its most vociferous champion for much of its history. In 1901, the ALP moved amendments to the act to ban Asians outright, making it explicitly racist.
The White Australia policy in common history is presented as a national shame representing the backwardness and bigotry of the past. The National Museum of Australia, for example, says of the period that “many White Australians feared that non-white immigrants would threaten Australian society”.
White Australia has come up recently, the Nazis behind the “March for Australia” justifying their racist dreams of ethnic cleansing by referring to this supposedly glorious past. Support for the policy has remained a touchstone for the Australian far right, from Pauline Hanson’s maiden speech in parliament in 1997 to Fraser Anning’s in 2018. Whether viewed with horror or nostalgia, the consensus is that “White Australia” reflected the wishes of most people in Australia.
The reality is that White Australia was the product, not of an irrational fear or some broad conservatism among “white Australians”, but of the interests of a new capitalist state operating as a European outpost in Asia. White Australia was formulated by the nation’s leading liberals and humanitarian reformers of the late nineteenth century, who pitched it as “progressive” and “democratic”.
Two main elements drove it: First, the emerging Australian ruling class desired to create a unified and independent state, and second, it wanted to build this state in Asia, facing competition from rapidly industrialising and expansionist Japan.
No ruling class can rule without maintaining “hegemony”, which means presenting the interests of the ruling class as those of the whole of society. The Chinese emperors had the “mandate of heaven”, European feudal monarchies had the “divine right of kings”, and modern capitalism rules under the pretence of the “will of the people” and the “national interest”. Just as older ideas justified the social position of nobles and kings, the notion that capitalism is governed “democratically” or that the “national interest” represents everyone serves to maintain capitalist rule today.
Australia’s colonial ruling class, which developed over the nineteenth century as Australia ceased being just a dumping ground for convicts, viewed White Australia as central to a national and “democratic” ideology for the new state.
Alfred Deakin, the first attorney-general and prime minister on and off from 1903 to 1910, explained that White Australia “was the note that touched particularly the Australian born, who felt themselves endowed with a heritage not only of political freedom, but of an ample area within which the race might expand, and an obligation consequent upon such an endowment—the obligation to pass on to their children and the generations after them that territory undiminished and uninvaded”.
The Australian ruling class understood that “White Australia” bound the interests of workers and bosses together, forging a common nationality. The idea that being “white” was a sign of civilisation pitted white workers against foreigners and helped to butter up the populace ideologically for Australia’s own expansionism in the Pacific, under the guise of “national defence”. Alfred Deakin, again:
“Coloured aliens engaging in any occupation subject white men in the same occupation to an utterly unfair and improper competition. The secret of the coloured man’s success was his complete indifference to the moral and social standards of his white fellow citizens. He worked from dawn to dark on seven days a week, he ate little else than rice, he clothed himself in rags, he lived in a hovel. White men through no fault of their own would be driven from employment and production, simply because they adhered to the most elementary ideals of a civilised society.”
It was argued by liberals—including much of the leadership of the Australian Labor Party and the trade unions—that building Australia as a “homogeneous community” of white civilization would preserve its supposed great qualities. By excluding non-white immigrants, mainly Chinese people who tried to immigrate during the mid-nineteenth century gold rushes, Australia would avoid the problems seen in countries like the United States, where importing African people as slaves led to civil war and segregation.
The ALP’s first federal objective was White Australia, supported in these liberal terms: “The cultivation of an Australian sentiment based on the maintenance of racial purity and the development in Australia of an enlightened and self-reliant community”.
When modern liberals explain the White Australia policy, they often claim that ALP and union support meant a genuine working-class interest. For example, Henry Reynolds and Marilyn Lake, in Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the Question of Racial Equality, suggest achievements like protectionism, industrial arbitration and the basic wage (what we today call the minimum wage) were the fruit of White Australia, benefiting (white, male) workers.
But immigration restrictions, past or present, do not benefit workers. White Australia’s purpose was to create a false “national interest” that in reality propped up bosses’ authority and power.
Protectionism—using tariffs to protect domestic industry—was justified as necessary for high wages, much as we hear today that higher wages depend on bosses’ profits. This means workers pay more for basics, as US workers now see under President Trump.
Arbitration was favoured not just by the ALP and union officials but also by most of the bosses. Capitalists backed arbitration (and still do, as with the Fair Work Commission), because it limits workers’ ability to strike and regulates disputes, hoping to avoid large strikes like those in Australia in the 1890s.
The basic wage, which Reynolds and Lake describe as challenging employer power, wasn’t a product of White Australia any more than similar minimum wages abroad. The minimum wage set what a family could survive on—the literal minimum—and paid accordingly. As socialists said at the time, “There is nothing radical about recognising that human beings require the same as a donkey—enough to live on”.
Arguments blaming the working class for White Australia haven’t changed much in over a hundred years. The only difference: liberals back then believed in White Australia to build an “enlightened and self-reliant community”; today liberals still claim it benefited workers, and try to ascribe responsibility for such blatant racism and discrimination not to their own political forerunners, but to “unenlightened” workers.
Besides providing the early Australian state with an ideology that could bind its population together, White Australia was also necessary because the Australian state confronted a rising Asian power in Japan.
Australia was always an aggressive power, pushing for Britain’s and the US’s involvement in the Pacific and Asia. Australia urged Britain to annex Fiji in 1874; Queensland annexed Papua New Guinea in 1884. During the Cold War, Australian governments supported US intervention in Vietnam and applauded the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia. This aggressive imperialism continues today, with Labor spending huge sums on nuclear-powered attack submarines as part of the US war drive against China.
While the fear is now about China, for most of the twentieth century it was Japan. From 1894, when Japan annexed Korea and embarked on its own colonial expansion, it was perceived as Australia’s key rival in the region. This view grew after Japan’s military victory over Russia in 1905, the first modern defeat of a European empire by a non-European state. The rise of Japanese imperialism was perceived as a threat to Australia’s capacity to develop as a white state. As George Pearce, Labor senator and later defence minister in World War One, put it: “The only doctrine that these [Asiatic] races respect is the doctrine of force. Our White Australian legislation is so much waste paper unless we have rifles to back it up”.
Despite fighting alongside Japan in World War One, Australia strongly opposed and defeated Japanese efforts to have the League of Nations (forerunner of the United Nations) support racial equality.
By the time Australia went to war with Japan in 1941, the ideological groundwork was done. Sydney Daily Telegraph headlines in 1933 said that “war with Japan is inevitable”, despite Japan being Australia’s second largest export market behind Britain, absorbing 12 percent of all exports. The parallels with China today are clear.
Racist vilification of Japanese people—always central to the White Australia policy—was pushed to extremes in World War Two. A two-week campaign started by the government claimed Japanese people were warlike fanatics, possessed by an irrational hatred of whites:
“The Japs have been educated to hate you from infancy. They have been preparing for a war like this since they were old enough to understand ... Even when they smiled on us and treated us ever so politely they hated us in their souls ... Young Japan learnt to hate while you were playing with marbles and enjoying the freedom and benefits of your democracy.”
This systematic campaign of dehumanisation was summed up in the slogan: “We’ve always despised them, NOW WE MUST SMASH THEM!”
In the Pacific War, this race hatred played out fully: Japanese soldiers were often executed instead of being taken prisoner, Japanese civilians were killed in the hundreds of thousands by US firebombing, and ultimately, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastated by nuclear weapons.
The White Australia policy is neither a glorious page in the nation’s past nor merely a symbol of ignorance. It was a deliberate effort by Australian rulers to manufacture nationalism and unity in a new state; a barbaric, dehumanising ideology to replace class struggle with racial hatred for imperialist aims. It stands as another mark of shame in the history of capitalism in Australia.

Duncan H.

What was the White Australia policy?

Watching the footage of the March for Australia rallies on 31 August, it was impossible not to conclude that they were gatherings of hard-core racists. 
When speakers chanted “Send them back! Send them back!” and “Heil Australia!” and the crowd enthusiastically joined in, or when demonstrators held placards stating “Mass migration = silent invasion”, or when t-shirts sporting the slogan popularised by the 2005 Cronulla riots “Fuck off, we’re full” were a common sight, you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out that these were racist mobilisations demanding a return to White Australia. 
Curiously, though, politicians and newspaper editors are now trying to convince us that these were not far-right mobilisations by racist dogs who should be shunned by society. The open Nazis, whose presence at the rallies could not be denied, did cop some flak. Victorian Police Minister Anthony Carbines called them “unhinged grubs”, and Nazi leader Thomas Sewell was remanded in custody on charges of violent disorder, affray and assault following the attack on Camp Sovereignty. 
But self-declared Nazis aside, Labor and Liberal alike are now doing their best to convince us that the rest of the crowd were essentially decent folk duped by fascists. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the crowd as “good people turning up to demonstrate their views” but who should be cautious about giving neo-Nazis a platform. Multicultural Affairs minister Anne Aly agreed: many of those attending had been “conned” by the far right. When asked to comment on the appearance of Pauline Hanson and Bob Katter as guests of honour at the Canberra and Townsville rallies, Aly could not bring herself to denounce even these out-and-out racists.
On the other side of the chamber, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said that the rallies were “attended by people of goodwill but hijacked by violent neo-Nazis spouting hate and racism”.
It hasn’t just been right-wing politicians who have downplayed the bigotry on display. The Age
editors condemned the rally but said that “it must be acknowledged that many of those choosing to protest on Sunday were not racist”. ABC journalists chimed in along the same lines.
What has been the defence put up for the bulk of the March for Australia demonstrators? That they were motivated by “legitimate concerns”, including about the housing crisis, inadequate infrastructure and the cost of living. 
These naïve folk should under no circumstances be called racist or called out on their disgusting actions, apparently. Oh no, that would be “polarising” and, according to Albanese, would “push them further down the rabbit-hole”.
Accompanying this has been near unanimity across the political and media classes that there needs to be a “mature conversation” about immigration, thereby accepting the fascist claim that immigration is a cause for concern.
Some on the left echoed these sentiments. Student members of socialist group Solidarity at Sydney University argued that the rally was “not a White Australia rally, but a housing crisis rally” and that the attendees were “impoverished” and “concerned about the housing crisis”. Solidarity’s online coverage of the event included quotes from racist trade unionists in an apparent attempt to play up a division between open Nazis and “softer racists”. They seem to believe that if racist workers march, their involvement somehow mitigates the fascistic character of these rallies and presents an opportunity to split their ranks.
It doesn’t seem to bother those trying to play up the supposed “legitimate grievances” of the crowd or insisting there were “good people” on both sides that not one chant at these rallies called for any government action to ease the housing crisis other than an immediate halt to immigration. Nor that the only printed placard mentioning housing—“Stop mortgage rises—stop immigration!”—was produced by One Nation. Nor that Nazi speeches, according to an Age reporter, were met with “rousing cheers”, and the one attempt to take the microphone from a Nazi, at the Adelaide rally, was met with fierce opposition from the crowd who demanded that he be given the right to speak. 
Emphasising the “legitimate concerns” of organised racists only weakens the struggle against bigotry. It is imperative that anti-racists organise to resist the growth of a far-right movement; casting its adherents in the most positive conceivable light is an obstacle to that goal.
It is hardly new that racism is dressed up as innocent “concerns”. Just look at the many excuses given for people voting against an Indigenous Voice to parliament. Indeed, scabs always claim to have “legitimate concerns”, including that they will face financial hardship if they go on strike. Police informers always have “legitimate concerns” that they face a tougher sentence if they don’t cooperate with the cops. But how do you build a strike, how do you protect people from harassment and how do you fight racism if your starting point is to make excuses for the people who do their best to defeat your efforts? The task of the left must be to solidarise with the millions repelled by displays of bigotry, not to apologise for the racists or to explain why they adhere to rancid ideas.
We must call these demonstrations for what they are: not assemblies of innocents somehow hoodwinked into supporting unfortunate causes but collections of hard-core racists trying to cohere into a political force. They need to be crushed, not “understood”.
Government ministers won’t do this. They recognise these pigs as potential voters they don’t want to alienate. And they understand that every grievance directed at a migrant is one less directed at them. Labor depends as much as the Liberals do on promoting flag-waving and rabid nationalism as part of the broader project of running Australian capitalism. Even if the government is not about to slash immigration (because Australian capitalists depend on it), it understands that right-wing nationalism certainly helps things along when you’ve got spending on public services to cut, a war to prepare for and hundreds of billions of dollars of extra military spending to justify. It’s the same reason Albanese refused to call the “No” campaign in the Voice referendum racist: to do so would require him to fight them, and fighting racism is simply not in Labor’s DNA. 
The ALP wants to run the capitalist state which requires it to pursue racist policies. The Greens, to their credit, condemned the racists. But they won’t mobilise to take them on. The trade union leaders have done nothing to push back. To take on racism, we need socialist politics grounded in class struggle and opposition to all forms of oppression.

Tom Bramble

‘Legitimate concerns’?

Last Sunday’s March for Australia was a significant moment for the far right across the country, as goons draped in Australian flags took to the streets in substantial numbers. In Melbourne and Sydney, they brought out close to 10,000 people, while in Adelaide, Brisbane, Hobart and Newcastle their numbers were in the hundreds or thousands. While the marches didn’t reach the size and militancy of the anti-lockdown demonstrations in Melbourne during the COVID era, they are the biggest explicitly racist demonstrations for some decades.
It was never made public who exactly organised the marches, which called for an end to mass immigration. But in many places, particularly in Melbourne, it was clear that the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network played an important role. Even where the NSN were less central, the strategy was the same: far right forces sought to build a relatively broader right-wing movement around anti-migrant racism. That is, this was an attempt by Nazis and their ilk to try and enter the mainstream of Australian political life. 
None of this would have been possible without the Murdoch press, which has clearly decided that becoming a Fox News tribute act is its best chance of staying relevant. Rupert’s local minions want to see Australia become more like the US and UK, where the far right is ascendant. So, they provided free advertising to boost the “March for Australia”, with the Daily Telegraph even publishing the official promotional leaflet. The Seven TV network, owned by billionaire Kerry Stokes, also publicised the rally, continuing its tradition of promoting filth like Pauline Hanson and Ben Roberts-Smith.
The movement produced by this classic alliance of fascists and billionaires was a predictable orgy of racism, anti-leftism and conspiracy theories. In a few cities, speakers promoted the “great replacement theory”, which posits that Western governments are consciously replacing white people with migrants. (Yes, those same governments that are incarcerating, deporting and drowning record numbers of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers the world over.) In Melbourne and Sydney, well-known neo-Nazis received rapturous applause, while in Adelaide the crowd went ballistic after a member of the NSN had a microphone wrenched from his hands, insisting on his right to speak. The Melbourne rally transformed into a terrifying pogrom against migrants and people of colour, before culminating in a violent attack on Camp Sovereignty, a protest camp led by Indigenous activists since 2006.
It's clear beyond doubt that the NSN played a key role in these demonstrations. But the despicable rhetoric was far from limited to the Nazis. Each and every speaker raged against migrants in their own deranged way, at times remembering to qualify their hate by insisting they were not against all migrants, before collapsing into calls to deport them all. Politicians Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts and Bob Katter addressed the crowds.
The fact that the fascists can make what sounds like a coherent link between housing and migration is a result of much more mainstream racism. For years, we’ve been subjected to arguments about how migration is leading to higher house prices, led by the Coalition and encouraged by Labor. This is reinforced by the lies told by the housing industry about so-called housing shortages, which continue to be peddled by politicians, the mainstream media and the vast bulk of capitalist economists, despite being <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/housing-supply-not-problem">systematically</a> <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/migrants-are-not-to-blame-for-the-housing-crisis">debunked</a>. 
But the reality is that very, very few of those on the streets were mobilised by economic concerns. The typical attendee was a 55-year-old white man, the vast majority of whom would have owned their own homes and/or businesses. One of the main organisers in Melbourne is Hugo Lennon, heir to a property developer worth hundreds of millions. In any case, there were no signs on the day complaining about housing, rent prices, failing education or health systems, or any such issues. This was not a protest about living standards, but a national day of racism and bigotry. Anyone who pretends it had anything to do with the former is giving cover to the Nazis and their followers.
Unfortunately, the media and political class have taken the bait hook line and sinker, earnestly discussing how the housing crisis and cost of living issues triggered these demonstrations. This is echoed by political leaders, shamefully including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who described the far-right hooligans as possessing “legitimate concerns”. The anti-fascist left should have no truck with this line of argument. These racist thugs need to be crushed, not empathised with.
In Melbourne and Sydney, a coalition of anti-fascist activists argued that the weekly Palestine rallies should take on the issue politically, and the resulting mobilisations were the largest anti-fascist actions seen for many years. Elsewhere, the left was less organised and far less effective in responding. In any case, the far right had the element of surprise on the weekend. Knowing what we now know, it’s clear that the left needs to be better organised for the future, to take to the streets in a show of unity and strength only possible through united action. We have prevented the far right’s growth before, and we can do it again.
Having said that, developing a serious anti-fascist approach means looking at the wider context for this resurgence in far-right sentiment. Unlike during the days of Reclaim Australia (a revival of the far right in the mid-2010s), which was a peculiarly Australian phenomenon, today the far right is surfing a wave of international success. In many European countries, fascists and the far right are playing substantial roles both in government and opposition. In the US—the most powerful country on the planet—Trump is in charge, leading the most aggressively reactionary and authoritarian administration in living memory. Alongside Putin’s Russia, Israel’s ethno-nationalism has become a model and an inspiration for fascists the world over, even as they continue to hold deeply antisemitic views.
More broadly, the growth of the far right reflects the crisis in the old strategy of capitalist domination, sometimes known as neoliberalism. This model emphasised trust in the free market (except in its love of union busting) and was prepared to tolerate symbolic improvements around certain social issues. Now there’s been a hard shift back to economic nationalism as the ruling class respond to rising imperialist tensions. Inequality has risen dramatically alongside the drastic decline of trade unions, and the rich rely increasingly on authoritarianism and bigotry to keep workers repressed and distracted. 
But while it’s important to build anti-fascist coalitions and actions where possible, alone such work is inadequate. Capitalism creates the conditions where fascism can breed, and as long as it exists so too will the far right. Mainstream capitalist politicians, be they social democrats, centrists or conservatives, all promote “moderate” versions of the ideas that make up fascist ideology: bigotry, hierarchy, oppression and militarism. So aside from day-to-day battles, the urgent task remains to construct a powerful socialist movement with roots in the working class, with all its wonderful diversity. Only by developing such an instrument and then using it to overthrow the rich and make capitalism history, can we end the far right for good.

Racism is about oppressing the working class

Liberals’ hate speech hypocrisy after Bondi

Adelaide Festival reaction shows we can push back the anti-Palestine repression

Forty-five Bondis a week in Gaza. Where’s the royal commission to root out Australia’s genocide supporters?

Supporters of Palestine must stand up to the post-Bondi right-wing offensive

Australia’s right-wingers want a post-Bondi racist movement

Shame on those using the Bondi massacre to slander Palestine solidarity

What was the White Australia policy?

‘Legitimate concerns’?

When fascists march, the left must get organised

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