@box text intr = In the days following the September 11 attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon, millions of Australians were glued to their television sets, fixated by horror and aching empathy for the victims.
The disaster could have provided a unique opportunity to build human solidarity with all people around the world who have suffered acts of terror and dispossession — such as the families of Acehnese buried in mass graves, Afghani women killed for trying to get a job, Palestinian children shot for throwing stones and many, many more.
The outpouring of rage and sympathy could have been mobilised to demand an end to wars that serve profit, to fanaticism funded and encouraged by imperialist intelligence agencies and to the growing threat of nuclear, biological or chemical attacks.
But instead the Tweedledum and Tweedledee parties that determine government policy have banded together in an attempt to divert all this sympathy towards the "civilised, democratic world" (i.e., imperialist countries) and to fan the flames of fear and rage against everybody else.
Under the leadership of Prime Minister John Howard and ALP "opposition" leader Kim Beazley, Australia, like the United States, is being whipped into a new war-like frenzy. It is the purpose of this nationalistic and xenophobic rhetoric that is truly terrifying.
Every day makes it clearer that the US government intends to use the situation to justify a new war in the Middle East to further its interests there. Immediate targets appear to be Afghanistan and Iraq.
Beazley and Howard have both indicated that they will organise Australian military and economic support for US offensives justified as "retaliation".
This is no surprise. Australian governments have always been quick to jump to the aid of US imperialism. We saw it in the US war on Iraq to defend its oil supply and the war on Serbia.
But the whipped up hysteria about "terrorism" has a two-fold domestic purpose as well.
Most immediately it has whipped up xenophobia. In this the Liberals have been the most culpable, going so far as to suggest that people fleeing on boats from Afghanistan may be operatives for Osama bin Laden (the ALP has pointed out most terrorists arrive by plane).
But although Labor has sought to distance itself from blaming all Muslims for the attacks, Beazley has been more than happy to blame a few, suggesting that "good, patriotic" members of "those ethnic backgrounds" may want to spy on those who are not.
This attempt to blame terrorism on those who flee the Taliban regime is disgusting, immoral and very dangerous.
Already, attacks on people of Middle Eastern appearance have increased. The basis for this hysteria was set by the venomous anti-refugee rhetoric that the Liberal Party has indulged in since the 1996 election. This rhetoric was escalated as the government attempted to reject the shipwrecked asylum seekers on the Tampa.
If the Australian military begins operations against Muslim countries, Howard can pretend his petty racism is "statesmanship". This is a sentiment that we must fight, and all of us need to gear up now to build a large, anti-racist peace movement to hamper any such plans.
Unlike the Coalition, Beazley has not directly flagged increased defence spending. But he has committed to using more defence money for "things like Aegis-type destroyers".
The Labor Party's 10-point plan to fight terrorism includes passing the Intelligence Services Bill 2001, which includes clauses protecting agents of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service from prosecution for illegal actions if they were acting under ministerial direction.
The ALP has also mooted a British-style anti-terrorist act, which would also strengthen the powers of secret agents.
The desperate fear that something like the US massacre may happen in Australia is being exploited in order to increase war spending and attack civil liberties, providing the government with cover to increase its harassment of protesters, particularly the growing anti-corporate globalisation movement.
It is not only our right to protest at the moment, however, but our duty. No matter how much the US wants to pretend that the cause of mass murder is "uncivilised" Arabs, we know better. We know that the vast majority of preventable human deaths on this planet can be laid at the feet of imperialism. To stop the terror finally, and to silence the fear, requires the defeat of a system that allows persecution to continue, breeding hate and fear.
The worst thing we can do now is to pause in our peaceful battle against imperialism, because the government will use that pause to tie our hands even further. And the battle will be harder when we pick up the flag again.