By Maurice Sibelle and Peter Boyle
The militant demonstrations at founding meetings of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party in Dandenong and Canberra have triggered another hysterical campaign in the establishment media against these allegedly "violent" and "un-Australian" demonstrations.
You would think from reading the newspapers or watching the TV news that Pauline Hanson's right to free speech was under serious threat. What is really under threat, however, is the right of anti-racists to speak out and demonstrate.
Some of the richest and most powerful people in this country, the media barons, have joined PM John Howard in trying to frighten people into not protesting against the ugly resurgence of racism.
The anti-racist protests have been essentially peaceful. The "violence" featured in the headlines was limited to isolated incidents. At the Dandenong protests — which drew the latest screaming headlines — the great majority of protesters were peaceful, even according to the police.
There is more violence at football matches every week, yet the cameras zoom in on every little scuffle at the end of a demonstration, generally ignore their context (especially when the violence is provoked by police or racists) and blow things out of proportion.
Many journalists seem to be working to a prepared script entitled "Nasty protesters deny rights of ordinary Australians". It is a bit of a give-away when a journalist rings up an activist and says, "I hear you are organising a violent anti-Hanson demonstration tomorrow".
Some journalists and editors resort to outright lies, inserting their words into quotes from activists, falsely captioning photographs and recreating "morning after the riot" scenes. There is material for several episodes of Media Watch in the establishment media's treatment of the anti-Hanson protests.
The reason is not just that sensationalism means more profits for the big business media. The media implement the political agenda of their wealthy and powerful owners and defend the interests of their class. Until the anti-One Nation demonstrations began to grow, most of the Australian media were campaigning against Hanson. Since then, they've switched to attacking every protest as "violent".
While the media barons have some concerns about the bad image Hanson is giving Australian business in Asia, they are also worried about the growth of a strong and independent anti-One Nation movement. Such a movement could spark a broader radicalisation that would ultimately pose problems for the ruthless "economic rationalist" agenda of the ruling class.
They want the anti-One Nation movement to stick within their agenda of opposing only the most blatant racism, and to work within the "proper channels" — lobby the politicians to pretend to do something about it.
They object to the sort of racism that gets in the way of more profits but applaud racist policies that will net more profits, such as attacks on native title and moves to make it hard for all but wealthy migrants to come to Australia.
The rapid growth of the anti-One Nation movement is doubly disturbing to the ruling class because the one force that, in the past, could be counted upon to impose some restraint on any progressive political movement, the ALP, has for now adopted an approach that puts it outside the ranks of the new movement.
The ALP and its supporters have generally worked against politicising the opposition to One Nation and against counter-mobilising at its meetings. Instead, they've opted to schedule "celebrations of cultural diversity" — usually away from One Nation meetings.
Alas for them, thousands of people around the country want to protest outside Hanson meetings, and they are raising demands that go beyond the basic political consensus among the Coalition parties and the ALP.
This reflects the strong opposition to racism in Australia. Surveys show some 60% of the population and up to 90% of young people oppose racism. That's pretty good for a country with a racist history that rivals South Africa's.
The widespread repugnance for racism today is even forcing the racists to plead, unconvincingly, that they are not racists.
The ruling class has a big problem on the racism issue and is trying its best to discourage the further growth of this movement.
In its desperate drive to persuade people not to join future demonstrations, the Sydney Morning Herald of July 9 tried to contrast the recent protests against One Nation as "violent" compared to the "essentially peaceful" Vietnam moratorium marches of the 1970s.
"It cannot be equated with the great moratorium demonstrations of the 1970s that turned Australians against the war in Vietnam. Those demonstrations were essentially peaceful, with the sheer numbers — tens of thousands — creating a powerful and often moving witness against the Vietnam War", the Herald claimed.
In fact, there was a lot more "violence" (mostly from the police) at the anti-Vietnam War protests, especially at the beginning, when the very right to demonstrate in the streets had to be won. But beyond that, there are many similarities and continuities.
The anti-Vietnam War movement was started by the organised left, so there is nothing unusual about the active role socialists play in the anti-One Nation protests today.
Like the anti-Vietnam War movement, today's anti-racist movement can succeed only by mobilising hundreds of thousands of people. Already some 60,000 around the country have taken to the streets against the racist offensive.
This builds on two powerful legacies of the anti-Vietnam War movement: the right to protest in the streets, and the broad anti-racist and democratic sentiment in the population, especially among young people.
Upon this political foundation, it is possible to build a powerful and independent anti-Hanson movement. The Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance — two groups that are actively building these protests around the country — are working hard to ensure that the protests are broad and peaceful but militantly against the racism of Hanson and the Howard government.
A small minority — including the ultraleft International Socialists — are trying to get the movement to shut down One Nation meetings and to deny Hanson and her supporters their right to free speech. This approach will lead only to pointless skirmishes with the police and individual racists. It won't defeat the racism.
Fortunately, this misguided perspective has not been accepted by the anti-racist committees in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Hobart, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth and Sydney.
Serious anti-racists want to keep the focus on the real issue: the revival of racism, that reactionary ideology developed hundreds of years ago to justify the enslavement of Africans, then adapted to justify colonial expansion and exploitation.
The new racist push, spearheaded by Hanson's One Nation, will succeed only if it intimidates its opponents into silence. That's one of the real threats to freedom that we face in Australia today. That's why we must keep organising protests against Hanson's movement and the racist policies carried out by federal and state governments.