Resistance has been heavily involved in organising and building actions in response to the upsurge in racism following Pauline Hanson's maiden parliamentary speech. The following is the text of a leaflet distributed by Resistance at recent actions, stalls, speak-outs and demonstrations.
John Howard claims he's not a racist. Kim Beazley and the ALP claim they aren't racist. In fact, despite the explosion of racist propaganda in this country, every major Australian politician and corporate player claims they are "not racist". Even Pauline Hanson says she isn't a racist. But when she slanders migrants as spreading diseases, when the Aboriginal affairs minister Herron states that Aboriginal people benefited from forcible separation from their families, this is racist. When the Howard government targets Aboriginal welfare as an area of funding cuts, this is racist. When they introduce strict English guidelines for immigration to discourage Asian migration, this is racist.
Concerned that Australian big business's trade with Asia might suffer if racism goes too far, Liberal and Labor politicians are now busy trying to put all the blame on the most extreme racists like Pauline Hanson and Graeme Campbell. But they can't wash the blood off their own hands. Prime Minister John Howard has encouraged Hanson's racist campaign, accusing anti-racists of being "politically correct" and representing "greedy minority interests", whilst defending Hanson's right to "free speech".
More importantly, both Liberal and Labor governments have scapegoated Aborigines and migrants for problems like unemployment and the destruction of the environment. Instead of providing real solutions to these problems, they are attacking native title land rights and cutting immigration.
Fight every attack
To counter the racism now spreading, it will not be enough to "reaffirm", as the Labor-Liberal parliamentary motion did, the "commitment to the right of all Australians to enjoy equal rights and be treated with equal respect regardless of race, colour, creed or origin". Such equality does not exist in Australia yet.
Where is the equality in granting uranium mining rights to giant corporations, while restricting Aboriginal land rights? Where is the equality in giving million dollar handouts to big business, cutting their tax rates and handing them profitable public utilities like Telstra on a plate, while Aboriginal and migrant resource funding is slashed?
To counter racism, we still have to fight for such rights. Aborigines, Asians and other ethnic minorities do not want more pious proclamations from insincere politicians. Words are cheap. To stop the racist attacks, government policies which encourage racist views must be challenged, and we need to build a strong and visible movement against racism.
As part of such a campaign, we need to support:
- Land rights and self-determination for Aboriginal people.
- No cuts to immigration, and in particular oppose the discriminatory immigration policies of the Howard government aimed at keeping Asian and non-English speaking migrants out.
- No deportation of refugees. Let the East Timorese refugees stay.
- Increase funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
- End the second-class status of non-English speaking migrants. No racist discrimination against non-English speaking migrants in work, welfare payments or where they are allowed to live.
- Implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody.
Fight the system
Racism is much more than an ignorant attitude. It is the ideological justification of the systematic oppression of entire communities on the basis of the different colour of their skin. Like other ruling classes of the First World, the Australian capitalists have promoted the ideology that non-white people are, if not mentally, then in social and cultural ways, inferior and not deserving of equal treatment.
The private profit economy makes a lot from racism. In cash terms, coloured people, like women, can be super-exploited — paid less than anyone else and treated worse. More importantly, racism is a crucial mechanism to undermine the solidarity of working people against their bosses — across national borders, but also within them. These days when the ruling class is demanding that the majority of working people cut their wages, suffer high unemployment and give up their social and democratic rights, it suits their interest to foster racism by scapegoating Aborigines and Asian migrants for the suffering they are forcing on us.
To completely eliminate racism, we need to replace the capitalist system that feeds it. Only a society that puts people's needs before corporate profit will end the basis for racism, as well as other forms of oppression such as sexism and homophobia. That's why Resistance is fighting for a socialist society, and for a socialist alternative.
Fight racism! Fight the system! Join Resistance!