Australia, Anarchist Affinity - The Platform #3 - Terror
Raids in the age of Team Australia by Dan
Before dawn on Thursday the 19th of September, more than 800 agents of the Australian
state descended on more than twenty properties in Sydney's west. This unprecedented show
of force yielded a mere fifteen arrests, only one of whom has been charged. It's not the
outcome of the raids but rather their glossy Hollywood production values that we should
look to when attempting to understand their function. ---- While the machinations of
'Operation Sovereign Borders' lie shrouded beneath layers of official secrecy, accounts of
the terror raids were painstakingly detailed. Bellicose headlines proclaimed our salvation
from the imminent jihadist threat, while the moment by moment specifics were spelled out
below in lurid techno-thriller prose. High definition video - shot by the Australian
Federal Police and the NSW Police's own media units - was made available to media outlets
almost instantly, painting a flattering and heroic portrait of the dashing plod in action.
That the raids served to soften up some political terrain for the Iraq War mark 3 is an
obvious, but incomplete, analysis. This argument assumes that the political class care
what the people who live on this continent think about their military ventures. It's true
that the prospect of war serves a range of domestic political functions - the appearance
of "Tony Abbott: War Prime Minister" in the wake of a deeply unpopular federal budget is
not a coincidence. But after 13 years in Afghanistan, it's increasingly unclear what the
phrase 'Australia at war!' even means. The reality is that Australia doesn't go to war out
of necessity, in service of high-minded democratic ideals or even to capture the Arab
world's oil wealth for ourselves. And it's about more than an excuse for patriotic sabre
rattling. These commitments have a consistent logic. They function as payment of tribute
to our US patrons, whose economic and military hegemony defends the fundamental interests
of Australia's violent colonial project.
As insipid as the collective memory of Australia's complicity in past imperialist
exercises might be, it is no longer 1914, and people don't flock behind such obvious
declarations any more. Thus, the state must look elsewhere for excuses, and the search
begins to identify and delineate an 'other'. A collective subject capable of bearing
responsibility for any and all ills within our society, or the world more generally.
Whilst gaining some political cover to help smooth the way for Australia to enter the war
in Iraq/Syria may be one part of the Abbott government's strategy here, it is more
relevant to note some of the other things the Abbott government stands to gain politically
(and materially) by saturating the national conversation with endless reminders of the
existential threat of the Islamic Isis 'death cult'.
In settler states like Australia (or the US, Israel or Canada), the most existential of
fears is the loss of the dominance of the colonial class and its identity. Australian
history overflows with examples of the various 'foreign' perils that nationalists feared
would take root and collaborate to destroy the society from within. In the modern west,
particularly Anglophone countries, the political label 'terrorist' fulfils this function
perfectly, and perpetually, because it can be redefined to suit basically any political
ends which might emerge. It can, for instance, be used to reinforce the moral authority of
the state's monopoly on the use of violence and force. All acts of active resistance to
occupation or colonisation are deemed to be terrorism. Any form of struggle by any
oppressed population can be wholly delegitimised due to its (perceived) association with
terrorism. Anyone reluctant to support highly repressive, draconian measures designed to
'prevent' terrorism is guilty of being sympathetic to terrorism.
Whether the threat was credible or not, and it is now quite obvious that the existence of
such a plot was hardly 'imminent' (in fact, little more than posturing by a small group of
poorly organised extremists who authorities had been monitoring closely for a number of
months), the crude propaganda value of such a stunt for the political class is enormous.
But this isn't the only benefit. Such performances are also crucial in developing the
legitimacy of an all-seeing surveillance apparatus and militarised police force.
Since the crisis of 2008, economic growth has stagnated or collapsed as capital struggles
to extract profit in the context of a prolonged global downturn. This crisis produced both
an opportunity and an imperative for renewed attacks on the working class, in the form of
a series of measures that are generally termed economic austerity. Whilst capital and
state have always shared a common interest in the protection of private property, a
program of austerity that worsens the material conditions of large segments of the
population requires much more robust methods of repression. Instability, whether along
geopolitical fault lines or domestic class lines, might on occasion represent a threat to
state and capital. But what it more often represents is a massive opportunity. Insecurity,
even the perception of it, can be harnessed by the state, commodified by private industry
and exploited for profit.
But this process requires legitimisation - a set of narratives to help sell the imperative
of social control. In the Australian context, the threat posed to us by a racially or
culturally 'inferior' other has been wielded in service of this end. Since the European
invasion, constructed identity statements (first British, then Australian, always white)
have been used to bludgeon people into distinct categories of belonging or rejection.
These identities serve to create and reinforce binaries between 'us' and 'them', on the
basis of highly arbitrary notions of what constitutes 'Australian-ness'. Such narratives
imply the need for unity between workers and their masters, whatever their disagreements,
under the banner of their common 'Australian' (European) identity. We can trace the
lineage of the current 'Team Australia' narrative through the logic of Terra Nullius, the
White Australia policy and the institution of mandatory detention. Though these identity
statements have their foundations in the chauvinism of the British Empire, they have far
greater utility for the ruling class than simply the expression of imperial prejudices.
The ideology of white supremacy is used to justify the genocide of Aboriginal people, the
enclosure of their lands and their continuing dispossession. It erases the role of slave
labour in the 'development' of the Australian nation and its economy. It divides workers
by immigration status, ethnicity, language and cultural background, determining an
individual's worthiness and virtue on this basis.
The 'plot' that sparked the raids (to kidnap and behead an Australian citizen in an 'ISIS
style' terror attack) invokes the high-profile murder of British soldier Lee Rigby, who
was murdered by Islamists on a London street in May 2013. It's worth comparing the two
incidents because, though the Australian plot was over before it had even begun, the
response from the Australian press has in many ways exceeded the level of hysteria sparked
in Britain by an actual murder. As Rigby's killers understood well (and, one suspects,
Abbott and co.'s spin doctors do too), even the thought of such an act has the capacity
provoke a storm of fear, disgust and outrage that carries the message - retribution
against crusading western foreign policy - well beyond that street in Woolwich. That the
press did this most important job for Rigby's killers is a bitter irony, and it had
immediate, dramatic consequences.
In Britain, as in Australia, where ethno-religious tensions have been threatening to boil
over for years, it is just not credible to suggest that the immediate and vicious
anti-Muslim backlash that ensued was anything other than deliberate. In fact it was
utterly predictable. It proved a godsend for declining far-right 'street movements' like
the English Defence League, for example, who flooded into Woolwich in the hours after the
attack attempting to whip up a pogrom under the guise of 'securing the area'. In the days
and weeks that followed, attendance at EDL marches spiked frighteningly, and all across
the UK communities of colour bore the brunt of a vicious, protracted campaign of racist
violence. Shops, flats and cars thought to belong to Muslims were covered in racist
graffiti or had their windows smashed. Mosques were threatened, invaded and desecrated
with pig entrails. On at least two occasions, they were firebombed. Muslims, particularly
women, were attacked on the streets and one elderly man was stabbed to death on his way
home from worship.
Such a spree of retaliatory violence, though given energy by the far right, is ultimately
the product of a media narrative that emphasises the collective guilt of the entire
Islamic community. As in the wake of every terrorist scare, British and Australian Muslims
have been routinely summoned before the court of public opinion and, down to the
individual, instructed that they must publicly and at every possible opportunity apologise
on behalf of the entire Islamic community. These communities must disavow terrorism (or
Sharia, halal and a host of other poorly informed canards about Islam) or be labelled
guilty of terrorist sympathies themselves.
The imposition of the burden of collective guilt is a product of the highly radicalised
association of the term 'terrorist' with 'Muslim person' or 'person of colour' that is so
ubiquitous in western societies. The possession of an Islamic identity, or even an
identity that can be 'read' as Muslim, is viewed in a binary against dominant cultural
norms of our society, and rendered unworthy in the face of our superior values. This is,
of course, atrocious nonsense. But it has dramatic, long lasting effects.
The lives of young men of colour, already subject to a host of radicalised and structural
oppressions in white supremacist societies like Australia, are further devalued. What this
means, in blunt concrete terms, is that 'Australians' are less surprised and less outraged
when the cops shoot them. Portrayals of a race, faith or other defining characteristics as
associated with terrorism can be used to excuse the harassment, warrantless detention,
brutalisation, torture or experience of racially motivated violence of anyone who also
happens to possess some of these characteristics. The Islamic State's sophisticated
propaganda and public relations campaign relies in no small part on exploiting the
profound fear and alienation felt by people of colour, but particularly by young Muslim
men, in places like Australia. The threats and acts of violence against the Islamic
community, which have skyrocketed in the wake of the raids, are exactly what their
strategy requires.
It is important to highlight that the acts of violence inflicted on the Muslim community
are committed, often quite specifically, in pursuit of some notion of service to the
Australian state (think the cries of 'Aussie Aussie Aussie' and the rhetoric about
protecting Australia during the Cronulla riots). Unlike repercussions for the Muslim
community, when white Australians throw scalding coffee in the face of a Muslim woman on
her way to work, or attack the home of a Muslim family with a shotgun, it is apparently an
'isolated incident'. When white Australians attack mosques and Islamic community centres
with racist graffiti, desecrate them with pig heads on spikes and phone in bomb threats
against them, it may even be condemned by some members of the political class as a
despicable act. But the guilt is never distributed collectively. When people of colour are
racially abused and assaulted on public transport, or when scarves are pulled from women's
heads on the streets, it is seldom even the individual - and never Anglo-Australia - that
is in any way held to account.
Other popular narratives, even the ones wrapped in appeals to liberalism and
humanitarianism, also follow this logic. For example, the lives of Islamic women (who
experience overwhelmingly the worst of the harassment and abuse) are conscripted and
exploited in a narrative of victimhood which strips them completely of their own agency.
Though the existence of gendered oppression in Islamic communities is beyond contention,
it is both disingenuous and despicable to suggest that this is in any way a situation
unique to Islamic communities.
So with a sense of outrage stirred, the existence of gender oppression and inequality in
wider Australian society is conveniently cleansed from the public mind and Muslim society
is placed under the microscope. Unlike women from white societies, we are told, Muslim
women are categorically oppressed, and they require the benevolent intervention of our
superior democratic values to 'save' them. (No, don't ask them what they actually think.
That's not how this works.)
The irony of such statements emanating from the cartoonish, born misogynists of the
parliamentary Liberal Party is simply staggering. But these narratives often find deep
purchase amongst liberal minded Australians, who find obvious prejudice distasteful, but
nevertheless want to ride on the Team Australia culturual superiority bandwagon. Such
narratives worked with the Northern Territory intervention, with the Stolen Generations,
and with 'children overboard.' And these narratives will keep working until we dismantle them.
The question of how anarchists, antifascists and others on the left should respond in such
a toxic climate is vexed, and I don't pretend to have any grand answers. But there are a
few things that warrant a mention.
It should be obvious, first of all, that the more romantic tactics we associate with
European antifascism are of very limited value in this situation. Of course, if a
nationalist organisation should be so emboldened as to attempt to mobilise or organise
publicly by exploiting this situation, it should be vehemently opposed. But I think such
an outcome is somewhat unlikely. For all its attempts to channel mainstream Islamophobia
into a broader nationalist street movement, the Australian Defence League is still riding
on the coattails of the state (the ADL claims to work 'closely with ASIO', for instance).
This is not a situation where focusing our all our attentions on shutting down the same
old bunch of boneheads is useful. We should heed the political lesson of militant
antifascist movements throughout history and understand that if we can't present a
credible, alternative analysis of how and why these things are happening, we've already lost.
Because the disgusting acts of racial vilification, harassment and violence suffered by
Australian Muslims and other people of colour in the days since the raids are not
motivated by any specific organisation or political tendency (beyond the imperatives of
the white colonial state), organising to prevent them is an extremely difficult task.
This violence, after all, is retributive and overwhelmingly opportunistic. It can't be
countered on the streets the same way as the threats posed by nationalist groups are. But
it is not leaderless, disparate or incoherent in its inspiration. This violence was
cultivated by the Australian state, and therefore our response must begin with and be
defined by our opposition to the activities of the Australian state and the role it plays
in oppressing communities of colour from Bankstown to Baghdad.
We should not presume when approaching this task that these communities need to be told
how to organise or defend themselves, and we should certainly resist any and all attempts
at party building in such a situation. This is not a moment for leftists to demonstrate
the worthiness of their particular ideology to marginalised communities. Indeed, the
inability of the left organisations to restrain themselves from doing this time and time
again is a primary reason why the left is viewed with suspicion in many of these
communities. It is time for us to work in solidarity with besieged communities, acting
however we can to support them, rather than acting insultingly on their 'behalf'. If we
are unwilling to listen to what communities of colour say about how to best resist the
oppression they experience every day, we should just give up now.
Equally, whilst we can and should blame racist politicians and pundits for peddling their
despicable bullshit, we cannot ignore the fact that such opinions are much closer to being
the norm in contemporary Australia than notions of anti-racism or class solidarity. This
reflects badly on generations of Australian leftists who have been unable (or unwilling)
to advance a genuinely popular form of anti-racist politics, a kind that stresses class
solidarity without becoming beholden to the type of class reductionism that all but
declares that dismantling racism can wait until after the revolution.
We have to take seriously the fact that racism in Australia is not simply a distraction,
thrown to the workers to inoculate bosses against the class struggle. It is a tremendously
pervasive ideology, including amongst the working class, and opposing it effectively
begins with acknowledging just how big the task before us is.
This piece was written for a few reasons, but mostly to contribute in some small way
towards developing some ideas about the kind of antifascism necessary in Australia right
now. And so, to end, I hope to help begin that conversation.
An effective Australian antifascism must be able to explain declining living standards,
casualisation and unemployment. It must identify not only capital, but also the state, as
the beneficiaries of racial division amongst the working class. It must describe how these
institutions help to create and benefit from these divisions. But it cannot simply reduce
the situation to this narrow analysis. Our antifascism must be intersectional because
solidarity doesn't work without collectivising all struggles for liberation.
An Australian antifascism must identify the settler-colonial nature of our society,
because the 'lucky country' is nothing but the proceeds of a crime more than 200 years in
the act.
Violence is absolutely inherent in white Australia, no matter what top-down constructions
of multiculturalism claim. The flag cannot be rehabilitated, nor can patriotism. Appeals
to a more benevolent past only help to obscure the fact that it never existed.
We must identify expressions and experiences of racism in Australia as both structural and
deeply personal. It has never been isolated. It is something which occurs every day, and
thus, our antifascism must stress the need for everyday interventions, all the way from
rhetorical to physical, against the perpetuation of white supremacy.
It is largely due to the incompetence of the Australian far right, and not our own
efforts, that we don't have a much bigger problem on our hands. This is serious. And we
need to be too.
From The Platform, Spring 2014.
http://www.anarchistaffinity.org/2014/11/terror-raids-in-the-age-of-team-australia/
