Posted by John, April 2nd, 2011 - under Labor Party, Liberal Party, Neoliberalism, Socialism, Socialists, The Greens, The Left, The Liberals.

Tags: BDS, Boycott

Extremists, reprehensible, deranged, socialist ideologues, hardline, anti-semitic. These are just some of the lies ‘respectable’ Labor and Opposition politicians, the Murdoch Press and the Zionists are throwing at the left-wing Greens.

Why? Because in New South Wales the Greens’ policy is to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.

Not only that but NSW Greens’ Senator elect Lee Rhiannon, who takes her seat on 1 July, has reaffirmed her support for BDS in recent days, despite the fierce opposition of national Greens’ leader Bob Brown.

Yet in spite of all this vilification Greens’ candidate Jamie Parker has claimed victory in the New South Wales lower house seat of Balmain.

The attacks from the political elite of Labor and the Opposition and the Murdoch press are reaching a crescendo of irrationality, an irrationality driven by fear that the Left (broadly viewed) might gain some traction on a range of issues, including Palestine.

Imagine having a Senator in the Federal parliament who didn’t actually parrot the ruling class’s lines. Shock horror, someone from the Left to perhaps challenge the plutocracy.

Next these ‘extremists’ might want to tax companies a little more, or even support a real super profits tax, not just a mickey mouse one on a few minerals but one on all super profits.

Heaven forbid, these ‘extremists’ might want to spend more on the poor, on things like a Denticare scheme so that all Australians might have good cheap dental care, and more benefits for pensioners, the unemployed and the disabled. They might want to talk about renewable energy. They will defend refugees.

They may hold Labor to account on equal pay for equal work.

No, scream the establishment. Politics is for us and all of those with our neoliberal mindset. These nasty left wingers might start to challenge our god given neoliberal prescriptions and right to rule. Quick, let’s attack them on.. Hmm… Israel.

These Murdoch ‘freedom fighters’ are the same Rupert apparatchiks who supported the slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan and whose apologias for Western dictators from Suharto to Mubarak to the Chinese tyrants, who just happen to buy lots of our minerals, and perhaps even the House of Saud, are murderous exercises in speaking lies for power.

And lie they do. In the News Ltd blog the Punch, David Penberthy, former editor of the Daily Telegraph and presently editor-in-chief of news.com.au and thepunch.com.au , claimed that ‘the Greens chose to direct preferences to the One Nation founder ahead of the ALP,’ i.e. to Pauline Hanson. This is untrue. The Greens did not direct preferences to any party or person but urged their supporters to vote one above the line for the Greens. Preferences were a matter of choice for Green voters.

Now Mark Kenny in the Punch has repeated the lie.

As Wikileaks shows it is a strategy we have seen before. When the establishment is under threat, even is a small way, it lies and it lies and it lies. Hence the barrage of calumnies and abuse against left-wing Greens.

The problem for the Greens is that the likes of Bob Brown are siding with the establishment and its attacks on the ‘watermelons’. Yes, The Australian has dragged that nonsense back into the lexicon of their deceit.

For those who don’t know it is supposed to mean green on the outside and red on the inside. There is nothing red about the left wing of the Greens. They have some socially and politically progressive policies with which I agree.

But red? Give me a break. They don’t have a socialist agenda, one of the self-emancipation of the working class.

Are they building and deepening links with the working class and union movement? Do they have an agenda for encouraging mass social upheaval, of say setting up a Tahrir Sq in Australia for better wages and democracy in the workplace? Are they going to organise mass demonstrations and mobilise workers as workers against Labor’s Workchoices Lite and the Australian Building and Construction Commission? For equal pay? For equal love? Against the Northern Territory intervention? Will there be mass civil disobedience campaigns for refugees, blocking the streets of Sydney and Melbourne? The answer to these questions is, unfortunately, no.

The establishment attacks on the Greens, from Gillard to Abbott to Murdoch, are not especially about particular policies. They are the intellectual and political equivalent of ethnic cleansing – to obliterate the voices of dissent among the population who dare challenge, even in a small way, the rule of capital and the essential oneness of its view.

They have learned their lessons well from the propagandists of Zionism whose cries of anti-semitism are designed to stop all discussion.

This attack on freedom comes out clearly in the lies about the pro-BDS Greens being anti-semitic. This is clearly a disgusting attempt to shut down debate about the apartheid nature of Israel and its ethnic cleansing program in Palestine.

As Norman Finkelstein put it “Kill Arabs, steal their land – cry anti-Semitism”.

I stand with the left-wing of the Greens in their fight against the establishment – from Gillard to Rudd and on to Abbott and Howard and their paid windbags in the media.

I stand with the Palestinians in their struggle for justice.

I stand for free speech in Australia against the repression of the establishment and its attempts to quash dissenting voices.

The battle against injustice is universal. It is the struggle against our own rulers and the injustices they perpetrate and perpetuate here and overseas. More power to the left of the Greens in their battles for justice, not just for Palestinians but for Australians too.