Posted by John, August 5th, 2011 - under Labor Party, Refugees.

Tags: ALP, Asylum seekers

I wrote this on my Facebook page. ‘Join the ALP. Send kids to Malaysian concentration camps.’

It provoked an interesting response from a long term ALP member and then others. (Ignore the heated nature of some of the exchanges. That is to be expected on this issue and doesn’t I think detract from the substance.) PJP, the ALP member, said this about my post:

That’s fucking out of order. I’m a long term member and am working from WITHIN to have this aping of Liberal Policy changed. What are YOU doing that will actually possibly make a difference?

That provoked a variety of responses, the general tenor of which I agree with.

BPC:

Um, I don’t know, maybe ACTUALLY FUCKING OPPOSING THEM by ORGANIZING AND ATTENDING PROTESTS, HANDING OUT LEAFLETS, DENOUNCING THEM PUBLICLY INSTEAD OF FUCKING APOLOGIZING FOR THEM AND THEN PATTING OURSELVES ON OUR OWN SPINELESS AND SYCOPHANTIC BACKS.

The only time people like you raise any ire is when someone has a go at the rotten policies of your party. Shame on you and your whole rotten, racist and decrepit party!

And this one from OL.

So glad I’ve left the Labor Party and do not have to defend the actions of this arrogant, morally bankrupt, opportunistic, reactionary, racist government. For someone who initially joined the Labor Party at the age of 15 in 1996 because of my strong opposition to Howard’s reactionary and racist policies and his flirting with Hansonism, it’s amazing to see a Labor government making John Howard look like a beacon of compassion and humanity.

The ALP member responded.

Yeah BPC, you’re REALLY going to change things. I think this is an awful policy, but for fucks sake, you need to wake the fuck up to yourself and stop being such a ignorant fuckstick. At no point did I ‘apologise’ for them. Dickhead.

TB made a very good point.

Every ‘how to vote card’ you hand out is an apology for party policy.

CM came in with:

Let me get this straight PJP, Labour is sending children to Malaysian concentration camps and you are offended because John has highlighted the new racist low that the Labour party has sunk to and the DEAFENING SILENCE of anyone within the Labour party who opposes this policy (because according to you these people actually exist) INSTEAD of being offended that Labour is sending children to Malaysian concentration camps. Because obviously the key issue is that the Labour party doesn’t look bad in all of this …

PJP responded.

What is this “Labour” party you speak of? Did you even fucking READ my post? I made it quite clear I’m AGAINST the fucking policy. Seriously you lot need comprehension lessons. So yeah, you didn’t get any of it straight, CM. Try again.

AB put his two bob’s worth in.

Why not join the Liberal Party and work from within there matey? Real left activists in the ALP in the past would spend half their time publicly denouncing the party’s shit policies and the other half building the social movements that they said they supported.

OC had a few thoughts based on history.

hehehe An ANCIENT history lesson there. Where is our Jim Cairns today? Instead as CM RIGHTLY pointed out this joker is more concerned with silencing criticism from the left. Is this how pathetic the left of the ALP has really become? The left that split the party and toppled a prime minister in 1915 to fight conscription, the left whose leaders had a special branch file as thick as your wrist for working with *gasp* communists to end the war in Vietnam. What do we get in 2011?

A labour party whose vile policy literally makes the libs blush and say they’ve gone too far down this road even for them. Pete We’re going to smash this policy and the regime of mandatory detention. My advice to you, GET ACTIVE OR GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY.

My response was:

Actually PJP I attend the demos against Labor’s racism, demos leftists like me and others organise. I write on my blog constantly about the issue. I don’t notice too many ALP people involved or speaking out against Labor policy. If you want to help us, by all means join in. How is Labor for refugees going by the way, other than as cover for defending the indefensible? Change from within is clearly cover for the vile policy. It’s your party, and in that sense they are your policies. It just shows to me the futility of the change from within strategy.

I must admit the ‘change from within argument’ struck me as a little anachronistic. Labor is now on all fronts such a neoliberal anti-progressive party that most of the left abandoned it long ago. Those who remain would I suspect have in the past not been in the left but such is the degeneration of the Party that centrism is the new leftism in the ALP.

Presumably Julia Gillard once had the same views as PJP about Labor as the agency for progressive social change.

Labor’s vile refugee policies are just another disgusting example in the Labor pantheon of disgusting examples of reaction and sellout. They have moved as I have written before from being a capitalist workers’ party to being a CAPITALIST workers’ party. Their actions highlight once again, for me at least, the absolute necessity of building a socialist alternative to coalesce and concentrate the forces wanting to fight as and for workers and the oppressed.