Posted by John, October 23rd, 2009 - under Racism, Refugees, The Greens, The Left, The Liberals, Wilson Tuckey.

Tags: Australian Labor Party

There is no ‘humane’ racism.

Kevin Rudd’s comments about ‘illegal immigrants’ and his Indonesian solution have fertilised the soil for Wilson Tuckey’s comments about terrorists being among the refugees wanting to come to Australia.

Rudd’s seed has fallen upon the ground and out of his primal slime has crawled Wilson Tuckey.

Racism turns everything on its head.

Such is the decrepitude and crapulence of the debate that people fleeing the genocide of the Sri Lankan Government are labelled terrorist when the Sinhalese Government is the real terrorist.

There is nothing new in this reversal of roles.

Our leaders happily condemn the dark skinned ‘terrorists’ in Afghanistan and Iraq who oppose their invasion and occupation when the real terrorists sit in Washington and London and Canberra.

What is (publicly) new is a politician explicitly using terrorism as an argument against refugees.

The fact that there is absolutely no evidence at all for this or any of the racist outbursts and policies on refugees is irrelevant to the two main stream parties in this debate.

Both believe there are votes in bashing refugees, so both parties are doing it. They are engaged in a redneck bidding war.

The attempt of the Liberals to out flank Rudd on refugee racism gives a cover to Rudd’s racism. It allows the fake left to condemn the Liberals while letting loose the dogs of humane racism.

It is the Prime Minister – Christian Kev – who has set the ground rules for this ‘debate’. Any lie, any calumny, any dog whistle, is OK as long as it can be wrapped rhetorically at least in a ‘humane’ cover.

Let me repeat. There is no humane racism.

Form is not substance. Rudd’s ‘humane’ policy cover cannot hide his ‘illegals’ racism.

Rudd’s refugee approach is in essence the same as Howard’s.

‘We shall decide who comes to Australia and in what circumstances’ is Labor’s real refugee policy. It could just as easily have come out of Rudd’s racist potty mouth as Howard’s.

The capitalist class and its state have a material interest in racism. Divisions over race, gender and sexual orientation weaken the unity of the working class and reinforce the dominance of the capitalist class and its extraction of more surplus value from workers.

And so a bout of refugee bashing is, in the eyes of the capitalist politicians, a vote winner and, in the eyes of the capitalist class, even if distasteful personally and something they would never stoop to, a systemic necessity.

Why bark when you have a dog called Kevin to do it for you?

There are 25 million refugees. The three main countries for refugees are Pakistan, Syria and Iran. Not Western countries but countries near the centre of wars and dispossession we have created.

Now Obama’s war on terror is creating hundreds of thousands more refugees in Pakistan.

About 4 million refugees are Palestinians and their descendants driven from their land by the genocide that is Zionism.

These 25 million refugees are the result of Western policies of war, invasion and poverty.

The fight for refugees must be the fight against Western imperialism and its deliberate policies of war and impoverishment.

Troops out of Afghanistan must be at the centerpiece of any campaign to help refugees.

And yet what do the Greens in Australia offer? Asking the Indonesians and Malaysian Governments to sign the UN Convention on Refugees.

The Australian Government’s racist repulsion of refugees shows the utter bankruptcy of the UN rules. Why replicate that failure?

The Greens have an opportunity here to build a mass movement for refugees and against war. They won’t.

Partly this might be because some greens have an anti-human philosophy – a view that the problem is people, not production. This view is usually held be comfortably middle class whites, and the too many people they talk about have dark skins.

Until the Greens challenge environmental racism they will be organisationally and politically incapable of fighting the Government on refugees.

The Greens don’t have any understanding that real change comes through struggle, not through having a couple of powder puffs in Parliament.

Or if they do (given their background) such struggles are merely stepping tones for the ‘real game’ – Parliament.

This is a diversion from building a mass movement for refugees and against war.

The left needs to be clear about this. Border controls are the creature of capitalism and its state.

They serve a dual role – to control the flow of labour into Australia and to control labour in Australia.

Open our borders to all who want to come here.