One Nation spies on anti-racist campaign
By Zanny Begg
BRISBANE — The One Nation party has launched a dirty tricks campaign to discredit the anti-racist movement. The July 14 Anti-Racist Campaign (ARC) meeting was infiltrated by a One Nation spy who released a false account of the meeting on the internet as an anonymous "intelligence report".
The "report" contained two points which were fabricated in an attempt to undermine ARC.
The most serious of these was an assertion that a "Hispanic ethnic" volunteered to "break through the crowd" at the next anti-Hanson demonstration and "physically assault" Hanson. This assertion was picked up by the TV media, Channel 10 running a feature interview with Hanson on the danger of the "violent" anti-racist movement.
Roberto Jorquera was present at the July 14 ARC meeting. He told Green Left Weekly, "Throughout the entire meeting, no suggestion of physical assault against Hanson even arose, and as the so-called Hispanic ethnic, I can assure you no-one volunteered for such a task. That is a complete lie.
"This is particularly hypocritical coming from the One Nation party, which is a real instigator of violence. National Action members, who are also members of One Nation, assaulted anti-racist campaigners in Adelaide. One Nation has called for no compensation for Aboriginal families who suffered the violence of forced removal of their children and has prompted violent anti-migrant sentiments."
The second assertion in the "report" was that ARC's priority is to "shut down ALL Pauline Hanson meetings". This also is a lie.
ARC's aims to protest outside One Nation, and other racist groups', meetings to mobilise the community against racism.
Some people within ARC, led by the International Socialist Organisation, have moved that ARC should aim to close down all One Nation meetings and that ARC's key demand should be "no free speech for racists". These motions have not been adopted by ARC.
Democratic Socialist Party branch secretary Jim McIlroy explained, "The establishment is running a strong campaign aimed at eroding support for the anti-racist movement. They are frightened that a genuine anti-racist movement will take on not only Hanson but Howard as well.
"Our strategy has to be to build the largest, strongest peaceful movement against racism. Advocacy of closing down all One Nation meetings can feed into the media hype about 'violence' and distract from the real aim of building a mass movement against racism."