By Susan Price
MELBOURNE — The opening two months ago of a bookshop run by the extreme right-wing organisation National Action has sparked a broad community campaign to drive them out of the area.
Fawkner is a working-class, migrant suburb on Melbourne's northern outskirts. The shop, painted with the standard Eureka flag, sells T-shirts opposing the "Asianisation" of Australia and other race-hate merchandise and literature.
National Action is a violent and openly anti-Asian, anti-immigration, homophobic, anti-woman and anti-worker organisation that has links with fascist groups in Australia and overseas.
Its foray into the northern suburbs, and its attempt to promote itself as a politically legitimate organisation, have been facilitated by the federal government and establishment media's campaign to scapegoat migrants for the unemployment crisis and blame native title legislation and the Wik decision for retarding economic growth.
The Campaign Against the Nazis (CAN) is holding a demonstration against National Action's activities in Fawkner on March 15. The rally is endorsed by a wide range of ethnic organisations and community groups, the People for Racial Equality (PRE), the Turkish Community Resource Centre, various left political organisations, anarchists and local ALP branches.
Endorsement from the Moreland City Council was sought but refused after extensive debate. Some councillors have agreed to support the rally as individuals.
The 30,000-strong rally against racism in Melbourne in December indicated the potential for an ongoing public campaign against racism.
The key to a successful campaign against the National Action bookshop and other racist attacks will be mobilising large numbers of migrants and workers to counteract the racist activities and to reveal the links between the activities of the far right and the government's attacks. Such a campaign must demand an end to the racist ideas, policies and practices of governments, and of the major parties.
While support for the campaign against the National Action bookshop should be sought from all quarters, including progressive sections of the ALP, we must not let the Labor Party off the hook — attacks on migrants, Aborigines and all working people occurred while it was in government.
Fascist movements
National Action in Australia has attacked anti-apartheid activists, including a gunshot attack on the home of ANC representative Eddie Funde in 1989, and trade unionists and migrants. In Fawkner, the bookshop has been used as a base from which to harass local residents and conduct racist graffiti runs around the train station.
While the heightened profile of National Action is worrying, the development of a fascist mass movement, preceded by a massive increase in attacks on the rights of migrants and trade unionists, as is happening parts of Europe today, will not come from such fringe groups. It would require a much more politically organised force, financed by big business, which can win the support of small business owners and farmers, as well as some sections of the working class.
Fascism has triumphed historically when the far right has been able to convince masses of people that it offers a viable alternative to economic misery, and when the left has failed to organise a broad united front to oppose fascism and the capitalist governments that created the economic and social conditions for its growth.
The strategy needed today is to mobilise the broadest forces possible against groups like National Action and the government's racist policies.
We cannot rely on governments or the police to shut fascist groups down. Any attempt by the state to suppress them is certain to be a precedent against left and progressive forces when they are perceived to threaten the status quo.
Force of numbers
When far-right groups engage in violence, however, we must demand that they are prosecuted. If police and courts refuse to act, their collusion with the far right is exposed.
Rather than debate the question of whether fascist groups have democratic rights, we must emphasise that such groups are infringing the rights of the majority of working people, migrants and Aborigines.
Slogans such as "No platform for fascists!" are problematic, not only because they can fuel the idea promoted by capitalist governments and the media that the anti-racist movement, its left wing in particular, dictates who has freedom of speech. They are also problematic because they require that the anti-fascist movement physically close far right groups down, rather than politically challenge and force them out of an area by the strength of mass opposition.
Rather than physically fighting fascists, we must build a mass response that isolates and demoralises them. Fascist movements cannot be "nipped in the bud before they have a chance to develop". Fully fledged fascism is a product of deep social and economic conditions, beyond the influence of a few activists. It can be defeated only by the conscious mass action of the working class, including migrants and Aborigines.
[Susan Price is a national committee member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]