[Election talk by John Percy, candidate for the Sydney electorate in the [October 3] 1998 federal election]

Hansonism – that’s now a synonym for racism and bigotry – and it has burst onto Australia’s political stage with a vengeance.

It’s shameful – for us as Australians, as workers, as socialists, as human beings. We can take some cold comfort – the biggest parliamentary victims in the Queensland elections were its creators and nurturers, the Nationals and Liberals. But 23% was 23% too much!

But we know who’s going to suffer: Hanson’s most visible targets, Aborigines and Asian immigrants, but also her other targets, the real “battlers” – workers, especially those who try to fight back through unions; the unemployed, especially the youth; women, gays and others who try to assert their rights against capitalism’s assigning them to second class status, clothed in a reactionary 19th Century moralism.

The coming federal election is going to be crucial for us, for all of Hansonism’s intended victims. But it won’t be boring and uneventful, as many recent polls have been. Because it will be a chance for all of us to campaign, and fight back, and build a real alternative.

We don’t know yet the exact timing of the election. Howard is caught between a rock and a hard place – One Nation gobbling up the Coalition’s traditional support base on the one hand; and on the other, the looming economic crisis. This crisis will be severe, as Australian capitalism starts to feel the real effects of the first stage of the Asian economic crisis, and also starts sweating at the prospect of the second stage, with an even sharper collapse triggered by Japan’s economy plummeting further.

In the short term, we have to discuss how to defeat this latest example of capitalist bigotry, racism, and nationalist narrow-mindedness.

But more importantly, we have to understand what’s behind Hanson’s rise in order to be clear how to prevent any future resurgences of racism.

What’s behind Hanson’s rise?

In order to work out how to stop this disease, now and in the future, we need to be clear about exactly what it is, how it arose, what nurtured it.

Racism has its origins in the development of capitalism, not before. It’s not something inherent in human nature, nor even inherent in previous social and economic systems. Racism is the ideology which justifies the social practice of racial oppression, of institutionalised inequality based on racial categorisation. The capitalist drive for profit requires the creation of superexploited layers within the working class. Racial categorisation provides one of the means of justifying this superexploitation.

Racism arises from the needs of capitalism for labour, and specifically in the needs of the slave trade under developing capitalism. In Australia racism arrived with the first white settlers, justifying the theft of the land and murder of the indigenous inhabitants. (Read the DSP pamphlet by Iggy Kim.)

Nationalism, the second weapon in Hanson’s arsenal, has been used by all capitalist ruling classes to consolidate and defend their rule, and by all Australian capitalist parties, Liberal, National, and Labor. Hanson’s variety is only the most crude and virulent.

One Nation was preceded by Howard’s One Australia, 10 years ago, launched June 23, 1988. This had almost exactly the same themes. No wonder he was sympathetic. But the Frankenstein monster he nurtured is now out of control, and devouring its creator. The Queensland Liberals lost five seats, and the Nationals six.

But that racism and nationalism have also emanated from Labor, not just historically, with its White Australia policy, which was only formally axed in the ‘60s. But the racism is still there, and not just with its more racist exiles such as Graham Campbell, and his Australia First. And it’s still thoroughly nationalist.

Are we, can we be, One Nation? No, we’re Two nations, here and around the world. Does anyone remember that caption on that famous photo of upper-class schoolboys rigged out with top hats and tails being gawked and sneered at by working-class kids? It’s two classes, and the divide is growing.

The rich are getting richer, as the recently released Forbes figures confirm. Bill Gates, sycophantically misnamed a computer whiz, still heads the obscenely wealthy list. Australia has Murdoch and Packer, themselves inheritors, and now passing it on to equally detestable sons. Suharto’s stolen billions are there on the list, though understated as we know. But the fact is, shouldn’t we be applying the word stolen to all of this obscene wealth?

And the poor are getting poorer. Here, through “reform” of the labour market, “labour flexibility”, “rationalisation”, “downsizing” – what effrontery to continue to use these lying words for the ongoing process of robbing the poor to make the rich richer. There’s also the return of outworking, even child labour (SMH, June 11), and the massive increase in the percentage of part-time and casual jobs (SMH, May 26).

Outside the advanced capitalist countries, the increasing poverty and misery is almost beyond belief, and often beyond our ken apart from token conscience settling images from the likes of World Vision. In Indonesia, 50 million people now have to survive on a dollar a day, if they’re lucky.

More recently, in attempting to be more sophisticated and broaden its base, One Nation has been slyly trying to emphasise its nationalist face rather than its racist face. Hitler also had his scapegoats, but in trying to broaden his reach stressed the nationalist side, German nationalism, he also just wanted “one nation”.

“Pauline’s not racist”, claimed her minders. “Quote any racist statement by Pauline” is a common ploy against interviewers.

Now she’s only allowed to say things like “but we’re just for equal treatment for all Australians” (and you wouldn’t want them living next door either). Or we’re not opposed to Asian immigrants, just worried about their “capacity to assimilate…” or the carrying capacity of Australia, so “zero net immigration”. Perhaps next we’ll hear: “some of my best friends are…” (We’ve heard that weaselly rationalisation before.)

But the mere fact of her political origins should expose this lie. Why did the Liberals disendorse her? Her racist remarks were even too racist for the racist Queensland Liberals!

Her denials now of racism show the most utter cynicism. Everyone knows. This morning’s Herald had a story of an Asian man being taunted down the street by a racist white man with cries of “Pauline Hanson, Pauline Hanson!” The Asian and Aboriginal communities certainly know she’s racist, they feel the effects first hand!

The international context

But we can’t just look to the causes, the origins of Hansonism and One Nation, in the individual racism of individuals like Pauline Hanson and David Oldfield, nor in the long term still uneradicated racism fostered by Australian capitalism and the Labor Party. We also have to put it in the international context.

The rise of far-right formations recently has been an international phenomenon.

So far, in Europe with Le Pen’s National Front in France, in Germany, in Italy, in Austria, Denmark even and many other countries, similar right-wing populist neo-fascist parties like One Nation are not yet the party of choice for the ruling classes. But they are growing..

In Russia we’ve seen the return of the most brutal nationalism and anti-Semitism. (Moscow is for Muscovites! Queensland is for Queenslanders!) In Hungary most recently we’ve seen the parliamentary success of the nationalistic, anti-Semitic Hungarian Truth and Life Party. In recent years in many countries we’ve seen the rise of Christian, Islamic, Hindu or Jewish fundamentalism, of the most intolerant, bigoted, racist kind.

There has arisen a space for far-right, neo-fascist demagogues in the last few decades, as the long capitalist boom has ended. It’s a period where easy sops are no longer available for the bosses to buy off workers in the imperialist countries, so the ruling classes in country after country implement neoliberal austerity, attacks on wages, jobs, and security (in spite of Howard’s pathetic repeated mantra of safety, stability, security!)

So the danger has increased of far-right demagogues exploiting the uncertainty, insecurity, for their own bigoted ends, a la Pauline Hanson.

We’re not yet at the next stage here, where organised, right-wing thugs are used systematically against the workers, unions, and oppressed minorities. It’s not yet the favoured option of the ruling class, not seen as necessary yet, but it would be a tool they’d employ if they thought it necessary, ((if the essential fightback by the working class does gather more momentum.)

And unless we fight against capitalist austerity and neoliberal policies and build a real alternative, the more desperate poor and unemployed workers and failing farmers will turn to One Nation type demagogues, get worked up about guns, and law and order, and Aborigines, and Asian migrants.

The economic crisis and evident capitalist instability here and around the world both creates the danger of these far-right, racist movements arising, but also the possibility of the working-class movement and left parties rebuilding and strengthening.

Reality catches up with the myth that the ruling classes have been trying to peddle, that the capitalist system is stable, benign, and produces “good outcomes” for all. (Wanting us to ignore the obscene riches at one pole, the misery and destitution at the other.)

Reality catches up with the myth that the Asian Tigers show the way out of poverty and underdevelopment for the Third World. The gap between the imperialist and the exploited countries is widening.

Reality catches up with the End of History myth, that “capitalism is permanent“.

So this is a time when socialist, working-class solutions are not only more necessary, but they’re more possible, and are increasingly seen as more realistic.

What won’t stop Hanson

won’t stop Hanson? Certainly head-in-sand attitudes won’t stop her. We can’t ignore Hanson and what she stands for, as some on the left initially advised, ignore her and she’ll go away. This didn’t work for the Liberals and Nationals, though of course they half wanted this development, but not at their expense!

The ALP is no alternative.

Firstly, it provides no alternative to Hanson’s racist agenda. For a start, for most of its history the ALP has been an overtly racist party, a staunch initiator and defender of the White Australia policy, only formally ditched in recent times. But all the old racist attitudes haven’t been jettisoned completely, they still seep through on issue after issue. They were slow and soft in responding to Hanson.

Secondly, it provides no alternative to Hanson’s nationalist agenda. Although the Labor Party tops such as Hawke and Keating were the main standard bearers for 13 years of the Australian ruling class’s neoliberal economic rationalist assault, much of the party (certainly the fake left) still retains its economic nationalist outlook. Much of the party’s membership and supporters have been mis-educated with false nationalist solutions – Buy Australian; foreign capitalists are worse than our own capitalists, better back them; high tariffs will save Australian jobs etc. (The old CPA miseducated also.)

ALP speechwriter Bob Ellis in his SMH column on Monday claimed the One Nation vote was not about racism but “economic correctness” (his euphemism for economic rationalism so recently fully embraced by his party). “Like Christianity, One Nation has a savage half and a civilising, merciful half”, he wrote. He has the hide to write about the “cargo-cultism of the major parties”, as if he’s somehow separated from one of them.

But the Labor Party tries to encompass both neoliberal economic rationalism, and economic nationalism. To its main masters, the capitalist class, it appeals as good economic managers for them. To its voters, it appeals with Australian nationalism. To both it appeals with calls of “governing for all of us”, able to dampen down any conflicts. And this was Peter Beattie’s tune tonight, on getting the premiership, “governing for all Queenslanders…”

The fact is, neither economic rationalism nor economic nationalism is in the interests of the working class. Neither is a solution to our problems.

So the ALP rules out a socialist solution, an anti-capitalist alternative that would mean fighting around such demands as:

• Tax the rich, not the rest;
• For a massive program of public works, for projects in public transport and for the repair of the degraded environment, that would create useful jobs;
• For the nationalisation of industries that threaten layoffs or threaten to flee the country;
• Reverse the privatisations;
• To curb the profit gouging of the banks and speculators, nationalise the whole finance sector and put it under democratic, community control.

Of course fighting for a program such as this would mean the need to counter the offensive of capital both here and internationally, it would require a thoroughly fighting and internationalist program.

But the ALP hacks argue, shouldn’t we all unite behind Kim Beazley to get rid of the immediate Hanson danger, and the Howard danger? This appeal assumes we’re stupid, have no memories, no understanding or knowledge of history this century. Will supporting a cynical, discredited Labor Party that has betrayed us so often actually stop Hanson now, let alone racism in the future? They assume that just because we have to concede that Hanson is a worse evil, we have to fall in behind a lesser evil.

We need united action, yes. We should all join in protests, demonstrations against all the concrete attacks on migrants, Aborigines, workers and others. But we’re not helped by unity around false solutions, around political programs that are similar to Hanson’s and Howard’s. That guarantees our continuing befuddlement and defeat.

The Greens and Democrats are also no solution, and offer no alternative, just a more timid version of the economic nationalism that One Nation espouses.

Peter Garrett was interviewed on radio this morning, and was challenged: One Nation’s economic policies seem no different from the Greens and Democrats, wouldn’t you agree? And he agreed. He’s right, they’ve both been partisans all along of economic nationalism. Supporting protectionism, Aussie capitalists, Aussie bosses, even if preferring the smaller ones to the big bosses. (Stop parallel importing of CDs, even if it means higher prices for consumers.) But by making the main enemy foreign capitalists, you align with your own capitalist class. (or the local branch of the international media monopoly)

And those Greens with a zero immigration line, wanting to close the borders, fall right in behind her too. One former Green candidate even stood for One Nation apparently.

(Not to mention the Democrats’ union bashing, or their latest plan to have the state ferret around in political parties – you know who the targets would be.)

What we have to do

None of these alternatives are adequate. To stop Hanson, to stop racism, and to win the majority to campaign in their real interests, we need to act on many levels, and fight on many fronts:

1. Protest, demonstrate, holler loud, stand up, speak out, march! Any action, large or small. Not just against Hanson and One Nation, but Howard et al, and Beazley and co if they lapse back into being soft on Hanson or equivocal about Aboriginal rights or Asian immigrants and refugees.

2. Educate and agitate. Speak to your friends and workmates. Start discussions. Start arguments. Hand out leaflets. Use the video we’ve got. You need the news and the arguments and analysis? Read Green Left Weekly, it’s had the best anti-racist coverage. Better still, subscribe. Better still, distribute it, take a bundle to sell at work or locally.

3. Vote for Democratic Socialist candidates, because frankly we’re the only candidates with an understanding of the dangers, the causes, and the solutions to racism and nationalism. Only then give your preferences to those parties with the next best stand on racism and the other key issues, the Greens, then the ALP, then the Democrats, then the Coalition, and finally far right parties such as One Nation.

4. Even better, help campaign for the Democratic Socialist candidates. We need the help of all supporters, all activists, in the Sydney electorate, where I’m standing, and in Reid, where Rupen Savoulian is standing, and throughout Sydney. Letterbox, put up posters, come to our meetings, organise meetings, organise fundraisers, contribute financially.

5. Even better still, join the Democratic Socialist Party. Join and fight with us on all other fronts, not just on elections. And have a say in organising the fight. Act collectively.

Taken together, help us build a real alternative.

• Is the election arena enough? No.
• Are demonstrations enough? No.
• Is education and propaganda enough? No.

As I noted at the beginning, racism is part of capitalism. To eliminate not just Pauline Hanson, but all like her, to eliminate racism completely, we’ll have to get rid of this rotten capitalist system.

To do that will require the mass mobilisation of the working class and its allies, all the oppressed and exploited.

Will electing one or two Democratic Socialist candidates to parliament stop Hanson and eliminate racism? No, but it would be a big step forward for the movement that needs to be built, and would aid the further development of that movement.

Would electing a majority of Democratic Socialist candidates to parliament eliminate racism and eliminate all the other problems workers and oppressed face? No, although it would mark that the movement had reached a much, much stronger stage.

But by itself it would change very little, because real power doesn’t lie in parliament, it lies with those with the money, the capitalist class, and all the other institutions in this unequal, undemocratic society that they control.

So until we take that power, the financial as well as the political power, until workers take control at both the grassroots, factory level and at the national level, until the majority really run things and put people before profits, and have real economic democracy, then parliamentary elections, seats in parliament, can’t really change things.

Until we eliminate capitalism, and start to build a socialist society, the capitalist class will always try to use racism, and nationalism, to try to divide us. They are linked. And they can resort to the most extreme variants of this – fascism – to defend their power.

Build the Democratic Socialists

We need a party able to lead and learn from past working-class struggles, and take those struggles the next step forward, towards the final overthrow of the capitalist, profit-driven system.

We need a party that we must start building now.

So it’s not enough to just be against racism, and fight against its most immediate proponents such as Pauline Hanson. Though that’s important, and let’s build that campaign, and unite to fight this bigoted bastard.

But we also need to fight on all other fronts, against all other manifestations of capitalist oppression, exploitation and ignorance. We need to build working-class unity, and the unity of all the oppressed, oppressed nationalities, the indigenous population, women gays and lesbians, those with special concern for the environment.

We need a socialist campaign to counter the capitalist neoliberal offensive being waged against us, and to counter the Frankenstein monsters that can arise from the ghoulish manipulation of our lives for the sake of ever-greater corporate profits.

The growth of One Nation is also our default, a result of the fact that the socialist forces are small, disunited. A stronger socialist movement would have been able to give a rational analysis and a positive lead to many of the unemployed, the workers with declining real wages, the poor and failing farmers in the rural areas, who have responded to Hanson in irrational despair.

One Nation has been able to channel the popular discontent with the existing system and the distrust of traditional politicians, in order to consolidate their bigoted, racist political objectives. Had we been stronger, we could have forestalled it.

To prevent the further growth of racist and bigoted nationalist movements now and in the future, we have to get stronger, build support for the Democratic Socialists. To guarantee the elimination of racism and bigotry in the future, we need to build a mass socialist movement that can carry through the struggle for a socialist society.

Join us!