By Peter Boyle
The recent round of public meetings by racist MP Pauline Hanson was met by a strong protests despite Prime Minister John Howard's call for people not to protest at Hanson's meetings so as not to make her a martyr for her cause. Preparations by anti-racist activists for upcoming meetings in Newcastle and Adelaide, where Hanson is due to speak on May 30 and June 11, respectively, indicate that the protests will grow.
As the anti-Hanson momentum grows, there is a lively discussion among activists about how to defeat Hanson's racist movement. 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly discussed this issue with three activists who have been involved in organising these protests: Iggy Kim, from Hobart; Emma Webb, from Adelaide; and Alex Bainbridge, from Newcastle. All play central roles in coalitions set up to protest Hanson's racist offensive.
Question: How are we going to defeat Hanson?
Kim: We have to understand what we are trying to defeat. Pauline Hanson is not just another racist bigot preaching hate and prejudice. She and the organisers of her One Nation party are trying to mobilise a new right-wing movement around the country. That's why she is holding these meetings.
She is rallying old reactionary forces, but also hopes to sell racist, xenophobic nationalism to a section of the population that is hurting because of the unrelenting privatisation, deregulation and attacks on social services carried out by both Labor and Liberal governments over the last decade and a half.
If we are going to win the battle for the hearts and minds of these people, we must counter-mobilise the anti-racist forces at every meeting of Hanson or her One Nation, if possible, and through initiatives like the Justice Tour being organised by 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly.
Webb: Hanson's racist offensive has only got so far because she has powerful support from 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of the Liberal and National parties, not least from the prime minister, who has encouraged Hanson's movement despite objections from corporate chiefs who are worried about its effect on their business deals in Asia. So we can't leave it to the government to stop Hanson's offensive.
I agree that we need to counter-mobilise, to build the biggest possible protests every time Hanson holds a public meeting. That's why Resistance, the socialist youth organisation I am a member of, has vowed to organise protests every time Hanson holds a meeting in a major city.
Bainbridge: The anti-Hanson movement is growing with every meeting that Hanson has held outside Queensland. In Perth, Hanson drew about a thousand supporters, but there were at least twice as many protesters. In Geelong, Hanson supporters were outnumbered 10 to one by 500 protesters, and the public meeting was cancelled.
In Hobart, 3000 protesters confronted about 300 Hanson supporters and again the meeting was cancelled. In Launceston, there was a demonstration of 1000 outside a meeting of about 500 Hansonites and in Ulverstone in north-west Tasmania, there was also a 300-strong protest outside a meeting of the same size.
Hanson plans to come to Newcastle on May 30, and we are sure she'll meet a similar response here.
Question: The mass media are beginning to focus on the danger of "violence" at these protests, and the Hansonites are claiming that their right to free speech is being denied by these protests. What do you say to this?
Kim: The Perth, Geelong and Hobart protests did inspire others to protest. We should defend the protesters who spontaneously stormed the meetings in Geelong and Hobart. Their anger was very understandable considering Hanson's vile racism.
She hasn't just engaged in a civil debate. Her racist message — which was pretty much unchallenged for most of the last year — has resulted in numerous abusive and violent attacks on Aboriginal and Asian people.
The dramatic increase in cases of racial vilification before the Anti-Discrimination Commission and surveys conducted by a Chinese community newspaper show this. It's no wonder people are angry about Hanson.
As you would expect, the mass media sensationalised these protests and exaggerated the "violence". Actually there was no real violence, except a couple of protesters were dragged out of some of these meetings. It is easy to distort things with a television camera, and they do it all the time.
Webb: In Adelaide, radio station 5AN rang Resistance for an interview about plans for protests outside Hanson's Adelaide meeting, planned for June 11. Resistance member Sid Bay was pushed several times by the interviewer to "guarantee" that there would be no violence at the protest.
She responded, "No, we can't guarantee the behaviour of everyone there, although the organisers are planning a non-violent event". Later that night, Channel 7 played a sound recording of the interview but chopped off the second half of her reply. Then the Adelaide Advertiser reprinted this — and changed Sid's gender in the process!
Kim: After the Hobart protest, I was interviewed by ABC Radio National and was repeatedly asked about Hanson's "right to free speech". But what about our right to free speech? Hanson has had a lot of opportunity to have her say, but her opponents and the victims of her racist scapegoating haven't.
Howard even says we don't have the right to call her, or him, racists — even when they are being blatantly racist. He says we are being "politically correct".
This campaign of racist intimidation by Hanson and Howard is aimed at silencing Aborigines, Asians and anyone who wants to speak up for justice. You don't have a right to complain because you're not "real Australians", they tell us. Well, we've had enough. We are going to answer the racists — and loudly too!
Strong protests will give confidence to many people who have been intimidated into silence, some in the hope if they stay quiet Hanson will fade away, or perhaps she and her bigoted supporters will pick on somebody else first.
Question: Some people in the anti-racist movement are arguing that Hanson's meetings must be stopped at all costs to "nip fascism in the bud". What do you think?
Bainbridge: Even if it was possible to stop all Hanson's meetings, this wouldn't defeat her racist movement. But mobilising many people to oppose her movement and to oppose the real racist policies being carried out by the Howard government can defeat Hanson.
We don't need to give Hanson's supporters a chance to divert attention from their reactionary politics to a spurious discussion about her right to free speech. And we shouldn't give the mass media a chance to frighten away possible supporters by presenting a distorted picture of the protests.
Webb: So far the media have been relatively soft on the anti-Hanson protesters. This is because a section of the corporate bosses are worried about the growth of Hanson's supporters. Many in the ruling class think that Howard has made a mistake by encouraging her.
On the other hand, these people also wouldn't want the anti-racist movement to grow too strong. People start to get active around an issue like racism and soon they become critical of other injustices.
Since the mass media in this country are totally dominated by a couple of infamous corporate barons, we have to expect they could soon turn nasty on the anti-Hanson protests. We don't have to play into their hands.
Kim: It is important that the movement focuses on clear objectives. They are the ones that Alex has mentioned. Unfortunately, at present the growing protests at Hanson's racist propaganda is not matched by a similar reaction to the actual racist policies being implemented by the Howard government, such as the attacks on native title, Aboriginal welfare, welfare rights of recent migrants and the rights of refugees.
Hanson's racist propaganda drive would be a fraction of its strength without the support of Howard and a section of the Coalition parties. She probably won't be able to keep her seat of Ipswich without Liberal preferences in the next election. Howard uses Hanson to beat back opposition to his racist moves and to present them as more "moderate".
It has been disgusting to watch the Howard-Hanson tag team over the Wik native title issue. Howard hopes to extinguish native title in all but name — in the process enriching the wealthy pastoralists who run the National Party — while appearing to be giving some concession to Aborigines. It is a dirty trick but that is his game with Hanson in its essence.
The lesson we should draw is that if we want to defeat Hanson, we must fight the racist policies of her backers in the Coalition government.
Question: It's also about "divide and rule", isn't it?
Bainbridge: Definitely. One reason Hanson is coming to Newcastle is to try to win a hearing among the depressed working class in this city. Life was already tough in Newcastle, and now BHP — for years the city's biggest employer — is closing down and sacking its work force. Hanson's future can be decided by how much support she can win among working people and the unemployed in the cities.
The rural right didn't succeed with the Joh for Canberra push in the '80s, but every year of neo-liberal offensive since then has added to the potential audience for Hanson's white nationalist populism in the urban working class.
While some polls indicate such support is growing, we have yet to see this reflected in Hanson's meetings. They have been attended mainly by older, white, middle-class types — small business people, farmers and more than their fair share of bankrupts!
Australia has become a lot more unequal in the last two decades. There are clear regional concentrations of suffering in small towns and regional cities, like Newcastle.
This adds to the pain and insecurity of former small farmers driven off their land in the massive rural restructuring over the last two decades. Cuts to government services and "rationalisation" of banking and other private services also have had a bigger impact in smaller towns.
Webb: Hanson's support in the working class would be a lot weaker with if the union movement was led by people willing to fight for workers' rights and actively oppose racism.
So far the union movement has only made a token effort. All the counter-mobilisations to Hanson's meetings, to date, have been organised without the real support of the unions. We should put pressure on union leaders to educate and mobilise their members against Hanson's racism.