Lately, we’ve witnessed right-wing populists, nationalists, racists, and fascists of all types licking their lips, emboldened by the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America. Following this torturous, political freak-show, we have already seen the dangerous realities and challenges it will bring about. Many from the right have come to see this as their moment to shine, while for many more it presents some sort of mythical return to a time of “greatness, prosperity, and freedom”.
Groups such as the One Nation Party led by Pauline Hanson in Australia are using this platform, feeding off growing popular discontent and alienation, in order to spread and enforce their conservative agenda. And in so doing, continuing to perpetuate and enforce the ideas and presence of nationalist, right-wing political parties, academics and individuals the world over. Acting as alternatives within a rotten system, they attempt to offer the moon and present themselves as saviours in order to capitalise on the bankruptcy of representative democracy and succeed in taking political power.
They deceive, divide and spew their hatred. They demonise workers, the poor, unemployed, immigrants and refugees; while always attacking those who make the choice to resist as violent thugs impinging on their freedoms. But they don’t care about freedom in any sense of the word. They –just like the super-rich- run to hide behind a state that is always invasive and controlling, asking for more and more repression, calling for more police and tougher laws to crush social movements and deal with dissent. They aren’t against the system, and the system isn’t there to help you.
Everything is calculated to promote apathy, giving the impression that all the important decisions in the world are out of our hands. That’s the point of state politics: to immobilise us outside the halls of power, forcing us to distrust each other and ourselves. Offered only confusion and fear, we are forced into choosing, not liberation, but the false idea of “change”. As is the case with every administration time after time that offers solutions and promises; but delivers only control and repression, exploitation and misery.
Here, in the territory dominated by the colonialist state, Australia, we already live amid the currents of a historically racist, nationalist status-quo, with a conveyor belt of conservative fanatics, and racist/fascist movements. There is no doubt that many have and will continue to use this as their opportunity to capitalise, manipulating and exploiting people to direct their anxiety and frustration towards each other, rather than the structures of power that oppress everyone, everywhere.
Meanwhile the corrupt and special treatment dished out to political and corporate elites is as despicable as the striking passivity which is injected into us all and causes us to sit idle while ever-increasing repressive laws are introduced in the name of ‘National Security’; while more and more police occupy our streets and communities with impunity; while politicians go from private sector to politics and back again. All the while deaths in custody, deaths at work, homelessness, criminalisation of the poor and ecological collapse continue.
We as anarchists are under no illusion that there could be any politician, or political party, capable of delivering us freedom from domination, repression, exploitation and fascism. Our opposition needs to be directed, not against one particular representative, but against the ideas of state, capitalism and representation itself. Against the collusion of liberals who would rather preserve the apparatus of the state even in the hands of outright fascists than permit real freedom to emerge; against the hypocrisy and deceit of the parrots in the mass media that seek to reduce us to mere spectators in a violent game that leaves all our lives, and the very earth itself, on a knife’s edge.
One of the fundamental problems is that power is structured into such vertical concentrations; that any person or institution could wield so much power in the first place. A man like Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin could never be so dangerous if we didn’t hand the responsibility of our own lives over to governments and capitalism.
Putting another party in power won’t fix this. In fact, the persistent and naïve belief that the right government could solve the problems generated by global capitalism are partly to blame for this situation. We see-saw back and forth from whatever political party has been profiting off their power, leaving millions living oppressed lives and destroying the earth in the name of industry; to another political party that will profit off their power, leave us oppressed and continue to destroy the earth, selling us “new” policies with the best marketing bullshit there is.
To resist means we have to stop ceding our strength to these institutions. Instead, we need to build networks to meet our needs directly and defend ourselves against everyone who wants to rule us. The only way to freedom and equality is through self-determination, mutual aid, and collective resistance.
It is our duty not to remain a sum of unaffiliated individualities who meekly obey the plans of the State and the bosses; not to succumb to their cock-and-bull stories about salvation and security, about prosperity and change that they use in order to maintain their domination.
With self-organisation in every workplace, in the streets and the neighbourhoods, struggling collectively in solidarity with one another, let our resistance become the seed for class and social liberation. We have to undertake immediate initiatives to create communities of struggle everywhere—opening spaces and social centers, organising discussions and autonomous demonstrations, liberating public spaces, breaking through apathy and isolation, producing free food, shelter, and culture for all. We have to think freedom and enact emancipation.
(via Running Wild)
