Civil Rights

No Forced Booster Shots!

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vax and skull

http://www.personalliberty.com

12-09-2021: The endless corporate media propaganda barrage of “Get Vaccinated!” has persuaded many to line up for Covid shots, whether or not they believe it is the right thing to do. Many figure it will get the government off my back, I will be able to travel, I won’t be excluded from supermarkets, restaurants, sporting and cultural events – I will just “get it over and done with”. With severe lockdown fatigue still plaguing parts of the globe, this sentiment is understandable. Yet if recent actions of the Israeli government are any indication, those who have already been double jabbed with the Covid vax may well have fallen for what may be the largest scam in amongst what is almost certainly the most extensive politico-medical fraud in history. The Israeli state, the most aggressive leader in vaccinating the largest proportion of their population – are now demanding booster shots on top of a Covid double jab, or your Covid passport becomes invalid.

Vaccination or freedom?

The message from the governments of the West until this point has been – you can have your freedom once you are fully vaccinated. We won’t apply any more lockdowns, or facemasks – if you line up for the shots. This was always a barefaced lie, a lie on top of the mountain of lies which underpins Covid hysteria. The Wall Street Journal reported that holders of Israel’s vaccine passports must obtain a third shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine within six months of their second jab – or lose the green pass which allows them more freedom.[1]  The Israeli “Health” Ministry states that a booster shot five months after the second jab will reset the clock and extend the vaccine passport for another six months.[2] In other words, in order to go to bars and restaurants, Israelis will need booster shots to maintain a valid Covid passport.[3] This means that “fully vaccinated” now means something other than having two Covid jabs. They have simply changed the rules. Should we be surprised?

The USA could be heading down the path of an 8-month interval for booster shots, with this timeframe supposedly driven by the “Delta variant”.[4] The Australian government is careering towards a 12-month interval for booster shots, and it has already purchased supplies of both the Pfizer and Moderna Covid vax for this purpose.[5] Once again the “conspiracy theorists” have turned out to be correct. This is not a one-off vaccination program in terms of rolling up your sleeve a couple of times – and everything goes back to normal. Not on your nelly. What may be taking place is the largest swindle Western governments have ever perpetrated against “their own” people. What is being planned is not a one-off vaccination, but rather a permanent vaccination program, and a permanent system of vaccine apartheid. The division of society into two classes – the “good” vaccinated (or permanently vaccinated), and the “bad” unvaccinated. The “clean” vaccinated will be allowed to take part in society, while the “unclean” unvaccinated will be left at the margins to scavenge an existence for themselves. Yet even allowing yourself to be injected once every six months doesn’t really get you into the clear. In reality, the politicians can decide at any time to shift the vaccination goalposts.

Permanent privatisation

The Covid “vaccines” are not vaccines in the sense that they do not confer immunity to anything, let alone a real or imaginary SARS-CoV-2 virus. In addition, even cursory research into the adverse reactions to the Covid injections will reveal some of the highest chances of permanent injury or death from any “vaccine” in history. The very suggestion that lockdowns, facemasks and Covid injections are healthcare measures are laughable. As Big Pharma rakes in billions of dollars from what is likely to be a planned permanent injection program, what is taking place is a form of permanent privatisation on a scale never seen before. This is not just the selling off of whole services and functions states formerly supplied. This is the direct funneling of billions of taxpayer dollars to the largest private corporations on planet Earth, on an ongoing basis. And this is for what is for some a lethal injection!

The Covid War is the actuation of extreme violence perpetrated by the imperialist minority against the overwhelming majority of humankind. All of its attendant ideology is false. Flatten the curve, stop the spread, stay away from others, don’t sing, don’t dance, don’t travel – its all lies. The lies have to be whoppers, and in fact have to surpass the lies which underpinned the rule of the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s (a so-called “master race” etc.), as the prospects for the survival of capitalism is much more in danger than it was almost 100 years ago. If fascism is indeed the merger of private corporations with the state, then lockdown fascism is the clearest example ever provided.

Fascism is the most extreme form of warfare against the working class. In order to save itself, capital is compelled to throw millions of workers out of work, and drastically reduce to a minimum the wages and conditions of those who remain. The sheer political terror of police and armed forces enforcing lockdowns is an essential part of driving down labour’s share of the national income. “Covid” is a convenient excuse. Under other circumstances, there would have been working class resistance to a direct assault on their livelihoods. However, this fightback has been strangulated by Union officials and the utterly fake left who have defended the politicians they glibly claim to oppose. Without the obscene treachery of these “progressives”, the enforcing of lockdown terror would be impossible.

Consequently, the fightback has taken the political path of a movement for “Freedom”. This movement has frequently mobilised millions of people throughout the globe, especially in places where lockdowns have been most harsh – Europe, the USA, Australia. This movement stands between the pre-Covid status quo and a descent into barbarism. Even if the broader masses mistakenly view it as being driven by conservative political forces, the majority desperately want an end to lockdowns, and at the very least sympathise with its aims. Yet this movement must engage the only class which can strike blows against capital – the workers. To that end, we demand a “lockdown levy” – a 10% wage increase for all workers across the board, whether permanent, temporary, contract, etc. A concerted fight for such a demand will also tend to counter the oppression of lockdowns, facemasks and “no jab, no pay”. A better world is possible, and the movement for freedom can be a vital link.

WORKERS  LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

[1] https://off-guardian.org/2021/09/02/how-and-why-israel-changed-what-fully-vaccinated-means (11.09.2021)

[2] https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/29082021-01 (11.09.2021)

[3] https://news.yahoo.com/israels-vaccine-pass-expire-6-102521992.html?guccounter=1 (11.09.2021)

[4] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/why-eight-months-what-s-behind-timing-covid-booster-shot-n1277013 (11.09.2021)

[5] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-07/covid-booster-shot-when-we-need-them-for-how-long/1004363 (11.09.2021)

Social Credit – East and West

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china social credit

http://www.creditinfoweb.com

06-09-2021: The dramatic imposition of lockdown tyranny across much of the Western world since early 2020 by governments plying their liberal credentials has thrown politics upside down. In direct contrast to the 20th century, we now find that it is the “left” which appears to uphold minority rule, governmental authority and the power of the corporate elite – while the “right” defends basic civil and democratic rights and freedom from despotic and arbitrary use of state power. In reality, the “left” drifted to the right over the two decades prior to the “Covid” lockdowns and was unable to reverse course once fascistic terror became a reality – while the “right” more or less stayed put and found themselves taking up the mantle of liberty from capitalist suppression, despite themselves.

“Left” and “Right” against “China”

Regardless of lockdowns mixing left and right like a kitchen blender, there are important exceptions to the rule. There are leftists which oppose lockdowns, in amongst what might appear on the surface to be a “right-wing” anti-lockdown movement. These groups are crucial, for without a working-class fightback against lockdown fascism, a future too horrible to contemplate beckons. Yet it is also vital that left-wing opponents of lockdown regimes have a correct understanding of the class nature of “China” – specifically, the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The anti-lockdown movement will scarcely achieve its goals of freedom if it maintains a similar narrative of the PRC as the very forces it is railing against. Similarly, anti-lockdown leftists must make a complete break from the anti-PRC invective both of the majority of the anti-lockdown movement AND imperialism itself.

For example, the Left Lockdown Skeptics (LLS) in the United Kingdom (UK) are breaking important ground by providing a basis for the building of left-wing opposition to lockdown enslavement. However, they sometimes fall into the trap of castigating the PRC in the same manner as their right-wing pro-lockdown opponents – both the lockdown fake left and pro-lockdown state and non-state forces. On the issue of social credit, some who write for LLS make the error of reiterating the essentially false claims that the PRC uses a “social credit” system to monitor every political and non-political move of Chinese workers. Hence, LLS distributes articles which claim that citizens in the West under lockdown dictates now “know what it feels like” to be living in the PRC under “Chinese Communist Party” (in reality, the Communist Party of China or CPC) rule.[1] Another LLS writer complains that onerous vaccine passports could be easily adapted into a CPC style social credit system.[2]

Such plaintive cries display a misunderstanding of the very partial implementation of a social credit system in the PRC, as well as the overlooking of virtually identical systems which have long been in place in the West – albeit often maintained by privately owned corporations. From the off, the very term “social credit” is arguably lost in translation. Social credit, translated as shehui xinyong, carries a different meaning in the Chinese context. Shehui in the PRC does necessarily mean social in terms of individual interpersonal connections. Shehui is also used to refer to “society” or the “public”. Thus a more accurate translation of “social credit” could be “the credit of society/the public”.[3] Indeed, the PRC’s “social credit” system – which is years away from implementation over the entire country – applies not just to individuals but also to companies and government entities.[4] The notion that social credit in the PRC is where the central government checks and monitors every movement and interaction of the 1.4 billion residents of what is effectively the continent of China – is an illusion. The Western corporate media, at the height of the New Cold War against the PRC, obviously has an interest in pumping out wild and fraudulent stories about “repression” in China. Both the anti-lockdown movement and left lockdown opponents make an error if they replicate parts of the New Cold War anti-China propaganda barrage which emanates from the very same forces they seek to counter.

Bogus Black Mirror comparisons

Many critics, from the “left” and right, make allegorical comparisons of the PRC’s social credit system to the Netflix series Black Mirror, which portrays human unease about the ever-increasing use of technology and how it might be used for control.[5] This specious argumentation is well wide of the mark. Only a few dozen towns and cities across the entirety of mainland China have a social credit system, so there is no such thing as a national social credit score. The government does assign social credit codes – not scores – to companies and organisations, for registration and tax purposes. Individuals have a national ID number, for tax purposes. The existing social credit blacklists use these numbers, like almost every other institution in the PRC. What is the difference between this and a tax file number in the West? Moreover, where they exist, the social credit systems DO NOT give a comprehensive ranking or score to each individual, and DO NOT give a score for “good” and “bad” credit. Companies, institutions and individuals are only blacklisted for serious offences such as fraud or pollution.[6] That is, blacklisting only occurs for actions which are serious crimes – the equivalents of which would certainly be viewed as such in any Western nation.

The PRC’s social credit system, which is only in its first stages, is intended to give an overview of the trustworthiness of firms, organisations, governmental bodies and individuals.[7] In its essence it is about whether organisations or individuals comply with legally prescribed social, economic and contractual commitments. It is NOT designed for political monitoring and control – though it is possible it could be used for this down the track. Importantly, there is little evidence that the PRC’s social credit system – in the small minority of locations where it exists – is opposed by Chinese workers. In the PRC, anxiety about pianzi, or swindlers, runs deep. “How do I know you are not a pianzi?” is a question which many Chinese ask if they are called on the phone by a telemarketer, or receive a knock on the front door from a salesperson.[8] In fact, contrary to the knee-jerk (false) alarm over social credit displayed by some in the West, there are strong indications that Chinese workers firmly support the social credit systems – at least for now.[9] Believe it or not, the social credit system in the PRC is generally NOT viewed as a system of surveillance. Rather, in the main, it is seen as a way to promote a more honest and law-abiding society. In a society where fraud and corruption was widespread – possibly due to the expansion of pro-market and “free enterprise” reforms from 1978 onwards – social credit is currently seen as a method to protect consumers and hold firms accountable.

Is social credit linked to social security?

The PRC’s fledgling social credit system must not be confused with its social security system. While the PRC’s social security system is not fully comprehensive, in recent decades it has vastly expanded to cover the overwhelming majority of working people – at a time when the West’s social security systems have been gutted by years of funding cuts, leaving the unemployed and the disabled with bare pittances on which to survive. The PRC’s social security system is totally disconnected from the social credit system, so there is no overlap at all. One cannot be excluded from social security even if they end up on a social credit blacklist. The PRC’s social security system is comprised of six streams,  to which both employers and employees make contributions. These are: Pension insurance, housing fund, medical insurance, maternity insurance, work related injury insurance and unemployment insurance. Maternity insurance and work-related injury insurance is paid into by employers only.

The rate of contribution is variable, depending on the location of the scheme throughout the PRC. Generally employers pay a higher rate of contribution compared to employees, and pay five times as much into medical insurance, and roughly double the amount into both pension and unemployment insurance.[10] While in the 20th century public retirement pensions were won and awarded at a reasonable age, in recent decades the age of eligibility is pushed higher and higher. In some cases, aged pensions do not apply until the age of 70, with a life expectancy of around 79 years! In contrast, working women in the PRC are able to access pension payments from the age of 50 if they work in blue-collar industries, 55 in white-collar industries, while it is age 60 for men.[11] While there are some moves to slowly and gradually increase these ages due to increasing life expectancies, it still tracks in a different direction to the stagnating capitalist economies of Europe, the USA and Australia.

The West’s de facto social credit system

Largely unbeknownst to Western critics of the PRC’s social credit system is the fact that a form of “social credit” has been in existence there for decades – albeit under the aegis of private corporations rather than governments. In the USA, nine out of ten money lending institutions use the FICO Score[12] to make a risk assessment of the credit history of each individual they consider engaging. On the popular market site Ebay, each seller has a rating ranging from a yellow star (how ironic), up 12 levels to a silver shooting star. These stars indicate how honest the seller was, how communicative they were, and how fast they delivered the item.[13] This certainly sounds like a “trustworthiness indicator” – which is one aim of social credit in the PRC. Moreover, there is a prominent US corporation which sells equipment that maintains lists of “objectionable customers” who can then be excluded from bars and restaurants.[14]

Blacklists are by no means the preserve of only partial aspects of the PRC’s social credit system either. The Hollywood blacklist was notorious for denying employment to anyone suspected of having communist or even left-wing sympathies.[15] Top construction firms in the United Kingdom (UK) kept blacklists for years on building workers who were also Trade Union activists.[16] In Australia, tenants of rental properties can easily end up on the tenancy database, which functions as a blacklist for those who miss rental payments[17] – which can directly lead to homelessness. In New York, insurance firms can legally set their premiums based on the social media feeds (!) of applicants.[18]  The monopolistic Airbnb now has six million listings, so a ban from their app may mean people end up sleeping on the streets. What is more, Airbnb can ban anyone at any time, for any reason.[19] Arguably, young people in the US cannot take part in society if they are banned from Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, PayPal, Uber, Amazon and so on.[20]

All of this can be actioned by Western Big Tech, which can claim that it is not part of the government until the cows come home. By default, however, these giant corporations are simply the arms of the capitalist state – and this is becoming more and more apparent to the millions of workers struggling against lockdown tyranny.  Italian fascist leader in the 1920s Benito Mussolini aptly noted that fascism, brought down to its bare bones, is a merging of capitalist corporations with the state. When Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Retail and others are the most enthusiastic enforces of lockdown and vaccine mandates, they have far eclipsed the role the state had during “liberal democracy” in the 20th Century.

For a permanent end to state surveillance

To be sure, the social credit system in the PRC could potentially be used for political surveillance. Even if so, this will be not that far from what already occurs via private ownership of monopoly corporate megaliths in the West. Working people have the right to be free from state/corporate surveillance at all times. The prerequisite for this is the removal of the system of commodity production for private profit in the West, along with the replacement of the conservative and nationalist bureaucracies which lead deformed workers’ states such as the PRC. That is to say, given the exigencies stemming from the imposition of Covid repression, socialist revolutions in the West and proletarian political revolutions in the East are now critical. Workers in the West need to urgently bring down both the states and governments which inflict lockdowns, while workers in the PRC need to maintain the state which emerged out of 1949 while injecting it with the guidance of genuine Leninism.

The conservative Stalinist caste which rules the PRC can be criticised for many things, but not for social credit – or at least not yet. If they were bona fide Marxists, the PRC’s political rulers would be seeking to march alongside the workers of the world in a pitch battle to supersede class society. The extension of workers’ republics internationally would deliver a death blow to the tottering imperialist regimes, which are devolving into lockdown fascism in order to save their own hides. This is a future which working people can prevent, if they are prepared to collectively defend themselves against Covid repression – by Western politicians or by CPC bureaucrats. Indispensable for locating the path to freedom is the political leadership of a vanguard party upholding Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution. Covidian terror can be vanquished by workers fighting for a new socialist order.

WORKERS  LEAGUE


www.redfireonline.com


E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

[1] https://leftlockdownsceptics.com/2021/08/book-burning-part-2-normalising-the-abnormal (05.09.2021)

[2] https://leftlockdownsceptics.com/2021/08/distilling-meanings-from-the-madness-covid-19-a-trojan-horse-for-the-4th-industrial-revolution (05.09.2021)

[3] MCJ No 2 – 2018.pdf (mappingchina.org) (05.09.2021)

[4] https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3096090/what-chinas-social-credit-system-and-why-it-controversial (05.09.2021)

[5] https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/black_mirror (05.09.2021)

[6] https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/ (05.09.2021)

[7] https://nhglobalpartners.com/china-social-credit-system-explained (05.09.2021)

[8] https://www.wired.com/story/age-of-social-credit (05.09.2021)

[9] https://merics.org/en/analysis/chinas-social-credit-systems-are-highly-popular (05.09.2021)

[10] https://shieldgeo.com/social-security-contributions-in-china-a-guide-for-overseas-employers (05.09.2021)

[11] http://english.www.gov.cn/state_council/ministries/2016/03/01/content (05.09.2021)

[12] https://www.fico.com/en/products (05.09.2021)

[13] Seller ratings | eBay (05.09.2021)

[14] https://patronscan.com (05.09.2021)

[15] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hollywood-blacklist (05.09.2021)

[16] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/27/on-the-blacklist-building-firms-secret-information-on-workers (05.09.2021)

[17] https://www.realestate.com.au/advice/tenancy-databases-blacklisted (05.09.2021)

[18] https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-insurers-can-evaluate-your-social-media-useif-they-can-prove-why-its-needed (05.09.2021)

[19] https://futurism.com/america-social-credit-system-china (05.09.2021)

[20] https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/565860-coming-soon-americas-own-social-credit-system (05.09.2021)

Lockdowns and the Twilight of Democracy

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markets and police

Above: Riot police in Melbourne pursue anti-lockdown protestors through food markets. http://www.pedestrian.tv

18-08-2021: The Australian states of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria (VIC) are currently enduring arguably the harshest “Covid” lockdowns ever imposed. A brutal lockdown has kept NSW incarcerated for seven weeks, with no indication of when it will be released. The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) has been reduced to a snap lockdown, allegedly after one (!) positive Covid case was supposedly identified along with Covid positive wastewater (!!).[1] Average temperatures in Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory (NT) hover around 30 degrees Celsius year round, with humidity fluctuating between 60% and 80% between the wet and dry seasons.[2] The north of Australia, close to the equator, scarcely has weather conducive to the circulation of a flu like virus. Despite this, NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner indicated that the NT may still impose lockdowns and border closures even if the plan of the National Cabinet for 80% vaccination rates are reached.[3]

The remote NSW outback town of Walgett, 230 kilometres east of Bourke, has now also been placed in lockdown. The town only has a population of 2000 but has been sent into lockdown on the putative finding of one (!) positive Covid “case”.[4] Walgett will be joined in lockdowns with seven other Local Government Areas (LGAs) in the West of NSW, including Gilgandra and Brewarrina. Walgett in particular has a high proportion of Aboriginal residents, who make up around 30% of the total.[5] For decades, Aboriginal people in Walgett have endured high poverty rates, with scant health and education services, and a high crime rate linked to a virtual absence of jobs. There is no shortage of money for the farmers though, some of whom have private airstrips, and send their children to expensive private schools in Sydney and Brisbane.[6] It hardly needs to be said that the lockdowns will impact Aboriginal people, and scarcely touch the farmers in their vast properties surrounding the town.

The cruelty of lockdowns is having a devastating effect on the mental health of those subjected to them. Currently, 800 000 scripts for anti-depressant medication are being filled each week throughout Australia.[7] Psychological distress and loneliness[8] is but one measure of the pain being inflicted, as lockdowns restrict or extinguish the very ability to have social interaction. Tens of thousands of jobs are lost, throwing countless workers onto the unemployment scrapheap. Many small and medium sized businesses are driven into bankruptcy, large numbers of which will never open again. The right to travel outside your neighbourhood has been subject to control, or even abolished.

Health emergency illusion

The notion that the planet is being assaulted by the “Delta variant” of a SARS-CoV-2 virus is absurd. For one thing, even the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) admit that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has never been isolated and purified in a laboratory anywhere.[9] Secondly, even if SARS-CoV-2 does exist and there is a variant of any sort, all previous immunology says that variants are less harmful than the original. Thirdly, if Delta exists at all, there is no test which can positively identify it.[10] 18 months later, even the basic narrative about a supposedly novel virus which threatens the globe has worn itself to ribbons. There is not now, and never was, a “pandemic”. All cause mortality for the planet has barely changed in the last two decades, including the year 2020.[11] There is no “health emergency”, and at the very least, this has left whole sections of the working class wondering what on Earth politicians are on about.

Even allowing for the possibility of a new coronavirus in circulation, this does not justify ANY extraordinary measures such as lockdowns, facemasks and vaccines. The lockdowns are quite obviously not about health care and are much more to do with political repression and the very real suppression of civil and democratic rights. In Australia currently, the Army is being used to enforce lockdowns in the streets of Sydney. All around the world, parliaments have been suspended, basic laws have been ignored, and the very constitutions of whole nations have been violated at will. Government “tracking and tracing” of entire populations has been introduced without even a cursory debate by local, state or federal politicians. In short, the very notion of democratic rights has more or less been made contingent on whether or not it can be overridden by “Covid”.

For 170 odd years, Marxists have stressed that “democracy” is in fact a form of class rule, and that capitalist “democracy” is only democracy for the rich. There can never be democracy – where the majority opinion or vote holds sway – across different social classes. There can never be a democracy where labour and capital co-exist in the same assemblies and same parliaments, in the same way as there cannot be “democracy” in a workplace between employers and employees. In the transition from capitalism to socialism, there can only be the rule of one class – the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. Thus, there can only be either bourgeois democracy or proletarian democracy. And bourgeois democracy for working people is as much a fraud and a swindle as is the “Covid Pandemic”. Hence, the (now urgent) historical need for the working class to rise to power through a social revolution.

Nevertheless, the pathway to a workers’ revolution can only be found via a thoroughgoing defence of the very rights that were won by the ascendent bourgeois class against feudal absolutism. Workers must defend their bourgeois democratic rights won under capitalism, for without them there cannot be even the first steps towards socialism. The right to free speech, to freedom of assembly, to a free press, the right to form political parties and organisations, the right to form trade Unions – all must be defended as a matter of priority. Ditto for the right to travel, the right to move freely, the right to consent, the right to bodily autonomy and the right to due legal process. The victory of proletarian democracy, via the establishment of a workers’ republic, cannot be obtained if the working class does not vigorously defend every democratic right it obtained during “normal” capitalist operation.

The twilight of liberal democracy

With the excuse of Covid, almost all bourgeois or liberal democratic rights have been curtailed, suspended or simply abolished. Even many of those who, despite everything, still cling to some notion of the government clumsily acting to protect people from a pathogen, are aghast at the blasé bypassing of the elementary norms of parliamentary due process. Even if they somehow uphold the notion of a “health emergency”, they sense something foreboding about the effective cancellation of elementary civil and democratic rights, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Despite being “onside” with the “war on Covid”, many of them agree that vaccines should not be forced. Even those within the anti-lockdown movement who can see through the false Covid narrative like a pane of glass, are also appalled at the removal of even the basic principle of consent.

Even though liberal democracy has always been a shroud for the dictatorship of capital, the bourgeois class was materially able to allow liberal democratic rights while certain economic conditions were maintained. Free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of movement – these and other rights were tolerated only insofar as the productive forces of capitalism were expanding, only so long as finance capital was able to expand internationally, and only to the extent that new markets were being found. This is no longer the case, so the Western ruling classes have little need for liberal democracy. Imperialist exploitation of the Third World has continued for decades, but that road is facing obstacles. Imperialist wars of regime change were another way for Western capital to expand, yet now that option is rarely available. Unable to expand at home, unable to plunder abroad, the ruling classes of the West now aim their guns at the heads of “their own” working classes. This is the real source of “Covid”.

Paraphrasing Russian Revolution co-leader L Trotsky, either the proletariat overthrows the Ancien Regime – the utterly decayed bourgeois society – or capitalism, in the interests of self-preservation, replaces liberal democracy with fascism.[12] Lockdown fascism, therefore, is not the result of “panic”, or an “overreaction”, or of snowballing “mistakes”. For some time, capitalism had already been doing away with free markets and free competition and had for the last 30 years been cannibalising the state through privatisation and deregulation. Now, capital needs to go to another level in an effort to regain an adequate rate of return on investment. The cost of labour power – wages and salaries of workers – needs to be depressed as low as possible. Throwing millions out of work while scaring the daylights out of the workers who remain employed, is one way of doing this.

If it was possible to explain in three words why imperialism must remove liberal democracy and install lockdown fascism, it would be: People’s Republic of China (PRC). Economically, the PRC is on the threshold of surpassing the economy of the United States of America (US). The situation is analogous to the 1930s, when the economy of the Soviet Union was achieving record growth while the West was in the deepest economic depression it had then known. Today, breakneck economic growth in the socialistic PRC is simply embarrassing the West. Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), or the amount one can purchase for a given amount of currency, is one indicator of economic performance, and the PRC has in recent years left the US behind.[13] The largest bank in the world – according to assets under management – is the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC).[14] Even though it operates commercially, this bank is in fact state owned and state controlled.

Lockdown tyranny the last roll of the dice

There can be no more accurate metaphor for the PRC’s economy surpassing Western decline than the recent launch of the world’s fastest train in East China’s Shandong Province. A magnetic levitation train developed by China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) has made its debut in Qingdao and is capable of reaching speeds of an astonishing 600 kilometres per hour(klm/hr).[15] This compares with standard high speed rail at 350 klm/hr and passenger aeroplanes which cruise at around 800 klm/hr. CRRC is a wholly state owned company, as is the entire rail network in the PRC. Compare this stunning achievement to Australia or the US, both of which are not in possession of even one kilometre of high speed rail !! The abyss between the Australian and US private capitalist economies and the socialistic collectively owned economy of the PRC is there for all to see.

At the same time, the conservative and bureaucratic political caste leading the PRC is subcontracting itself to imperialism by enforcing its own version of lockdown, facemask and Covid injection insanity against workers on its mainland. Betrayal of workers at home and internationally is second nature to Stalinism, and the entertaining of the false Covid narrative by the Communist Party of China (CPC) is another prime example. Despite this, workers in China and internationally need to defend the enormous gains of the 1949 revolution against imperialist subversion. However deformed and distorted, the loss of the PRC workers’ state would arguably be a greater setback for the world proletariat than the counter-revolution which abolished the USSR in 1991.

In the West, the pressing task is the rebellion against lockdown terror, which now regularly mobilises millions of people determined to fight for freedom. Lockdown fascism is the ruling elite’s last chance to save capitalism, and it comes with enormous risks. Any form of fascism generates acute and continuous conflict, which can result in overthrow if the working classes possess the level of organisation required, or war against states that resist imperialist domination. Yet Covid is first of all a civil war waged by billionaire capital against workers and the oppressed. At the same time, by initiating conflict against its nemesis, the world bourgeoisie demonstrates its political bankruptcy.

The abject treachery of the lockdown fake left alongside Union officials is proof positive that lockdown fascism is being waged under the banner of liberalism, i.e., totally fake claims to progressive, humanitarian, “public health”, and even “anti-racist” and “anti-fascist” values. In that vein, the facemask is the swastika of lockdown fascism. Like Covid “vaccines”, facemasks can be forced onto those who question its rationale, becoming both a symbol and a method of gagging and suffocation simultaneously. They are also the perfect propaganda ploy, giving the appearance of a “health emergency”, when nothing remotely resembling it exists.

By a quirk of history, the anti-lockdown movement is currently leading the struggle for proletarian democracy – despite what many of its protagonists imagine themselves to be fighting. By its very existence, the anti-lockdown movement explodes the bourgeois fiction of Covid. Leninists must find ways to aid and assist this rebellion, while taking the time to “patiently explain” that freedom can only be won through the assembly of a workers’ republic. Indispensable for this is the manufacture of a Marxist vanguard party upholding the theory of Permanent Revolution, which can help lead the toiling masses to their rightful place as masters of their own destiny.

WORKERS  LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

[1] https://www.health.act.gov.au/news/covid-19-update-act-enters-seven-day-lockdown-12-august-2021 (12.08.2021)

[2] https://www.australia.com/en/facts-and-planning/weather-in-australia/darwin-weather.html (12.08.2021)

[3] https://au.newschant.com/national/nt/northern-territory-says-lockdowns-and-border-closures-could-be-viable-options-after-vaccine-benchmark-reached/ (12.08.2021)

[4] https://nypressnews.com/news/world/australia/coronavirus-australia-walgett-nsw-to-go-into-lockdown-after-positive-covid-case/ (12.08.2012)

[5] https://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/LGA17900 (12.08.2021)

[6] https://blackflagsydney.com/article/26 (12.08.2021)

[7] https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/western-sydney-more-susceptible-to-mental-health-impacts-from-lockdown/ar-AANbcjN (12.08.2021)

[8] https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/covid-19 (12.08.2021)

[9] https://www.globalresearch.ca/does-the-virus-exist-the-sars-cov-2-has-not-been-isolated-biggest-fraud-in-medical-history/5752066 (14.08.2021)

[10] https://journal-neo.org/2021/08/11/delta-variants-pcr-tests-and-cognitive-dissonance/ (14.08.2021)

[11] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/death-rate (14.08.2021)

[12] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/03/crossroads1.html (15-08-2021)

[13] https://www.globalfirepower.com/purchasing-power-parity.php (15-08-2021)

[14] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/122315/worlds-top-10-banks-jpm-wfc.asp (15-08-2021)

[15] https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202107/1228998.shtml (16-08-2021)



No To Vaccine Apartheid!

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czech anti-vax passport

Above: Protestors in the Czech Republic use the yellow star symbol which was pinned to Jews in Nazi Germany, as a prop to demonstrate against the public ostracism directed against those who are “unvaccinated”. http://www.haaretz.com

08-08-2021: Humanity has reached a turning point. One and a half years after imperialism launched its global war on working people under the rhetoric of “Covid-19”, society hangs in the balance. Even though capitalism intends to push much further into lockdown fascism, they are partially blocked by the stern defence of an anti-lockdown movement which has long understood the stakes at play. One of the central pillars of lockdown fascism is the imposition of a system of vaccine apartheid. Those who can see through the intense corporate propaganda pushing a dangerous and experimental injection[1], or even just those who harbour serious concerns about the safety of a “vaccine” which has not even been licenced, are already being derisively referred to as the “unvaccinated”. The former banker and French President Macron has announced plans for the societal exclusion of those who do not trust politicians and Big Pharma. The “Pass Sanitaire” would if implemented mean a six-month jail term for those in a restaurant without Covid certification, and twelve months in jail for restaurant owners who do not check that its diners have up to date passes.[2]

Covid lies

As Professor Chossudovsky writes, there is no killer virus, but there is a killer vaccine.[3] The Covid mRNA “vaccine” produces a spike protein in the cells of those who get the shot. Dr Charles Hoffe’s research strongly indicates that the spikes will form as part of the wall of blood vessels, which inevitably causes blood clots.[4] Evidence of Covid vaccine fatalities keep piling up – and these are just a fraction of the deaths that are reported to health authorities.[5] Such information is largely censored by Big Tech, as it directly counters the lies continually used to justify plunging society into devastating lockdowns. This points to why the “unvaccinated” are dangerous to the ruling classes; they are living proof not only of the Covid lie, but of the falsity of the entire Covid narrative. Healthy unvaccinated people expose the tyranny of lockdowns as entirely unwarranted political repression.

Covid passports – a digital or paper indication that one has been subjected to what is essentially a gene-altering injection – are not in the least about healthcare. They are simply the means by which vaccine apartheid can be enforced. In Nazi Germany, Jews, Slavs, Roma, homosexuals, and the physically and mentally disabled were the Untermenchen – inferior peoples who contaminated the Aryan race. The propaganda accompanying Nazi totalitarianism was so overwhelming that many Germans were afraid to speak up when such people began to be taken away, ultimately to death camps. In 2021, healthy unvaccinated people have become the Untermenchen of Covidian state terror.[6] The unvaxxed are the unmentionables, the untouchables, the unclean – vectors of disease. It matters not that this portrayal contains not one shred of truth. All forms of totalitarianism are based on lies, and given that lockdown fascism arrives so late in the lifespan of capitalism, Covid lies are even more outlandish and more illogical than the “master race” lies of the 1930s.

Despite decades of Western liberal and government backed measures outlawing discrimination against women, indigenous people, various religions, political opinion and more, Covid has rendered these a virtual dead letter. Unless it is halted, the unvaccinated are now and will be subjected not only to discrimination but a form of legalized scapegoating. The unvaccinated can be blamed for ALL of society’s woes – even the lockdowns themselves. The unvaccinated can be blamed for border closures, economic shutdowns, millions of workers being thrown out of employment, the closure of small and medium sized businesses – almost anything. It’s all false, but the masses loathe lockdowns and yearn for a return to “normal”. If not stopped, the unvaccinated could be subjected to a series of escalating punitive measures, such as: being banned from public places, being banned from work, being banned from social security, being forcibly vaccinated, being sent to quarantine camps, or even being murdered.[7]In other words, Covid terror has all but abolished centuries of liberal and humanitarian progress on the protection of the individual from the abuse of state power.

Fightback well underway

Despite this apparent apocalypse, there is no reason for working people to despair. On the contrary, the anti-lockdown movement is leading a fightback against the Covid juggernaut. In France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Holland, Greece, Australia and beyond, millions have repeatedly marched against lockdowns, facemask mandates and dangerous Covid injections. This force, regardless of its political physiognomy and its current leadership, is the only entity standing between the last vestiges of free will and a descent into an unspeakable apartheid fuelled barbarism. So far, it has demonstrated organisation, determination and bravery on the basis of its propensity for self-education.  However, to win decisive victories, it needs to learn and develop a political line which is capable of shaking the very foundations of a lawless global capitalism.

The obstacles to the winning of freedom are not so much the apparatus of the capitalist state – the police, the courts, the army, the civil service bureaucracy – although this is formidable. There are not enough police to control millions of workers, and never can be. What the lockdown state does is to empower deputies which act with para-state power. Friends, family, neighbours, work colleagues, community members and others turn on “their own” and become auxiliaries of Covid terrorism, while sincerely believing they are protecting society from a deadly plague. This would scarcely occur were it not for the putrefaction of the absurdly misnamed “socialist” parties and the Union officials, whose base treachery and defection to the side of billionaire finance capital is unmistakable.

Vaccine apartheid, and all aspects of Covid repression, was never about a real or imagined virus. At this historical stage, capitalism must inflict pain and suffering on workers if it is to survive. Therefore, socialism is now critically urgent. The key prerequisite for this is a workers’ vanguard party, linked internationally. To get there, Marxist revolutionaries have no option but to fight shoulder to shoulder with the anti-lockdown movement, while seeking to draw the masses into a pitch battle for the establishment of workers’ republics and collectivised and planned economies.

WORKERS  LEAGUE


www.redfireonline.com


E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

[1] https://healthimpactnews.com/2021/death-rates-skyrocket-in-israel-following-pfizer-experimental-covid-vaccines/ (05-08-2021)

[2] https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/human-rights/french-face-six-months-in-jail-for-entering-a-bar-or-restaurant-without-a-covid-pass/ (05-08-2021)

[3] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-killer-vaccine-worldwide-7-9-billion-people/5749363 (05-08-2021)

[4] https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/dr-charles-hoffe-issues-vaccine-warning/ (05-08-2021)

[5] https://undercurrents723949620.wordpress.com/2021/05/22/how-many-have-died-from-covid-vaccines/ (05-08-2021)

[6] https://off-guardian.org/2021/08/02/the-road-to-totalitarianism/ (05-08-2021)

[7] https://leftlockdownsceptics.com/2021/07/collaboration-or-resistance-part-3-scapegoats/ (07-08-2021)


Free Queensland!

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Brisbane lockdown

shower-stairs.blogspot.com

02-08-2021: An iron curtain has descended across South-East Queensland, Australia’s “Sunshine State”. Deputy Premier Steven Miles announced the extension of a three-day lockdown to eight days,[1] which could be extended further on a whim. 11 Local Government Areas stretching from the Gold Coast in the south to the Sunshine Coast in the north have been condemned to lockdowns, with stay-at-home orders in place, workplaces shuttered, and most small and medium-sized businesses threatened with state prosecution for opening. Facemask mandate rules arguably now cross the line of child abuse, with all students from Year 7 to Year 12[2] somehow being required to mask up, expressly restricting oxygen flows and risking nausea, dizziness and worse side-effects. This is allegedly in response to a 17-year-old student who attends Indooroopilly High School in the west of Brisbane, “testing positive” to Covid-19.[3]

Propaganda “pandemic”

The notion that society is faced with a deadly plague which can be spread by healthy people with no symptoms is farcical. At best, the SARS-CoV-2 virus – if it exists at all – presents virtually no risk to people of working age, and none at all to young people, let alone school children. Covid-19 is a pseudo pandemic[4] which is fuelled by a corporate media barrage so intense it has swindled legions of the most highly educated professionals in many fields. Relentless propaganda from politicians and Big Tech dominated social media has created societal conditions where logical fallacies are repeated often simply to avoid the ominous threat of social opprobrium or outright ostracism. In many cases, workers have little choice but to go along with the Covid narrative just to remain in employment. Other workers in areas deemed “non-essential” have been thrown out of work or stood down without pay.

The claims that some high school student contracted Covid which risks an “outbreak” of the “highly infectious Delta variant” are little more than a tissue of lies. As are the claims that lockdowns, facemasks and Covid vaccines “work” to help contain a virulent disease. Such prattle is only part of the ideology of lockdown fascism, which at its roots has origins which are economic and political, rather than scientific and medical. Lockdowns are a component of “The Great Reset”, where capitalism self-inflicts partial economic destruction in a (vain) attempt to restart itself after more than a decade of flatlining stagnation. The “Global Financial Crisis” (which was not global at all, given that the People’s Republic of China was barely affected) in 2008 was the “third slump” which set the stage for Western economic contraction and the subsequent drive to imperialist wars of regime change in Libya, Syria, Ukraine and many other countries. During the 2010s, workers’ wages in the West barely increased at all, leading even some employer associations into calling for wage increases! This is the background which point to some of the real and underlying reasons for “Covid” lockdowns from 2020 onwards.

Political fight in the balance

Despite having launched lockdown fascism early in 2020 and having all the resources of the state and government behind it, the ruling classes internationally do not have it their own way. In fact, the Australian ruling class is politically losing the Covid agenda, replicating the situation in many countries in Europe and the United States of America (USA). One could reasonably claim that the lockdown extension in Queensland was but an act of political retaliation against the working masses. Just one week prior, some 20 000 people had marched through the streets of Brisbane, as part of “Worldwide Rallies for Freedom”. They were joined by at least 40 000 in Sydney and Melbourne,[5] which were under strict lockdowns at the time. Tens of thousands of people in each of the major population centres on the Eastern Seaboard represents mass rejection of the entire narrative of Covid hysteria and the overtly political repression which is used to enforce it. Lockdowns, facemasks, Covid vaccines, tracking and tracing, state and national border shutdowns, the throwing of millions of workers out of work, the driving of medium and small businesses into bankruptcy, the ludicrous list of ever-changing rules and restrictions on social, family and even intimate partner life – all of it is intolerable.

The political fightback against lockdown domination is now so widespread that the ruling class is responding with more outrageous actions – more lockdowns, more “variant” propaganda, and more repression. In New South Wales, Australian soldiers are being used to enforce Covid lockdowns. In Brisbane on the morning of August 2, police blocked off access to the CBD to prevent a snap protest against lockdowns from going ahead. Those who attempted to walk to the rallying point at the Botanical Gardens were turned away, some with fines for exceeding the 10-kilometre travel limit. Protestors made a tactical retreat to New Farm Park, only to be again dispersed by a heavy police presence. This is evidence that the massive scale of the July 24 anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane represented a “tipping point” in the political fight between the anti-lockdown movement and the forces of capitalist state repression. The anti-lockdown movement now has the upper hand, partially because it is the living refutation of every one of the government’s Covid lies.

The sheer determination of the anti-lockdown protestors is something to behold. In a certain way, the anti-lockdown movement confirms one of the central tenets of Marxism: that the working-class will at a certain point be compelled to defend themselves against the despotic terror of capitalist rule, irrespective of their current political views and beliefs. To be sure, the anti-lockdown movement also contains a large contingent of small business owners wedded to various forms of nationalism. Nonetheless, in practice they are resisting the dire encroachments of finance capital, which only offers a future of political tyranny and economic collapse. This is why leftists need to work side-by-side with all sections of the anti-lockdown movement even if some of them regard themselves as “right-wing”. Real revolutionaries must find a way to forge a workers’ vanguard party through the mass movement which must ultimately pose the question of socialism or lockdown barbarism.

WORKERS  LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-02/queensland-coronavirus-new-cases-update-lockdown-brisbane-school/100341828 (02-08-2021)

[2] https://www.qld.gov.au/health/conditions/health-alerts/coronavirus-covid-19/current-status/public-health-directions/restrictions-impacted-areas (02-08-2021)

[3] https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/indooroopilly-state-school-closes-after-student-tests-positive-for-covid-19-20210730-p58e9x.html (02-08-2021)

[4] https://off-guardian.org/2021/06/29/pseudopandemic/ (02-08-2021)

[5] https://www.instagram.com/p/CRs–eUNfA_/ (02-08-2021)

Australia: Mass Resistance to Lockdown Hell

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sydney freedom protest

Above: Sydney anti-lockdown protest, July 24. http://www.worldpoliticnews.com

25-07-2021: While Europe and the USA are in the process of at least temporarily lifting “Covid” lockdowns, Australia is headed in the opposite direction. Currently, 13.5 million – around half of the country – are under harsh lockdowns imposed by soulless politicians. Many of the lockdown measures and a dizzying list of rules and restrictions are illegal even according to state laws and the federal constitution, but the capitalist state imposes them with the threat of police enforcement. The states of New South Wales (NSW), Victoria (VIC) and South Australia (SA) resemble dystopian hellscapes, with most citizens effectively confined to house arrest. In NSW, the government lists 16 “reasonable excuses” for people to leave their homes and allows 14 reasons for an “essential gathering”. In all other cases, gatherings of more than 2 people are expressly forbidden.[1]

If people breach the draconian “health directions”, they can face an on-the-spot fine of $1652 for individuals and $9913 for businesses, with larger fines able to be issued through the courts.[2] In Tasmania (TAS), the island state on the southernmost tip of the country, people can be fined $16 800 or six months in jail – for not being at home.[3] Western Sydney, areas which have a high concentration of residents from migrant backgrounds, are subject to heavier restrictions than those imposed on people living in the East. Some workers from Western Sydney are not allowed to leave their local government area – even in the case of work. Residents from the Cumberland, Blacktown, Fairfield, Liverpool and Canterbury-Bankstown local government cordons can only travel outside these areas for work if they are on a list of “authorised workers”.[4] In addition, police in Western Sydney have reportedly been stationed at some shopping centres and have been checking the bags of those exiting – allegedly to ensure that shoppers were only purchasing “essential items”.[5]

This was never about a virus

18 months after “two weeks to flatten the curve”, any claim that Covid lockdowns are about public health is vexatious. If the SARS-CoV-2 virus exists at all, it has an infection fatality rate of between 0.1% and 0.5% at the most, comparable to a medium round of influenza.[6] Mandatory facemask mandates are risible, given that some studies have concluded that facemasks have no effect on the transmission of a respiratory virus, and may even increase the likelihood of infection, due to the collection of saliva and mucus within.[7] Lockdowns prevent access to fresh air and sunlight, one of the key means which naturally combat cold and flu coronaviruses. Lockdowns create enormous psychological and physical distress, at least partially due to a virtual abolition of social contact, and the prevention of some being able to earn wages with which to pay rent and food. The lockdowns are predicated on the false notion of “asymptomatic spread” – where people who are 100% healthy and have no symptoms, can allegedly spread a deadly virus. The tests used to determine “positive Covid” are likely to produce false positives at a rate as high as 97%,[8] due to their epic misuse.

The Covid “vaccine”, which is being pushed onto world populations with an overblown propaganda campaign, should not actually be referred to as a vaccine. A vaccine, until Covid came along, was a method of conferring immunity from infection to a particular illness – providing it worked at all. The Covid “vaccine” – from Big Pharma corporations Pfizer, Moderna, Astra-Zeneca and Johnson & Johnson – does not at all deliver immunity from anything, let alone the SARS-Cov-2 virus (presuming it exists). If it does anything at all, it will only reduce[9] what are effectively cold and flu symptoms. And this is IF you are lucky enough not to have any side effects. Side effects from the Covid “vaccine” include sudden death, Bell’s Palsy and other permanently disabling conditions.[10]

Yet one and a half years into a supposed “pandemic”, it is becoming superfluous to rationally discuss science and medicine. Facts, much less scientific and medical research, are given little respect due to the intensely political use of “Covid-19” by the ruling class in their struggle for survival. This was never about a real or imagined virus. If anyone has any doubt as to the deeply misanthropic thrust of lockdowns, check the recent statement of NSW “Health” Officer Dr Kerry Chant, who warned the public that talking or being friendly to neighbours should be avoided due to the spread of Covid![11] Part of the nefarious agenda is clearly to physically separate workers from each other, in order to prevent them from fighting back against the terms of their “New Normal” slavery.

What is the agenda?

If the deliberate collapse of whole economies and almost limitless political repression of working people is not actually about a virus – what is the agenda? In a word – fascism. This is not an intentional exaggeration, but a description of what workers must resist. For despite its notorious history, fascism is not always immediately recognisable. This is because it can assume many different forms. It does not have to assume the form of a far-right Nazi type party or movement, which appears to be an outsider which gradually or rapidly acquires mainstream support. That is only one type and succeeding forms of fascism do not have to adhere to that model. As Robert Lindsay writes, fascism can and does call itself just about anything. In fact, there have been fascist movements which have called themselves anti-fascist.[12] Today’s lockdown fascism is using the vehicle of liberalism and thus the rhetoric of “progressive humanitarianism” to sustain and grow itself.

This means that it can use the existing capitalist parliamentary parties – conservative or social-democratic – as its political driver. It does not have to create a new party or movement. Therefore, acting as willing auxiliaries of the parliamentary parties and hence of lockdown fascism are – wait for it – Trade Union officials and the parties of the former “left”. This has created mass confusion and political disorientation, but it is something we must understand if we are to defeat it. Union officials have a material interest, despite themselves, in restricting working people within the confines of capitalist relations of production. If capitalism enters a period of severe economic crisis and finds that it can no longer entertain the bourgeois democratic and civil rights pertaining to liberal democracy, the ruling class will simply junk them in favour of fascism. Trade Union officials retain their well-heeled positions irrespective of whether capitalism uses the liberal democratic or fascist shell. For example, the officials of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), instead of fighting against lockdown fascism, are instead one of its key protagonists. They have even pushed for four days paid pandemic leave so workers can receive the Covid vax and recover from the dangerous side effects![13]

“Left” parties uphold lockdowns

Despite decades of proclaiming themselves “Marxists” and “revolutionaries” and “socialists”, almost every Australian left party has been eager to deputise as agents of finance capital, even while it launched its most devastating broadside against the working class in history. They do not appear to notice that lockdown fascism has arrived, nor that they themselves are participating in it. In fact, some of them have so wholly swallowed the pandemic of lies, they adopt positions to the right of the ruling class itself. For example, the Trotskyist Platform does not appear to notice the devastation they are in the middle of in Sydney, when they write that half of the country “has had” to be locked down! They do not at all oppose lockdowns, but only the Morrison government for not ensuring a fast enough Covid vax rollout. They whine that some in Sydney had to wait six hours for a Covid test.[14] These “leftists” complain that there is not enough Covid hysteria, and not enough state repression!

Socialist Alternative (SAlt) direct their fire at the Liberal Party for not enacting lockdowns earlier. Fantastically, they claim that by delaying lockdowns in NSW, the current lockdown now has to go longer.[15] Despite millions of workers being thrown into unemployment, they still claim that lockdowns are in the interest of “public health” ! The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) are now known for pressuring the ruling class from the right for harsher, stricter and longer lockdowns. They appear blind to the adverse consequences of closing down whole parts of economies, removing already threadbare democratic and civil rights, and giving cops an almost free rein to keep workers restrained. Incredibly, they claim that the NSW government had not introduced a “genuine” lockdown, which meant that some businesses were able to remain open.[16] Perish the thought that some workers can keep their jobs!

The Socialist Alliance (SAll) call for an extension of the incredibly invasive tracking, tracing and testing.[17] The “Marxist-Leninist” Communist Party of Australia (CPA),[18] Communist Workers Party of Australia (CWPA),[19] and Communist Party of Australia Marxist-Leninist (CPA-ML)[20] all blame the government for not imposing swifter and harder lockdowns! One wonders just how much poverty and destitution would have been adequate for these “revolutionaries”. The other “Marxist-Leninist” party, the Australian Communist Party (ACP)’ are a little more circumspect about actually calling for harsher lockdowns. Their strategy seems to be to avoid mentioning them, such as calling for the defence of democratic rights while refusing to even mouth the word “lockdown”.[21]

To their partial credit, Solidarity actually recognise that the current lockdowns are pushing people to breaking point, and that many workers turned out on July 24 to protest against them. However, they then go on to warn against protests that seek to “let the virus rip”.[22] They claim that the rallies were led by “reactionary forces”, while not recognising how reactionary it is to side with Big Pharma and Big Tech against workers demonstrating for the right to turn up for work. The Spartacist League (SL) have distinguished themselves by adopting a position which opposes lockdowns, albeit a full 12 months after they began.[23] This would have been a positive step towards the defence of the working class, but it is overshadowed by their wholesale acceptance of the “Covid-19 outbreak” nonsense, which remains undistilled bourgeois ideology. A foot in both class camps is impossible to sustain.

Resist lockdown terror

As Connor Kelly writes, there are psychological reasons why many refuse to recognise the reality of lockdown fascism. Almost everyone imagines themselves to be a good and moral person, who cares about the welfare of others.[24] Virtually no one wishes to identify as a fascist, and the thought that they themselves could be one is dismissed out of hand as a self-defence mechanism. Simultaneously, they are policing and enforcing lockdown fascism against those who even question the logic behind the removal of almost every right that has been won in the past. They even dismiss the fact of millions of workers being thrown into unemployment as an “unfortunate” by-product of a “pandemic”.

In a similar way, so-called left parties which have enthusiastically signed up to capitalist imperialism as Covid enforcers cannot conceive themselves as reinforcing 21st century fascism. They imagine themselves to be “leftists”, and thus dismiss the very possibility that they could be being used by the very forces they have sworn themselves to oppose. They have not been able to recognise how politics has switched sides over the last 20 years, and how it was turned upside down during 2020. Stuck in the 20th century, they push themselves further away from workers in dire need of direction.

Thankfully, the anti-lockdown movement has taken up the mantle of the struggle against fascism. During the “Worldwide Rallies for Freedom” on July 24, tens of thousands mobilised across Australia to protest against barbaric lockdowns, facemask mandates and dangerous vaccines. Numbers are disputed, but there were at least 15 000 in Brisbane, 30 000 in Sydney, and 5000 in Melbourne.[25] Fascism cannot be combatted without confronting the capitalism from which it emerges. Therefore, the urgent task for genuine Marxists is to help build the anti-lockdown movement despite the disparate political forces involved. At the same time, the winning of the most class-conscious elements to the painstaking task of the construction of a workers vanguard party remains the key to breaking the back of lockdown fascism. Out of the wreckage of a crumbling capitalism, a socialist order must rise.

WORKERS  LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

[1] Government Gazette No 65 of 30 March 2020 pages 1149 to 1163 (nsw.gov.au) (25-07-2021)

[2] Coronavirus in Australia: Most of the country is effectively in full lockdown as state governments help stop the spread | 7NEWS (25-07-2021)

[3] Tasmania’s home lockdown order for coronavirus spread explained | The Examiner | Launceston, TAS (25-07-2021)

[4] Sydney COVID: Cumberland, Blacktown residents subject to tighter worker restrictions after cases continue to surge (smh.com.au) (25-07-2021)

[5] Police spotted waiting outside a Kmart in western Sydney to check customers’ shopping bags (clikati.com) (25-07-2021)

[6] https://swprs.org/facts-about-covid-19/ (25-07-2021)

[7] https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/html/10.1055/a-1174-6591 (25-07-2021)

[8] https://www.globalresearch.ca/nucleic-acid-testing-technologies-use-polymerase-chain-reaction-pcr-detection-sars-cov-2/5739959 (25-07-2021)

[9] https://off-guardian.org/2021/07/23/new-normal-newspeak-2-vaccine/ (25-07-2021)

[10] https://www.sott.net/article/447459-Objective-Health-The-Covid-Vaccine-Lottery-What-Side-Effects-Will-You-Get (25-07-2021)

[11] EVIL Dr. Kerry Chant says: DO NOT TALK TO YOUR NEIGHBOURS or be friendly, because of COVID (brandnewtube.com) (25-07-2021)

[12] Alt Left: Trotsky on Fascism: One of the Best Analyses of Fascism Ever Written – Beyond Highbrow (25-07-2021)

[13] Federal Government must provide four days paid vaccination leave for aged and disability care (actu.org.au) (25-07-2021)

[14] FREE LEFT-WING POLITICAL PRISONER CHAN HAN CHOI! | Trotskyist Platform (25-07-2021)

[15] Liberal governments’ failures are the reason we are in lockdown | Red Flag (25-07-2021)

[16] Australian state government declares “national emergency” in Sydney but rejects calls for sharp lockdown – World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org) (25-07-2021)

[17] To defeat COVID-19 workers need income support | Green Left (25-07-2021)

[18] HARD SHUT DOWN NOW! – CPA (25-07-2021)

[19] THE AGITATOR (communistworkerspartyofaustralia.org.au) (25-07-2021)

[20] Vanguard – Communist Party of Australia Marxist Leninist (cpaml.org) (25-07-2021)

[21] Don’t Discount Democratic Rights — Australian Communist Party (auscp.org.au) (25-07-2021)

[22] ‘Freedom rallies’ no answer to lockdown woes – Solidarity Online (25-07-2021)

[23] Down With the Lockdowns! – The Working Class Must Defend Itself (icl-fi.org) (25-07-2021)

[24] Collaboration or resistance, part 1: Our brand new shiny fascist state – Left Lockdown Sceptics (25-07-2021)

[25] Australians say ‘no more’: Mass freedom protests staged in capital cities – TOTT News (25-07-2021)

Free New South Wales!

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Covid border closure

http://www.sydneynewstoday.com

15-07-2021: One and a half years after “two weeks to flatten the curve”, the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) is enduring one of the harshest lockdowns ever imposed. The draconian dictates of Covid rules enforced by police are a laundry list of inconceivable demands which defy elementary tenets of logic. In the Greater Sydney area, residents can only leave home if they have a “reasonable excuse”. Facemasks are mandatory more or less everywhere except inside your own home. The rules even state that facemasks must be worn in the stairwells and corridors of an apartment block. Church services are banned and can only be live streamed online. At these online services two people are permitted to sing or chant – provided they are 3 metres apart! Weddings are essentially banned, and people cannot enter Greater Sydney and other regions of NSW to attend them. Pubs, clubs, restaurants, hair salons, cinemas, music halls and much more are all closed down by government order.[1] With some exceptions, culture, religion, sport and most avenues of public interaction have ceased – with no given date as to when these restrictions will be lifted.

Pandemic of lies

The only pandemic which exists is a pandemic of lies. The current lockdowns in NSW are said to be in response to the death of one (!) 90 year old woman who allegedly died in the Liverpool Hospital days after “testing positive” to Covid-19 via contact with a family member.(!)[2] Working people have little time to verify what they are bombarded with by the corporate media and captive politicians. Corporate backed politicians are professional liars, and they are more than adept at spinning lie after lie to “explain” more lockdowns, more facemask mandates, more vaccine hysteria, and on and on. Their system produced a television advertisement featuring a woman gasping for breath in a hospital bed, with messages urging “Stay at home. Get tested. Book your vaccination”. Some have immediately labelled the advertisement “next level gaslighting”.[3] Mountains of irrational fear is the only ideological weapon in the arsenal of a system whose credibility has long expired.

If the SARS-CoV-2 virus exists at all (which is doubtful)[4], it is likely to be just one of the coronaviruses which cause common colds and influenza each winter. This is one reason why the anti-microbials Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine are effective treatments[5], as are doses of Vitamin C and Vitamin D. Sunshine can provide the latter, and along with fresh air and exercise, a protective barrier against “Covid-19” – which is essentially a renamed flu. Yet fresh air and exercise is precisely what people in NSW are being denied under lockdowns, along with the immense psychological damage of aggravated anxiety and depression. Going into lockdown is not like going to jail – because even then each inmate knows exactly when they will be released. Unscrupulous politicians fanning corona doublespeak, on the other hand, do not announce permanent lockdowns. They only say “it depends on case numbers”, or even threaten to extend lockdowns if people do not follow the rules!

Class attack

Covid repression is the crisis of liberal democracy as the principal form of bourgeois rule. In the same vein, lockdowns are the clearest example of capitalism reducing itself to a grotesque absurdity, and a historical anachronism. Private production for private profit based on the exploitation of social labour was, at one time in the distant past, a historical advance on the rule of feudal monarchs. The material economic conditions for the supersession of capitalism and its replacement with socialism were present at the time of World War I. The 20th century could have been the final nail in capitalism’s coffin, but for various reasons, the working class in the West was unable to cohere the requisite political leadership which could shatter the chains of wage slavery through workers’ revolution.

Hence, the longer the life of capitalism is extended, the more inevitable the appearance of fascism becomes. Liberal democracy – which always was only bourgeois democracy, (democracy for the rich, the wealthiest millionaires and billionaires) contains far too many civil and democratic rights for a ruling class which is locked in a life and death struggle for its own survival. Finance capital therefore simply dispenses with the usual formalities of parliamentary rule and reverts to rule by unrestrained violence or the threat of violence, in this case – lockdown fascism. Fascism is the last political resort for capital but faced with its own demise it will not hesitate with its deployment. Lockdown fascism, combined with the attendant Covid narrative, is the current phase of capitalist imperialism. Even if lockdowns are on again, off again, Covid nonsense (facemasks, vaccines, tracking and tracing, restrictions, rules etc.) can be extended permanently. Unless overthrown by an uprising, the unbearable and intolerable Covid repression will remain, and there will be no “back to normal”.

Rise Up!

Despite this, there is no reason to despair. Vast swathes of the masses are sick and tired of lockdowns, and/or loathe and despise them. If this overwhelming sentiment is harnessed by an organised and determined political leadership, the lockdowns could be tossed into the trash can of history. An anti-lockdown movement has arisen and has mobilised millions of people around the world repeatedly – from Australia to the USA to Europe and beyond. As important as the successes of this movement are, they are partially based on the demands for freedom, peace and liberty. While this is entirely understandable, these abstract concepts mean different things to different classes. Small and medium sized business certainly has been crushed by the lockdowns, but it is the working class which has suffered the worst with millions of job losses – meaning a loss of livelihood. While the petty-bourgeoisie certainly demands an end to lockdowns and Covid repression, by virtue of their class position they cannot demand an end to capitalism and its demonic offspring – lockdown fascism.

While the urgent political task for workers is the building of the anti-lockdown movement, movements in themselves are limited in what they can achieve. To achieve mighty tasks such as the overturn of capital and the forging of a workers’ republic, the working class must have a party of its own. Due to the abject apostasy and perfidy of the Union officials and the lockdown “left”, there is a vacant political gulf which must be filled by a Marxist vanguard party. Such a party can help lead the struggle to abolish lockdown tyranny as the first vital step towards the triumph of a socialist order.

WORKERS  LEAGUE


www.redfireonline.com


E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

[1] https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/rules/greater-sydney#places-that-are-closed (14-07-2021)

[2] https://news.yahoo.com/australia-announces-first-coronavirus-death (14-07-2021)

[3] https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/coronavirus/critics-say-insensitive-covid19-ad-should-be-taken-off-air-immediately (14-07-2021)

[4] https://italytravelideas.com/the-virus-is-fictitious-cdc-sued-by-7-universities-scientists-for-huge-fraud/ (14-07-2021)

[5] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/elites-worried-covid-cases-india-plummet-government-promotes-ivermectin-hydroxychloroquine-use/ (14-07-2021)

For A Permanent End To Lockdown Terror!

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no lockdown pic

Image from youtube

02-07-2021: As at June 30, more than 12 million Australians are in lockdown – reportedly with 2 people in intensive care units (ICU) and no one on a ventilator. Nearly 18 months after “two weeks to flatten the curve”, the Covid narrative barely has a leg to stand on. Whether or not the SARS-CoV-2 virus exists, there is no “pandemic”, and there is no “health emergency”. If there was, world governments would not have to even try to convince people of the presence of danger. The spurious claims of a suspiciously named Delta variant, which is allegedly both more deadly and more contagious than the original, are farcical to those who possess a scintilla of critical thought. Rather, the latest phase of the Covid-19 psy-op has been wheeled out to justify more lockdowns, forced facemasks, border closures, economic shutdowns, job cuts, vaccine passports and a dangerous “Covid vaccine” rollout.[1]

Devastation of lockdowns

Arguably the worst impact of lockdowns is the drastic damage to the mental health of the most vulnerable, and to those who are losing hope for the future. A recent study found that 1 in 10 Victorians seriously contemplated suicide during the height of the lockdowns enforced in that state during 2020.[2] Young people, unpaid carers and those with a disability were found to be among the most affected. When young people have little or no expectation that their lives will be fulfilling, we can be rest assured that the entire system is rotting alive, and desperately needs replacing. The sudden impact of on again, off again lockdowns, with all the uncertainty it brings – is the major factor in creating a situation where masses of working people are seeking immediate solutions. In such conditions, revolution no longer appears as a wild or romantic idea, but one worth serious consideration.

The cleavages in society have become palpable. We are now dealing with divisions over the very interpretation of reality itself. The evidence is now overwhelming that Covid is a cover for a political agenda of mass repression and economic destruction from which billionaires benefit. Yet as CJ Hopkins has advised, we are not currently in a rational debate with both sides considering evidence for their respective cases.[3] We are not dealing with the sober assessment of facts. We can show the Covid proponents scientific studies which find that facemasks offer no discernible protection and are even harmful. We can point to innumerable studies showing the skyrocketing incidences of domestic violence under lockdowns. We can point to doctors noticing the terrible psychological effect on children that occurs when they are prevented from going to school and seeing their friends. We can show figures which outline how many workers have been thrown out of employment and are struggling to feed themselves. Covid advocates are immune to all of this. This is not a debate or a discussion – for they will not allow it. This is totalitarianism, which brooks no dissent. Even if its subscribers view themselves psychologically as humanitarians, social practice demonstrates the opposite.

Covid is the class line

This is because Covid has defined the class line. Despite all the various shades of opinion on both sides, those who uphold lockdowns and a Covid vax stand on the side of the ruling elites, and those who oppose or even just resent lockdowns and the Covid agenda, stand on the side of the oppressed masses. In other words, those backing Covid defend big capital, while those exposing the Covid fraud defend the well-being of toiling humanity. The political rule of big capital has coincided with the rise and now rapid decline of liberal democracy. The descent of liberal democracy into today’s lockdown lunacy is the most dramatic expression of the fact that capitalism is now so outdated and outmoded, it has devolved into a form of fascism in a dire attempt to save itself. To survive today, capital must attack the wages and living conditions of the working class. To carry out the sheer scale of the assault, capital enlists the most extreme form of political repression ever enacted – lockdowns.

Even if the ruling class has lifted lockdowns in some places, or impose only “snap” short lockdowns, the Covid agenda has an entire scheme attached – tracking and tracing, vaccine passports, mass vaccination with an experimental and highly dangerous injection, state and national border shutdowns, border passes or visas to move or travel domestically, and on and on. This is an insidious program, which if not stopped will create a two-tier society – the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, or the clean and unclean. The ruling class is deliberately fostering and fomenting conflict amongst the masses. The “enemy” becomes the “unclean”, rather than the government and the oligarchs themselves.

The most willing foot soldiers of the wealthiest billionaires in history have been Union officials (not members) and parties of the fake left. In contrast to the 20th Century, big capital has opted to use the existing establishment parties of liberalism to impose lockdown fascism. Bourgeois Labor parties, the Democrats in the US, Union officials and organisations making risible claims to be “socialist” have combined to enforce the Covid agenda on disoriented and dismayed workers. As a result, those resisting lockdowns have largely – but not entirely – turned to the right for leadership.

However, lockdowns and the Covid agenda will not be permanently ended without the overthrow of the governments imposing them. This stark reality faces the heroic sections of the masses which have mobilised in their millions around the world for freedom. This movement is critically important and workers must join and build this movement irrespective of different interpretations of what “freedom” means in practice. ALL aspects of lockdowns must be defeated: the injection, job cuts, deliberate economic collapse, tracking and tracing, facemasks, border closures, quarantine camps and so on. Yet the anti-lockdown movement must move in a pro-working class direction to achieve its aims. A popular movement is bound within certain limits. To this end, we advance the demands for:

  1. A six-hour work day
  2. Public ownership of energy, infrastructure, banks
  3. A workers’ government

WORKERS  LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

[1] https://www.globalresearch.ca/towards-a-third-wave-combating-d-the-dangerous-delta-variant-the-mathematical-lockdown-model/5748695 (30-06-2021)

[2] https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/1-in-10-people-in-victoria-considered-suicide-due-to-chos-health-advice.6128417/ (30-06-2021)

[3] https://off-guardian.org/2021/06/21/manufacturing-new-normal-reality/ (30-06-2021)

No To Vaccine Passports!

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covid pass

http://www.abc57.com

13-06-2021: “Papers Please..” This infamous phrase now needs updating in the dystopian world emerging from the on-again, off-again lockdowns imposed the world over since 2020. Now it may be a digital pass which is required to travel, to catch public transport, or even to shop at your local supermarket. Vaccine Passports have been launched in Australia,[1] following the lead of the Zionist Israeli state, which issued a Green Pass. Israel’s “immunity” pass enables users to access supermarkets, theatres, concert halls, indoor restaurants and bars.[2] While it will be difficult in a legal sense to mandate injections with the Covid-19 “vaccine”, there are other ways of forcing people to subject themselves to the dangers of an experimental gene manipulation system, which already has thousands of adverse reactions – including death – being reported.[3] These include: No jab no job, No jab no school or university, no jab no sport, no jab no entry to cultural events, and on and on.

Vaccine Apartheid

It is notable that in Australia a “vaccine passport” was renamed as a “digital certificate”,[4] due to a potential public backlash. This is because many people can see – even if they fall for a version of the fear pandemic – that vaccine passports will seriously divide society into hostile camps. Dr Clare Wenham recently expressed the fear that many hold: vaccine passports are totally unethical, and they create a two-tier society which inevitably leads to civil unrest – “Vaccine Apartheid”.[5] Dr Mike Yeadon concurs, and warns about a “Medical Apartheid”, which hands enormous coercive power to the state to wield against unvaccinated people.[6] Indeed, vaccine passports appear to be deliberately designed to cleave society into two – those who blindly (or reluctantly) comply with government dictates, and those who refuse (or think for themselves). The latter can then be characterised as “Covid deniers” – the modern-day equivalent of a Holocaust denier.[7] The possibility that the extreme divisions fostered by Vaccine Passports could well lead to another Holocaust does not seem to figure.

Just as the Covid-19 fear pandemic was never about healthcare, vaccine passports are not about a vaccine or a virus. During an interview, Naomi Wolf stated that “Covid-19” vaccine passports are really about your personal data. Almost any other digital functionality can be loaded onto a platform, not just a vaccine history. Financial history, payment plans, all of your medical history can be added – as has already happened in Israel. This has led to activists being ostracised and placed under constant surveillance.[8] The prognosis is ominous. Vaccine passports build on the bitter conflict which has been deliberately inflamed by soulless politicians through the use of state power to enforce lockdowns, curfews, facemasks and a litany of ever-changing rules which make no logical sense whatsoever. Without exaggeration, vaccine passports are another dire step towards the “train to Auschwitz”.

Covid passport fightback

Many who have been swept up in the hype of the Covid vaccine are unaware that injection does not prevent infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus (assuming it exists), nor does it prevent transmission.[9] It does NOT confer immunity to anything, let alone the dubious coronavirus which allegedly causes “Covid-19”. It MAY reduce the severity of what are most likely to be cold and flu symptoms – while posing a huge risk to your health and even longevity. If the Covid vaccine does not prevent infection or transmission, it is patently obvious that Covid vaccine passports have another purpose entirely. Nor is the Covid vaccine itself exclusively about cold profit for Big Pharma – although there is plenty of that. Pfizer will take home a cool $15 billion in profit from 2021 alone.[10]

Above all, a vaccine passport is part of the lawless political repression accompanying the largest assault on the working class in history – under the code name of Covid-19. The virtual abolition of freedom of movement signified by a vaccine passport is also aimed at working people, as any number of exceptions will be allowed for the wealthy elite. The longer the socio-economic system of capitalism has its life extended, at a certain point its regression into fascism becomes inevitable. The outbreak of the first World War in 1914 was the first clear sign that capitalism no longer served any historically progressive function and had begun to destroy itself. More than 100 years later, capitalism is lurching from crisis to crisis, as it is unable to pull itself out of the latest slump which began in 2008. This is the real material basis of lockdown fascism which reared its ugly head at the beginning of 2020.

While it is true that the nationalist bureaucracies leading the deformed workers’ states (principally the People’s Republic of China – PRC) have also played along with the coronavirus pantomime, it does not follow that lockdown tyranny is part of some kind of “socialist” oppression, taking place via the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations (UN). Nor does it follow that the political leadership of PRC is jointly pushing the march towards the “New World Order” in partnership with the ruling classes of the imperialist West. The Communist Party of China’s (CPC) behaviour in this sphere is merely part of the double deception of “peaceful coexistence” and “socialism in one country”. Under these mistaken theories, the CPC bends over backwards to preserve the status quo – even to the extent of assisting and facilitating political repression both at home and in the West.

This betrayal of the CPC is matched by the treachery of Union officials and the lockdown left (parties which claim to be “revolutionary”, but have in practice enforced lockdowns). Yet there is no reason for despair. Millions of workers energetically reject vaccine passports, reflected in the fact that many church leaders have openly stated that they will not prevent an unvaccinated person from entering their congregations. Mass protest can have the effect of rolling back vaccine passports, even if the ultimate battle against lockdown fascism is yet to be decided. This is why workers must strive to construct organs of workers’ power – with and alongside the anti-lockdown movement.

WORKERS  LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com


E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

[1] https://tottnews.com/2021/06/10/vaccine-passports-launch-in-australia/ (12-06-2021)

[2] https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/01/1020154/israels-green-pass-is-an-early-vision-of-how-we-leave-lockdown/ (12-06-2021)

[3] https://www.globalresearch.ca/alarming-casualty-rates-mrna-vaccines-warrant-urgent-action/5746343?print=1 (12-06-2021)

[4] Why would we need a certificate if they weren’t planning to outcast us? – Reignite Democracy Australia (12-06-2021)

[5] https://tottnews.com/2021/01/22/vaccine-apartheid-immunity-passports/ (12-06-2021)

[6] Halt Vaccine Passports! – OffGuardian (off-guardian.org) (12-06-2021)

[7] “No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, No Unvaxxed” – OffGuardian (off-guardian.org) (12-06-2021)

[8] Naomi Wolf: Mandatory Vaccine Passport Could Lead To The End Of Human Liberty In The West | Video | RealClearPolitics (12-06-2021)

[9] https://www.globalresearch.ca/who-no-guarantee-covid-vaccines-prevent-people-being-infected/5734693 (13-06-2021)

[10] https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/04/23/pandemic-has-shown-pfizer-obsessed-profits-not-saving-lives (13-06-2021)

Free Victoria!

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victoria lockdown

http://www.betterhr.com.au

30-05-2021: For the fourth time, the Australian state of Victoria has been crushed into an inhuman lockdown by compassionless politicians with the threadbare excuse of an “outbreak” of Covid-19. The restrictions imposed on 7 million people are possibly the harshest measures enforced globally since the start of 2020. Facemasks are mandatory virtually everywhere apart from inside your own home. All public gatherings, indoor or outdoor, are banned. No travel beyond a perimeter of 5 kilometres is permitted. Workers must work from home unless they are “authorised”.  Weddings are banned, and there is a 10-person limit for funerals. No religious or church gatherings are permitted if they are in person. All schools and Universities must move to remote “learning” online.[1] The bewildering list goes on and on. Victorians are expected to check a long list of “Covid exposure sites”, recall if they have visited a shopping centre, bar, restaurant, gym etc., get tested and quarantine for 14 days, or until they test negative.[2]  This nightmare scenario goes way beyond what George Orwell envisioned in his dystopian novel about future totalitarianism, 1984.

New round of job losses

At this stage, the lockdown may be lifted in seven days – but there is no certainty about that. At the very least, many workers will lose at least a week of income, and many may again be stood down or face termination. Under “Stage 4” restrictions, employees who remain employed must carry a work permit with them to attend their workplace, which must be downloaded and printed from a government website. The penalty for not having a “work permit” is up to $19, 826 for individuals and $99,132 for businesses that do not comply. Small Business Australia estimated that the lockdown would cost the state $1 billion in revenue, while the Grattan Institute estimated the losses would be $900 million. It is the working class which pays the heaviest price for lockdowns, as business owners can retain their assets while simply laying off staff. Federal Trade Minister Dan Tehan stated that workers without work can go to Centrelink to apply for emergency payments but was unable to say whether any assistance would be offered.[3]

Professor Patrick McGorry, a former Australian of the Year, said that the Stage 4 lockdowns in Melbourne have caused a 20% increase in calls for help with mental health issues, and that “the suicide risk is very serious”.[4] Previous lockdowns in Victoria had already caused a raft of intense mental health issues, such as eating disorders amongst young people. Lockdowns remove social, work and usual exercise patterns, leaving people feeling suffocated.[5] Stress, anxiety and depression are simply turbocharged, devastating wide sectors of society. Aloof politicians attempt to feign concern, by offering platitudes such as the lockdowns are “regrettable but necessary”.

Pandemic of lies

The claim that lockdowns and associated restrictions are about healthcare is preposterous. Lie after lie from politicians and the corporate media attempt to excuse the inexcusable. Lockdowns obviously cause immense suffering, and it is the working class that cops the brunt. While the existence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is disputed,[6] there can be no doubt that the only “pandemic” is a pandemic of lies. Australia’s mortality rate has hovered around 7 deaths per thousand for the past two decades, including the year 2020.[7] There never was, and is not now, a “pandemic”. What has occurred is a deliberately triggered recession so as to “reset” global capitalism.[8]  Bar none, it is the most savage attack on the working class in history. Paraphrasing Russian revolutionary leader L Trotsky, capitalism can only survive by drastically reducing the living and working conditions of the proletariat. Patently, this cannot be done without severe political repression – hence the lockdowns.

We do not hesitate to label lockdown mania as a particular form of fascism. Fascism becomes inevitable the longer the life of capitalism and imperialism is extended. The list of bourgeois democratic rights which capitalism brought in its train during its heyday is significant. Freedom of speech, the right of assembly, the right to protest, the right to a free press, the right to free expression, the right to a civil trial – all of these and more were won alongside the bourgeois struggle against feudalism. Now the system of private production for private profit is in terminal decline, so all of these rights and much more are junked as if they were so much human refuse. For these rights to return, and for humanity to survive, nothing less than the overturn of the profit system through a workers’ revolution will suffice.

For this, clear working-class political leadership is key. The traditional avenues workers have deferred to – the Trade Union officials and left parties – have so betrayed workers it is difficult to find words of description. All Union officials and almost all left organisations[9] have universally backed, and even enforced, barbaric lockdowns together with the very capitalist state they disingenuously claim to oppose. The staggering perfidy and base treachery of these “left-wing” functionaries is epoch making, for all the wrong reasons. They must be unmasked as capital’s gendarmerie.

Despite this, there is no reason to succumb to despair. The vast majority of working people detest lockdowns, facemasks and unrestricted dictatorial power waged against them. The anti-lockdown movement has been, and still is, the only thing standing between the ruling class and an even worse fate. Therefore, it is crucial that workers join and build the anti-lockdown movement as a matter of urgency. It exists in Melbourne, other states of Australia, in Europe and other parts of the globe. Within this movement, Marxists must argue for a pro-working class orientation, as a “people’s movement” is self-limiting. FREE VICTORIA!  FOR A PERMANENT END TO LOCKDOWNS!

WORKERS  LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-27/victoria-lockdown-restrictions-on-masks-gatherings-travel-school/100169450 (30-05-2021)

[2] https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/exposure-sites (30-05-2021)

[3] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-30/dan-tehan-tells-out-of-work-victorians-to-head-to-centrelink/100176828 (30-05-2021)

[4] https://www.news.com.au/national/mental-health-cases-surge-in-victoria-amid-stage-four-lockdown/video/60aa3d37f79bbd519c24b6f4f6af2a8c (30-05-2021)

[5] https://www.smh.com.au/national/surge-in-eating-disorders-reveals-tragedy-of-lockdown-20201212-p56mwy.html (30-05-2021)

[6] https://yukonfreedom.com/1-2-m-reward-to-anyone-providing-an-isolated-sample-of-the-covid-19-virus/ (30-05-2021)

[7] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AUS/australia/death-rate (30-05-2021)

[8] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-2020-worldwide-corona-crisis-destroying-civil-society-engineered-economic-depression-global-coup-detat-and-the-great-reset/5730652 (30-05-2021)

[9] https://redfireonline.com/2021/03/31/year-one-of-the-lockdown-left/ (30-05-2021)