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 21^st 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 20^th 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)

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 20^th 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)

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)

01-05-2021: May 1^st – Labour Day or May Day – is the international workers’ day. Not only does it mark the historical winning of the eight-hour day, it honours the struggle of workers and their Unions and all of their victories for more than 150 years. Today, the working class is faced with the largest assault from billionaire finance capital it has ever faced – lockdowns, facemasks and forced vaccines. Workers have been subjected to a mountain of lies about an alleged “pandemic”, which is easily exposed with basic logic. Elementary critical thinking, let alone a smidgen of independent research, reveals that the “Covid-19 pandemic” is a fraud,[1] and there is another political agenda entirely. Far from being a “public health emergency”, Covid-19 is code for civil war against working people.

Freedom is a right

Transparently, the lockdowns imposed by the capitalist state are not about “stopping the spread” of anything, let alone the most “lethal virus in history” – which, if it exists at all, has a laughably low infection fatality rate of 0.15%.[2] Rather, lockdowns are aimed at preventing workers from organising and collectively resisting millions of job cuts worldwide, and the forcible closure of whole sections of economies. With workers and their families confined to their homes, obviously no protest can take place. At one stroke, the ruling class of an extreme minority imposed the harshest political repression ever seen in history. Bourgeois democratic rights – the right to protest, civil rights, freedom of movement – have been removed and only barely returned. Meanwhile, the world’s billionaires increased their wealth by 54%, or 4 trillion dollars,[3] during the year of lockdowns!

The principal aim of lockdowns is to dramatically depress the cost of labour power, i.e., wages and salaries, and to remove basic working conditions won over more than a century of struggle. To do this, the capitalist state reverted to a form of fascism, in which the primary freedoms workers believed were guaranteed under liberal democracy were removed without apology. If workers cannot leave their homes on pain of prosecution by the state, protest is illegal, facemasks become mandatory, and vaccinations are used to set up a divide between the “clean” and “unclean”, fascism has arrived.

Moreover, tracking and tracing the movement of workers hands the capitalist state virtually unlimited power – even the power to detain entirely healthy people indefinitely. Lockdowns cause exponential health problems themselves – up to and including excess death. The psychological torment and despair of lockdowns, unbearable strain on working families, the resulting huge spike in domestic violence overwhelmingly against women is just for starters. This abomination must be fought.

Unions must fight

When finance capital and its government launch an attack on workers, Unions should be the first to lead the fightback. Unfortunately, virtually without exception, Union officials (as opposed to rank and file members) have rushed to the side of the government of the enemy class. From there they assisted the capitalist state impose lockdowns and the entire “Covid” narrative on their own members and all workers. This betrayal of workers has been all but universal. The capitalist state repeatedly dresses up every assault everywhere – including Anglo/US led wars – as justified by the need to “save lives”. These lies are whoppers, especially since these same governments have been shredding the public health system of funds for some 40 years, in the same way as they have gutted education and basic public services. The capitalist state and its government is the bitter enemy of working people – we are NOT “all in this together” against a barely dangerous virus! On the contrary, the “virus” is being used as a disguise so that workers will not blame the government for a crumbling decline into a dystopian hellscape. Union officials who mimic politicians need to be held to account.

One thing is clear – workers and Unions cannot and will not be able to defend themselves from the Covid assault until and unless they make a clear break with Covid ideology. ALL facets of Covid practice – lockdowns, facemasks, vaccines, bans on travel, state border closures, Covid passports, contact tracing, social distancing, bans on protests, gatherings, marches, religious worship etc – must be rejected in toto. Workers must not comply with ANY Covid dictates issued by the bourgeois state OR by conservative bureaucracies in the deformed workers’ states. Nothing about Covid is to do with healthcare, and everything about it is used as a club with which to beat workers and their Unions. Workers must resist individually where possible, but collective resistance is the most effective.

Build the anti-lockdown movement

This is why it is crucial that workers and their Unions join and help build the anti-lockdown movement. Worldwide, the anti-lockdown movement has mobilised millions across Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Europe, and is continuing to do so. It has somewhat stayed the hand of sadistic governments which force lockdowns in order to increase political repression and partially shutdown economies. But to permanently win an end to lockdowns, the anti-lockdown movement must at the very least take on a pro-working class political character. A mass movement of everyone who stands for freedom is an important first step, there is no doubt. Yet for serious gains and to drive back rapacious elite politicians, a movement for freedom needs to arrest the terrible intrusion of the capitalist state by permeating the resistance with working class demands. The demand for a six-hour work day is vital. In this way, the anti-lockdown movement can be infused with much needed political direction.

Fascism arrives at the precise moment when capitalism is driven into an impasse. As history advises, fascism can only be brought to heel via the entry of the organised working class onto the stage of history, via its preparation for the task of establishing its own rule. A vanguard party guided by genuine Marxism is vital for these urgent tasks, to propel the fight for freedom.

WORKERS  LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

---

[1] https://degraw.substack.com/ (26-04-2021)

[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/eci.13554 (26-04-2021)

[3] https://inequality.org/great-divide/global-billionaire-wealth-surges-pandemic/ (26-04-2021)