BLACK
LIVES MATTER – IN THE USA, AUSTRALIA AND LIBYA!
23-07-2016 – The deadly intimidation towards African-Americans residing in the United
States of America continues unabated. Police in the US routinely extinguish
their lives without fear of being held to account. Alton Sterling and Philando
Castille follow Mike Brown and Tamir Rice as only the most well-known US
citizens to have been blown away by cops. Latino Americans and a small minority
of white Americans are also taken out without cause, but the overwhelming
majority are African-Americans, suffering the brunt of a racist society founded
on slavery. The website Killed by Police tracks the fatalities committed by
cops in the US. It lists 96 fatalities in May this year, followed by 100 in
June.[1]
That is, close to two hundred in two months – with African-Americans
predominating.
The daily
discrimination perpetrated against African-Americans in the US takes on a
plethora of forms. African-Americans suffer higher levels of unemployment, vast
inequalities in financial wealth as opposed to white Americans, higher rates of
poverty, lack of access to higher education, disproportionately higher levels
of incarceration and much more. Approximately one quarter of African-Americans
live below the poverty line in the US, compared to less than 10 per cent of
white Americans. African-American males have a 1 in 4 chance of being
imprisoned, compared with white American males having a 1 in 23 chance of being
imprisoned.[2]
US society is falling
apart at the seams, but it is important to trace this latest unravelling to the
devastating impact of the “Global” Financial Crisis which began in 2008. The
“normal” functioning of capitalism in the US proceeds with extreme racism
against African-Americans at the best of times, but when the profit system
falls into crisis, working people and the most oppressed are made to pay for
it. It is for this reason that there has been a spike in the number and extent
of brutal police killings of African-Americans in the last couple of years. Capitalism
means the breakdown of society. In the US, this means even more extreme racial
oppression domestically, combined with
even more US led wars of regime change internationally. The two are
interlinked, and actions in response should reflect this reality.
The theme of “Black
Lives Matter” is also directly applicable to the Australian context. Here, the
Aboriginal people, who had been custodians of this continent for at least 40
000 years before British colonisation, continue to endure racial oppression no
less significant than that which occurs in the US. After almost being wiped out
in a genocidal war of occupation which lasted for 150 years, the Aboriginal
people miraculously survived, with parts of their ancient culture intact. Yet
the establishment of Australian capitalism has prevented Aboriginal people from
basic participation in society as equals. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say
that modern Australian society was founded on the dispossession and brutalisation
of its indigenous people. To seriously acknowledge this would call into
question the very basis of the “Commonwealth of Australia”.
A brief glance at
recent figures indicates the depth and extent of Aboriginal disadvantage in
Australia. Aboriginal people die ten years earlier than non-indigenous people
in Australia, and they are 15 times more likely to be imprisoned. The
indigenous infant mortality rate is double that of non-indigenous people. Only
60% of Aboriginal students finish year 12, and only 47.5% of indigenous people
in Australia are employed.[3]
Aboriginal deaths in custody continue to occur, 25 years after the Federal
Government’s Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. In fact, since
that commission, a further 330 indigenous people have perished in custody.[4]
Essentially there has been no reduction, and no progress on the basic right of
Aboriginal people to be treated as others are treated in custody, or in
society.
If the US ruling class
has no regard for Black Lives domestically, it certainly doesn’t in its
prosecution of its wars for Empire. During the US led war of regime change
against the former government of Libya in 2011, the US, with the assistance of
Saudi Arabia, armed and funded mercenary Islamic fundamentalists in order to
overthrow the imperfect but nonetheless anti-imperialist government led by
Colonel Gaddafi.[5] The US had in fact never
ceased it’s funding of Islamic fundamentalists since it’s arming of the
Mujaheddin in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 80s. Due to
the fact that these mercenaries in Libya had little domestic support, they were
unable to overthrow the Gaddafi led government. So in stepped the US and its
NATO allies with a lethal bombing campaign which brought about a horrific end
to Libya as it was known.
The armed Islamic
fundamentalists were referred to by the corporate media as “rebels”, and many
liberals were unable to break from this spurious imperialist pretext. Some left
parties even lauded them as “revolutionaries” and cheered them on even as their
atrocities became known. Many of these atrocities were carried out against
Black Africans, who are mainly concentrated in the south of Libya. These Black
Africans were seen by the “rebels” as supporters of the Libyan government, and
thus were targeted for slaughter.[6] As leading Hands Off Syria academic Jay
Tharappel has pointed out, despite the massacres of Black Libyans, the “rebels”
were politically backed by some left parties, who fell into line with the US as
it went to war. These parties in Australia include the Socialist Alliance,
Socialist Alternative, Solidarity and the Communist Party of Australia. Despite
their silence on the extermination of Black Libyans, most of these groups now
throw their support behind Black Lives Matter.
The hideous racial
oppression of Black people in the US and Australia, and the prosecution of
imperialist wars overseas – from Libya to Syria to Ukraine to the potential
wars against Russia and China – are thus all linked. Capitalism needs racism to
survive, both to divide their domestic working classes against themselves, and
to gain at least their passive acquiescence to racist imperialist wars against
the Third World, and any country which even hints in the direction of political
independence from the US Empire. Canberra plays its own role as an imperialist
power in the Asia Pacific, as well as a foot soldier for the largest US wars of
conquest. Fighting the oppression of African-Americans in the US, and the
Aboriginal people in Australia requires a simultaneous struggle against all
facets of imperialism.
In a sense, the police
patrolling the streets are the domestic embodiment of imperialism. In essence,
police are mercenaries, hired by the ruling class to protect the private
property of the ‘captains of industry’. To do this, they must suppress the
workers, who create every dollar of capitalist profit through their labour. The
harshest repression, however, is meted out to those with black skin, either in
the US or Australia. Police officers are virtually licenced to harass,
threaten, beat, incarcerate or kill those they see as black, with impunity. To
end this requires the overturn of the entire system of capitalist exploitation
and violence, through workers’ revolution and the victory of socialism. This
requires the formation of a multi-racial workers’ party, which can champion the
liberation of black people through leading class struggle. While Black people
experience the worst effects of capitalist repression, it is only by allying
with the working class that enough social power can be mobilised to undermine,
and eventually overthrow, the ultimate source of oppression – private capital.
FOR BLACK LIBERATION THROUGH WORKERS’ REVOLUTION!
ML GROUP
PO BOX 66 NUNDAH
QLD 4012
www.ML-Group@blogspot.com.au
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