Bent Street 3 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Collections
ISBN: 6313683
Publisher: Clouds of Magellan
Published: 2020-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

Making common cause

As the global economic crisis worsens, we are living in an ever-more polarised world with the far right gaining increasing influence in many countries. Fascists and neo-Nazis are seeking to build movements, supported by their parliamentary enablers. To do this, they need scapegoats to distract people from the real source of their misery. The LGBTIQ community is right up there, joined by a range of other targets—foreigners, the unpatriotic, immigrants, Muslims, Jews, single mothers, people on welfare, the unemployed, First Nations, refugees, urban elites, greenies, political correctness, halal food, fake news, socialists and anarchists. The targets may vary, but the end goal of fascism is to remove all democratic rights, crush the trade unions and the ability of the working class to resist.

While 21st century fascists may present in slightly different ways, we have really seen this all before, and we must learn the lessons from history. Long before Stonewall and Harry Hay founding Mattachine, Dr Magnus Hirschfeld formed the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in 1897 in Germany—the first homosexual rights organisation anywhere in the world (Dickinson, 2014). Hirschfeld and his colleagues organised for three decades, making important inroads. This era saw the rise of a vibrant and visible gay and lesbian community in Berlin during the Weimar Republic. This was all swept away when Hitler and his Nazis came to power and homosexuals, alongside of Jews, Roma, people with disabilities, Slavic people, non-Europeans, Communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholic clergy, Soviet citizens and Spanish Civil War refugees were all systematically murdered.

In the current polarised environment, we must be ready to defend every gain won by the LGBTIQ movement over the last 50 years. We can certainly see how reforms can be rolled back by looking at the current precarious state of abortion rights, which are being steadily eroded in the U.S. The most crucial steps for the LGBTIQ community now are to make common cause with everyone the far right seeks to target. We urgently need to unify with a common goal to stand together against the bigots and fascist bully boys to stop them now. We need a broad and democratic united front to mobilise in massive numbers, ready for collective self-defence every time they seek to organise. We need to drown out their toxic message and stop them from growing and cohering a mass movement. We can’t afford to be disunited or to dismiss the threat. And we certainly can’t rely on the capitalist state to do the job for us. Right here in Melbourne, Radical Women has direct experience with being part of protests where police frustrate anti-fascists while openly assisting neo-Nazis to parade through the city wearing swastika insignia. Just this month, neo-Nazis crashed the Pride March in Detroit. The film footage of police facilitating the Nazis’ provocative march through the Pride parade should be a wake-up call for anyone who thinks the police are somehow on our side.

Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson and all who rebelled for three nights on the streets of New York in June 1969 knew that the police are not our saviour.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.