The events in Cronulla and their aftermath are chickens-come-home-to-roost for the racist Howard government, and all its partners in “Hansonism”.

The riots reflect the rising racism in Australia, a tide that has been fostered by the Howard government’s policies and propaganda that criminalise and lock up refugees, dehumanise and bomb the Iraqi people, and define all Muslims and Middle-Eastern Australians as potential terrorists.

So when the new terrorism bill is promulgated - aided and abetted so keenly by the Labor Party - is it so strange that on a NSW beach such racism explodes?

This country’s entrenched racism, historically focused on Aborigines and Asians, has been exploited once again, like a maggot which has been given fresh garbage. The prejudice on which Pauline Hanson relied has now jumped the generations - from the ex-diggers and grey-haired RSL loyalists, to the testosterone and beer-fuelled youths who are hurting in Howard’s Australia, in and out of work.

While this process has taken its time, it needed official state sponsorship, enshrined in such things as the new anti-terrorism legislation, to find a new core of activists.

And our prime minister, John Howard, wants to preach calm! Has anyone seen these guys? Should any ethnic community be calm when these thugs are whacked out of their heads, wielding baseball bats and launching bricks and flower pots!

And they wrap themselves up in the flag of the Australian state to justify themselves! Are these then, the “real Australians” of which the prime minister is so keen to eulogize?

In the face of this terror, communities are being asked to rely on the NSW police force for protection. But who would do such a thing?

The NSW Labor Party has worked overtime to divide the state along ethnic lines, with the determined complicity of the radio shock jocks and the print media. By engineering a brutal police regime in multi-ethnic communities at the same time as Muslims are being blamed for so much - from a genetic predisposition to pack rape to a war of terror - it’s no surprise that these riots occur in New South Wales given what the ALP government has dealt out these last few years.

Those young Lebanese-Australians were right when they gathered to protect their local mosque. They are right to demand an end to the racist scapegoating of their communities. And the trade union movement, anti-war activists and everyone outraged by racism must stand shoulder to shoulder with them.

Stop the racist attacks! Defend civil liberties! Repeal the anti-terror laws!

The Socialist Alliance , December 14, 2005