QLD Police Hospitalise Far Left Activist Jeff Rickertt
QLD Police hospitalised far left activist Jeff Rickertt while attempting to control an unauthorised protest organised by Marxist front group “Refugee Solidarity Meanjin”.
Rickertt was a part of a mob that was attempting to pull down a fence surrounding a Brisbane hotel where failed asylum seeker applicants have been housed as a result of the disastrous “Medevac” bill. Police asked Rickertt and a small group of protesters to release the fence, step back stand down and re-join the wider protest group. The leftists refused and so the police removed them, throwing Rickertt to the ground in the process and causing him a head injury for which he received treatment at Mater Hospital before being released on Monday afternoon after no serious injuries were detected.
Police have announced that their officer did nothing wrong. Perhaps people trying to tear down fences shouldn’t throw stones.
Unsurprisingly Rickertt has a long history of association with far left extremist groups. Even more unsurprisingly not a single media outlet bothered to report this.
In 1999 he shared a stage with Socialist Alternative organiser Tom Bramble (who famously declared that the sight of the Australian flag makes him want to vomit) at a forum where Rickertt compared the “crisis” faced by the Australian union movement in the 1990s to that of the 1930s.
In 2011 Rickertt spoke at the “Occupy Brisbane” squat which had briefly taken over Post Office square in the Brisbane CBD. Speaking alongside him were Ewan Saunders of the Socialist Alliance and Gary MacLennan also of the Socialist Alliance. Rickertt has also written articles for the Socialist Alliance newspaper Green Left Weekly.
In 2017 Rickertt spoke at an event organised by the “Cloudland Collective” in the West End of Brisbane celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia . The Cloudland Collective describe themselves as a group who believes that:
“a truly democratic, just and ecologically sustainable society is possible only if workers and oppressed people unite to replace capitalism in all its forms.”
Speaking alongside Rickertt was Alison Stewart of the of the International Socialist Organisation and one of the founders of Socialist Alliance. The title of Rickertt’s talk was: Bolshevism Down Under: the Impact of October 1917 on Australian Labour Movement Politics.
In this talk Rickerrt spoke glowingly of the murderous regime of the early Soviet Union. Stating that:
“Russian workers, soldiers and peasants put in place an alternative to this abomination (Capitalism). In the end they were defeated. But their bold venture can still stand as a beacon… October 1917 still has a world of possibilities to offer.”
Perhaps Rickertt is most notable however as the author of The Conscientious Communist: Ernie Lane and the Rise of Australian Socialism. A glowing biography of one of Australia’s earliest far left extremists and a man who, in Rickertt’s own words, plotted armed insurrection against the Australian government.
The “Refugee Solidarity Meanjin/Brisbane” group that organised this disruptive protest was founded is a project of the Refugee Action Collective, itself a front for the revolutionary Trotskyist group Solidarity. “Refugee Solidarity Meanjin/Brisbane” held their first event on the 17th of April this year in conjunction with Socialist Alternative, another revolutionary Trotskyist group and Australia’s largest left wing extremist organisation.
So police pulled a man off a fence after he refused to listen to their instructions to do so. The man just happened to be a long time far left activist who venerates the early Soviet Union and who has been organising and speaking alongside revolutionary Marxist activists for at least two decades, and who wrote a hagiography about one of Australia’s earliest communists. To top it off he’s written multiple articles for Green Left Weekly, Australia’s most prominent Marxist newspaper about how much he admires musician Phil Monsour (himself a Socialist Alliance member and Marxist activist since the early 90s) and the protest he was attending was organised by a Marxist front group.
And not a single Australian journalist even seemed to notice. Instead they decided to lay into the “evil” police for being too rough with the poor dear.
It’s enough to make you spit.
