Climate Protest Organiser Admits: It’s All About Overthrowing Capitalism
Socialist Alternative activist, proud Marxist and “Uni Students for Climate Justice” co-convenor Gavin Stanbrook has admitted in an interview given to left wing activist Paul Gregoire that tomorrow’s protests are ultimately about overthrowing capitalism.
Stanbrook admitted that although the stated aims of the protest are for the sacking of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the greater funding of firefighters the real aim is “system change” to overturn the capitalist system which he claims is the “core reason” for the crisis.
Stanbrook, much like his Melbourne counterpart Anneke Demanuele is a member of the revolutionary Trotskyist group Socialist Alternative and a committed Marxist. He was a featured speaker at the 2018 Socialist Alternative conference and will again be speaking on a panel at this year’s event in April. Gavin has written extensively for the Socialist Alternative magazine Red Flag where among his more memorable quotes can be found these gems:
The nationalism that
underpins Australia Day assumes there’s something to celebrate about this
country. I don’t agree. Nationalism is a cancer.
I am against any day
being allocated to celebrate the foundation of Australia. There’s nothing to
celebrate.
Only Australia could
rival the entrenched racism and barbarity of countries such as the US, Israel
and apartheid-era South Africa.
When you run the
Australian capitalist state, racism becomes your tool, rather than a cancer to
be eradicated.
So I support 100
percent the sentiment of Onus-Williams and the stand she has taken (when she
said “Fuck Australia, I hope it burns to the ground”). The country would be a
better place if the racist structures of Australian capitalism were dismantled.
Seems like a fairly moderate middle of the road fellow. So of course The Guardian Australia (until the end Malcolm Turnbull’s favourite media outlet during his time as Prime minister) published a column by Gavin where he declared that:
We can transform
society in our interests if we unite to smash the system…
It’s capitalism that’s
responsible for the suffering of my people, the environmental crisis and so
much more…
now more than ever we
need to scream “revolution” from the rooftops, and fight for it….
As Marx said,
“capitalism creates its own gravediggers”…
We need to smash this
system. There will be no saviours from on high. For that, we need the politics
of solidarity: understanding that the oppression of all is tied to the
inequality of capitalism…
Black communists such
as Kevin Cook and Chicka Dixon are legends of our movement – and they had an
entire communist workers movement standing with them.
Mass protest can build
towards revolutionary change that can liberate us all.
The Guardian didn’t mention that Gavin was a member of
Socialist Alternative. After that article maybe they thought they didn’t have
to. But they still employ one of the founders of Socialist Alternative Jeff
Sparrow as an opinion columnist (who is also booked to speak at the Marxism
2020 event this year) and they never mention his affiliations to Australia’s
largest left wing extremist group either.
How does the Guardian still have a press pass again? At what point do it and Red Flag just give up pretending and merge?
The fact that the “Climate” protests of the past year have been organised primarily by revolutionary Marxist groups should be obvious to everyone. After all every spokesperson for “Uni Students for Climate Justice” has been an activist for Socialist Alternative. In Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, Wollongong, Melbourne and Sydney. Every. Single. One.
And yet not a single media outlet thinks it worth pointing out that all the people who have been organising the largest protest movement of the last twelve months all belong to the same group which proudly declares as its goal the overthrowing of the Australian government and the implementation of a totalitarian state.
It’s a scandal. Or rather it should be.
