Marxist “Refugee” Protesters Fined By Police
Marxist activist Chris Breen was arrested and 26 fines were issued following a Marxist organised “refugee” protest in the inner northern Melbourne suburb of Preston yesterday.
The group of activists was organised by the “Refugee Action Collective” group. The organisers decided to go ahead in defiance of warnings by police that such self-indulgent posturing was clearly in breach of the “non-essential” activity rule brought in during the period of Coronavirus lockdown and would lead to fines and arrests.
The “Refugee Action Collective” was founded in 2000 by Trotskyist activists Judy McVey (of the Solidarity group) and Fleur Taylor (of Socialist Alternative). it was created to serve as the Melbourne counterpart to the Sydney based “Refugee Action Coalition” which had been earlier established by veteran Trotskyist activist Ian Rintoul. The “Refugee Action Collective” is perhaps best known for organising a mob attack on the Woomera detention centre in 2002 in order to violently break out 40 detainees.
In the statements released to the press by the “Refugee Action Collective” both before and after the event no mention was made of the group’s Marxist ties. The original statement had only Solidarity member (and Marxist activist since the 90s) Chris Breen as contact number. The second part of the statement released after Breen’s arrest was authored both by long time Marxist activist, Solidarity organiser and “Teachers for Refugees” founder Lucy Honan and Ian Rintoul himself (the founder of the Solidarity group and a Marxist activist since the mid 1970s).
Solidarity itself is a revolutionary Trotskyist organisation founded as a merger of three smaller Trotskyist groups in 2008. The Unshackled readers would remember them as the group who organised a rally against the “racist” Morrison government closing the borders to China to stop the spread of the Coronavirus.
As a revolutionary Marxist group Solidarity believes that since Australia is an immoral social construct created to perpetuate “patriarchal white supremacy” it has no right to enforce any sort of border controls. One would think that the fact that a group campaigning for open borders is doing so because they believe Australia has no right to exist and want to overthrow the government and implement a totalitarian socialist state would perhaps be relevant. But of course as usual the diligent Australian journalists who will spend hours of research trying to find a photo of a right winger making an O.K sign seem uninterested in Marxist extremists even when they’re breaking quarantine during a pandemic.
Funny that.