Mehreen Faruqi to Speak At Marxist Meeting, Again. Media Silent, Again.

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Mehreen Faruqi the controversial Greens Senator from New South Wales certainly does like associating with people who want to overthrow the parliament she’s supposed to be a member of. In fact she doesn’t seem able to stop herself.

Mehreen Faruqi was a speaker at another Marxist meeting in April. The Greens factional powerbroker and Education spokeswoman was the featured panel speaker at a campaign launch organised by Socialist Alternative front group “Students Organising Resistance in the Pandemic” (SOR).

In October last year Faruqi spoke at a Socialist Alliance organised protest in favour of cowardly anarchist murderer Jock Palfreeman outside Sydney Town Hall.

Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi as the "Featured Speaker" for an event organised by Australia's largest Marxist group.
Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi as the “Featured Speaker” for an event organised by Australia’s largest Marxist group.

In May last year Faruqi spoke at a public protest against Mark Latham organised by Socialist Alternative. She made a speech against “extremism” in front of a giant banner with “Socialist Alternative” written on it while standing beside Socialist Alternative activist Hersha Kadkol.

There’s still no point in Faruqi pretending she didn’t know who Hersha Kadkol was. They both were speakers on the same platform a month before that event during an anti-Israel protest outside the Opera House. Faruqi also spoke alongside Ms Kadkol at a Socialist Alternative organised event protesting the very idea of a Ramsey centre sponsored Western Civilisation degree at the University of Sydney in late October 2018.

As recently as January of this year Faruqi was a speaker at a Socialist Alternative organised “climate justice” march of an estimated 30,000 people in the centre of Sydney. Also speaking was Greens MLC David Shoebridge whose association with at least three different revolutionary Trotskyist groups goes back over a decade. Both shared the podium with Gavin Stanbrook of Socialist Alternative.

And now next week Mehreen will be speaking at a forum organised by longtime extremist activist John Minns alongside another veteran Marxist Jeff Sparrow, both founding members of Socialist Alternative (SAlt), Australia’s largest revolutionary Marxist group.

And of course the supposedly evil right wing Australian media couldn’t care less.

Mehreen Faruqi speaks with john Minn
Dr John Minn. Co-founder of Socialist Alternative and chief spokesman of the Refugee Action Campaign Canberra.

Dr John Minns is today an associate professor in Politics and International Relations at the ANU in Canberra, but he began his career as an activist for Brisbane Anarchist organisation the “Self Management Group” (SMG) in the mid 1970s. Minns (along with fellow extremist Ian Rintoul) split from the group to form an explicitly revolutionary Marxist organisation, becoming the Brisbane branch of the Trotskyist “International Socialists” (later the International Socialist Organisation or ISO) by 1977. They were busy, IS in Brisbane at most had 30 members but the list of their front groups was bewildering. At one point QLD premier Joh Bjelke Petersen was publicly denouncing the group by name. John Minns was so vital to the success of the Brisbane branch that when he left to move to Sydney it caused a split. To fill the hole he left, the Melbourne-dominated leadership moved another young extremist activist named Mick Armstrong up from the south, to take over in Brisbane. Armstrong (who had been recruited at La Trobe in 1975) immediately clashed with Rintoul and his allies like Judy McVey in the “hardcore” faction of the Brisbane branch and was rapidly withdrawn.

In 1995 Minns helped to found the Socialist Alternative group as a split from the ISO and by 1996 was a Department of History and Politics lecturer in Woolongong. In 2001 he founded and organised the “Illawarra Refugee Action Collective” out of his workplace at Woolongong University. By 2009 he had moved on to become director of the grandly titled “Australian National Centre for Latin American Studies” at ANU and became the central figure in the Canberra Refugee Action Committee (known since 2019 as the Refugee Action Campaign).

John has written copious articles for various Marxist publications over the years, praising the early Soviet Union and speaking of Leon Trotsky in almost worshipful tones. But one of his pieces stands out, the one where he supports the “Iraqi Resistance” in 2005 and blames the evil Americans for forcing the poor dears to resort to beheading and terror. Students of recent history would realise that the “Iraqi Resistance” Minns was supporting was none other than Al Qaeda in Iraq, the group which would eventually become ISIS. Quite the nice man for our dear Mehreen to be associating with.

Jeff Sparrow is a little rich kid who has been playing revolutionary since the late 80s. Born into a wealthy family in Melbourne’s exclusive bayside suburb of Brighton Sparrow had a privileged upbringing. He attended the private and exclusive St Leonard’s College before studying under the sandstone arches of Melbourne University; at the latter institution he was recruited by the Trotskyists of the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) and became a fixture at their often violent and disruptive protests. In 1992 Jeff and his sister (along with veteran Marxist Mick Armstrong) were arrested and charged after an ISO led mob attacked a police car. When Armstrong was purged from the ISO for the crime of losing a factional struggle with Ian Rintoul the Sparrow siblings joined him (and John Minns) in founding Socialist Alternative in 1995.

Sparrow has continued his close association with Socialist Alternative over the years. As editor of the taxpayer funded Overland journal he was instrumental in publishing young SAlt activists injecting their ideas into the bloodstream of Australian leftist thought. He has continued writing for SAlt publications including their current magazine Red Flag and has attended and even spoken at numerous SAlt conferences. Despite this he’s still welcome at taxpayer funded writers festivals and as a columnist for the (Malcom Turnbull founded) Guardian Australia.

Jeff Sparrow the co-founder of Socialist Alternative speaking at a Socialist Alternative conference in 2013.

At some point there was probably the opportunity for a journalist or a right of centre politician to speak up about the increasing tendency of Greens politicians Like Mehreen to associate with people who openly proclaim that they want to overthrow the government and implement a totalitarian state. Now it’s probably too late. Association with the most extreme political elements in Australian society has now been normalised. Mehreen Faruqi certainly doesn’t feel any qualms about rubbing shoulders with Marxists and Anarchists, and why should she? None of her friends in the media have called her out on it.

For those of us who can still smell the stench of the hundred million corpses communism created last century this normalisation needs to be a wake up call.

We never expelled the adherents of Marx from the universities that not only teach our children, but also teach those who teach our children. Now it looks like we will suffer as a result.

Author Details
Lucas Rosas
Lucas Rosas has spent years monitoring far left extremists so you don’t have to. He lives in a secure location with multiple large and hungry guard dogs.
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Lucas Rosas
Lucas Rosas has spent years monitoring far left extremists so you don’t have to. He lives in a secure location with multiple large and hungry guard dogs.
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