Who organised the protest against the March for Men?
You may have heard that there was a successful “March for Men” held in Melbourne on the weekend.
The event was held as a celebration by men and women of the positive contribution men make to society and to show the men in all our lives that they are valued and cherished. The uplifting and positive slogan and main chant of the marchers was “March for men, respect for all!”.
If you’ve been watching the media coverage of the event you would also be aware that a smaller group of counter protesters attempted to attack and disrupt the marchers.
Now if you’re a normal, healthy functioning human being you might be tempted to ask what kind inhuman perverse monsters would actually organise a counter protest against a rally trying to praise half the population and bring attention to the issues they face?
You might wonder what kind of sick disgusting excuses for humanity would actually try and chant over a softly spoken guy trying to share with a crowd of supporters his painful experiences of being abused?
What kind of mentally ill nutcases would actually get up on a weekend and seriously believe that they have nothing better to do than go to the centre of the city in a mob and try to shout down people trying to bring greater attention to issues of depression and suicide?
if you relied on the mainstream media for your news you’d keep on wondering.
Luckily you read The Unshackled.
The counter protest was originally announced by the NUS women’s department officer Kate Crossin. Kate is a Young ALP hack from the Labor Left faction doing the usual Young Labor student politics shtick of trying to make a name for herself before disappearing into the wider union hack apparatus and (hopefully) an eventual pre-selection to a safe seat.
Now when Kate first announced her counter protest she had an issue, that issue being that while the Young ALP is a great way to get a kick start for a career in politics it doesn’t actually have much ability to organise people out in the real world.
So Kate reached out to our old friends at the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (CARF) who have recently stopped even pretending to be anything other than A Socialist Alternative front group.
Nearly all the organising and promotional legwork for the counter protest was carried out by SAlt. They put up the posters, made and carried the banners, brought the megaphones and led the absurd and abusive chants.
The leftist protest was packed with well-known SAlt organisers including Cameron Moon, Claudio Uribe and Chris Di Pasquale.
Why was a Revolutionary Marxist group of the Trotskyist school trying to attack a march attempting to bring attention to men’s issues?
After the humiliating failure of their attempt to shut down the Stefan Molyneux/ Lauren Southern events earlier this year CARF has been doing everything it can to try and regain enough momentum to organise yet more violent rallies to oppose the speaking tours of Nigel Farage, Gavin McInnnes, Ann Coulter and Milo (again).
To this end they’re currently willing to show up to the opening of a leftist envelope.
But the better question is why did not a single media commentator notice that the people attempting to attack, shout down and blockade a peaceful rally of half a thousand people were almost entirely from the largest, best organised and fanatical violent political extremist group active in Australia today?
One of the most prominent commentators denouncing the marchers was Jeff Sparrow of the Guardian. Jeff wrote diatribes both before and after the event declaring the March for Men to be full of stupid, gullible, right wing extremist idiots who were at the same time both laughably pathetic and terrifyingly dangerous.
But despite all his bile for the marchers Jeff didn’t seem to notice that the counter protesters were all from Socialist Alternative, which is an interesting oversight since Jeff was one of the founders of that group back in 1995. It’s worth noting Sparrow has never disavowed his Communist beliefs or apologised for the violence the group he founded has carried out in the decades since.
Jeff still supports Trotskyist extremists to this day. He helped publish many of them when editor of the taxpayer funded Overland magazine.
In fact Jeff attended the manifesto launch of the Victorian Socialists, an electoral alliance between the Trotskyist Socialist Alliance and the Trotskyist Socialist Alternative to support the Victorian upper house bid of the Trotskyist Yarra Councillor Stephen Jolly.
https://twitter.com/Jeff_Sparrow/status/1032920151052570626?s=19
Coincidentally at that same manifesto launch at Brunswick Town hall manning the Socialist Alternative booth was Socialist Alternative activist Cameron Moon who was taking to opportunity to promote the Socialist Alternative organised counter rally that he would later be leading.
I guess Jeff must be getting short sighted in his old age since he didn’t notice any of this, or at least didn’t feel the need to inform his readers.
I doubt he’ll feel the need to inform the audience this Friday while promoting his book on the evils of right wing extremism at the Melbourne Writers Festival either.
Perhaps Jeff’s memory will come back to him this Sunday when he appears on a panel discussing the rise of political extremism at the Sydney Opera House.
Or perhaps not. Who knows?
After all, you would think a man with as much experience of far left extremism as Jeff has would talk about it more.
Yet strangely he seems curiously reticent on the subject.
And none of his media mates seem to want to bring it up.
Funny that.