PARTISAN!

The Revolutionary Communist Organisation condemns the recent terrorist attacks on the Jewish community in Melbourne and Sydney. Regardless of who was responsible, these are acts intended to induce a chilling effect on all Jews in Australia. This is simple racial violence and it must be opposed wherever it appears. These acts did not come out of nowhere; anti-antisemitism is ubiquitous in capitalist society. It is not confined to fringe far-right groups, nor is it unique to specific religions, ethnicities, or societies.

Anti-Semitism has a more than two-thousand year history as a pillar of Western worldviews, through antiquity, feudalism, and now, capitalism. It did not cease to exist when the Holocaust ended. Zionism itself is a development of earlier forms of antisemitism, with its central tenet being that antisemitism is an immutable characteristic of non-Jews. The conclusion from this is that combating antisemitism is a futile task, hence the supposed need for a Jewish homeland to protect Jews. Zionism’s unimpeachable status in the West today only proves the point that antisemitism continues to be an integral part of Australian society.
Outright antisemitism has intensified in recent years partly due to the conservative counterrevolution, as well as due to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Unfortunately, there is a prominent element of antisemitism in the Palestine solidarity movement.

These elements conflate the State of Israel with all of Jewry, and play on old, tired tropes of the Jewish people. Endorsing an antisemitic worldview is antithetical to any espoused goals of ending the occupation, and only serves to drive working-class Jews into the arms of Zionism. This negates their ability to join the global working class struggle. Workers of all religious and ethnic backgrounds have a common interest in overturning imperialism, they must therefore unite and fight!

We dually condemn the Australian state’s efforts to expand its own power and surveillance in response to these attacks; regardless of its excuses of “defending the community”, and combating antisemitism. These powers are tools used to suppress the working class, and we oppose all attempts by the capitalist state to further arm itself. Any defence of workers and especially those that are racially exploited by the bourgeois state is only ever conditional and temporary.

Unconditional defence of workers cannot exist without the party of the working class, the Communist Party. The party is the organised vanguard that provides leadership and long-term political education in the class struggle. Its political life rejuvenates working class politics and social life, as it connects all sections of the class. Workers’ self-defence is one aspect of this rejuvenation, and is needed for us to protect each other, places of worship, and community centres. This is how we can confront racial violence wherever it appears.

The party does not yet exist as the socialist movement is split into a myriad of various sects. The main task of socialists in Australia at this moment must be to re-found a unified Communist Party. In the meantime, however, we can still take the first steps towards eliminating Jew-hatred, and that is through confronting antisemitism wherever it appears, be that in society at-large, or in our own movements.