Demonstrations outside hotels housing asylum seekers have gained traction after an asylum seeker was filmed sexually propositioning a 15-year-old girl. Despite the man being arrested the ultra-right, who were aware of his arrest, capitalised on it and stirred up a violent protest outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Knowsley, near Liverpool, despite the man in question not being a resident of the hotel. A police van was set on fire and projectiles were thrown at police by crowds of locals stirred up by those on the ultra-right such as Patriotic Alternative. Demos have now been organised by the ultra-right in various locations and its now possible that what happened in Knowsely could occur up and down the country.
Some were predicting this sort of thing would happen and it is not really surprising in a sense considering that significant numbers of asylum seekers have been placed in under-resourced, working class areas where there are political voids – all it takes is resentment in these places and instigation by the ultra-right to light the spark.
It is definitely the case that the concerns of these deprived working class communities should be taken seriously and listened to, but the ultra-right cannot be trusted at all and have a divisive and racist agenda. People should be aware that as usual these bigoted reactionaries are opportunistically trying to gain politically from the situation. And it should be noted that we should not be generalising about asylum seekers – a group of people should not be blamed for the behaviour of one person or a minority. It’s also an important fact to take note that sexual misconduct, abuse and misogyny is rife on the far- right and that there has been a long list of white men convicted of sexual abuse and paedophilia throughout the various far-right organisations. All sexual abuse is wrong and has nothing to do with ethnicity or race. It’s also the case that in an atmosphere of anti-refugee and racist hysteria, it is definitely possible that false allegations can be directed at asylum seekers and immigrants.
We also need to be aware that the underlying problem here is capitalism – which is why asylum seekers are here in the first place and why people born in this country are suffering due to the deliberate inequality, poverty and austerity and rising inflation and why ordinary people are deliberately deprived of resources and a decent quality of life – a dire problem faced by the working class internationally. It is for this reason that asylum seekers and immigrants are scapegoated – by the bourgeois media, culture etc as a diversion to point the finger at those from overseas who have legitimate reasons to be here and who have escaped from the most dangerous and repressive places on the planet, and escaped the brutality and murder of the border regime on the European mainland and around the Mediterranean and are just people trying to get on and live their lives, look after their families and who want the world to be a decent place. The far-right and the bourgeoisie and its media happily stoke up this hysterical scapegoating to gain from this and it is the ruling class who runs the show to their own class advantage, they are the ones to blame for our suffering.
It’s the far right who help the ruling class and their capitalist system, which feeds off of the misery of the international working class, dispossessed and oppressed, which includes asylum seekers and immigrants, as well as those of our class who are born here. It is the far right and their ultra-nationalism (capitalism taken to an extreme) that robs workers through exploitation and punishes the poor with austerity and the inequality of the class system. Nationalism has always been and will always be an anti-working-class ideology that divides the working class for the benefit of the ruling class. And it is the rich who create inflation with year on year profits – In order for profits to keep increasing wages and hours have to be cut and prices have to be raised, the rich all the while making obscene profits and hoarding everything, including most of the land and resources for themselves – so nationalism can’t us help at all and all nationalists actually defend the very system that causes us harm. Nationalism also deprives us of our freedom by enslaving the individual and robbing us of our autonomy for the benefit of the state, and again therefore the rich rulers who control it.
At the end of the day it is the class traitors of the far right who obsequiously serve the interests of the ruling class and that means racist scapegoating as a diversion to defend capitalism and divide the working class – this can only be at our grave expense and very much to our detriment as a class, simply continuing and worsening our misery and turning worker against worker. Instead, what the working class needs is to unite as much as possible against the ruling class and the far right and resist capitalism, wage the class war for itself and by itself, build autonomous alternatives from below and strengthen our communities in solidarity with each other as members of the international working class – rather than dividing and weakening ourselves to the advantage of the rich – then we will be genuinely getting somewhere and fighting for ourselves and our class interests – rather than going against them and being bootlickers for the bourgeoisie.
Nationalists and fascists are reactionaries who want to turn the clock back for their own political gain and power – they cannot be trusted and are anti-working class. They must be resisted now more than ever before. The far right is awash with power-hungry class traitors, weirdos, wrong uns, nonces and sexual abusers who want to use ordinary working-class people for their own ends and the working class will gain nothing from trusting them, especially as things now are so desperate for the working class. The far right have no real solutions and will stab workers in the back as they always have when gaining strength, they have nothing to offer the working class but division, hate and class betrayal and class defeat.
AnarCom Network 