Racists and Jihadis both have the right of free speech

It is said, to the contrary, that racist groups engage in violent acts, that indeed such acts of violence are an intrinsic part of their modus operandi and so these groups need to be confronted whenever they publicly emerge and gather.

Although it is indeed true that the neo-fascist component of the Reclaim Australia movement exhibits a cult of violence this still would not give one the right to use violence against them when such groups either alone or in coalition with more moderate racists peacefully rally with the intent only to air their views.

The same principle applies to the 1% motorcycle clubs that have, in my view justly, staged protests across Australia against various state government anti association laws and bills. Despite the fact that violence is an intrinsic part of the modus operandi of these biker clubs nobody on the Left has argued that they should be forcefully prevented from airing their views on laws or proposed legislation which affect them. Certainly none have attacked them when doing so.

Violent motorcycle clubs have the right to peacefully demonstrate and so do racists.

Some of the left wing rhetoric in favour of militant anti-fascism has bordered on the hyperbolic. It is almost as if the Panzers of the SS Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler Division are massing just beyond the Dandenong Ranges ready to swoop and smash the organised working class in what for the bourgeoisie of Toorak is a frightfully pre-revolutionary situation. It is not 1933 nor 1941 nor even the 1923 of the Beer Hall Putsch.

Many of the everyday participants of Reclaim Australia are lowly working class people, if not part of the urban and rural underclass, that have been hard hit by globalisation. They form the natural constituency of the Left and the communities from whence they hail should be reached out to. That is how a mass social movement against racism in favour of solidarity and mutual aid is built.

Those who engage in frivolous and pointless violence against the losers of globalisation are neither interested in these outlying working class communities nor in doing what it takes to build a mass movement that addresses their very real economic grievances.

The left wing counter rallies, furthermore, are counterproductive on tactical grounds.

The racist and neo-fascist groups are led by a small collection of buffoons. Their most significant problem, like their erstwhile enemies the jihadists, is their very extremism. They are marginalised and isolated. Left alone most people would not give them a second glance.

Their arguments are outlandishly absurd and widely seen as being so. Yet they have been given a national canvas three times running now because the scenes of violence provoke widespread media coverage and public commentary. Furthermore the violent counter rallies give the radical Right an argument where previously they had none, namely that of free speech.

For the racists and neo-fascists national exposure is golden, and the granting of it by the Left constitutes a significant victory. It is ironic indeed, despite the many Facebook memes lampooning the low education of the buffoons that lead these rallies that the intellectual sophisticates of the Left cannot see what the buffoons so obviously can.

Though many on the Left claim they are the victors they are surely the losers, as most who observe the obscenities tar both sides with the same violent brush. That for the Left is devastatingly bad, especially so as global capitalism faces its worse crisis since 1945.