Download this leaflet as a pdf.
We are witnessing a rise in clashes between anti-migration demonstrators and ‘antifascist’ counter-protesters in Britain’s towns and cities today. Why?
Working-class people, facing the same problems of austerity, unemployment, housing and food insecurity, and a steady decline in living standards, are being funnelled into opposing camps whose only real function is to stop them recognising their common interests and their common enemy. This is no accident – it is the calculated application of imperialist divide-and-rule strategies that have been perfected through centuries of class warfare and colonial domination.
Right-wing agitators
On one side, we see the anger of workers with genuine concerns about their deteriorating life conditions being misdirected toward migrants in general, and muslims in particular, through systematic campaigns of disinformation.
State assets like Tommy Robinson and his paymaster Elon Musk are presented by corporate media as ‘anti-establishment disrupters’ to help them gain the trust of workers who have lost faith in mainstream media and politicians. These demagogues spread lies about a supposed connection between the presence of migrant workers and the conditions of capitalist economic crisis that are making life worse for the masses.
Their glib transition from talking about real problems with jobs, housing, inflation and public services to crude racism and islamophobia reveals the hidden hand of ruling-class interests, justifying imperialist wars abroad and creating division at home.
To reinforce anti-migrant hysteria, agitators are sent into poor communities to spread stories about ‘rapists’, ‘terrorists’ and a ‘life of luxury on benefits’ – lies that are then pushed further by both mainstream and ‘alternative’ media. They work to whip up anger against those who are perceived to be creating this ‘migrant problem’ – the migrants, the workers who defend them, and the state forces they have been (wrongly) told are ‘soft’ on migrants and ‘the left’.
The ruling-class’s policing strategy encourages both sets of demonstrators to feel that they are a threat to the establishment, while the media presents the police as long-suffering intermediaries and the capitalist state as the only guardian of ‘social peace’ and ‘law and order’.
The apparent ‘persecution’ of Agent Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Tommy Robinson) is all part of this same subterfuge. (We note he always manages to be at large when the ruling class needs him to incite a pogrom, and is highly paid to spread poisonous lies on monopoly-controlled social media platforms!)
Left-wing provocateurs
Meanwhile, most of the leaders of the so-called ‘left’ are bought-and-paid-for supporters of the same system that controls Tommy and co. They encourage their followers to blame the stupidity of other workers rather than the systemic needs of capitalist imperialism for racism and fascism.
The Trotskyist organisations that tend to manage these ‘counter-demonstrations’ have a long history of state control, having acted for decades as agents of confusion and demoralisation in the working-class movement. The crowds they mobilise, whether they realise it or not, thus end up as unwitting tools of the same ruling-class interests as the workers who have been fooled into turning out for Ukip, the EDL etc.
Rather than helping to spread the truth and building bridges with misinformed workers, Trotskyist and fake ‘antifascists’ scream abuse and entrench division. No attempt is made to listen to or connect with those who have been motivated by genuine concerns (as opposed to those who are simply paid to be there). No effort is made to explain who is really benefitting from all the anti-migrant hysteria and why workers will never be able to defend their real interests while they are taken in by these lies.
The front ranks are packed with paid state agents who egg on those at the back to vitriol and even violence against the ‘enemy’. On both sides, workers are encouraged to identify with representatives of the exploiting class, to put their faith in an electoral party (EDL, Reform, Your Party, The Greens) and to pray for a saviour (Robinson, Farage, Corbyn, Polanski) to rescue them.
Both sides are offered an illusion: that capitalism would be run in a kinder, fairer way if the ‘right people’ were in charge. Both sides are offered a ‘saviour’ who has been hand picked by the ruling class. (Note that anyone whose message was really ‘disruptive’ to the interests of the ruling elites would not even get a mention in the corporate media, never mind endless airtime and column inches!) Both sides are offered an enemy who supposedly stands in the way of their salvation – another group of workers.
Reality behind migration
Refugees and asylum seekers are not the architects of their displacement but victims of the same imperialist system that oppresses British workers. British corporate parasites destroy country after country through wars, sanctions and economic looting, then cynically exploit the desperation of those who are forced to leave their homes.
Asylum-seekers receive a beggarly £49 a week, and are penned up in insecure ‘accommodation’ (essentially slums, which may also house the homeless, families fleeing domestic violence, addicts etc) for which hotel magnates charge extortionate rates via a huge Treasury-looting scam. They are denied legal status, the right to work or integrate, and kept in a limbo that reinforces their vulnerability – creating a desperate, hyperexploitable labour force and simultaneously providing a convenient scapegoat for all the ill effects of capitalism.
The path forward: class unity
Recognising that the real problem we face is imperialism and its domestic expression, austerity capitalism, we must strive to educate and organise our fellow workers, redirecting their anger toward its proper target – the capitalist class that profiteers from war, exploitation, and the export of industries and capital while workers of all backgrounds suffer.
Our real demand should not be ‘Stop the boats’ but ‘Decent housing and pay for all workers’! We need a mass campaign to abolish the conditions that enable employers to prey on the vulnerable and thereby drag down pay and conditions for everyone.
The exploiters are working hard to stop us realising we are part of a class and that it is in our interest to join together to defend our conditions of life, to oppose the genocidal war machine, and ultimately to dismantle capitalism and replace it with a planned socialist economy. When British workers of all backgrounds recognise their common interests and rise up against their common enemy, that moment will mark the beginning of the end of this parasitic system.
To fight for your real class interests, join us!
——————————
Note that we include anarchists in the Trotskyite state provocateur category!
