Breaking the System’s Shell

In recent months, governments have been scrambling to keep the egg’s shell from shattering, desperate to quell the uprisings challenging the oppression of the system. However, the resistance remains unyielding, and has been pushing harder than ever to emancipate itself from its trapped shell. 

Recently, we saw the people mass mobilise to march on the Harbour Bridge, even after Chris Minn's government tried to ban the march. 300+ Organisations, and 12 unions stood strong against the ban, to march for humanity and to demand sanctions on Israel.

Globally, the crisis of capitalism has deepened. It is clear from Israel’s continuous destruction of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iran not long ago. It is clear from Trump’s policies against immigrants leading to the mobilisation of the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the military against communities in the United States. 

The increased violence of the state—desperate to regain control—has only inspired more defiance. As ICE and police thugs rip babies out of mother’s hands or parents from families to then threaten with deportation, thousands have taken up to the streets to defend the community. In Los Angeles, ICE cars and trucks were met with rocks of resistance akin to the ones seen in Palestine against the genocidal tanks. Those resisting ICE connected with the struggle of Palestine, waving the Palestinian flag and wearing the Kufiyah proudly in the streets. 

The people have had enough of the ruling classes' enforcement. A new shift towards collective action has emerged after thousands have sought solutions at the weekly Palestine rallies demanding sanctions and boycotts of apartheid Israel. 

Greta Thunberg and the Madleen crew attempted to break the Israeli siege on humanitarian aid entering Gaza. Tens of thousands marched across North Africa towards Cairo and the Rafah crossing into Gaza. In response, apartheid Israel illegally kidnapped the Madleen crew on international waters and the Egyptian government showed its willingness to suppress the movement by ordering police to brutally attack the attendees of the Global March. 

Despite this repression, the global movement is determined to resist and tear down the walls of the apartheid siege. 

The war on Iran was the recent episode in the crisis of the current system. 

Desperate to glue together fragile fragments of its shell, governments turn to war to distract from their failings. A pathetic attempt to unite the people under the idea of a nation and a common enemy in the East; an idea that actively harms the people, whose aim is to restore the leash of control to hands of the rich. 

As an Iranian brother Arman Ismaeili put it “War always belongs to those who do not fight themselves […] We must organise, because in a moment of war, it is not only physical life that is threatened but also the possibility of collective action”. Despite Australia’s physical distance, its military alliance with the United States and support of Israel’s apartheid state continues to harm the working people here. 

The government has plans to allow nuclear waste to be dumped and stored in Australia. Will it be dumped besides a residential area? Will it pollute waterways? This nuclear waste will be produced by the $368 billion dollar pact with the United States to create nuclear submarines for war against China. 

While backing Israeli apartheid abroad, Albanese is enabling a system of racial apartheid at home, particularly in the Northern Territory, where heavy-handed policing and systemic violence continue to brutalise Aboriginal communities. It was under this regime that Kumanjayi White was killed by police in a Coles supermarket.

We need organisation to break the shell and win liberation from the system. From the students at each university to every workplace in the country, we must resist complicity in genocide and militarism. We must break from our shells governments have forced onto us, and organise on the streets of our campus' to ensure all ties with genocide are cut. We cut ties with the Israeli Institute of Technology (Technion), but that is the first tie we have cut, certainly not the last.