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Title: Slackbastard on Fortress Australia Author: Anarchist Affinity Date: July 26, 2014 Language: en Topics: Australia, immigration Source: Retrieved on January 18, 2021 from https://web.archive.org/web/20210118072543/http://www.collectiveaction.org.au/2014/07/26/slackbastard-on-fortress-australia/ Notes: Published in The Platform Issue 2.
Andy Fleming is a Melbourne based writer, anarchist and creator of the
prominent antifascist blog Slackbastard. We sat down with Andy to talk
about nationalism, borders and the political functions of mandatory
detention.
I want to discuss mandatory detention, but I want to dig below the usual
moral repugnance and discuss a few means and ends. I once had an
experience with some University of Sydney Labor Club kids who simply
would not believe that it was the ALP in 1992 who built much of the
infrastructure of the contemporary border regime. Whilst I found the
ignorance quite shocking at the time, I now wonder if it was at least
partially informed by their inability to comprehend why Labor would have
felt it necessary to introduce mandatory detention. Was it prescient
political triangulation, pre-empting the rise of Hanson/Howard rhetoric,
or is this too simplistic? What other functions does mandatory detention
serve?
At the time, the Minister responsible, Gerry Hand, stated that:
“I believe it is crucial that all persons who come to Australia without
prior authorisation not be released into the community. Their release
would undermine the Government’s strategy for determining their refugee
claims or entry claims. Indeed, I believe it is vital to Australia that
this be prevented as far as possible. The Government is determined that
a clear signal be sent that migration to Australia may not be achieved
by simply arriving in this country and expecting to be allowed into the
community.”
As I understand it, the precise reasons why Labor elected to establish
the system when it did remain a little obscure. That is, critics
questioned the need for such a system to be established at all, and
noted that there appeared to be no pressing reason to do so. To more
fully answer the question would require an examination of Labor thinking
on the matter at the time: something I’ve not explored myself. I suspect
that the answer may be found by locating the policy within a broader
framework; that is, the transformation of Labor party politics under the
Hawke-Keating (1983–1996) governments. In this regard, I think there is
both continuity and disjunction with previous policy. Otherwise, I
believe state controls over transnational labour movement and capital
flows play a key role in arriving at a better understanding of
Australian government policy during this period. In which context,
Angela Mitropoulos’s essay on ‘The Exhaustion of Australian Social
Democracy’ is I think a useful treatment.
Transnational labour and capital is a crucial part of this discussion,
but this is something you hear almost nothing of in the contemporary
refugee campaign. Why do you think that is? Does the scapegoating of
refugees and asylum seekers merely provide political cover for the
expansion of policies that exploit migrant labour and depress wages? Can
you sketch out the connection between the two?
To begin with, I’d suggest that many if not most of those involved in
‘the contemporary refugee campaign’ – a concept which requires some
unpacking – are motivated by humanitarian concerns rather than, say,
mobilised on the basis of an analysis of the capital/labour distinction
and its application in a local (Australian) context. In other words,
with some exceptions, most attention is being given to that category of
persons known as asylum seekers or refugees, and to activities which
seek to support their efforts to settle in Australia.
The distinction between the ‘good’ refugee and the ‘bad’ refugee (or
migrant worker) is often expressed in economic terms: those fleeing
persecution in another country have nominal rights to do so while those
seeking to migrate to Australia simply in order to improve their
economic or social status are regarded as illegitimate. Determinations
regarding the nature of cross-border movement of labour – and thus the
shape of the local labour market – are the result of calculations made
by government and state. The international legal treaties to which the
Australian state is a party provide a framework for these
determinations; often ignored in practice, and subject to international
condemnation as a result – to little, if any obvious effect. The chief
task of the state is to control these population flows in the interests
of the elite institutions which dominate the economy.
I’m not convinced that the scapegoating of refugees and asylum seekers
is simply about providing political cover for attacks upon working
conditions: here a distinction should be made between support and
function. To begin with, it seems to me that this kind of scapegoating
relies for its effectiveness – its popular appeal – upon long-standing
racist tropes and xenophobic sentiment. Popular support for the policy
of mandatory detention and the construction of a Fortress Australia is
just as often expressed in non-economic or ‘cultural’ terms and it’s
these concerns which seem to generate the most excitement among
supporters, while the actual function of such policies are broader and
more extensive.
Punitive forms of state discipline – such as welfare quarantining or
extended waiting times for access to social security programs – are
programs that are ‘piloted’ on already oppressed and marginalised groups
(e.g. the introduction of the ‘basics card’ in Indigenous communities) a
long time before they are rolled out to the broader population. Is it
fair to argue that a normalisation of the prison system, particularly
the component of it under for-profit control, is also an intended
consequence of the spectacle of mandatory detention? What else might
fall into this category?
‘The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its
prisons.’ ~ Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead
It’s certainly the case that punitive policies of this sort are
invariably imposed upon, at first, the most marginalised populations –
for obvious reasons. The same may be said of the industry which has
developed around ‘border protection’, though in this case the Australian
state is pioneering managerial
techniques which are then exported and developed in international as
opposed to domestic markets.
The privatisation of the prison industry dates from roughly the same
time as the introduction of mandatory detention under Labor (in 1992)
and may be regarded as forming one part of a broader social
transformation often referred to as ‘neoliberalism’. An account of the
development of neoliberalism in Australia and elsewhere in the world,
rooted by some in popular challenges to austerity in the so-called Third
World in the 1960s and 1970s, is a larger topic. In any case, the
privatisation/ corporatisation of prison systems has obvious benefits to
the state. Not the least of which is rendering conditions (and the
systemic abuses) inside prisons that much more obscure to the general
public. As defence, the state often invokes some concept of
“efficiency”; a loaded term which, like many others in popular
discourse, requires translation into English before being of any use.
Broadly speaking, these and similar measures are governed by
institutional political and economic considerations; of creating
entrenched and systematic forms of social control which are both
effective and, as far as possible, profitable, with the social costs
being borne by the general population.
There is, to my mind, a close link between Australia’s unreconciled
colonial identity and the resonance of anti-immigrant rhetoric with
‘ordinary’ Australians. Though the language has changed from the
language of the white Australia policy (we now deploy the navy to turn
boats back out of apparent concern for the lives of the people aboard),
access to Australia and Australian-ness is as zealously defended as
ever. How do we, especially those of us who continue to benefit from the
privileges inherent in ‘being’ Australian, begin to challenge these
myths?
It’s likely the case that popular anxieties over immigration are
informed by some lurking sense of historical injustice. That is, the
Australian nation is understood as being an especially precarious
‘imagined community’, one whose foundation is the theft and murder of
non-Whites (Indigenous peoples) by Whites (British Empire), whose
geographical situation is Asia, not Europe, and which is subject to
continual attacks upon its sovereignty by both outsiders and domestic
elements. A brief survey of both far right literature and important
segments of the popular media on the subject reveals a good deal of
evidence to support this thesis. As to how to combat such ideas and
practices, I think Ken Knabb provides a useful (if somewhat lengthy)
guide in the following:
“It’s often said that a stateless society might work if everyone were
angels, but due to the perversity of human nature some hierarchy is
necessary to keep people in line. It would be truer to say that if
everyone were angels the present system might work tolerably well
(bureaucrats would function honestly, capitalists would refrain from
socially harmful ventures even if they were profitable). It is precisely
because people are not angels that it’s necessary to eliminate the setup
that enables some of them to become very efficient devils. Lock a
hundred people in a small room with only one air hole and they will claw
each other to death to get to it. Let them out and they may manifest a
rather different nature. As one of the May 1968 graffiti put it, “Man is
neither Rousseau’s noble savage nor the Church’s depraved sinner. He is
violent when oppressed, gentle when free.”
Others contend that, whatever the ultimate causes may be, people are now
so screwed up that they need to be psychologically or spiritually healed
before they can even conceive of creating a liberated society. In his
later years Wilhelm Reich came to feel that an “emotional plague” was so
firmly embedded in the population that it would take generations of
healthily raised children before people would become capable of a
libertarian social transformation; and that meanwhile one should avoid
confronting the system head-on since this would stir up a hornet’s nest
of ignorant popular reaction.
Irrational popular tendencies do sometimes call for discretion. But
powerful though they may be, they are not irresistible forces. They
contain their own contradictions. Clinging to some absolute authority is
not necessarily a sign of faith in authority; it may be a desperate
attempt to overcome one’s increasing doubts (the convulsive tightening
of a slipping grip). People who join gangs or reactionary groups, or who
get caught up in religious cults or patriotic hysteria, are also seeking
a sense of liberation, connection, purpose, participation, empowerment.
As Reich himself showed, fascism gives a particularly vigorous and
dramatic expression to these basic aspirations, which is why it often
has a deeper appeal than the vacillations, compromises and hypocrisies
of liberalism and leftism.
In the long run the only way to defeat reaction is to present more
forthright expressions of these aspirations, and more authentic
opportunities to fulfil them. When basic issues are forced into the
open, irrationalities that flourished under the cover of psychological
repression tend to be weakened, like disease germs exposed to sunlight
and fresh air. In any case, even if we don’t prevail, there is at least
some satisfaction in fighting for what we really believe, rather than
being defeated in a posture of hesitancy and hypocrisy.
Andy writes about politics for outlets such as New Matilda and Overland.
He also keeps a close watch on the ‘master race’ on his blog