VANGUARD - Expressing the viewpoint of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
For National Independence and Socialism • www.cpaml.org
The horrific Bondi massacre unleashed a wave of ideological, political and organisational attacks on the Australian people. Such shock and grief shake people’s ability to think clearly. The vast majority of our people are potential allies, but they can be manipulated by fear and lack of knowledge by powerful imperialist warmongers and their local collaborators to blame the wrong people.
We have to understand in detail our own strengths and weaknesses, and our enemy’s. This doesn’t just mean listening to the vile Zionist attacks of John Howard, Chris Minns or the leading Zionists who support them.
Listen and speak respectfully
We have to know what resonates with people. We have to test by listening and putting counter views, experimenting where truth finds a way to surface and lies fail.
It means breaking from comfortable likeminded circles, and mixing with those who disagree with us. It means not hitting out, falling in to traps, or lecturing people, but using the mass line – taking the ideas of the people, concentrating them into theory, and testing that theory in practice in an endless cycle of increasing understanding.
We have to first unite and give confidence to our own forces, and second to win back those who are under ruling class influence.
To fight back, to organise, we must stand on solid ideological and political ground.
Always listen first.
But speak carefully, respectfully. No one likes to be lectured. Just because we are bursting with what we want to say, less is more. Know when to stop. Know your audience. For some, you might have two minutes or less, or two sentences online to make a point. Know who not to engage with. Know which platforms to avoid.
Four key slogans
Here are four of our enemy’s key slogans: Don’t bring it here. Palestine rallies make us unsafe. Muslims won’t integrate and can’t be trusted. Look after Australians first.
To counter them, put yourself in others’ shoes. Acknowledge justified grief and anger.
Ten-year-old Matilda was a refugee from Ukraine via Israel. Imagine the grief of her family, the Jewish community and school friends and staff at La Perouse Public School. Start there, and with the incredible bravery of many people. Or simply say the obvious, that it’s terrible.
Only for the openminded, ask them to imagine that grief multiplied by 80,000. Gaza was just 26 kilometres long and seven kilometres wide at its narrowest point. Now it’s half that size. 2.2 million people, and all those bombs in such a small area. 400 more dead since the ceasefire.
“Don’t bring it here”
Expanded, it means don’t bring overseas problems here. Australia is “safe and free”.
True? Well, why project an Israeli flag on federal Parliament House, or its blue and white colours on the Sydney Opera House in October 2023?
Why allow the US war base at Pine Gap, near Mparntwe Alice Springs, to guide missiles and drones, and choose human targets in Gaza? Australia hasn’t declared war on Palestine, so how can we allow this to happen? (Pine Gap is on Arrernte land without permission.)
Why are Australian navy boats and personnel in the Middle East? Or the South China Sea?
And isn’t it ironic, the US demands “freedom of navigation”, while hijacking Venezuelan shipping?
If we don’t want it to come here, why support another undeclared US war?
The government banned ‘Globalise the Intifada’. It’s a trap. It entices us to repeat it in defiance. Refusing to be silenced is important. But it’s the wrong slogan for us. Most people see a foreign word they misunderstand, and think it means we want the horrors of Gaza here.
“Palestine rallies make us unsafe”
There’ve been hundreds of Palestine rallies, and not one violent incident.
From the first protest, Jewish people marched. Hundreds of Jewish people have protested. Holocaust survivors have marched. If you’ve seen them, say it because personal experience is hard to refute. It means calling you a liar.
At the Sydney Bridge March, people waited patiently in the nearby railway stations until there was room to exit. Everyone waited 90 minutes or longer in the rain, without complaint.
When Hezbollah flags were brought to rallies after Israel bombed Lebanon, they were told by organisers not to bring them again (because Australian governments declared Hezbollah a terrorist organisation). But don’t get into an argument about Hezbollah or Hamas. That’s quicksand, whether what you say is true or not.
Marches for peace and justice make us all safer.
How? Because people feel they belong. They feel valued.
Before Australia joined the failed US invasion of Iraq, peace marches brought over a million Australians to the streets across the country. Half a million brought Sydney to a standstill.
We warned that terrorism would erupt, breed and spread from Iraq. We knew UN documents and international weapons inspectors said weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed.
But in Australia’s “great democracy”, John Howard declared war against the opposition of 94 percent of Australians. Muslim Australians marched too. They knew they were supported by all Australians. They knew they were part of the Australian community.
Because of this, there was no terrorist attack here until eleven years later, by a man who should have been in jail for life, not bail, for 43 sexual assaults on his ex-wife, and as an accessory to her murder.
When 300,000 marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, it showed a majority of Australians had understood genocide.
But think back. Australia sent forty thousand 20-year-olds to Vietnam, to be killed or carry lifelong trauma. Who fought to bring them home? Women set up “Save Our Sons”, marchers chanted “Bring them home! Bring them home!” We ended Australian involvement in that war. One misguided woman – who blamed the soldiers not those who sent them to an unjust, unwinnable US war – smeared red paint on returning soldiers. Now all protesters are unjustly blamed for the trauma Vietnam veterans carry.
“Muslims won’t integrate and can’t be trusted”
The two killers at Bondi had IS flags. IS has killed tens of thousands of Muslims. Shia, Sunni, Alawites, all hate IS.
Why blame all Muslims for the actions of two men? Or the two other young people, isolated from their community, who committed attacks since 2003?
How would you feel if all “white” Australians were blamed for the 59 murders by an Australian white supremacist in a New Zealand mosque five years ago?
Where was the panic about Islamophobia?
Or if all men were blamed for the murder of 73 women in 2025 and a 104 in 2024?
Or if all blonde men were blamed for the Port Arthur massacre?
“Put Australians first”
Australia is where we live. Loving our country and people isn’t racism. It doesn’t mean we love everything our country does. But if we want to change the world and bring justice, Australia is where we do it, and the peoples on this continent and its islands are who we do it with.
We can’t allow the far right to claim moral high ground. Poverty, homelessness, failure to fund public schools, hospitals, ambulances occurs because, for example, $30 million a day, every day for the next 40 years goes to AUKUS, for submarines that won’t protect us and may never arrive.
US military bases like Pine Gap litter our country. We pay for them. They make us a target in a war the US will lose against China. Our military has become a wing of the US military, but the US shows no interest in defending Australia. The US is collapsing economically, can’t feed or house its own people. It can’t sustain a war with a rising power like China. Australia is a pawn. It will be collateral damage. In World War Two Britain sent our troops to Africa, and left Australia undefended against the Japanese onslaught. The US will not defend Australia. It will make us a target, but tie our hands so we are unable to fight back.
And Palestine? The map of ever-diminishing Palestine since 1947 must be publicised in every way we can. A group in Canberra is constantly updating it.
Truth shines
These are many ideas that have made people think and even change their minds in quiet conversations since that terrible massacre of 15 people at Bondi.
Some will listen for longer than others. Shoving ideas down peoples’ throats never work. But dip your toe in the waters of truth, ask questions so you know how people think, refuse to be silenced, speak out, and work out other ways, stickers, posters, banners, memes, songs, videos.
We need to get organised. We need to rebuild the strength of workers and community in every way we can.
Lies have short legs. Truth shines.