France: New Poplur Front challenges the far-right

Lisbeth Latham

In the wake of the far-right National Rally (RN) winning the largest share of votes in France for the European Elections on June 9. French President Emmanuel Macron announced the dissolution of the French General Assembly with new elections to be held on June 30, with run-off elections to be held on July 7. The announcements have sparked real fears that RN could form a government. However, in the face of this threat, France’s left and progressive forces are seeking to fight back both on the street and through the formation of a New Popular Front (NFP). This development has generated both hopes for the left and fears for business that the snap elections could usher in a united left government.

In the European Parliament elections, like far-right parties across Europe but most notably in Germany and Austria, the RN’s vote surged to 31.37% or 7.76 million votes. This result was a substantially improved performance in comparison with RN’s performance in the 2022 National Assembly elections (18.7%) and the Front National (RN’s name at the time) in the 2019 European elections (23.3%). The substantial growth in RN’s vote, along with the fall in votes of parties that support President Macron which collapsed from 22.42% (2019) to 14.52% (2024). Raising fears that RN would be in a strong position to win both the 2024 presidential and national assembly elections.

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Map showing the political alignment with the highest vote in different localities across France on June 9 - Brown being Far-Right

In response to the poor performance of his supporters in the June 9 elections, Macron announced the dissolution of the National Assembly with the first round of new elections to be held on June 30. In announcing the dissolution, Macron said “France needs a clear majority in serenity and harmony”, a reference to the difficulty that Macron has faced with his supporters not winning a clear majority in the National Assembly in the 2022 election

Given the very different momentums between the far-right and the parties of the centre. RN and its leader Jordan Bardella are seen as being in a strong position to win a majority and form government. Indeed, Bardella has repeatedly said that the RN would only form government in its own right rather than build coalitions with other parties post the elections.

This possibility has led to significant speculation as to Macron’s motivation in taking a risk in allowing RN to form a government. One is to place pressure on the traditional Gaullist right-wing parties, most notably the Republicans, to enter into a coalition with Macron’s Rennaisance to form a government to avoid the threat of RN, or that should RN form a government that it would be in a situation of cohabitation with Macron’s presidency, which would limit the ability of an RN government to implement its agenda, and Macron potentially still able to push through legislation without reference to the national assembly via cl 49.3 of the French constitution which allows the president to declare legislation passed unless there is a vote of no confidence in the national assembly. This would require RN not only to have the largest bloc but a viable majority in the Assembly. Supporters of Macron’s approach hope that this frustration of RN’s agenda would result in dissatisfaction amongst their voters, positioning Macron and his supporters to then win the 2027 elections.

While this approach has been seen as a potentially risky but brilliant gamble the real potential risks are not going to be felt by Macron, but by the broader French population, particularly the working and popular classes and France’s marginalised communities who have historically been the target of RN’s agenda. This reality reflects the deeply cynical character of the decision to dissolve the National Assembly.

In the wake of the dissolution of the National Assembly, Éric Ciotti, the head of the Republicans has made it clear that he is willing to consider entering a coalition with not just RN, but also France’s second far-right party Reconquest which received 5.46% of the vote. This announcement resulted in an outcry within the Republicans and a move by the party’s leadership on June 12 to expel Ciotti from the Party - a move that the Paris Judicial Court overturned on June 15. On June 17, Ciotti announced that he would lead a list of 62 candidates from The Republicans in alliance with RN.

Despite Ciotti’s actions the leadership of Reconquest has refused to enter the alliance. Marion Maréchal, who was elected to the European Parliament for the party, and the niece of FN Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, and the granddaughter of the National Front founder and long-time leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, led the negotiations with RN on behalf of Reconquest. However, when these broke down, she criticised party leader Éric Zemmourare accusing im of making too many demands, and announcing she would support the joint list between RN and Ciotti. In response Maréchal was expelled from Reconquest on June 13. Reconquest is standing their own list of candidates, but perfomance in opinion polls has collapsed to between 1-2%.

In the face of the European Election results and the dissolving of the National Assembly, there have been two linked responses from France’s left parties and broader social movements. The call for a united electoral alliance to attempt to achieve the best possible electoral outcome for the left and in parallel calls for popular mobilisations against both the dissolution of the National Assembly and the threat from the far-right.

On June 10, a call was issued for the formation of NFP to “carry a program of social and ecological ruptures to build an alternative to Emmanuel Macron and combat the racist project of the far right”. There were 11 initial signatory organisations including Rebellious France (FI), the Socialist Party (PS), the Ecologists, and the French Communist Party (PCF). While individual leaders of the PS initially rebuffed the call, this reluctance had changed by June 14, with Raphaël Glucksmann, the leader of the PS’s European Parliamentary elections ticket announcing his support. A contributing factor to this decision would have been the announcement by former president François Hollande, who had historically been close to Macron and had endorsed Macron’s previous presidential election campaigns, that he was supporting the NFP. Hollande has been confirmed as the candidate for the constituency he represented for 22 years prior to his election to the presidency in 2012.

The FNP’s agreed platform for the election includes:

• the abolition of Article 49.3 of the French Constitution;
• the introduction of proportional representation for elections to the National Assembly;
• organising a constituent assembly to prepare a new constitution for France, moving from the current Fifth Republic to the new Sixth Republic;
• supporting a retirement age of 60 and the repeal of the 2023 French pension reform law;
• introducing paid menstruation leave;
•  a 14% increase in the minimum wage;
• re-introduction of the solidarity tax on wealth that had been abolished in 2017;
• introducing a new tax on excess profits;
• increasing the Generalised Social Contribution paid by the richest taxpayers;
• free school lunches and supplies;
• abolition the Parcoursup University Admissions system - which limits the number of university places for high school leavers;
• supporting military aid to Ukraine, while committing to no direct French military intervention;
• recognising the State of Palestine;
• enforcing an arms embargo against Israel;
• introducing gender self-identification for trans people;
• abolition of universal national service

The announcement of the formation of the NFP has given significant hope to the French electorate with the NFP receiving between 26-29% support in national polls. This is close to maintaining the combined results that the NFP’s constituent parts received in the European Election of 31.58%. This consolidation of support makes it much more likely that candidates of the NFP will either be directly elected or reach the second round (when no candidate in the constituency achieves a majority of the vote. Support in polls remains consistently below the results for the RN’s polling of between 29.5-36%. The support for the NFP has given rise to concerned speculation in France’s mainstream media regarding the prospect of a NFP government, particularly one in which the FI’s leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon would be prime-minister. With open speculation as to the willingness of French capital to support a RN government. Hoping to curry this support RN has announced that it would back away from promises to lower France’s taxes on fuel, power, and the broader value added tax.

The urgency of the situation has seen the far-left New Anti-Capitalist Party-Anti-Capitalist (the NPA split in 2023, the other component is the NPA-Revolutionary) announce that it would participate in the NFP. Whilst the NPA-Anti-Capitalist is small, in several constituencies, particularly around Bourdeux, where it has local councillors, it could have played a role in diffusing the left vote. The NPA-Anti-Capitalist’s participation in the NFP is significant as it and its precursors have, whilst willing to participate in negotiations around the formation of united electoral efforts, stood apart from left-electoral fronts to a large extent since 2002. This refusal has been primarily based on a desire for the formations to adopt a clear position going into elections that it would reject a governmental alliance with the PS due to the PS’s record of social liberalism in government, that is neoliberalism with a social democratic face. In announcing their participation in the NFP, the NPA - Anti-Capitalist observed “in a few days, all the left-wing political forces, unions, associations and movements working on environmental, anti-racist, feminist and LGBT+ struggles, grouped around the New Popular Front. In a few days, it is indeed our social camp, that of the exploited and oppressed, which has reconstituted itself as a political subject to defend its rights”.

The NPA-Anti-Capitalist is not alone in adding to the supporters of the NFP. There are now some 53 parties, five union confederations, and numerous social movement organistations that have joined and supporting the front.

Since June 16 there have regular protests across France called by FNP and other left and progressive social and political forces. Whilst not at the level of mass mobilisation as has been seen in France’s past they are significant. The interior ministry estimated national participation in protests across France on June 16 at 250, 000, whilst the General Confederation of Labour put participation at 640, 000 with estimates of Paris protest participation being 72, 000 and 250, 000 respectively. The details of the 117 actions against the RN across France this week can be found here.

Irrespective of the outcome of the first and second rounds of the elections. The capacity and willingness of France’s left and popular movements to build on these mobilisations play a central role. In the lead-up to the second round of elections, this will include pressuring the parties of the centre and right to work against the election RN candidates. In the wake of the second round opposing any efforts to build a coalition with RN to form government. Finally in the face of whatever government is formed to struggle for the interests of working and popular classes and marginalised communities whether against a government of the far-right, centre, or in holding the parties of the left to the NFP program.

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The sobering reality of opening up

Lisbeth Latham

In recent weeks, political and media commentary about the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia has focused on the question of when, in the context of growing vaccination rates, the country should consider ‘opening up’ (in this context a permanent and total break from lockdowns).

This discussion conveniently ignores the reality that the situation in Australia -particularly in NSW and Victoria - is increasingly out of control and, consequently, neglects the more urgent questions of what should be done now. Despite the situation in NSW, the state government is pushing ahead with its plans to lift restrictions for the vaccinated leaving many of the poorest and most culturally and linguistically diverse local government areas in lockdown[1].

Are Lockdowns sustainable?
This is not a simple question. Nonetheless, it is the case that there is a limit to how long the current lockdowns can be sustained. This is due to the insufficient support being provided to those in the most economically precarious circumstances. This lack of support, which has only worsened as the pandemic has progressed, only serves to punish workers whose work has enabled communities to lockdown in the first place. If this was addressed, the capacity to maintain lockdowns would be expanded, yet at a certain point key sectors of the economy - those necessary for sustaining lives - would also be disrupted. Luckily, no one has ever suggested permanent lockdowns. Instead, governments have advocated for lockdowns of sufficient length to suppress the virus to levels that enable us to protect lives and health.

Mental Health
A major argument against lockdowns has been that they contribute to community mental health concerns. There is no doubt that lockdowns are tough; loneliness and isolation are significant predictors of mental health problems and lockdowns are often very lonely experiences. In addition to these commonly shared impacts, many people are experiencing additional stressors. These include the constant threat of infection; concerns around income loss and the cost of living; relationship stress arising from home confinement; and supporting and caring for children with little to no understanding of the restrictions’ purpose or necessity

However, much of the media discourse around mental health feels disingenuous, many commentators seem to believe that lockdown is the only cause of the current strain on the mental health system and that it’s lifting the only solution. Such commentators conveniently ignore the range of support mechanisms that could be further deployed to support community mental health. Furthermore, their constant depictions of lockdowns as wrong and corrosive are demoralising and may negatively impact people’s ability to cope and persevere. Lifting the lockdowns in the context of widespread community transmission is a recipe for mass infections and large scale death - both of which would devastate communities, particularly when the people dying are your loved ones. Too often media discourse around the psychological impact of lockdowns is nothing more than a cynical exercise aimed at building pressure for opening up, with little or no consideration for people’s actual mental health.

Debate in epidemiology
From the beginning of the pandemic, there have been notable discrepancies in the advice being given by epidemiologists regarding the preventative measures that should be applied to minimise the spread of COVID-19. To an extent, these differences should come as no surprise; COVID is a novel virus and it took time for the mechanisms via which it spreads to be fully understood. Furthermore, with professional reputations at stake, it is unsurprising that many experts have doubled down on their own position or attacked the conflicting opinions of their colleagues. The additional seduction of building a media profile by publicly endorsing or criticising government position(s) has not helped matters either. Nonetheless, a much bigger debate has unfolded within epidemiology throughout the crisis. This debate centres on how and when to make judgements about the adoption of various preventative public health mechanisms. On the one hand, epidemiologists from the “medical-based evidence” camp have resisted adopting measures without conclusive evidence that supports their value or efficacy. These experts argue that the potential cost of such mechanisms far outweigh any benefits - benefits which they say are at best unproven and at worst, nonexistent. On the other hand, were the epidemiologists who argued that, in the context of a major global public health crisis, it was neither possible nor prudent to simply wait for the evidence to come in. For these epidemiologists, adopting measures such as masks and social distancing was essential because their potential to curb infection risk far outweighed any potential costs, most of which were financial. This debate has occurred publicly, most noticeably in the Boston Review, but also in the exponential increase of opinion pieces and media interviews with epidemiologists regarding not only what actions work, but also what level of effectiveness is worth the social and economic cost. Early in the Pandemic, in response to statements by Bill Gates that “COVID was a once in a lifetime pandemic”, Stanford University epidemiologist John Ioannidis wondered if the coronavirus pandemic might rather be a “once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.”

I’m not in a position to judge the scientific merits of the modelling, but it is important to recognise that these judgements are not purely objective, but informed by subjective judgements regarding how we ought to weigh threats to life against the economic impacts of policy options. I personally stand by the idea that preserving human life and health is where we need to place our priorities - not only because saving lives is the whole point, but also because of the harmful impacts mass illness and death have on people’s livelihoods and the economy at large. Those who prioritise the economy at the expense of human life are not only lacking in empathy but have an unaccounted for, built-in error in their calculations.

Vaccinations: are they a magic bullet?
Since the emergence of viable vaccinations for COVID - public discourse has shifted towards the idea that the way to deal with the virus is to focus on mass vaccinations and that a vaccinated population would effectively eliminate the need for lockdowns. This argument has a number of flaws. First, reaching mass vaccination has been slow. This is understandable, since achieving mass production of vaccines takes time. In particular, the mNRA vaccines such as Pfizer and Moderna are essentially new technologies, meaning that whole new production and supply chains have had to be created from scratch.

Related shortages in production have contributed to and exacerbated the uneven distribution of vaccines globally. This is not just devastating for those populations left unvaccinated and who are left more vulnerable to infection and death; the mass transition also creates much better conditions for the mutation of the virus and is associated with the development of new strains, some of which may be more infectious, more deadly and/or more resistant to available vaccines. For this reason, it is essential that overcoming global inequalities in vaccine distribution becomes a priority for all rich countries, including Australia - not just as an act of solidarity (though this should be the primary driver) but also as an act of self-preservation.

In addition to the problem of vaccine inequality and the associated risk of new and increasingly deadly strains, much of the discourse around vaccination has overstated the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing infection, illness, and transmission between and among populations. While the effectiveness of vaccines is uneven, no vaccine for any illness delivers these outcomes. This disjuncture between promise and reality has thus lent undue credence to bad-faith actors, expanding and legitimising opposition to vaccinations and lockdown. Opponents, therefore, argue (or at the very least imply) that inaction is preferred to measures that cannot guarantee a 100 per cent success rate.

Still, the reality that mass vaccinations will not eliminate the virus has done little to impede the proliferation of media commentary linking mass vaccination to “opening up”. Instead, it has led to a growth in public discourse about the need to “live with the virus”. Such discourse initially relied on technically true statements that the vaccine would make it less likely for the vaccinated to get infected, to become seriously ill, and to die or infect others. Yet as concerning levels of infections continue to be recorded in countries with much higher vaccination rates, the rhetoric from a section of capital, political parties/leadership and the media have attempted to normalise infections and COVID-related deaths, arguing that these are acceptable price pay for ending “unsustainable lockdowns”. This push has, in many cases, been heavily reliant on modelling by researchers at the Doherty Institute whose research has informed the National Plan to transition Australia’s Covid response. What is clear is that this modelling is inadequate, but also that even the most optimistic projections include much higher levels of infection and death than Australia's previous strategy ever contemplated. Moreover, it is also clear that many of the assumptions which underlie this more optimistic projection, such as effective test, track and isolation mechanisms do not currently exist. Australians are thus being softened up for precisely the horrors seen in other countries - horrors which our collective sacrifice of lockdowns was aimed at avoiding.

This pressure is not new. It has been at play in Australia since the start of the pandemic. The idea that the economy should be prioritised over life - a position that was resisted not only by unions, but sections of capital, and most importantly some of the state and territory governments - most notably Victoria, WA, and Queensland - has drawn persistent attacks from large sections of capital, the media, and the LNP. This is despite the complete failure of their preferred model. Thus these ongoing attacks are not only bad in terms of their intent or potential outcome but are divisive and demoralising, sapping people’s reserve of endurance and tolerance. Lockdown is hard enough without constant reminders that it is too hard, unnecessary, or the supposed fever dream of a crazed dictator. While those who think lockdowns are horrible but necessary are unfairly denounced as mindless cultists, such discourse continues to create fertile ground for the conspiracy theories being actively spread by the far-right.

Human Rights
Questions surrounding the implications of lockdown measures for human rights, including the most appropriate means for convincing people to adhere to public health measures have also been a constant topic of debate. There is no doubt that the impact of lockdowns has been uneven, with race and class location significantly impacting certain populations' experience of not just lockdown but also some of the more repressive measures deployed by governments in the name of public health. For this reason, there need to be not only more and better resources allocated to support those in lockdown, but also increased accountability and scrutiny of the actions of the police. Having said this, focusing on the rights of individuals to not be impacted by the state ignores the intent and positive consequences that such health measures have on reducing infection rates. Protection from potentially life-threatening and debilitating illness is also a significant human right and in weighing these two rights we need to form a judgement about where to place our emphasis. In this respect, I am firmly in favour of preventing loss of life and promoting health. Public health orders play an important role in achieving this goal, and in order for them to be meaningful, there need to be consequences for breaching them - consequences which also must be appropriate, proportionate, and consistent in their application.

Pressure on public health
Part of the discussion regarding the response to’ COVID-19 has focused on pre-existing problems in public health systems, both in Australia and across the globe. These critiques point to the impact that decades of underfunding have had on public health systems as part of the neoliberal transformation of our societies. This transformation has effectively reduced both the available staffing in frontline and support roles and the number of available beds. It has also meant that, despite long-standing concerns regarding the risk of an emergent pandemic, little was done to prepare for it. These are important critiques. Nonetheless, it is important to recognise that even in the most ideal situation COVID, with its high level of infectiousness and increased risks of hospitalisation and long term complications, would have been a challenge. This can be seen that globally, despite the different capacities of health systems globally, as well as the different suites of policy responses have had varying degrees of horrific outcomes with a few notable exceptions.

Concerns about lifting lockdown restrictions prematurely
This concern is based on the fact that there is only a narrow margin for error and getting the timing and details wrong would put significant pressure on the country’s already strained health care systems. The reality is that while decisions about how hospital beds are used can be made quickly, simply designating additional beds for ICU or ventilation isn’t sufficient. In order to make these arrangements work, hospitals need additional qualified and trained staff - and those staff simply don’t exist. The Victorian health unions went further on September 17 released a joint statement which included: 

‘‘This has been a long, tough and incredibly stressful 18 months for healthcare workers. The impact on their mental and physical wellbeing has been huge. We need the Premier to hold the line and maintain strong public health measures to help keep the pressure on the hospitals and the healthcare workers as low as possible. We must stop counting bed capacity and start looking at healthcare worker capacity, both mental and physical. Healthcare workers are at breaking point. You have no health system without health professionals to run it”.

So, what are we to do? It is true the current lockdown will eventually need to end. However, the question of when and how must be contested. While rates of community transmission remain high you can’t substantially weaken the provisions without also substantially increasing the level of vaccination rates in the community. Even at this point, the measures need to account for and seek to protect those sections of the community that are unable to be vaccinated. This means that most of the social distancing and PPE measures that have been in place for the virus will need to be retained, at least at some level, for the foreseeable future. Finally, we should not accept the idea of a permanent end to lockdowns. In the event that infections rise again, we must continue to look to lockdowns as an option to protect people and to safeguard health care systems which, if overwhelmed, would exacerbate the possibility of further (and otherwise preventable) loss of life.

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1 As a disclaimer, it is important to acknowledge that, like the vast majority of commentators in Australia, I am not an epidemiologist. As such I will not attempt to interpret models or do my own modelling, instead, I seek to simply explore issues that I feel are being overlooked in the current discussion.

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Misplaced Sympathies: Anti-Lockdown Protests Undermine Social Solidarity

Lisbeth Latham

As more Australians enter lockdown in response to the spread of COVID-19 there has been an associated rise in protests against lockdowns and other public health measures designed to curb the spread of the virus. These protests are not a new phenomenon but have been occurring since the beginning of the pandemic. Although initially condemned, in Australia at least, there are now attempts to paint these protests in a sympathetic light or even as somehow progressive. According to these commentators, the protests, although misguided, are really a response to the state’s failure to deliver sufficient support to working people. Yet while financial hardship may be a motivating factor for some participants, remedying financial stress is by no means the objective of these rallies. Instead, the protests rely heavily on militant individualism and opposition to state limitations on behavior which are justified by appealing to a range of interlocking conspiracies that question the reality of the pandemic and the motivations for the various state responses to it.

In most countries, the early protests against lockdown and other public health measures aimed at limiting the spread of COVID. This was particularly aimed at the compulsory wearing of masks and the limiting of movement. The right-wing character was made clear not just by the groups pushing heavily within this framework - such as in the US militias, and other far-right currents such as the Proud Boys, and various Christian patriot groups, but the language that was used to justify and legitimise refusal to comply. These were heavily drawn from highly individualistic, right-wing libertarian sources, such as sovereign citizenship etc. which apart from denying the right of states to govern rely heavily on completely nonsensical quotes of non-existent legal arguments regarding the Magna Carta and other historical and totally irrelevant documents. These mobilisations were often also pushed by sections of capital who did not want to forfeit their right to make a profit at the cost of saving lives.

One of the numerous anti-lockdown advertisements published by Clive Palmer in major Australian newspapers.

In July of this year, the protests in Australia were bigger than earlier protests. This has lead to some on the left searching for a basis for this growth, the answer that a number have come to the conclusion that the driver is the shift in the level of financial support provided by the government to workers in lockdown and as such the protests are really, to paraphrase Marx, the sigh of the oppressed. While there is some appeal in being able to explain the growth in the protests as simply the growth in anger at financial difficulties brought on by the pandemic, you do need to be able to establish more than a correlation to demonstrate causation particularly if we are not descending into vulgar forms of materialism and accelerationism. However, the advocates for a position that this is a prime driver provide limited if any evidence. Tom Tanuki, in an article in the Independent Australian, whilst acknowledging that it is:

“a ’big tent’ conspiracist movement that houses discordant ideas and sometimes leaderless factions. It’s given direction by a ruling caste of portrait-video-filming figureheads who often scrap with each other for viral supremacy. The attention-seekers among them get a sugar rush of shares, the grifters get lots of money and the political careerists try to craft a future voting bloc.”

Despite this Tanuki plays down the significance of this reality and instead posits the movement, at least in Sydney, as “left” based on the participation of the working-class and sections of the Lebanese community from Sydney’s South West - however, no evidence is provided to support any of these claims. Christopher Knaus and Michael McGowan writing in the Guardian outline the global far-right network that has been seeking to build the anti-lockdown movement globally and notes that at least some of the organisers in Australia are embedded in these global far-right networks. However, Knaus and McGowan also cite Josh Roose, a senior research fellow specialising in extremism at Deakin University, as suggesting:

“While there were elements of far-right rhetoric among the protestors, what they actually shared was a level of marginalisation and distrust in authority.
“There are some similarities and commonalities to the far right in terms of content but these protests are not driven by the far-right per se,
“What immediately distinguishes these sorts of protest groups from the far right is that they’re highly multicultural and they’re made up not just of angry men at a patriot rally but also women.
“In both Melbourne and Sydney the people and areas being represented are the areas that have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic. There’s also issues here with the cultures and communities often have a deep-seated distrust of government, often for good reason.”

Again no evidence is provided to support either the observation or the conclusion. The idea that the presence of workers, people of colour, or women, may not fit with some people’s stereotypes of the far-right, but all of these identities are heterogeneous and historically they have all been sources of recruitment, particularly amongst more marginalised sections of communities, for the far-right even if our image of the far-right are young white men.

In questioning this argument I am not saying that financial hardship is not a factor. There would undoubtedly be people at the protest who have suffered financially - moreover, there are many people experiencing severe financial hardship due to the inadequacy of state and Commonwealth financial support. For some, this experience may have been a driver for their participation. Whether it is a driver of mobilisations, we should be raising demands not only to increase the level of financial support to workers, the self-employed, those reliant on welfare payments, and small business. Such financial support policies need to be consistent and locked in to provide greater certainty for people in the coming months. Our demands need to go beyond simply demanding the reinstating JobKeeper, and the COVID support supplement, but addressing the significant flaws in JobKeeper, many of which were entirely by the design of the Morrison government and for the COVID support supplement to be incorporated into all government pensions.

In saying this, I am also saying those advocating that financial hardship as the primary driver, or even a significant driver, need evidence that is the case. For me, a key basis for judging motivations of mobilisations are the public justifications for the mobilisations and the demands raised spontaneously within the participants. On this, the evidence does not suggest that seeking to address financial hardship is a key driver. It does not feature highly in the calls to action or with the homemade signs. Instead, we see calls for “freedom” and around the need for an end to lockdowns and other social distancing mechanisms, such as masks, and rejections of vaccines - which are core issues of this movement since its initial development.

Also, the growth and development of the movement internationally while not uniform, suggests it is growing irrespective of the financial and social distancing regulations which are actually in place in any given city or country. So rallies have occurred in cities without lockdown or provisions such as compulsory masking in place, although in these cities the protests tend to be smaller - which you would expect as the perceived threat is not present.

This does beg the question as to why there has been a growth in the anti-lockdown movement? Well, I don’t think it is for a singular reason. One factor is that there has been significant disinformation spread regarding both the virus and the various mitigation measures, including masks and vaccines. This is highlighted by the recent seven-day suspension of Sky News Australia from YouTube over the spreading of Covid misinformation. As the distress of lockdown and other limits on movement have built, it is understandable that some people who are experiencing extreme emotional distress would find the idea that that distress is both unnecessary but also can be ended simply by ending lockdowns. This is particularly the case in a country such as Australia where the health impact of COVID has been more limited - it is easier to imagine proceeding as normal without the fear that infections could explode to the levels experienced in other countries. This is contributed to discussions in both mainstream media and on social which talks about the Australian experience without contextualising it in the global context: at the same time the discussion also tends to discuss the Australian governmental response as far more repressive and restrictive than other states - this is particularly notable in discussions of Australia’s border policy as being unique in closing and limiting travel in and out of the country - which a review of sites such as the International Air Transport Association’s COVID-19 Travel Regulations Map - it is clear that Australia is not alone in having travel restrictions in place, nor does it currently have the harshest restrictions internationally.

Even in countries where infections and deaths have been much higher, most of the experience has been isolated to sections of the community particularly health care workers, and those who have experienced close family and friends become extremely sick and die. This is reflected in experiences in a number of countries of hospitals being targeted by anti-lockdown/COVID sceptical individuals as being part of a big lie to justify incursions on civil liberties.

The problem with identifying the drivers of protests is that they are not singular. However, it is clear that the process of the pandemic and associated public health measures have been extremely distressing for the vast majority of society. This is not a real shock, particularly when we consider the lack of certainty faced by many individuals, will they have work, will they be able to go see friends, will they be able to see family or travel. Uncertainty is highly stressful. It makes us feel anxious and that we have no power, or ability to control our own lives. It should be no surprise that psychological distress would help to create a fertile medium for conspiracy theories and anti-science denial to grow and take root. These ideas provide certainty, against a reality of a virus that might kill you and your loved ones - a counter reality where there is no virus and the restrictions are simply part of a conspiracy by the powerful to control us, can be appealing on many levels. That detachment from reality would not necessarily be a problem if it weren’t for the reality that rejecting the public measures increases the risk of exposure of everyone to a highly infectious virus that not only kills but causes long-term health problems in many of those who catch it.

These dynamics can only get worse as the emotional wear of the pandemic builds.

So what is the answer? While we must always come from a position of empathy, and understand that many participants in the protests are coming in situations of significant and understandable distress - I don’t think that empathy should let us fall into a position of accepting their arguments and motivations as being legitimate. These actions are aimed at undermining measures that protect public health - whilst people should not be treated with excessive or unreasonable force - the protests do need to be limited and prevented as they are aimed at disrupting the limits on social distancing needed to suppress the virus and save the lives and health of the broader community. Our efforts to maintain support for public health measures need to be premised on social solidarity and the idea that through some individual pain it is possible to reduce the severity of the impact on any individual - which means that the pain does need to be shared across the community - the idea of locking down working-class communities and communities of colour in order to enable rich suburbs to go on as if nothing is happening is unconscionable and reasonably erodes the idea that we are trying to protect everyone.

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France: The urgency of building an anti-capitalist and internationalist alternative

Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste
Tuesday, May 28 2019
The results of the European elections confirm the political crisis in France as in Europe: 50% abstention, votes for the extreme right very high, government parties globally discredited but which safeguard their electoral capital. Against capitalism, for social justice, there is still a voice for the world of work.

The extreme right threatens 
As in 2014, the National Gathering comes first, based on the rejection of the European Union to deflect anger in the field of racism and the struggle of all against all. 

With its associates in Italy, Belgium or Hungary, it embodies a mortal danger: that of the fiercest competition between the countries, with the dramatic consequences that would ensue for the popular classes, for women, for immigrants, and for all democratic and social rights.

Government parties save their seats
Although completely disavowed by the mobilizations of these past months, Macron and LREM managed to limit the damage. Similarly, in Germany and the Spanish state, the right or the PS are maintained although their policies have also been rejected by the people. These forces will dominate the future European Parliament, which shows once again the undemocratic nature of these institutions.

These formations are like ramparts against the extreme right. But it is the policies they lead, of social rights, privatization, contempt against the working classes, which actually feed the extreme right.

The Greens scored high on growing environmental concerns and mobilization for climate justice. With around 30% of the vote, the left parties are globally at their lowest, paying for their participation in liberal policies, particularly in the context of the European Union, their division and the difficulties of social mobilization that are struggling to win.

Fight, debate, build 
The economic, social, ecological crisis will continue to grow stronger and the choice to make is more and more clear: is the far right taking more and more space - up to the taking of power? - because the government parties will not stop the far-right's progress, or will the world of work manage to overcome its weaknesses to build a real alternative to liberal and/or nationalist policies?

It is futile to want to arrange the system. We need a radical left, independent of the institutions, anti-capitalist and internationalist, for the revolutionary break with the system, whose centre of gravity is the concrete defence of the world of work.

 There is an urgent need to build a political representation for all the exploited. Without denying the disagreements that exist, by the discussion and the confrontation of the points of view, we want to work for the unity of our social camp, to be able to unite to act against the government, against the repression, for our social demands, democratic and ecological. It is already possible to coordinate so that the struggles win together instead of losing one after the other. For these mobilizations, to this work of construction, urgent and necessary, the NPA intends to do our all to play our part.

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On Cologne and the problem of hegemonic masculinity

Lisbeth Latham

Protest against both sexual violence and racist attacks 

Over New Year’s Eve, a series of large scale attacks against women took place in Cologne and other German cities. A number of perpetrators were reported as being from refugee communities resulting in an intensification of the debate over how Germany and other Western societies should respond to asylum seekers from non-Western cultures particularly from predominantly Arab and Muslim countries - particularly as far-right forces have sort to use the attacks to build support for their own attacks on migrant communities, especially Muslim communities. Sections of the German left (which is also reflected in the Anglophone left) have sort to respond the right’s use the Cologne attacks, by attempting in various ways to downplay the seriousness of the events of New Year’s Eve and by shifting focus onto sexual violence within German and other Western societies. In doing so the left’s arguments while differing significantly in premise from that of the right, still shares much of the right’s logic regarding the violence in Cologne and refugee policy - albeit the logic is inverted. Much of the left arguments are primarily aimed at proving how racist the right is - and that the right’s supposed concern for women is disingenuous - but ultimately is not useful in either challenging violence against women in our society or the attempted mobilisation of those concerns to attack migrant and refugee communities.  

What happenedOn New Year’s Eve there were large scale attacks on women at train stations in the German cities of Cologne, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Dortmund, and Bielfeld. The largest of these attacks took place in Cologne where an estimated 1000 men participated in attacks. Groups of men reportedly acted isolated individual women these isolated were then robbed and/or assaulted. These attacks took place despite large scale police presences. Angela Klein reported that 213 local and federal police were deployed at the Cologne station and the adjacent cathedral square. Initial complaints to police were, ignored, but women continued to make complaints and media attention and public awareness around the incident grew, by January 30 to more than 1,000  complaints had been reported to police in Cologne alone (more than 400 involving sexual assault), some of these complaints include complaints against the police for failing to assist women on the night. The other German cities where large numbers of complaints have been made include Hamburg (236 complaints involving 391 victims - with only three of these complaints not involving sexual assault) and Dusseldorf where 113 complaints were made regarding sexual assault and theft.

Official responseThe initial responses of the German state and media pretended that the attacks had not occurred. A press release from Cologne Police headquarters on January 1 stated, “Shortly before midnight, the station forecourt in the area of the stairway to the cathedral had to be evacuated by uniformed officers in order to prevent a stampede caused by the firing of pyrotechnic munitions by about 1000 revelers. Despite the unplanned break in celebrations, the situation was relaxed, because the police were well placed at critical locations and showed their presence.” ZDF, one of Germany’s state broadcasters did not cover the attacks until January 5, and had made a deliberate decision at least on January 4 to delay reporting on the incidents. They subsequently issued an apology.

When the nature of the attacks were revealed, Henriette Reker, Mayor of Cologne, suggested that “there’s always the possibility of keeping a certain distance of more than an arm’s length – that is to say to make sure yourself you don’t look to be too close to people who are not known to you, and to whom you don’t have a trusting relationship.” She later stated that women in the city should follow a ‘code of conduct’ including a dress code to prevent further attacks.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the dominant party in the coalition government, under pressure over the slow public acknowledgement of the violence and criticised by far-right parties over the government’s policy supporting large scale (but inadequate) intakes of refugees announced that it will look at quicker mechanisms to deport migrants and asylum seekers guilty of crimes, the government has also made threats that it will reduce its refugee intake.

Thomas de Maizière, the CDU interior minister has called for a review of Germany’s laws around deportation to make it easier to deport individuals (including refugees) convicted of crimes. Currently only attracting prison sentences in excess of three years impact on refugee status.

While this call has been met with opposition from some within the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), the minority partner in the German government. Ralph Stegner, SPD deputy chief, accused de Maizière of knee-jerk opportunism. “We don’t need to change either the basic right to asylum or the Geneva refugee convention to deal with organized criminality by whoever in Germany”. However, other sections of the SPD have engaged in their own anti-refugee rhetoric. Heiko Mass, the SPD justice minister, has stated that those who are applying for asylum can be deported for crimes attracting a one-year prison sentence, while three local chapters of the SPD in Essen have called for blockades against the establishment of refugee centres in the city. The SPD Essen city organisation has distanced itself from these calls.

In the wake of the attacks there have been a raft of changes in Germany. The governing coalition has Bundestag approved new laws providing for the creation identity cards for refugees linked to a centralised data system - these cards will include country of origin and fingerprints and will be accessible by all government agencies. On February 26, passed of new refugee measures including a two year suspension of family reunions for refugees and reducing payments to refugees by €10 and provision for quick asylum decisions for refugees from an expanded list of “safe countries” which now includes Algeria, Morroco, and Tunisia.

Far-Right responseDuring 2014, Germany had seen the emergence and strengthening of a number of hard right and neo-nazi organisations, most notably Pegida (Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes - Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West), a Far-Right organisation established in Dresden in October 2014, which were able to mobilise large regular anti-Muslim protests in a number German cities. These actions peaked with a march of 25,000 in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in January 2015. These organisations have seized upon the New Year’s Eve attacks as “proof” of the “existential threat” posed by refugees - particularly Muslim, Arab and North African refugees, to German culture and society.

It is important to note that while some of those who are alleged to attacked women have been identified as coming from North African and Arab backgrounds (including some of whom are refugees) others have been German and US citizens. The Far-Right organisations have sought to pose as the “true” protectors of German women. These organisations accuse the local, state and federal governments along with the media and police of engaging in cover up to conceal the “threat posed” by refugees and Islam to German society.

Since New Year’s Eve, in a number of German cities there has been a series of anti-refugee protests and an escalation of physical violence against refugee and migrant communities – including a protest of 2000 people in Leipzig on January 11, which included hundreds of Far-Right activists torching cars and smashing windows and resulted in the arrest of 211 people. On February 6, Pegida, with other European far-right organisations, organised Europe-wide anti-Muslim protests, which they have dubbed “Day of European Patriots”, with the largest protest in Dresden involving between 8000 and 15000 people. Pegida has also sought to use outrage over Cologne to attempt to establish Pegida franchises in a number of countries including Ireland and the Netherlands.

In response to the attempts to use violence of New Year’s Eve to promote anti-refugee and broader islamophobia as mechanisms to “protect women” Laurie Penny argues that the right is seeking to “steal feminism” - however the right are not only not interested in “stealing feminism” they are generally hostile to feminism and it’s liberatory project. Instead they are motivated to mobilise racism - the extent to which the right has a concern for women it is primarily regarding who controls women in society.

Far-Left responseThe German Far-Left has attempted to mobilise around two core issues - opposition to sexism and to anti-refugee sentiments. This has notably occurred at protests organised by feminists, Left and anti-fascist forces in Cologne on January 6 and January 16. These protests have expressed anger both at victim blaming calls for women to modify their behaviour – attempting instead to focus on sexual violence as a problem, and rejecting the Far-Right’s’ claims of caring about women as cynical hypocrisy to cover their racist attacks on refugees and Muslims. The importance of these dual themes have also been a feature of articles published in Australia and England.

While I agree with a need to reject both sexism and anti-refugee racism, many of the articles from the Left have a tendency to give more weight to their anti-racist arguments by downplaying the seriousness of the attacks - reflecting the tendency of sections of the Left towards a cynical hypocrisy when it comes to taking violence towards women seriously. Indeed Angela Klein argues that significant sections of the German left failed to take the attacks on New Year’s Eve seriously. This downplaying is a consequence of the poor understanding of why violence towards women occurs (and a lack of real concern when said violence is an inconvenience when addressing other priorities). Also, much of the Left shares with Far-Right and mainstream political forces an orientalist understanding of non-Western cultures, particularly Islam.

Silke Stockle and Marion Wegscheidher, in an article for the German website Marx 21 (which has been republished by a number of Left-wing Anglophone publications and websites), argue that the mainstream discourse fails to discuss the systematic character of violence against women in Germany and state that the “hundred police officers present at the scene who did nothing to intervene in order to protect the women victims, despite the fact that there was even an undercover policewoman among them, is speaking volumes”. It is undoubtedly the case that the police response to the attacks exacerbated the situation. Angela Klein argues that the police response was deeply flawed in the following ways:

• Despite being aware that something was occurring as early as 9.30 pm, the police failed to seek additional support and, feeling overwhelmed, reportedly departed the square at 11.35 pm, when attacks were still happening and continued through until the early hours of the morning;
• The police responded, if at all, above all to acts of theft. Women reported that the police in case of sexual harassment were merely “watched”. Even a female officer who had been sexually harassed in the crowd got no help from her fellow officers. Angela Klein argues this is consistent with the general behaviour of police and legal authorities in Germany towards sexual harassment, which in Germany is still regarded as a “peccadillo” that is not punished under criminal law;
• There are also reports of women attempting to escape the square being pushed back into it by police.

However, the failure of the police response, which has seen the Cologne Chief of Police take early retirement - while undoubtedly influenced by misogyny and victim blaming attitudes - does not negate or reduce the responsibility of the perpetrators.

Much of the discourse of the Left has positioned the gendered violence in Cologne within the context of the pervasive gendered violence in German and other Western cultures. At one level, this is an extremely important point, combating a tendency to focus on the violence and problems of the “other” to minimise and erase the violence within one’s own culture.

However, in seeking to highlight the problems of sexism within Germany, and Western cultures more broadly, there is a tendency to minimise what occurred in Cologne and other cities. This is done in a number of ways, including:

• Failing to acknowledge that the number of reported attacks have risen and continuing to comment based on the very early figure of 100 complaints to police;
• Making a false distinction between rape and sexual assault and then focusing on the number of reported rapes, effectively ignoring the hundreds of sexual assaults that occurred;
• Making false comparisons to other violence against women in German society, such as at Oktoberfest, to suggest that anger and concern is purely motivated by xenophobia. I argue that these comparisons are false because they do not acknowledge that while sexual violence is a feature of both the Cologne attacks and Oktoberfest, the scale and scope of both the violence and the events are very different. Each year the estimated number of sexual assaults at Oktoberfest is several hundred (of these just 10 to 12 are reported to the police!), at a 16-18 day festival attended by millions of people, which is less than half the number of reported assaults in one square on New Year’s Eve in Cologne);
• Arguing that the violence either did not occur or was perpetrated by other groups of people;

These strategies are problematic for a number of reasons. Most importantly because they demonstrate a clear lack of empathy for the women attacked, whose experiences are being erased. This is also the case for women attacked at events like Oktoberfest, whose experiences are being mobilised to erase the experiences of the women assaulted in Cologne.

Kate Davison writing in Overland, and Ulrich Rippert writing on the World Socialist Website argue the small number of arrests to call into question whether attacks occurred at all. The Huffington Post’s German edition ran an article suggesting that the allegations of violence in Cologne were false rape allegations either consciously or unconsciously prompted by the racist atmosphere in Germany. More recently The Idependent ran an article headlined “Cologne: Three out of 58 men arrested over mass sex attack on New Year's Eve were refugees from Syria or Iraq”.

These arguments are seriously flawed. Whilst it is true that only a small proportion of alleged perpetrators have been charged - this speaks to the difficulty in identifying people in the circumstances of the New Year’s Eve attacks - to suggest that it reflects a broad conspiracy by the German state does not fit the early response of the German state. Tobias Lill in arguing that the allegations reflect false rape allegations - relies on a number of examples women reportedly making false allegations against refugees- however only one of which was associated with the Cologne attacks - out more than 400 allegations (which is consistent with experiences around the world that very few allegations of rape are false). Lill misses the right’s argument - they are not only opposed to refugees but Muslms particularly from North Africa and the Middle East - of whom the refugees fleeing persecution and war are a subset - so arguing that those perpetrating violence were not refugees (which is questionable) will is not sufficient counter the racist fear campaigns being mounted by the right, particularly when they can shout that a significant proportion of those individuals who have been charged from the Cologne attacks (albeit primarily for theft) were from North Africa (25 Algerians, three Tunisians and 21 Moroccans), Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Underlying all of these minimising arguments, is an assumption that if refugees were responsible for violence then it calls into the question the legitimacy of the right to asylum for other refugees. Rather than reject this logic these arguments simply attempt to negate the facts on which the right makes its arguments. Downplaying the seriousness of attacks is a flawed strategy as it not only doesn’t negate the racist arguments - but instead risks alienating anyone who has a genuine concern about the violence and leaves the left in a weakened position in dissuading them from accepting the xenophobic arguments of the right. A far more effective and honest argument is simply to deny the relevance of the actions of some individual refugees when it comes to answering the question of what Germany’s (or any other Western country’s) response should be to address the needs of millions of people currently in need of refuge globally.

Orientalist approach of both the right and far-left
A major factor underlying the attempt to erase and downplay the extent and seriousness of the violence on New Year’s Eve is that much of the Left discourse accepts the racist logic and assumptions of the Far-Right, Right and centrist parties - i.e. that non-Western cultures are homogenous - but the Left reject the Right’s argument that these cultures are universally misogynist and instead argue the opposite: that they are universally unproblematic. In order to sustain this position it is necessary for responsibility for violence to be shifted onto causes other than “culture”:

• Sexual violence that is inherent with capitalism;
• Marginalisation and alienation experienced by refugees;
• The violence being a consequence of the perpetrator’s gender rather than their culture.

All of these perspectives, while making some valid points, are flawed in their own way. It is undoubtedly the case that late capitalism promotes cultural products which objectify women and promote violence against them. However, it is odd to think that a brief exposure to the violence and sexism of German culture would be able to quickly overcome a cultural background that contained no attitudes and values that normalise and legitimise violence against women.

Similarly, while alienation can be an important factor in triggering acts of violence, why would gendered violence manifest in the scale and organised fashion it did on New Year’s Eve? Alienation and disempowerment only make sense if the violence is seen as an antidote to those feelings; or if the targets of the violence are perceived somehow to be responsible for this alienation and thus deserving of punishment.

While gender is undoubtedly a factor in the violence, gender is not culture-free. Indeed, masculinity and femininity - or what it means to be a “man” or a “woman” - are generally viewed as being culturally constructed and not universal characteristics.

Viewing non-Western cultures as homogeneous is a reflection of what Edward Said described as Orientalism. Said also argued that orientalist views of culture see Westerners as being less bound or influenced by their culture than non-Western people. While we may view the right’s orientalist views as being more problematic (as they legitimise violence and war), the left’s Orientalism is also problematic as it erases:

• The agency of women in North Africa and the Middle East, and their supporters, in seeking to transform their society’s attitude towards women;
• The extent to which attitudes towards women within Western cultures are a consequence of feminist struggles;
• The extent to which misogyny and sexism towards women within non-Western countries has been actively promoted by the West.

There are long histories of struggle against sexism within North Africa and the Middle East and the involvement of women in broader liberation struggles. The most notable current example is the contribution and leadership of Kurdish women in the struggle against ISIS in Syria, particularly in the Women’s Protection Units. However, the struggle in the region for women’s rights has deep roots. The Turkish and Egyptian feminist movements date back to the nineteenth century, Turkish women achieved full suffrage in 1934 (this is earlier than in France and prior to the elimination limits to suffrage based on race based exclusions in Australia and the US), with 18 women elected to parliament in the Turkish elections that year (there were not that many women elected to Australian federal parliaments until the mid 1990s). It is also important to note that there were refugees in Cologne’s cathedral square who sought to stop attacks on women, and there have been the protests by refugee communities in Germany against the violence on New Year’s Eve - both of which have received little attention outside of Germany.

Central to arguments that refugees pose a threat to Western societies is the idea that the West has a benevolent attitude towards women, or what Klein refers to as a thin “varnish of a civilized behaviour towards women”. Of course to sustain this position distance must be created between the gendered violence that exists in Western and non-Western cultures themselves. Those who seek to justify the exclusion of refugees based on the “inherently violent” cultures that refugees come from, ignore that Western cultures are themselves highly violent and misogynist. This is reflected in the already too-high level of violence against women in Germany (which at 1 in 7 of German women is lower than the 1 in 5 Australian women who have experienced sexual violence) but also other forms of violence in German society, such as the Far-Right’s recent spate of assassination attempts against politicians, including the attempt on Henriette Reker’s life the day prior to her election as Mayor of Cologne.

White Germans (and white Australians) create distance between themselves and violence which occurs in Western societies. The perpetrators of violence are “othered” so it can be more easily argued that they do not represent the culture of that society. So pick-up artists and neomasculinists who advocate and teach rape tactics are not indictments against Western culture - but instead simply “sad losers” who live in their mother’s basement. Even the violence within institutions such as the police and armed forces are argued away as instances of bad apples or at worst problems with the internal culture of those institutions rather than a reflection of broader problems with western culture.

Whilst most people in Australia (and for that matter Germany) would not publicly agree with the attitudes towards women articulated by MRAs - the National Community Attitudes Towards Violence Against Women Survey suggests that the vast majority of Australians understand that violence is a crime (96%), and that violence against women is a serious issue (95%). However below this general opposition to violence, lie widespread attitudes and beliefs that justify and legitimate violence, including sexual violence, against women: 1 in 5 Australians think that domestic violence is excusable if a person gets angry or later regrets it; only 59% of surveyed Australians “believe that women rarely make false claims of rape” - meaning that 41% believe that women often make false rape allegations (they don’t). These seemingly contradictory attitudes reflect the existence of both a view, which has been achieved through struggle, that violence towards women is wrong existing along side widespread attitudes that justify and legitimise such violence.

The right’s cynical use of the New Year’s Eve attacks are premised on the idea that “Western attitudes towards women” are somehow more “enlightened” than the supposed “misogynist and patriarchal views” of non-Western countries - and that these attitudes are inherent to the respective cultures. However we should remember that the West’s “enlightenment” is not only superficial (as indicated above, but the gains for women that the idea of enlightenment is premised on, have only relatively recently been achieved through changes in laws (and not necessarily in cultural beliefs). Some of the rights for women, which women in Australia have achieved formally (but are not always able to access due to class and other oppressions) as a result of campaigns over the last 120 years include:

• Ending women’s status as the legal property of their fathers and husbands;
• The right to attend university;
• The right to divorce and gain custody of children (in particular the introduction of no-fault divorce);
• An end to compulsorily dismissal from government jobs upon marriage;
• Criminalising domestic violence and marital rape;
• Increased control of fertility [albeit limited and constantly under legal  threat - particularly for women experiencing additional intersections of oppression];
• Some legal limits on mobilisation of victim blaming in rape prosecutions [most notably shield laws which formally limit the ability of a defence from raising a survivor’s sexual history, but sexist judges may still allow such defences];
• Some restriction in the application of provocation defences which allow men to justify assault and murder on the basis “that their partner provoked them”;
• Legal protections against discrimination in employment.

Western imperialism has played a central role in supporting reactionary misogynist political movements in the Middle East that have undermined the political status of women. The Taliban in Afghanistan emerged as a part of a reactionary counter-revolutionary movement (led primarily by landlords) hostile to the land reforms of the government of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. The Taliban sought to mobilise a broader opposition to the government by harnessing anger at advances in the rights of women. The success of the mujahedeen (from which the Taliban emerged) was made possible by the large scale military and financial support from the West, particularly the US government.

Similarly, the US and other Western government have been hostile to other governments in Arab and predominantly Muslim countries that have advanced the rights of women - as these governments challenged Western interests - whilst propping up thoroughly misogynist regimes such as the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia. The impact of the Western imperialism’s support for misogyny can be seen in the decline in formal and practical rights between the Ba’athist regime in Iraq and the subsequent US protectorates in Iraq (women’s rights had been under assault in Iraq in the decade between the first and second gulf wars).

Hegemonic masculinity

If we recognise that all cultures contain progressive and reactionary characteristics, how can we account for violently misogynist attitudes that permeate society? Hegemonic masculinity is a concept coined by Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell in her 1993 work Masculinities. Rooted in Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, hegemonic masculinities are those masculinities that base themselves on the subordinate position of women in relation to men. Like other hegemonies these masculinities primarily rely on ideas of the superiority to maintain the stability of this dominance. Behind these ideas of superiority is a capacity and willingness to mobilise violence to defend the domination of men.

Implicit in this, is that there is not a singular hegemonic masculinity, but multiple masculinities which have their own concerns regarding threats to their hegemony and how best to respond to these threats.

Anne Summers in her 2003 work The End of Equality argued that the emergence in Australia in the 1990s of various father’s rights groups was a response to gains of women in the Family Court associated with child custody. These groups sought and were successful in weakening the legal gains by women. Summers argued that part of the push back was associated with escalating violence by men towards women - violence which was most clearly articulated in the emergence of the Black Shirt father’s rights group. These developments in Australia continued, and has been seen in other Western countries, with the emergence of Men’s Rights Activism. These ‘activists’ are implacably hostile to feminism and advocate violence against women, asserting such violence exists in the ‘natural order’ of relations between men and women. MRAs simultaneously paint men as experiencing a uniquely ignored victimhood in order to undermine positive action to eradicate violence against women.

The concept of hegemonic masculinity does not explain all violence by men towards women - nor does it deny the existence of gendered violence which is not perpetrated by men against women - however, it argues that much gendered violence can be explained within a framework where men’s violence towards women seeks to maintain, justify and legitimise men’s dominance over women.

The existence of Western hegemonic masculinities supports the logic of the slogans of sections of the German Left which claim that violence against women is not an import into German society - at the same time, German hegemonic masculinity is not the primary cause of the New Year’s Eve attacks and the misogynist aftermath. At the same time there is no escaping that this misogyny (particularly by police and other state agents) did play a driving role in the series of events that followed.

Across the West, we are seeing concerted attacks on refugees, asylum seekers and Muslim communities. These attacks, and the attempts by the Right to justify them based on the individual criminal individual acts by members of these communities, should be rejected totally as a cynical and racist attempts at collective punishment. It is important to fight against the marginalisation of refugees and any policies that seek to limit the rights of refugees to be united with their families. If violence within within our society is to be overcome the actions of the state actions needs to be directed by marginalised sections of the community - particularly the women in these communities. At the same time it is necessary to confront misogyny and violence against women and recognise that gendered violence is a problem in all communities. If we are to live in societies free of gendered violence then the attitudes and values that legitimise and justify that violence must be challenged with a focus on the many hegemonic masculinities in our communities as a priority.

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