#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #UK #News #Journal #Update - (en) #UK, AnarCom: On the Anti-Refugee Protests (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Demonstrations outside hotels housing asylum seekers have gained traction after

an asylum seeker was filmed sexually propositioning a 15-year-old girl. Despite
the man being arrested the ultra-right, who were aware of his arrest, capitalised
on it and stirred up a violent protest outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in
Knowsley, near Liverpool, despite the man in question not being a resident of the
hotel. A police van was set on fire and projectiles were thrown at police by
crowds of locals stirred up by those on the ultra-right such as Patriotic
Alternative. Demos have now been organised by the ultra-right in various
locations and its now possible that what happened in Knowsely could occur up and
down the country. ---- Some were predicting this sort of thing would happen and
it is not really surprising in a sense considering that significant numbers of
asylum seekers have been placed in under-resourced, working class areas where
there are political voids - all it takes is resentment in these places and
instigation by the ultra-right to light the spark.

It is definitely the case that the concerns of these deprived working class
communities should be taken seriously and listened to, but the ultra-right cannot
be trusted at all and have a divisive and racist agenda. People should be aware
that as usual these bigoted reactionaries are opportunistically trying to gain
politically from the situation. And it should be noted that we should not be
generalising about asylum seekers - a group of people should not be blamed for
the behaviour of one person or a minority. It's also an important fact to take
note that sexual misconduct, abuse and misogyny is rife on the far- right and
that there has been a long list of white men convicted of sexual abuse and
paedophilia throughout the various far-right organisations. All sexual abuse is
wrong and has nothing to do with ethnicity or race. It's also the case that in an
atmosphere of anti-refugee and racist hysteria, it is definitely possible that
false allegations can be directed at asylum seekers and immigrants.

We also need to be aware that the underlying problem here is capitalism - which
is why asylum seekers are here in the first place and why people born in this
country are suffering due to the deliberate inequality, poverty and austerity and
rising inflation and why ordinary people are deliberately deprived of resources
and a decent quality of life - a dire problem faced by the working class
internationally. It is for this reason that asylum seekers and immigrants are
scapegoated - by the bourgeois media, culture etc as a diversion to point the
finger at those from overseas who have legitimate reasons to be here and who have
escaped from the most dangerous and repressive places on the planet, and escaped
the brutality and murder of the border regime on the European mainland and around
the Mediterranean and are just people trying to get on and live their lives, look
after their families and who want the world to be a decent place. The far-right
and the bourgeoisie and its media happily stoke up this hysterical scapegoating
to gain from this and it is the ruling class who runs the show to their own class
advantage, they are the ones to blame for our suffering.

It's the far right who help the ruling class and their capitalist system, which
feeds off of the misery of the international working class, dispossessed and
oppressed, which includes asylum seekers and immigrants,  as well as those of our
class who are born here. It is the far right and their ultra-nationalism
(capitalism taken to an extreme) that robs workers through exploitation and
punishes the poor with austerity and the inequality of the class system.
Nationalism has always been and will always be an anti-working-class ideology
that divides the working class for the benefit of the ruling class. And it is the
rich who create inflation with year on year profits - In order for profits to
keep increasing wages and hours have to be cut and prices have to be raised, the
rich all the while making obscene profits and hoarding everything, including most
of the land and resources for themselves - so nationalism can't us help at all
and all nationalists actually defend the very system that causes us harm.
Nationalism also deprives us of our freedom by enslaving the individual and
robbing us of our autonomy for the benefit of the state, and again therefore the
rich rulers who control it.

At the end of the day it is the class traitors of the far right who obsequiously
serve the interests of the ruling class and that means racist scapegoating as a
diversion to defend capitalism and divide the working class - this can only be at
our grave expense and very much to our detriment as a class, simply continuing
and worsening our misery and turning worker against worker. Instead, what the
working class needs is to unite as much as possible against the ruling class and
the far right and resist capitalism, wage the class war for itself and by itself,
build autonomous alternatives from below and strengthen our communities in
solidarity with each other as members of the international working class - rather
than dividing and weakening ourselves to the advantage of the rich - then we will
be genuinely getting somewhere and fighting for ourselves and our class interests
- rather than going against them and being bootlickers for the bourgeoisie.

Nationalists and fascists are reactionaries who want to turn the clock back for
their own political gain and power - they cannot be trusted and are anti-working
class. They must be resisted now more than ever before. The far right is awash
with power-hungry class traitors, weirdos, wrong uns, nonces and sexual abusers
who want to use ordinary working-class people for their own ends and the working
class will gain nothing from trusting them, especially as things now are so
desperate for the working class. The far right have no real solutions and will
stab workers in the back as they always have when gaining strength, they have
nothing to offer the working class but division, hate and class betrayal and
class defeat.

Article by Tom Hughes

https://anarcomuk.uk/2023/02/22/on-the-anti-refugee-protests/
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