Debunking the debunking of Bob’s Mantra

Some who may have argued with ‘anti-racists’ may very well have discovered that anti-racism is not much more than anti-white sentiment wrapped up in a phoney morality. Some of us may have heard of, or used Bob’s Mantra. Robert Whitaker has a history of political involvement, having worked on Capitol Hill from 1977 to 1982 and being a published writer.

Bob Whitaker is now the coach of BUGS (Bob’s Underground Coaching Seminar), an online seminar style blog, where participants develop and use techniques to expose the underlying anti-white sentiment of so called liberal anti-racism. BUGS is also ACTIVE plastering this over the internet so it is heard, something just as critical. The Mantra is as follows.

Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.

The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.

Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.

What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?

How long would it take anyone to realise I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?

And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?

But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.

They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.

Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.

The mantra is self explanatory and simple. For people who argue with ideological opponents, this line of attack is invaluable. Too often people get sidetracked onto irrelevant issues such as colonialism, slavery, issues of supposed supremacy and such. Using the mantra exposes our opponents position for what it really is, and having used it personally I can vouch for its success. The mantra isn’t just an argument to use, its a debating strategy which forces you to stay on track, to avoid debating your opponent’s straw man arguments. It works because it is correct. Anti-racism IS anti-white. Debate with any anti-racist, and you should discover that they offer no solution to the race problem other than for white people to allow mass immigration into ALL and ONLY white nations and for whites to intermarry.

After some mention on BUGS about it supposedly being ‘debunked’, I was curious. How can simple statement, which are self evidently more or less true be debunked?

A ‘debunking’ exists on Jett and Jahn’s site ^{www.jettandjahn.com} written by Mike Jahn. Unfortunately, it really doesn’t debunk anything, in fact, it completely misses the point and in the end, doesn’t come close to even challenging the central premise of the mantra.

The first point the article makes is

The first problem with this is that Bob assumes that someone would want to be brought to a third world African country and then breed with n****s*. The second issue is that we can see that blacks  lack social stigmatisation against race mixing. *(racial epithets removed by author).

The first problem mentioned simply doesn’t matter. The point of the mantra isn’t what people living in African countries (many of which aren’t black) want, but the demands that PC liberals might place on these countries. The fact is they DON’T demand mass multiracial immigration in African countries. The second issue, which is questionable, again assumes that demands are based on what the host country wants. The mantra quite clearly is talking about the double standards that liberals have, where it is expected that a white nation opens up it borders, but no such expectation exists for other nations. Have you ever heard a white liberal say that Japan is too Japanese? Have you ever heard a white liberal say that Kenyans really need multiracial immigration and assimilation? But we have all heard of anti-racists complaining about whites.

Here are some examples.

“Neighbours TV Show too white”

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/neighbours-tv-show-too-white/story-e6freuy9-1111116943998

Royal wedding of William and Kate was ‘disturbingly white’

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/royalwedding/she_the_sacrifice_at_altar_q3kAzkx3hN6ClhLol5X6aP

“Too many white people on French television”

http://islamversuseurope.blogspot.com/2011/07/too-many-white-people-on-french.html

“Dutch civic leadership too White “

http://www.islamineurope.net/2009/11/dutch-civic-leadership-too-white.html

There are plenty more examples. One doesn’t have to look far, in fact we would have all heard many times a liberal or ‘mummy professor’ type argue that this is the future. But you never see them say this about non-white countries.

Whether people will want to move there isn’t the point, because the mantra is dealing with the anti-white motives of those so called anti-racists who make these demands. The mantra exposes the motives by which anti-racist anti-whites operate on. By revealing the underlying motive, you expose their arguments for what they really are, not arguments based on a morality which eliminates racism, but arguments for denying white nations a continued existence as a white nation. This is a critical revelation. Using the mantra aggressively and with discipline, one’s opponent has no choice but to take up an anti-white position and advocate what amounts to genocide, because their ‘anti-racist’ ideology demands it.

The second point the article makes is

The mantra’s weak stance brings me to yet another lapse in ideology – a lot of people waste a lot of time and effort on white civil rights. Why do I say it is a waste ? One has to only study academic liberal literature to understand for himself . When one takes a conservative position on the race issue and says that Whites too deserve special rights (or an equaliser) , one assumes the  classical stance that minorities took up – one of the oppressed .

This is incorrect, as exposing PC liberalism as anti-white has nothing to do with civil rights, and that the mantra doesn’t make one take the position of ‘oppressed’ but puts the opponent in a position where they have to justify the unjustifiable. Besides, one either argues that Whites have the same right as everyone else to preserve their ethnic heritage, or they don’t, and we at Nationalist Alternative argue that they do. The argument that historically Whites have been colonialists therefore cannot claim moral superiority is again flawed. The anti-racists argue that ALL whites nations must open their borders, but not all white nations have engaged in colonialism. The demands are the same for Poland as with Britain, which held a formidable empire. Liberals may use colonialism and imperialism as justification for their position, but a nation which has not engaged in such activity is still nevertheless required to become multiracial. Again, the point of the mantra is to expose that the anti-racist doesn’t really in the end, care about levelling the score, but is using past colonialism and imperialism as an excuse where applicable.

The articles third point is that

As I write this I yet again imagine the retorts I shall get so I will also address the white Genocide videos that have popped up. Genocide by it’s very definition implies that when a population is being destroyed by another, the population being destroyed does not consent to being destroyed . White people are not being killed in any direct way , not at all , they are being outbred and not through rape but by their own free will.

This is wrong for two reasons. Firstly, it is arguing that there is consent, which there isn’t. Having debated with anti-whites many times, none are able to point to any specific consent being given by the people to follow a policy of mass non-white immigration and of turning their nation into a melting pot. There was no consent given except after the dog had bolted. Consent was only given (with much ‘education’ (brainwashing), browbeating and propaganda) a posteriori and even then it is questionable whether it is given now. Most Australians STILL want more restrictive immigration.

Mike argues that it is ‘suicide’ which is sadly occurring, and to a degree it may appear this way. But it is technically not. Suicide is the killing of ones self. Taking others with you is murder. Blowing up a bus is murder and the fact that you took yourself down with the bus doesn’t change this fact. Likewise, as many anti’s argue that this is ‘suicide’, it completely ignores that fact that many people wilfully and knowingly put forward arguments and demands which they know are incompatible with the secured existence of a particular race. I argue that this is pretty much genocide, and whether one is deliberately doing this to another race, or their own is irrelevant. There is nowhere in the definition of genocide which makes an exception if you belong to the group you are targeting.

Suicide is also questionable if its not willingly done. Are there suicidal whites? You bet. But the fact that the system does everything it can to prevent points of views, discussion or dissent against PC liberal orthodoxy regarding multi racialism, it is a stretch to imply that its willingly done and voluntary. People who knowingly continue this are knowingly engaging in an activity which jeopardises the future of a race. Most anti-whites will admit that whites may not have a future, and many seem to even look forward to it. To argue that this is more suicide than genocide is plainly wrong. The fact that the anti-white is white themselves makes no difference to the end result.

If Australia was a true democracy and national policy truly reflected the will of the people, there is no doubt in our minds at Nationalist Alternative, that our liberal immigration policies would be much tighter.

The rest of the article makes valid points about against being weak and the importance of giving people a sense of belonging, though worrying states that we are by nature oppressors and that this is something that we should not be afraid to continue. The lesson of the past in the West is what goes around comes back around and the fleeting glories of imperialism pale in comparison to achievements at home. Mike Jahn underestimates the role that liberalism has played in bringing about the demise of Western nations, and its continued role at keeping the status quo. The current status quo relies on oppression, on the media constantly disavowing any nationalist groups, on ‘hate speech’ laws which really only exist to stifle speech and therefore stifle discussion and thought. The mantra, unlike many other arguments cuts to the chase and exposes the core of so called ‘anti-racism’.

There is no debunking which takes place here, only a misunderstanding of what Bob’s Mantra is saying, and a misunderstanding of the role that Liberalism is playing in the decline of the West. The Mantra, and the BUGS group isn’t ‘cultish’, only very disciplined, and discipline is vital to waging a political battle. Being disciplined means lots of necessary repetition and hard headedness. It means staying on target regardless of your enemies distractions and attempts to steer you away.

by Tom Sinclair

1. What every nationalist politician needs

We nationalists certainly have a radical program – if by radical we mean uprooting the tendencies and habits which have formed in the West over the past thirty years. The chief tendency, which we oppose is, of course, multiculturalism and mass non-white immigration into the West – a development foisted upon the Western nations by our own politicians, and welcomed by our media, intellectuals, economists, trade union and business groups. Disparate nationalist groups, from Britain to Russia to New Zealand to Canada, are all united on one thing: non-white immigration into the West must cease; and the non-white immigrants already here must be encouraged, through state policy, to return to the homelands of their forefathers.

That is, one could say, our key policy: and certainly the one which attracts the attention of the public. The masses are not really interested in, for instance, the BNP or the NPD’s opinions on global warming, industrial relations, or public health care: they want to hear about immigration. They will vote for a nationalist party for its positions on immigration, mostly because no other politician is brave enough to speak out against it, no matter his or private feelings on the issue, and every political tendency across the board – from the mainstream, liberal democratic parties, conservative and social democratic, to the radical Left – are all for multiculturalism and immigration. “Racists” have been purged, even from the conservative parties of the West, long ago. The likes of the BNP and the NPD, then, constitute an alternative to the mainstream political consensus.

It has to be admitted, however, that the policies of nationalists on non-racial topics which have little to do with immigration – e.g., trade union law, interest rates, financial regulation, recycling, old growth forest logging, maternity leave and the like – attract little attention from the public for another reason. That is, those policies are undeveloped – which is a euphemistic way of saying that nationalists don’t have any. There is very little consensus on these areas of policy in the nationalist world when they do come up for discussion.

The danger is that this locks nationalists out of mainstream political debate. Suppose that a representative for an Australian nationalist party were to do an interview on the current affair program The 7.30 Report. Kerry O’Brien, the host of the show, and a notoriously tough interviewer, would hammer that representative, relentlessly, on areas where the nationalists are weak: he would ask, ‘What does your party think of the ACTU’s latest Living Wage claim? Or increased financial regulation in the wake of the recent financial crisis?’. The representative would mumble some clichés about ‘true Australian worker’s socialism’ in response to the first question, and, in response to the second, perhaps blame the recent financial crisis solely on a single special interest group. All the while he would be hoping that O’Brien would turn the line of questioning back to the question of immigration. At home – in the living rooms across the country – the average Australian television viewer would be shaking his head: even though he may agree with that nationalist party about immigration, he can see, straight away, that the party – given its inability to formulate even the most basic positions on current political topics – is, in the jargon of the mainstream media, ‘unelectable’.

Is it so hard? Does a politician need to have a clear, fixed position on everything to be able to negotiate an interview, or hold a press conference? Does he need to be able to recite facts and figures on almost everything, at a moment’s notice? No: all he – and his party – needs are positions on three or four contemporary political issues. In an interview, at a press conference, on the campaign trail, he can adroitly steer the discussion towards one of those key issues, and then expound the party’s position on it. Enoch Powell made a political career on four issues: immigration; Britain’s membership in the EU; the conflict in Northern Ireland; and monetarism. For Pauline Hanson, it was Aboriginal welfare, Asian immigration, protective tariffs for Australian industry and agriculture, and rural and regional unemployment and under-employment (and socialist remedies for solving that problem). In the case of both Hanson and Powell, their ideology covered a broad range of issues. It should be noted that with his discussion of monetarism alone, Powell was involving himself in a discussion of one of the most contentious issues of the day, involving many mainstream, respectable politicians, economists, journalists and academics. He was not simply a ‘Send the Asians and Coloureds home’ one-trick pony.

And this is the main problem: to introduce the nationalist to mainstream debate – to open doors which have been closed to him because his opposition to immigration was not ‘respectable’.

The purpose of this article is to look at a particular issue which is of great relevance to Australia today, and to educate the nationalist reader who has little to no prior acquaintance with it: hopefully, then, a clear position can be formulated in his or her mind on the topic.

2. Chile in the 1970s

The history of Chile in the 1970s is, in itself, intrinsically interesting to the student of politics. Chile, a Latin American country with a predominantly white population, went from a Chavez-style socialist banana republic to a typical Latin American style military dictatorship banana republic in the space of a years – albeit with a difference: Chile, under the military dictatorship, was the first experiment, in the post-war era, in what is now known as neoliberalism. After the military coup in 1973 that deposed the Marxist Allende, the Chilean military junta enjoyed – after imprisoning, exiling or killing thousands of Chilean communists – absolute power. Faced with a desperate economic crisis, the junta took the (uncharacteristic, for a Latin American ‘fascist’ government) the step of implementing structural reforms to the Chilean economy, which included deregulation, privatisation (Chile’s electricity grid was sold to the Australian entrepreneur Alan Bond), the privatisation of superannuation (or social security, to American readers), labour law reform, cutting of tariffs on imports and the like. The junta’s economic policy-makers were known as the ‘Chicago Boys’, having studied economics in the University of Chicago under the economists Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger. This was the first instance in history of an authoritarian regimé applying neoliberal measures.

The results are controversial: those with inclinations towards neoliberalism use statistics to show that the Chilean experiment was a success – inflation and unemployment fell, economic growth rose, etc. – while the opponents of neoliberalism (a diverse array of Communists, socialists, Keynesian economists) use statistics to show that the Chilean experiment was a failure. What is certain is that Chile broke new ground: Australia, along with many other Western countries, embarked on widespread deregulation, privatisation, cutting of import tariffs, in the 1980s, a decade later (the Chilean privatisation of superannuation preceded the Australian). Furthermore, it is unlikely that the ‘Chicago Boys’ could have carried out their program without the complete control of economic policy given to them by the Chilean military: their policies met with substantial opposition, not only from the regime’s Communist opponents, but from organised labour and big business as well.

Communism is based on myths and personality cults. The case of Allende in Chile is no exception. Allende was, and continues to be, exalted by the radical Left as a superman figure, a sort of Marxist higher man bringing socialism to the masses, wooing them with his oratory, charisma and rare genius. In his personality cult, he is like so many Communist leaders before him: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Che, and lesser lights such as East Germany’s Honecker, Romania’s Ceauşescu and Albania’s Hoxha.

The BBC documentary series on Allende and the coup that toppled him – ‘The Other 911’, which is available on YouTube – even evokes, unwittingly, parallels to Hitler and his fall. Allende perishes, by his own hand (blowing his head off with a submachine gun given to him by Fidel Castro), in a fortified presidential palace, besieged by soldiers from the outside, defended by a small, but ideologically determined, praetorian guard of Chilean Communists. The females are evacuated as the palace is besieged (bombed by Chilean air force jets) and Allende, to the last, makes heroic addresses over the radio to the Chilean people, mourning the end of the Chilean socialist dream. The similarities between Allende’s last days, and Hitler’s, are obvious – even if the Left is not willing to acknowledge them.

The circumstances leading up to the Chilean coup, and the aftermath, will not be covered here, interesting as they are. The objective is to look at the main myth about Allende’s Chile: that he had introduced valuable ‘social reforms’, that it was a kind of ‘socialist paradise’. At the time, Allende’s Chile was upheld by the radical Left – like Chavez’ Venezuela now – as a model to the world, as a path, towards ‘democratic socialism’ and ‘development’ worth emulating. In contrast, Pinochet’s Chile, when the ‘Chicago Boys’ ran rampant, was a time of great poverty, misery, inequality, etc. My intention here is to expose the myth: not by measuring statistic against statistic, but by showing how everyday life was, in Allende’s Chile, would be unbearable – in terms of personal freedom, comfort, and the efficiency in the provision of services – even to the most radical of Leftists in the West today.

The question is: why is this of relevance to nationalists in the West?

In the year 2009, Communists have, by and large, infiltrated the environmentalist and anti-globalist movement, and are bending both to Communist purposes. And they are not troubling to define their terms and substantiate their claims. They speak of themselves as anti-capitalist, without defining precisely what capitalism is, or, moreover, what their alternative to capitalism is (at least to the general public – at bottom, they want Soviet-style Communism).

Now, many nationalists are eager to join forces with the anti-globalist movement, or at least, find common ideological ground. Because of their ideological and theoretical vulnerability – in short, their not having a position on these subjects – they can easily be seduced by the arguments of the anti-globalist/anti-capitalist crowd, and end up endorsing a kind of hazy socialism or communism without thinking of the implications of their statements (against greedy bankers, corporations, excessive economic growth and personal consumption, neoliberalism (however neoliberalism is to be defined). So they need to be shown what the consequences are – in a country such as Allende’s Chile, in which the government provisions ‘social justice’ and ‘social reform’, and is run by ‘the workers’. However Communists don’t seem to concern themselves too much in relation to the Ethnic/Racial Heritage of its workers and this is one of the major contrasts between it and Nationalism.

Perhaps the difference between the nationalist and the anti-capitalist/anti-globalist is that the nationalist has only a very vague idea of an alternative to ‘capitalism’ (however capitalism is defined) while the anti-capitalist/anti-globalist (who is, more often than not, a secret Marxist, or a radical environmentalist who wants to take the world back to the pre-industrial age) has a very clear, well-thought out plan. To the Marxist, the ‘anti-capitalist’ world of the future will be a lot like Honecker’s East Germany, or, at the least, Chavez’ Venezuela or Allende’s Chile.

The anarchist is, on the other hand, halfway between the Marxist/environmentalist and the nationalist in terms of vagueness. His idea of the future is one where property is abolished and where businesses are ‘run by the workers’ (syndicalism); or, better still, one where no-one has to work. How people are meant to survive without working – which, in the anarchist doctrine, is considered to be degrading and dehumanising – is not quite explained. All the same, the anarchist does, unlike the nationalist, have a consistent position as to what the alternative to capitalism is. Some Nationalists have flirted with using ideas from Social Credit and we do not discredit the possibility but it has never really been tried and tested too much.

While history has, most definitely, rejected Marxism, it has not rejected socialism. Indeed, socialism has, across the Western world, enjoyed something of a revival during the current recession (socialism in general always does well during a recession). At one point, then, the nationalist – if he wants to stay relevant – will need to come up with an answer to the question: socialism, for or against. Being vague in this area – while being extremely detailed on immigration (or rather, anti-immigration) policy will not do.

3. How it was

So, given the importance of the subject, what was everyday life in Allende’s Chile like? Rather than looking at statistics – which certainly do not give a full picture – we shall examine small bits and pieces, as it were, of Chilean-style socialism in action. (The quotations here are from an account by a Chilean economist, Daniel L. Wisecarver, who is quite biased against socialism, and definitely in favour of neoliberal formulas, but who has some quite hard to come by information).

We shall begin here with a description of the quite bizarre practice of setting ‘fair’ and ‘socially just’ prices by the government in Chile:

By the end of the Allende government, more than 3000 prices were explicitly fixed, primarily by DIRINCO (the Directorate of Industry and Commerce). It is quite clear that the process of price fixing could only be negotiating sessions (when interested firms were allowed to participate) and that the post of price fixer had to be one of the most remunerative employments in all of Chile. The printout lists of fixed prices, including such items as “chalet type” dog houses and woollen gloves for infants, served as inventories of goods that had at one time been available for purchase… [Even after the Junta took power] some specific price fixes were remarkably detailed, particularising the name and type of product, the distributor’s name, and the place sold. For example, in July 1974, maximum prices were set for retail sales of RANN brand detergent, imported by the Center for Purchases of the Ancud Chamber of Commerce; or the retail price of soybean oil from the Netherlands imported by Domingo Coro and Son… [Wisecarver, Daniel L., ‘Economic Regulation and Deregulation in Chile 1973-1983’, in ‘The National Economic Policies of Chile’, ed. Walton, Gary M., Jai Press, 1985, pp. 154-156]

Such a policy had consequences:

One of the most dramatic and visible effects of [Allende’s] price controls and economic policy was the generalised scarcity of most goods in formal markets, the emergence of well-developed black markets, and long queues. In fact, it is now part of Chilean folklore that, upon seeing any queue, people lined up, sometimes for hours, without knowing what was for sale but buying whatever it was in the maximum quantity allowed. [Ibid, p. 154]

Wisecarver gives examples of, of all things, socialist and interventionist policies in buses:

Some of the regulations that existed in 1973 and 1974 were truly spectacular. For example, children could be transported only in yellow buses, so much so that owners of yellow buses were at times able to convince the police to give traffic violation tickets to parents who took more than their own children to school in the family car. Or if any organised group wanted to charter a bus (or drive its own) for a weekend outing to the beach, it was first necessary to get permission from the Sub secretary of Transportation, with at least three days’ anticipation. In fact, no bus could go anywhere, anytime, for any purpose without express authorisation. And one of the many crucial decisions reserved for the Subsecretary of Transportation, one which required careful study and consultations with other ministers, was the color and fabric of the uniforms that bus drivers were to wear in the coming year. [Ibid, p.161]

On a more mundane level,

The authorities fixed the number of buses and the frequency of runs; the frequencies were uniform, regardless of the day of the week or the hour of the day, and were monitored by the police. To help enforce required time schedules, bus drivers were prohibited from taking rest periods in bus terminals… The Ministry of Transportation also set quotas on the number of buses that could be brought into Chile, their make, model, size, country of origin, etc. Most of these restrictions and controls were codified [in a decree]… which also required that the Subsecretary of Transportation ensure that there appear no unfair competition from similar transport services, specifically not from artificial cost reductions. Hence, all bus fares were fixed.

[Ibid, p. 161-162]

Price-setting and regulations gave the government officials in charge enormous privileges, and the right to be inefficient in providing a service:

It is necessary to mention the state’s ex-entry in this sector, ETC (the collective transportation enterprise), a firm which ran annual deficits on the order of US $10-15 million. At the outset of the current government, this public firm possessed approximately 35% of Chile’s buses, its own set of exclusive routs, its own replacement-parts factory, and more than 5000 employees. ETC was well known for its free “social” routes and for having its vehicles broken down in the shop up to half the year. [Wisecarver adds in a footnote] These routes often turned out to exist for the exclusive benefit of a variety of government officials, their employees, and their related social groups. [Ibid, pp. 164, 199]

As for taxis:

The number of autos that could be employed as taxis was strictly controlled by the Subsecretary of Transportation, the Traffic Director, and indirectly by the union of professional taxi drivers. Each municipality was assigned a fixed quota of taxis which were identified with special license plates, and the taxi plates were naturally worth several times the value of the car itself. The monopoly enjoyed by these taxis permitted them to provide poor service (they might agree to take a customer to certain places only if it was convenient). The only “control” exercised over those drivers who were lucky enough to be cabbies took the form of fixing legal taxi rates. [Ibid, p. 164]

Wisecarver gives an account of the practices of Chile’s longshoremen and dock workers, which makes bizarre reading. He first describes the activities of the unions:

In Chilean ports before 1981, there were a total of 77 separate unions up and down the coast, with as many as 17 in any one port. These groups had total monopoly control on moving any cargo within the ports; they determined the number of workers on each crew and fixed their remunerations as a function of the type of cargo. Every worker had his precise job and could and would do nothing more; no one not explicitly named to each task could work. In practice, the system degenerated to such a point that work crews doubled true labor requirements and, of course, the wage bill was correspondingly duplicated [i.e., workers would be paid for two jobs despite only doing one]. One of the major concerns of workers during half of each shift was said to be finding the most comfortable place to sleep. [Ibid, p.173]

Strangely, the Chilean port workers lived in a kind of feudal, hierarchical society, where unions had complete control over the workers’ lives:

The social structure that grew up around the port workers’ monopoly was, if anything, even more remarkable. There were at least five categories of workers:

1. Stevedores – These were the truly high-class workers, the ones with the legal monopoly to work, granted by the possession of an official ID (identity) card issued by the authorities.

2. Supplentes – These were the first-round substitutes for the stevedores, logically but not necessarily the first ones in line to receive the coveted (and lucrative) ID card. The suplentes were the first ones called to work if there were insufficient stevedores.

3. Pincheros – These “helpers” were a large group of lower class (at least in the port hierarchy) workers who might one day hope to be granted stevedore status. Meantime, they waited in the ports for any jobs that might be handed down to them by the higher-ups.

4. Medio Pollos [‘Half chicken’] – These were lower-class pincheros.

5. Cuarto Pollos [‘Quarter chicken’] – Lower-class medio pollos.

For every ship that had to be loaded or unloaded, the stevedores would be called in to determine work crews and costs. Only the stevedores had the legal right to employment, and therefore they were the only ones directly paid. They would then dole out jobs to their pincheros, who in turn would distribute tasks to medio pollos and cuarto pollos. The stevedores collected all the wages and passed them along, after deducting a sort of “commission”, to those below them who had participated in each specific job. At the same time, the union leaders collected a separate round of contributions from all the workers in order to finance the unions’ network of social benefits – housing, schools, health, etc. This network was sufficient to maintain the support of the lower-level workers for the union leaders and hence to maintain the pecking order within the ports. [Ibid, pp. 173-174]

Wisecarver mentions that, under these arrangements, workers were effectively controlled in where they wanted to work and live: ‘Anyone wishing to move and be able to work in a different port had to receive explicit authorisation from the authorities and respective unions’. [Ibid, p.175]

On the topic – of workers being paid for more than they actually worked – Wisecarver writes amusingly:

When the time arrived (1981) to change the legislation and eliminate the monopoly, the card-carrying stevedores reportedly “worked” between 400 and 600 days per year and earned more than $US2000 per month, substantially more than annual per capita income in the entire economy. Such statistics were of great use in stifling potential opposition to the new law among nonparticipants in the ports. [Ibid, p.174]

Finally, we shall look at a topic which has the most relevance to conditions in Australia at the present: Chilean labour law. A kind of guild socialism existed:

Consider the case of “professional colleges”. These colleges were basically highly specialised unions formed to protect the interest of the profession practiced by their members; each College, along with its legal faculties and responsibilities, was created by its own law. Without being a registered, paid-up member in good standing with the relevant college, regardless of professional qualifications, one could not work as a lawyer, public administrator, architect, librarian, accountant, newsman, doctor, nurse, pharmacist, professor, etc. The specific laws gave colleges the right to set fees charged by their members as well as standards for their work, prohibit the public sector from hiring nonregistered professionals, prohibit non-members from offering professional services to the general public, ensure that only dues-paying professional were registered, and so forth. [Ibid, p.186]

In general, the Chilean labor law was based on an ideological worldview akin to that of Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and the modern Australian union movement:

Starting with publication of the 1931 Labor Code, legislation governing labor relations blossomed into a network of some 70 fundamental labor laws by the end of 1973. Aside from the numerous statutes granting special privileges, two general types of legislation might be considered. On the one hand, for individual contracts, lawmakers acted as if employees were gullible and naive while employers were shrewd and ruthless. Therefore, in order to protect the former from the latter, it was necessary to legislate hours of work (normal and maximum overtime), wages (minimum at least), work conditions, length of vacations and when they could be taken, and so forth and so on – nothing was left to change or negotiation. [Ibid, p.187]

One consequence of the Chilean system was that unions played an increasingly politicised role – just as they did in Britain and Australia in the 1970s:

Over time the unions began to acquire more and more economic and political power, particularly those that could associate themselves with important, protected industries. As the unions became more extensive, and with state intervention in the economy becoming continually more generalised, any labor problem quickly became a political problem, one that was most readily resolved by granting union demands. Given the ubiquitous state intervention, once the firm or industry had granted union requests, it could turn to the state for a compensating favor of some sort – a price readjustment, higher protective tariffs or tighter import restrictions, a tax exemption, whatever. It was a neatly closed, if totally distorted, system. [Ibid, p.188]

4. Solutions

We have only covered part of Wisecarver’s article: not included are agriculture, railroads, air transport, maritime shipping, electricity, telephones, water, fuel, finance and banking…

To Wisecarver, what matters the most is greater ease, comfort, efficiency and freedom of personal choice in day-to-day living. Wisecarver looks at Chile, sector by sector, and recounts what to him are the happy results of a policy of deregulation. For example, he enthuses that:

Before deregulation the route between Santiago and Valparaiso/Vińa del Mar was served by two firms which were characterised by old, uncomfortable buses and somewhat less than reliable service. By the end of 1982, there were 12 firms covering the same route. Nowadays, at any time of the day, one can, for example, take the subway to the outskirts of Santiago, wait no more than 15 minutes, and get on a new, modern, air-conditioned bus, arriving at one’s destination within two hours The fare was lower in nominal terms than it had been five years earlier. And passengers to the coastal cities and sea resorts were not the only beneficiaries; daily rates for swimming pools in Santiago also fell. [Ibid, p.164]

Less electricity brown-outs, better phone coverage, less theft of cargo at the docks, less wasteful employment of government workers who do little to no work, better customer service in taxis and airlines… The list goes on and on. Life was bad under socialism; after the downfall of socialism, and the rolling-back of many of Allende’s splendid ‘social reforms’ (and the ‘reforms’ by the administrations prior to Allende) life improved – even if it became less ‘socially just’, more ‘inequitable’, more prone to ‘dog-eat-dog competition’ and ‘capitalism’. In other words, Chile approached the standards of ease, comfort, efficiency that we have become accustomed to in the West. Today’s Left, in Australia and elsewhere, could not abide life in Allende’s Chile – or Castro’s Cuba, or Chavez’ Venezuela, or Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea. (And lest one object that such ‘standard of living’ concerns are trivial, it is undoubtable that the rather dismal and grim existence in the Eastern European and Soviet regimes in the 1980s hastened the demise of Communism in that region).

That question – of whether life under Allende-style socialism is better (or worse) than under deregulation – is one we will avoid here. The question which should be asked, and which we rarely hear, is, ‘How on earth do we get deregulation?’. That is, how does a country, politically, go about getting these things?. The surprising answer is: to a large extent, not through liberal democracy.

In Australia, the remuneration of almost every single occupation is fixed by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC), which in turns makes it decisions based on claims put forward by Australia’s small, but powerful, trade union movement and the reckonings of a special ‘judiciary’ whose job it is to decide what is a ‘living’ wage, a ‘fair’ wage. Competition is outlawed: one cannot offer to work for less than the specified award rate (that is, the minimum rate for each and every occupation). Under the Liberal government of 1996 to 2007, some competition was introduced: workers were able to negotiate their own agreements, called Australian Workplace Agreements, outside the award system. The agreements were vehemently opposed by the union movement, and one of the first tasks of the Labor government elected in 2007 was to abolish them and tighten up laws against competition in the labour market further.

That is what one expects of the Labor Party, which is a centre-left party completely funded and controlled by trade unions. But the Labor government, once elected, did introduce competition into the wheat export market, in a move which would have delighted Wisecarver. Before 2008, Australian wheat-growers had to sell their wheat through a government board, the Australian Wheat Board (AWB). Because it had the monopoly – it was the only entity which had the legal power to sell – it could charge a ‘fair’ price, a ‘just’ price, for wheat exported overseas. Australian wheat-growers were forbidden to sell wheat at anything less than a price determined by the AWB. Why, given its adherence to deregulation, privatisation, liberalisation, individual choice, etc., did not the Liberal Party abolish the monopoly? The answer was because it was in a political coalition with the National Party, an agrarian socialist party, for its entire time in office. The Labor Party, which was not bound by such an alliance, and therefore not in need of propitiating a small special interest group, had no trouble at all in abolishing the monopoly – despite the vociferous opposition of rural socialists such as the senator Bob Katter. (One beneficial effect of the policy, and one which was intended, has been to open the export market to farmers prepared to sell their wheat at below the ‘socially just’, ‘living’ rate set by the AWB).

And there is the answer: under a representational liberal democracy, which, by design, represents small sectors of the Australian population, and not the nation as a whole, as an entire unit, deregulatory measures cannot be enacted on a large scale without offending some special interest pressure-group which demands that a government-enforced monopoly be upheld as long as possible. Furthermore, a democratically-elected political party often lacks the political power to take a policy of deregulation, liberalisation, etc., to the limit. To be consistent with regard to its stated beliefs, the Liberal Party ought to have abolished the entire award system, and the minimum wage; possibly, it could have done this in 1996 or in 2004, when it won crushing majorities (in 2004 in particular, it attained, for the first time, a majority in the Senate). But it did not. The reason why is that the Liberal Party had to contend with a pluralist liberal democracy. It is no coincidence that the policies of Chile after 1973 were enacted after the suspension of Chile’s liberal democratic constitution and a wide-reaching internal military campaign against the Chilean Left.

Advocates of neoliberalism do not often recognise this: they sneer at ‘big government’ and politicians and statesmen in general, and excoriate the state. They call for a ‘limited government’ which protects individual liberties against ‘tyranny’, that is, socialists in the legislative chambers. How that protection is to be achieved – through the diminution of the functions of government, and the excising of power-politics and national-minded statesmen from government – is never explained.

Some neoliberal theorists do recognise the conflict – between a competitive liberal society, and liberal democracy – presented here. In a pamphlet (‘The Conflict between Democracy and Economic Reform’, Political Notes no. 77, The Libertarian Alliance, 1993), Adriana Lukasova examines three governments which, in her view, successfully enacted neoliberal measures: the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile; the Thatcher government in Britain; the post-war occupation government in Germany in 1948. These governments were authoritarian (the occupation government in Germany was an Allied-installed dictatorship) and imposed their measures against the wishes of pressure groups such as the trade union movement, big business and the Left. Lukasova approvingly quotes the Chilean finance minister of 1981, Rolf Luders:

The Chilean tradition shows that governments endowed with strong authority, which have simultaneously guaranteed the exercise of economic freedom and of private initiative, have presided over the periods of greatest progress in the history of the country. (Lukasova, ‘Conflict-‘, p.2).

The formula is expressed, in some academic writings on the subject, as ‘Strong state, free economy’. Lukasova writes, of Britain in the Thatcher period,

In 1982 police were equipped with weaponry, police vehicles, communications devices, protective body armour and crowd control equipment. A system of national co-ordination was devised. The police National Reporting Centre, based at Scotland Yard, became a permanently available facility – to provide some of the benefits of a national police force without the odium of establishing one. (Ibid).

Again, the terms need to be defined: does a ‘Strong state’ equate a state with a large, well-equipped police force and army, and a secret police with special powers to carry out surveillance and arrest people without due process? France and Germany traditionally have had very powerful state security services: yet the French government is notorious for caving in whenever a large union demonstration against some unpopular ‘free-market reform’ takes place. President Sarkozy was elected as a neoliberal, but, in the end, gave in to the ‘French consensus’ – that is, sectional-group pressure – to abandon his proposals and stay with the same old French socialism and welfare-statism.

The same can be said of the term ‘free market’, or ‘free economy’. How are they free? No-one is free to buy or sell whatever they like and at any price. Otherwise, there would be, considering the large number of deviant consumers for them, a trade in child pornography or heroin.

These are some of the problems with the formula, ‘Strong state, free economy’. A more accurate formulation would be: ‘The state that says no’. That is, a state run by a small group of men and women who stay focused, at all times, on the national interest, and have the political strength to resist the demands of small, but highly vocal, political pressure groups. Such a state can ignore the union movement, and the industrial-relations judiciary, when introducing competition in the labour market; it can ignore the Marxist category of environmentalists and the indigenous rights lobbies in proposing sustainable development of the country’s gas, coal and minerals where it benefits the national (not international) interest; it can ignore the Bob Katter’s when deregulating agriculture; it can ignore General Motors when it asks for a $US70 billion bail-out (wasted on a company which is going bust anyway), it can ignore big business demands to increase the migration program to 300,000 per year, or developers demands to constantly expand cities and strip away every green belt. Such a state is a rare thing indeed, and rarely appears in a liberal democracy.

That state – one that says no – is one, by definition, that should appeal to nationalists. After all, a nationalist is someone who puts the well-being of the nation first and foremost. And surely it is no good for the nation when, for instance, 1.8 million Australians on welfare are unable to obtain work because, under the award system, the minimum wage rates for every occupation are being kept artificially high by a small special-interest minority, and so less jobs are created than would exist under a fully competitive system?

Many politicians confuse the special interest group for the people who make up the nation. The trade union movement, for instance, can mobilise large numbers of activists to demonstrate against an Australian government, in short notice; and, given its wealth, can mount extremely effective public relations campaigns using advertisements and other forms of propaganda and outreach. The politician, on the cusp of putting forward some proposal to reduce union powers to strike, or to bring about competition in one sector of the market, will look at those large masses of people and think, erroneously, ‘The Australian people are against me’. And often the battle can get ugly and involve actual violence, between unionists and ‘scabs’, and unionists and the police – as during the Australian maritime workers’ dispute of 1998, or the coal miners’ strike in Britain in 1984. In the liberal model, the state has the monopoly in coercion: that is, only the state has the legal right to arrest people, fine them, prevent them from entering certain premises, use some form of restraint and violence against lawbreakers. In a country politically dominated by large, violent trade-union movements, those functions are usurped: the state loses its monopoly, and unions can carry out coercion, commit acts of violence, at will. Given the seriousness of such conflicts, the politician can again mistake the actions of a small but powerful and well-organised group for the popular will, and hold back on introducing legislation for fear of starting what seems almost like civil war.

This is a problem in liberal theory: the constitution, the state structure, is there, in the liberal model, to protect individual freedom. What happens, then, if a small, well-organised pressure group use that freedom to push through legislation in parliament that violates that individual freedom – to work at a certain job at a certain rate, or to supply wheat on the international market at a certain price, or to prevent a rural land-owner from chopping down trees on his own property (in order to protect his house against a fire outbreak)? The answer is that freedom needs to be protected against such groups. Which is why a government, run on nationalist principles, needs to rule with a guiding hand, a firm hand.

Not serving the interests of such groups means that one is serving the interests of whole: which is what nationalism is all about. So, paradoxically, nationalists are, in this regard, advocates of a liberal society – perhaps the last defenders of liberalism in a socialist and environmentalist world. Nevertheless, it should also be noted that Nationalist Alternative is very much against unrestricted Free Market Fundamentalism which is Capitalism in its most terrorizing form. Genuine Nationalism is also intrinsically against Globalization too. This is because Nationalism wishes to preserve the identity, culture, and heritage of people and their Nations.

by Michael Kennedy

Anyone with a worldly outlook and an independent mind would be acutely aware of how the media play a pivotal role in determining for other people what is to be considered an issue and what isn’t. The media set the tone of discussion. If the media brings something up, it must be an issue. If they don’t, it mustn’t be important. So some obscure issue which has always been around suddenly becomes ‘water cooler’ discussion because of its appearance on the front page. Yet a slowly unfolding revolution is considered worthy of being ignored, because the media choose not to focus on it. We take the view that it’s not what newspapers, television or mainstream press which dictates what important, which problems we must tackle, but it’s our own judgement and position.

One issue which has been glossed over, mentioned but never explored in the depth it deserves is the housing crisis. While the global financial crisis gets in depth coverage and the ‘crisis’ with Lindsey Lohan gets valuable airtime, this crisis is perhaps felt far more keenly by Australians is only time to time mentioned with no one seeming to even consider that it is a problem that we as Australians should consider resolving. The state of housing affordability in Australia has truly become a crisis. A financial crisis because of vast amounts of credits pumped into an unsustainable asset bubble which will cause economic problems when it pops, and a social crisis, as young Australians seeking to start a family and construct the very social fabric of the future of this nation find they are unable to do so.

Historically house prices have always oscillated but have always, with the exception of periods of economic recession and depression, been affordable to the working class. Yet in the 21^st century, we saw housing reach new levels of unaffordability, during an economic BOOM. During a period of time when working hours were increasing, when the economy was growing rapidly, market forces were conspiring not to give Australians the opportunity to use their hard earned wealth to secure a residence, but to use property as a vehicle for profiteering.

The Generational War

The housing market as it is now, is generationally skewed, with the older baby boomer’s standing the most to gain from overinflated prices, and the most to lose from housing becoming affordable. For many younger “Generation X” and “Generation Y” Aussies, there is a clear sense of anger over the fact that they cannot achieve the Australian dream that their parents could. For many Australians who had working class parents, who paid off the ¼ acre block in the suburbs, they grew up and studied and worked hard to be able to afford the same. Now with many having gone through the education system, worked the entry level jobs they find that these very same houses, which were paid off by brickies, labourers and office clerks are not out of reach to young professionals. The houses which sold for $10,000 many decades ago, or even those which sold at $150,000 only two decades ago are now well over half a million. The property owners, who would still profit from selling the house at half its current ‘market value’ refuse to take anything less than the overinflated and grossly unfair market value. For these baby boomer’s using property to fund their retirement, they are borrowing, and that’s putting it nicely, money from a future generation. To put it more aptly, they are utilising the fact that housing is a basic necessity to set sale terms which are completely unreasonable.

The baby boomer generation claims that ‘hard work’ gave them their status, when in reality it is nothing more than the sheer luck of being born at a time when housing which was suitable for family life could be afforded on one wage. These conditions simply do not exist now, and younger Australians are being blamed for this inequity. It is supposedly the reluctance of “Gen X” and “Gen Y” to work hard or start small, according to these self righteous children of the hippie era, which is to blame for their predicament. But the truth is vastly different. The current generational inequity is the result of nothing more than the timing of economic and social change, with the older generation finding itself on the favourable line of the divide, and the younger ones drawing the short straw. Canberra University’s National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling showed that during the financial boom of the 2000′s, the one which most people missed out on, the divide between rich and poor grew further, with this divide having a generational angle too.

People over 65 increased their home equity by an average of $80,000 in the 10-year period – four times as much as for people aged 15 to 34. ⁱ

How has the government sought to address this, to ensure that hard working Australians are able to secure basic shelter? By giving home owners grants which did nothing apart from line the pockets of real estate agents, property speculators and investors. This divide is turning into anger between generations, turning children against parents, parents against children and reinforcing the worst form of individualistic, me, me, me trains of thought. Unfortunately, the growing anger baby boomer’s and the older generation is justified, as while they have profited immensely, obscenely, they are showing no regard at all as a collective demographic for the plight of the younger Australians who are doomed to worked well past 65 in order to fund the baby boomer retirement.

The Population War

Another contributing factor is the insane, reckless and poorly though out mass immigration policy. Hard as it is for new infrastructure and public transport to be put in place, as full as our roads, trains, hospitals and schools are, as competitive as the job and housing market are, the government nevertheless ramped up immigration, doubling and trebling it in the past decade or two. In a big ‘up yours’ to the Australian people, it completely ignored these concerns and opened up the country to ‘skilled workers’, without even mentioning how they would look after those who were here. The population grew immensely and Australia experienced the fastest population growth. Yet no plans were made to house these people, and no mention of how Australians would be ensured space and opportunity to make a workable life in this country. The government just didn’t care, and many Australians are finding life less and less workable. Aaron Gadiel from Urban Taskforce Australia says that local councils are indifferent to the plight of home buyers and that

“Every credible independent report on the housing shortfall has found that the planning system and the restrictions imposed by local councils are front and centre to blame for the current situation we find ourselves in.” ⁱⁱ

The Speculators War

The third aspect is property speculation. Financial opportunists using property to further enlarge their asset base have pushed Australians out the market even further. People who already own a house, in a act which is nothing more than pure greed, buying up other properties for the sole purpose of profiteering. Buying an already overpriced quarter acre block in the suburbs for $550K, only to tear the house down, erect 3 units and sell the units at $400K each. People who are up in arms over a few cents per litre extra on the price of petrol and demand the blood of oil companies become silent and overlook this vastly more insidious gouging. The economic divide is growing, as people who already own multiple properties and obtain income through rent and subdividing the land, use this leverage to obtain even more properties, to drive up the price and push out first home buyers. It really is just greed and avarice which compels people who own multiple properties, who are aware of the housing unaffordability crisis to continue with this socially destructive practice for the pursuit of filthy lucre. The Liberals, in their true style helped kick off the speculative bubble, with Peter Costello in 1999 saying

“Work for a living and we’ll tax you at close to 50 cents in the dollar; speculate and we’ll only take 25 cents. Not only that but, as a special deal – while stocks last – we’ll pay half your speculating costs.” ⁱⁱⁱ

Halving the capital gains tax rate and negative gearing has been a boon to those who least need to enter the so called property market, those who already own a property. Meanwhile, first home buyers were given a first home buyers grant, which only served to allow buyers to leverage themselves even more applying for easy credit, and bidding up prices and succumbing to the spruiking of the only “profession” that doesn’t require an education, the Real Estate Industry.

Yet such greed is rewarded through tax benefits such as negative gearing and lauded in economic circles. Financial analysts perversely call unaffordable housing a “strong market” and celebrate its further “growth”. From a nationalist viewpoint, any economic condition which weakens the social make up of the nation, which undermines the ability of people to secure a future for themselves is to be avoided, regardless of how profitable it is to the already rich, already well off social class.

What has the government done about this? It opened up property investment to the foreign market and we saw real estate agencies spring up whose sole purpose was to sell properties to Chinese nationals.

Nationalist Alternatives war against the housing crisis

We are unashamedly against greed and profiteering. Every other party treats this issue with kid gloves. The Liberals wouldn’t dare upset cashed up investors and the boomer’s, and besides, they champion market forces and value them over the welfare of the nation. Labor has been completely inept and uncommitted, showing that they care not one iota for the many Australians struggling to afford just an extra bedroom for a child, or those facing the prospect of never being able to afford to live in a house which doesn’t belong to someone else. The Greens have said nothing, but while they might fight on behalf of Australians against speculators, they wouldn’t dare fight on behalf of Australians for population control. Without addressing the immigration issue, any effort made is worthless. Socialists just don’t care as the issue doesn’t affect trans-gendered lesbian indigenous people in Africa fighting against imperialism.

We at Nationalist Alternative are wholly committed to affordable housing. It IS a right, just as clothing, food, medicine and education are a right. It is just as detestable in our opinion to use the market to price a vital product such as housing out of peoples reach for profit, as it is to auction food to the highest bidder for profit and leave others hungry. There is quite simply no excuse, nor any good reason for such a crisis to occur. The free market has failed, free markets being an abstract ideology that in real life is unworkable. Australia needs a government which as the courage to do its job and govern for the welfare of the nation.

Quite simply, housing should be MADE affordable. That’s not to say that the government should pay for peoples housing, but the cost of constructing a house is still affordable and within reach. It is the price of land which has lost all control. As land costs nothing to produce, it is entirely reasonable to expect Australians to pay fairly for construction costs. Such a demand even today would not be unreasonable, but it is not reasonable to expect one to pay $800K for an empty block in a traditionally working class suburb by Altona.

Nationalist Alternative is committed to ensuring that our economy serves US. There is no room in our society for practices which destroy our social conditions, even if they are of benefit to the few. Australians have fought and died to protect their nation, worked hard to pay taxes to their country, worked hard to build it up from arid sands into one of the best countries on earth. This work should not be in vain. Those who work to secure a future should not see their efforts destroyed.

“Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Boat People are used as a way to release pressure from the real immigration debate”.

It seems that recently Australia has  rediscovered its obsession with asylum seekers.  News stories now abound of how more boats are on the way, of how asylum seekers (always by boat, not by plane) are given first class treatment, shacked up in luxury accommodation while “working families” struggle to pay the mortgage.  One only has to load up the website of Victoria’s most popular rag, the Herald Sun, and sure enough the issue is mentioned, as it is pretty much every day in the more neo-conservative publications.  “Now I’ll fix the boats: Gillard “1 says the headline.  Since when has Labor taken a strong stance against boat people?  Since it’s been a popular vote grab.  The “Tampa” election showed that its a hot button issue, even bigger than environmental degradation through salinity, emissions, the housing affordability crisis and unsustainable population growth.  

When Howard was elected in 1996 he cut the planned immigrant intake to 68,000, but by last financial year he’d more than doubled it. His planned intake for next financial year is almost 153,000 – plus 13,000 under the humanitarian program. To that you can add about 24,000 New Zealanders – who don’t need visas and will be arriving to join the 470,000 of their fellow country-persons who are here.  Last calendar year was the eighth straight year of net immigration (that is, net of permanent departures) in excess of 100,000.The media slyly links ,not explicitly, but implicitly, illegal refugees with a sense of being inundated with hordes of people.  From the opinion of many of the Australian public, that seems to be working.  Many Australians seem to believe that the country will be flooded by boat people alone, and make statements about how our infrastructure is already at capacity.  Nothing clears up the air like a bit of perspective, and nothing better brings about a sense of perspective than factual data.

In 2009, 5,000 asylum claims were lodged in Australia 2.  USA & Canada have over 80,000 claims and Europe close to 300,000.  That figure of 5,000 might seem high, but in reality, it is not.  Legal immigration exceeds this every fortnight.  This is half the number of assisted immigrants than arrived at the start of the 20th century, when Australia had a much smaller population.  According to Wikipedia, “Net overseas migration increased from 30,042 in 1992-93 to 177,600 in 2006-07. This is the highest level on record.”  In two decades, that’s a 500% increase, one largely brought about by the ‘conservative’ Howard government. Howard was an expert at making his Battlers believe he shares their dislike and distrust of foreign dominance, via sole opposition to boat people. Yet in the background on behalf of big business he ran the biggest immigration program Australia had ever seen including one where the proportion coming from non European sources is now greater than 50%.

Asylum claims therefore account for less than 3% of our immigration intake, a fairly unremarkable proportion.  Yet if you were to follow the popular press, this tiny percentage is going to inundate the country, that we don’t have room for that few percent, that if the government would just crack down and secure our borders against this few percent, we’d be a lot better.  It seems a silly position, one bereft of logic and proportion, but why are Australians so worked up about boat people?  Why did Tampa demand so much attention for the handful of people on it, when the population was increasing by thousands each week from planes flying overhead?  Why is it OK to suggest that refugees be blasted out of the water, with even the opposition minister Tony Abbott stating he’ll do “whatever it takes”.  “Whatever it takes” does not exclude some form of violent action. And why is there a strange paradox in the media, where it is permissible for paid commentators like Andrew Bolt to make all sorts of grandiose statements against them, when even suggesting that legal immigration be scaled back gets one branded a racist?

How is it that Nationalist Alternative is lambasted simply for advocating a political policy where the government would assist a greatly reduced level of international students and economic refugees (i.e. The huge ‘skilled intake’), a policy which hardly is inhumane, but the same media silently and selectively allows far more vigorous comments by neo-conservatives levelled against the small intake stream comprising boat people/asylum seekers/refugees.

You will note that none of these neo-conservative commentators speaks of removing Australia from the overarching United Nations dictates (1951 Refugee Convention) that impairs national sovereignty in the first place? They simply are not serious and only wish to defer public sentiment away from the real issues.

Surely comments about blasting women and children out of the water, who many consider could quite well be in ‘desperate need of refuge’ are indicate of a less ‘humane attitude’ by liberal standards, than comments about taking in less people to study and live here from overseas, people who are generally quite well off anyway (they have money) and are coming from countries which have a reasonable to high standard of living.

This state of affairs most likely exists because of one simple factor. Money.  Economic immigrants are skilled (at least some) and have money, or the capacity to earn money.  They will buy consumer goods.  They will put deposits on houses with over inflated prices to fund the baby boomer’s retirement and therefore keep that asset bubble inflated.  They provide labour to big business, and quite often, cheaper, that is, more ‘cost effective’ labour, as an increase in the supply of labour will drive down its cost, as there are more competitors in the race to the bottom.  Make no mistake about it, big business, the Real Estate industry and even smaller business love immigration.  The ‘ruling class’ in modern western society isn’t aristocrats, dictators, feudal lords, emperors, kings or seeming not even a democratically elected government.  It is big business, the corporations.  Anyone who’s been following the events regarding the Resource Super Profits Tax would only be too keenly aware of the clout that big business and corporations have in modern society.

The Institute for Public Affairs have states that Western Australia needs more people to prosper.  A sentiment echoed by the mining industry. They IPA states  ?We are now in the largest boom in the State’s history. The challenge for the State is to make the most of the boom and getting more people to the State is the key to doing so.?  What can be gleaned from this, isn’t that population levels are crippling the state, but there is the potential for greater growth and greater economic gain (presumably only for those who are already well off), but that there simply is the opportunity for greater profits, if there were more people.

The IPA is a centre right think tank which advocates free market politics, trade liberalisation, climate change scepticism and limited government.  The attitude isn’t one of bringing in more people to fill a need, but a lamentation that there are potential further profits which could be gained if it weren’t for Australia’s restrictive immigration policy.  It is an attitude which suggests a lack of any form of restraint.  The last sentence states ?While more people will bring challenges, such as ensuring that there is adequate land for housing, schools, hospital beds and roads, it is the key to our future prosperity.?.  All that is written about how hundreds of thousands of Australians are going to cope with real and pressing issues they face each day, is mentioned in a throw away line at the end.  It’s pretty obvious that many who are calling for an increase in the intake of people, consider the trouble it causes for many Australia a negligible externalities.  Other companies benefit from skilled immigration.  Wages can be depressed by increased competition for jobs and bottom lines can be increased through finding cheaper sources of labour, and by lowering working standards and conditions.

What does this have to do with refugees?  Probably due to the fact that asylum seekers generally don’t have skills and don’t have as much money by the time they arrive onto the taxpayer’s payroll after sometimes exhausting thousands of dollars on people smugglers. An Afghan refugee isn’t soon going to be in a position to put a deposit on a house, or apply for a position in the IT industry.  In other words, they are less useful to big business.  Another big business, the media, relies on selling a product just like any other business.  The product that news media sells is not just news stories and information, but a guiding hand, a sense of representation for the average person.

It is no secret that most Australians think immigration rates are too high.  Many are concerned about how sustainable intake levels of 200,000 per annum are, how we can do this while water is becoming more scarce, infrastructure such as transport and health are bursting at the seams and competition for housing is high, with astronomical prices denying hard working young Australians the opportunity to own even a modest home

to raise a small family in.  Sentiment against misguided government policy, largely fuelled by a religious belief in ?growth? and rapacious and insatiable business who seems to resent any restraint is high.  This spills out into resentment against the immigrants themselves, though for the rates and social issues that have arisen as a result, Australians with their generous natures have been very accommodating and tolerant.  The sentiment is still there, and the media knows this and knows that it is a marketable product.  This leaves the media with a paradox.  They cannot steer Australians towards wanting lower levels of legal immigration because the media is itself big business.  Rupert Murdoch is not likely to kill off the inflow of people which is the golden goose for other plutocrats.  The Australian and the Herald Sun are not going to turn against the Real Estate industry and the mining industry, who buy valuable advertising space and milk Australia’s frustration at the unsustainable and rapid growth and change occurring.  How to use this sentiment, while at the same time maintaining the status quo?  The answer is simple.  Redirect the sentiment, which appears at face value to be exactly what the popular mainstream media has been doing.  With Australians concerned about growth, about the future of the nation and bewildered at the government constantly increasing the rate of population growth when most people believe the opposite is necessary based on their personal experiences, they want a media outlet which shares their concern.

The mainstream media has been doing this, by directing the ire, the resentment and frustration towards the most helpless and economically least advantageous immigrants.  Asylum seekers, refugees and boat people.  It’s always boat people too, as it conjures up images of dishevelled, dodgy looking opportunists scrambling ashore.   Asylum seekers who arrive by plane don’t look like they are doing anything illegal or dodgy, nor is there a stand off in mid air, so they are rarely if ever mentioned.  The spectacle with them just isn’t there.  With the mainstream media turning a blind eye to anti-refugee sentiment and never bothering to call the so called ‘racist’ dog whistle, they kill two birds with one stone.

Firstly, the papers sell.  Hyperbolic headlines with barely a scratch of truth about how refugees are arriving in vast numbers of boats and given luxury accommodation fuel the sentiment, and direct attention.  The attention is taken away from the vast number of people who use student visas as a back door, away from the large number of ‘economic’ migrants, and towards a relatively small, insignificant numbers of refugees.  The claims about luxury treatment, about harbouring terroristsand disease only serve to inflame passions, sell papers and sway government policy.  The government then sees asylum seekers as THE pressing immigration issue, and will act on that, rather than on population growth in general.  The other outcome is that the discussion moves towards the few percent of arrivals only, and not the bigger picture in general. The flow of labour and capital which serves big industry is no longer considered as part of the equation, and therefore is no longer threatened by discussion about immigration.  The immigration debate then is purely about stopping boats.  It has been effectively neutered.  The papers sell.  The Australian population think their concerns about growth are being attended to.  Growth continues unabated.

Australians deserve honest debate on pressing issues such as the environment, population growth through government policy, industrial relations and social programs.  But this debate is degraded and dragged into the gutter as a small proportion of the population twist the debate, and mislead the population, leading them to incorrect  conclusions and given them skewed perspectives.  Young Australians who may have only had one opportunity to vote in a federal election, or no opportunity deserve a better quality of discussion from the general public and the media.  This can only be done holding an accurate perspective, being honest about what is happening and not being led by hysteria.

In short, Australia cannot have any meaningful public debate about how immigration policy will shape the future of our nation if there is stage managed ‘contained hysteria’ about boat people. The media, which usually is so quick to hyperbole about parties who call for lowered immigration, turns a blind eye to anti-refugee sentiment , while grilling those who suggest that local students should be considered over cashed up foreign students or that the ‘legal’ migrant intake is way too high.  This is an absurd situation and one that Australia currently finds itself in.

There are of course legitimate questions and issues concerning asylum seekers, issues about processing, about controlling borders and how to differentiate between legitimate refugees (on Australia’s definition not the UNs..) from opportunists, but the hysteria is out of proportion to the problem.  If it is held to be humane to give refuge to someone fleeing persecution and possible death then it is by no means inhumane not to offer someone who has an education and a job, the opportunity to study here as a hair stylist to gain permanent residency so as to bring the rest of the family, simply because there is more space here, or more money to be made.

Australians deserve a better quality of discourse on this issue, especially younger Australians who will MOST be affected by these policies.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/triguboff-lets-trade-trees-for-homes/2006/10/10/1160246131958.html

1 http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/new-pm-julia-gillard-vows-to-address-issue-of-asylum-seekers/story-e6frf7jo-1225887320708

This is the second episode of Nat-Alt Radio which is done by a new speaker named David Ellerton. In this particular speech he will discuss; immigration, the break down of the family unit and green taxes. There will be a number of other interesting speeches on a broad range of topics in the future from Nationalist Alternative so stay tuned!

To download the audio file, click here.

Parts one and two of Episode 2 of Nat-Alt Radio can also be viewed below: