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2013 September Fightback

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2013 September Fightback Publication information Becoming a sustaining subscriber Table of Subscriptions to Fightback are available for $16.50 a year, this covers the costs Contents of printing and postage. At present the writing, proof reading, layout, and 3 Editorial distribution is all done on a volun- 3 In brief teer basis. To make this publication sustainable long term we are asking for 4 Solidarity with Russian LGBT people to consider becoming ‘Sustain- movement: Neither Washington ing subscribers’ by pledging a monthly nor Moscow but international amount to Fightback (suggested $10). queer liberation! Sustaining subscribers will be send a 6 What would Adam Smith have free copy of each of our pamphlets to thought of neoliberalism? thank them for their extra support. The name of the magazine will change to 10 Leaflet: Stop the scab bills! Fightback, but current subscriptions Interview: The 15 year will remain unaltered. 11 old fighting back against To start your sustaining subscription McDonald’s set up an automatic payment to 38- 9002-0817250-00 with your name in 12 Fijian sugar workers face threats, the particulars and ‘Sustain’ in the code intimidation and email your name and address to 14 Student Debt: Reinforcing the [email protected] Logic of Capitalism 15 Coalition governments and real change Get Fightback each month 17 John Minto for Mayor: “We need a Kiwi socialism” Within NZ: $20 for one year (11 issues) 20 Grant Brookes for Capital and or $40 for two years (22 issues) Coast DHB Rest of the World: $40 for one year or $80 for two years 22 Witness to a revolution Send details and payments to: Fightback, PO Box 10282 Dominion Rd, Auckland or Bank transfer: 38-9002-0817250-01 Donations and bequeathments Fightback is non-profit and relies on financial support from progressive people, supporters and members for all its activities including producing this magazine. To financially support us please deposit to 38-9002-0817250-01 with your initials and surname (or anony- mous.) Large and small, regular and one-off donations are all appreciated and listed in Fightback from time to time. Fightback magazine is now in its 20th year as we continue the long-term fight for socialism. Readers and supporters may consider re- membering us in their will with assets or money that will help the struggle in the long-term. If this is you please put in your will ‘Fight- back, PO Box 10-282, Dominion Road, Auckland’ as well as what you would like to leave to us. 2 Fightback September 2013 Editorial Welcome to the September 2013 issue About of Fightback. Fightback is a socialist organisation in Aotearoa/NZ, and this Fightback is our monthly magazine. With the 2013 local body elections Under our current system, democracy coming up, Fightback will be involved consists of a vote every 3 years. Most in electoral work alongside community of our lives are lived under dictator- struggles on the ground. ship, the dictatorship of bosses and Fightback does not believe socialism WINZ case managers. Fightback can be simply voted in, however elec- stands for a system in which our toral work combined with wider popular workplaces, our schools, our universi- struggles can play a role in socialist ties are run democratically, for social transformation. “In an article originally need rather than private profit. printed on the Daily Blog, Mike Treen Fightback participates in the MANA of Unite Union and the MANA Move- Movement, whose stated mission is ment discusses strategy for the 2014 to bring “rangatiratanga to the poor, general election (page 15-16). Editorial the powerless and the dispossessed.” Fightback supports the MANA Move- Capitalism was imposed in Aotearoa ment, which is standing candidates through colonisation, and the fight in the local body elections. Fightback for indigenous self-determination is writer Daphne Lawless interviews intimately connected with the fight John Minto, who is standing for Mayor for an egalitarian society. We also of Auckland on a MANA Movement maintain an independent Marxist ticket; (page 17-19) and Ian Anderson organisation outside of parliament, to interviews Grant Brookes, a Fightback offer a vision of a world beyond the member who is standing on a Health parliamentary capitalist system. First ticket endorsed by the MANA Fightback stands against all forms of Movement (page 20-21). oppression. We believe working-class power, the struggle of the majority for self-determination, is the basis for ending all forms of oppression. However, we also recognise that daily inequities such as sexism must be addressed here and now, not just after the revolution. Fightback is embedded in a range of struggles on the ground; including building a fighting trade union move- ment, movements for gender and sexual liberation, and anti-racism. Fightback also publishes a monthly magazine, and a website, to offer Coordinating Editor Layout: a socialist perspective on ongoing Byron Clark, Ian Joel Cosgrove struggles. Anderson Assisting Editors Monthly magazine published Fightback stands for struggle, soli- Proofing/Content Mike Kyriazopoulos, by: Fightback darity and socialism. Jared Phillips Kelly Pope, Daphne Fightback September 2013, Vol.1, No 7, Issue No 7 Lawless, Grant Brookes. Fightback September 2013 3 Queer liberation Solidarity with Russian LGBT movement: Neither Washington nor Moscow but international queer liberation! by Ian Anderson, Fightback (Wellington). has documented this period in his work Putin regime clamp-down Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Jumping forward nearly a century, it Russia. Healey argues that the removal wasn’t until the fall of the USSR in the Russia was arguably the first country to of sodomy from the 1922 Criminal early 1990s that gay relationships were legalise homosexuality. Code was no accident, but rather an at- again legalised. The current attack on In the ferment between the revolution tempt to “secularise” gender relations. queer rights, through both street vio- of 1905 and the revolution of 1917, lib- This was a period of debate. Medi- lence and anti-gay laws, is a case of ‘one eral reformers argued that homosexual- cal persecution and anti-gay attitudes step forward, two steps back.’ ity should be decriminalised. A number persisted, alongside struggles for gender After nearly a decade of both legal and of prominent men were open about liberation. their attraction to other men (as in most extra-legal violence, Russian President It wasn’t until 1933, with the consolida- countries, lesbianism was never strictly Vladimir Putin’s regime has introduced tion of the Stalinist bureaucracy, that illegal, although women attracted to laws forbidding ‘propaganda for homo- homosexuality was legally forbidden each-other were forced to pursue their sexuality,’ protecting ‘religious feeling’ again. This was connected to a project of desires privately). and scapegoating minorities as ‘foreign nation-building involving the reasser- agents.’ With the seizure of mass workers’ power tion of the nuclear family, prohibition of Vigilante gangs bait and assault queers, in 1917, the entire Criminal Code was abortion and other gendered restrictions. repealed. History was open to be writ- with tacit support from the government. This history is necessary to understand- ten through popular struggle and debate. Although the new laws theoretically ing the current struggle over Rus- After the Civil War and the formation target gay paedophiles, all gender non- sia’s anti-gay laws; it is not a clash of of a new defensive state, the new Crimi- conforming folk are targets. The gang ‘Western’ and ‘Russian’ values, but rather nal Code of 1922 removed the crime of torture and murder of a young gay teen- a more complex historical struggle of muzhelozhstvo (‘men lying with men.’) ager has received particular attention. oppression and liberation. Drawing from medical and legal litera- The Putin regime’s introduction of anti- ture of the time, historian Dan Healey gay laws is part of a more generalised 4 Fightback September 2013 Queer liberation nation-building project. The growth of attention than abuses in countries fully nation; they will only if they are silent. violent fascist groups with tacit sup- backed by the US. We hope to join forces and succeed port for the government, strong links For example, while the abuses of Zim- in raising everyone’s voices for LGBT between the regime and the Russian babwe’s President Robert Mugabe are equality in Russia and elsewhere. We Orthodox Church, repression of pro- widely known, the vicious atrocities of hope that together with those who gressive social movements, attacks on US-backed oil baron Teodoro Obiang share this vision, we will succeed in ethnic minorities and queers, are all part (President of fellow African republic sending the strongest message pos- of a broad cultural assault. Equatorial Guinea) receive little atten- sible by involving athletes, diplomats, tion. sponsors, and spectators to show up and speak up, proclaiming equality in most No clash of civilisations Meanwhile, unsurprising cables released compelling ways.” by WikiLeaks revealed that in Europe, In endorsing the call to boycott the US agents pursued a deliberate strategy Previous attempts to boycott Olym- upcoming Winter Olympics in Rus- of highlighting women’s oppression in pic games – including Berlin in 1936, sia, British commentator Stephen Fry Afghanistan in the leadup to the war, in Moscow in 1980, and Los Angeles in argued that the “civilised world” could an attempt to win over European public 1984 – have proved largely ineffectual. not associate itself with homophobia. opinion. By contrast, the Black Power salute at Fry argued the Five Rings of the Olym- the 1968 Mexico Olympics resonated This is not to say that the visible oppres- pics would be “forever besmirched” by globally as part of a broader upsurge sion of Russian queers is a lie concocted endorsing homophobia. against imperialism, and remains an by Western conspiracy.
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