Safe-Schools founder speaks at Sydney Marxist conference
On the weekend, Australia’s largest political extremist group held their Sydney conference. In attendance were a former Greens Senator, a Guardian columnist, the founder of the so-called “Safe-schools” program and academics from La Trobe and RMIT. And the media didn’t say a word.
To reiterate. A group that openly declares that it wants to overthrow the government of Australia and implement a totalitarian state held a conference in Sydney attended by a prominent member of Australia’s third largest political party, a journalist from a major media organisation, and lecturers from our institutions of higher education. And nobody in the mainstream media even bothered to report on it.
It boggles the mind.
For those who haven’t guessed yet the extremist group in question is Socialist Alternative. The former Greens Senator is Lee Rhiannon. The Guardian columnist is Jeff Sparrow and the academics are Roz Ward, Liam Ward and a plethora of others.
Socialist Alternative is a Revolutionary Marxist organisation. We know this because on their website in the section titled “Statement of principles” the first sentence reads, “Socialist Alternative is a Revolutionary Marxist organisation”.
It doesn’t get a lot more cut and dried than that. Not a lot of mystery here. These people are old style Communists and proud of it.
To be more specific Socialist Alternative are Trotskyists, that group of Marxists who believe that the Soviet Union would have worked out just fine if Trotsky and not Stalin had been the winner of the power struggle that occurred after Lenin’s death. To be even more specific they are “Cliffite” Trotskyists. Followers of the line formulated by British Trotskyist Tony Cliff who postulated that the Soviet Union under Stalin was never really “Socialist” but rather “State Capitalist”. This branch of Trotskyism migrated to Australia from the United States in the early 1970s and has had a following here ever since. It’s adherents in the 21st century in the guise of the “Socialist Alternative” group have recently outcompeted and pushed aside their rival left wing extremist groups to become the dominant force for political extremism in Australia.
All of this is common knowledge. None of this is hidden or in any way secret. A few internet searches and a bit of basic research would uncover it all. Yet amazingly not one of the hundreds of professional journalists in Australia have bothered to do so.
The weekend’s conference had a jam-packed schedule including:
-a Friday night opening gala discussing how Marxism is the revolutionary solution to climate change and capitalism.
-Saturday seminars on: Lenin’s theory of the revolutionary party, How capitalism limits scientific progress, Marx’s theory of social class, Trotsky and the Russian Revolution, and Perspectives for revolution in the West.
-On Sunday workshops and talks on Marxism and ecology, Marxism and the fight for revolutionary consciousness, Marx on alienation, and (my personal favourite) Marxism 101: All your questions answered: a Socialist Q&A
You know if I didn’t know any better I’d think these people were some sort of Marxists.
The schedule shows at first glance that this isn’t a meeting of hippies trying to save the rainforest or unions campaigning for better wages. This is clearly an extremist event run by people who mean to overthrow the government and implement a totalitarian socialist state. So why do a former Greens Senator, a supposedly mainstream journalist and supposedly reputable academics feel so comfortable attending?
Well in the case of Lee Rhiannon the answer is pretty obvious. Lee was born into a Stalinist family, was educated into a Stalinist mindset, attended a Stalinist university in Stalinist Russia was a member of Australia’s last openly Stalinist party and was editing the last Stalinist newspaper in Australia right up to the point the Berlin wall fell (when she joined the Greens). Ms Rhiannon has never renounced her Marxist beliefs (or even really been asked to). On Sunday Ms Rhiannon was the featured speaker launching a book written by Ben Hillier the editor of Red Flag (the official Socialist Alternative magazine).
Jeff Sparrow is likewise unsurprising. In the early 90s Jeff was a member of the Socialist Alternative parent group the International Socialist Organisation and along with his sister Jill was one of the founding members of Socialist Alternative in 1995. At this point it’s worth asking if there are any journalists at the Guardian who aren’t former Trotskyists (Jeff Sparrow, Gary Younge, Paul Mason) or the children of Marxists (Owen Jones, Martin Kettle) or openly self declared current Marxists (Van Badham) or Anarchist PR agents (Jason Wilson). If a right wing outlet employed former Nazis, the right wing children of Nazis and self-proclaimed neo Nazis they’d probably be left without a press pass (and rightfully so). Mr Sparrow was the featured speaker for a panel on Sunday talking about the threat of rising extremism. Not his own of course (don’t be silly), the evil right wing kind.
How are these extremists able to operate so freely in our society? The clue is in the academics who attended. Over the 24 years of its existence, Socialist Alternative has managed to acquire a quite considerable number of university academics amongst its members and fellow travellers. The group instructs its activists to spend as much time in the university system as possible and does all it can to help the more talented of its members into academic careers with the aid of sympathisers already inside the faculty system. The number of Australian academics who have joined or have been openly associated with the group is staggering.
But the stand out name at this conference is Roz Ward.
Roz Ward has gained national attention as the founder of the Safe Schools program, a radical Gender theory course designed to warp the minds of young children masquerading under the disguise of an “anti-bullying” program. The course was formally launched in June 2014 by the Abbott Government and has provoked mass resistance from parents (and mass support by journalists, gay activists and academics) ever since. Parents from the Chinese, Indian and Catholic communities have been notable amongst the fiercest opponents. The architects of this program openly declare that its aim is to challenge notions of “heteronormativity” and promote acceptance of “LGBTIQ” lifestyles. This is cultural imperialism of the internal sort. Brunswick, Newtown and the West End imposing their value systems and beliefs on those unlettered barbarians in the suburbs.
Ms Ward was removed from her role advising the Victorian government on education policy (and was briefly suspended from her teaching position at La Trobe University) after stating of the rainbow flag flying over the Victorian parliament that: “Now we just need to get rid of the racist Australian flag on top of state parliament and get a red (Communist) one up there and my work is done.”
At the conference Ms Ward presented the topic “50 years since Stonewall: Birth of Gay Liberation”.
So the people who are designing the curriculum manufactured to mould the minds of your children are revolutionary Marxists like Roz Ward. A woman who openly advocates for the overthrow of our government and the destruction of Australia as an identifiable country. In a sane world this would probably be a big story, but sadly it seems the fellow travellers of these extremists were the ones that educated our nation’s journalists.
The truth is that the West never won the Cold War. The Soviet Union may have collapsed under the weight of its own economic absurdities but we in the West allowed Marxists to stay in positions of power inside our university system. They have for thirty years now been instrumental in shaping the worldview of an entire generation of worth of lawyers, social workers, public servants, union leaders, economists, filmmakers, teachers, diplomats, journalists as well as the hierarchies of the police and security services.
And their influence in this sphere is only increasing. Even 20 years ago the idea that an open member of a revolutionary Marxist group preaching the absurdities of “Gender theory” would be allowed to shape the curriculum of primary school students would have been ridiculous. Now when Roz Ward was rightfully removed from her position teaching at La Trobe the entire establishment system successfully swung into action to have her reinstated.
You can’t win a culture war if you allow the greatest enemies of your culture to teach generations of your children what their culture is. Until the Marxists are thrown out of the academy and into the gutter where they belong the culture will continue to shift to the left, and Australia will continue to lose our sense of who we are.