[Marxism] Re: ISO (Australia) involved in banning Green Left from Peace Group activity

[Nick Fredman]

On 16/10/06 11:03 PM, "Rohan Gaiswinkler" <rohanger at yahoo.com.au> quoted:
> 
> Parramatta Peace Group (PPG) meeting ... decided, (by seven to four and after
> several heated meetings discussing this topic) to ban GLW and other radical
> papers from its meetings, events or actions. Even leaflets, advertising other
> group’s activities, are henceforth banished.
> 
Rohan¹s subject line is a bit narrow ­ according to the letter the ISO voted
to ban any items of its own propaganda as well. I wonder if it applies to
union journals with radical content, or far right rags, or the bourgeois
press, or what about radical t-shirts ...? Will someone with a Che tattoo
have to cover up? Will the group appoint a censorship commissar for each
event to judge how to apply the policy?

During the 1997 campaign of protest against meetings of the racist One
Nation party, the ISO were warned that their mania for ³no platforming² the
³fascists², including by pressuring local councils to refuse hall hire to
ON, could very well rebound on the left. It seems the reason they didn¹t
care about censorship by the bourgeois state at the time was because they
are quite happy for the far left to censor itself.

This is surely the reductio ad absurdum of the apparent current line of the
International Socialist Tendency  of pandering to conservative forces and
ideas in the name of a ³broad² peace movement, a tactical orientation which
seems a wild swing from their previous ultra-militancy. Hopefully one day
they¹ll work out what a principled united front is.