President Donald Trump’s declarations this week that the Palestinian people will be forced from Gaza and the strip taken over by the US mark a new stage in the open embrace of colonialism and imperialist illegality.
Trump’s statements, making explicit what has always been the aim of the US-Israeli genocide, implicate not only the fascistic US leader, but all of American imperialism’s allies. That includes the Australian Labor government. It has refused to criticise, much less condemn, Trump’s plan for ethnic cleansing, one of the most heinous violations of international law. In politics, such a refusal constitutes a de facto endorsement.
Delivering a press conference on Tuesday, Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was repeatedly asked to comment on Trump’s statements, which he made shortly before standing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the butcher of Gaza.
“I’m not going to have a running commentary on statements by the President of the United States,” Albanese said, repeating that phrase, or a variation of it, over and over again to all follow up questions.
In line with the entire political and media establishment’s backing of the Israeli onslaught, the press corps has generally given Albanese a free pass, almost never pointing to the illegality of the Zionist regime’s operations or Australia’s complicity. But in this instance, Albanese’s statements were too much even for them.
Having declared that he had nothing to say about Trump’s plan to remove all of the Palestinians from Palestine, Albanese then ludicrously said that Australia’s position remained support for a “two-state solution.” “But he’s blown that apart, hasn’t he Prime Minister,” one journalist asked.
Another noted that this was not a run of the mill statement, but could be “history changing.” Would the Labor government send troops to Gaza, in support of Trump’s colonisation, they asked. Albanese blandly replied that no such request had been forthcoming, clearly signalling that such a deployment would be a possibility.
Other questions pointed to Albanese’s previous condemnations of purported Chinese and Russian violations of international law. How were Trump’s actions any different, they asked. Albanese again said nothing of substance. Neither he, nor any government leader, has voiced a word of criticism in the days since, as Trump has reiterated his intentions to colonise Gaza.
In the first instance, that is because the Labor government supports this operation. The logic of the Israeli genocide has always been for ethnic-cleansing. That was spelt out in the earliest stages of the bombardment, as Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu, described the Palestinians as “animals” and declared that Gaza would be rendered uninhabitable.
Whatever its occasional mealy-mouthed statements of “concern” over the mass civilian deaths, Labor has supported Israel politically, diplomatically and materially, helping to establish the conditions for Trump and Netanyahu to unveil their “final solution.”
It is not only on the issue of Gaza that Albanese and Labor have refused to differ with Trump. Not a single policy of the fascistic administration has been criticised by the Labor government. That includes Trump’s threats to seize Canada, Greenland and the Gulf of Mexico; his trade war measures targeting nominal allies and adversaries alike, as well as his mass roundups of immigrants and blatant violations of the American Constitution.
Instead, Albanese has repeatedly made fawning statements of congratulations to Trump. And, with an Australian election due before May, he has declared that a Labor government would be better placed to collaborate with the Trump administration than the Liberal-National opposition.
Labor’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong attended Trump’s inauguration last month, sitting through his Hitler-inspired speech before telling the media it “was an honour and a privilege for me” to participate in the fascist spectacle. Defence Minister Richard Marles is currently visiting Washington, and will hold a meeting tomorrow with US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, an open defender of American war crimes who has also presented all domestic opponents of militarism as “Marxists” and “enemies.”
Few governments in the world have aligned themselves as openly with Trump, as Labor has. Its embrace of the US administration is matched only by that of other fascistic and far-right regimes, such as the Argentinian government of President Javier Milei, who is an inspiration to Trump, and the Italian administration of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, an admirer of Mussolini.
Labor’s attitude to Trump is not simply or primarily the result of the right-wing proclivities of Albanese and other Labor leaders. Their position expresses the attitude and the interests of the dominant sections of the ruling elite, and is in line with Labor’s character as the preeminent party of Australian imperialism.
As a middle order imperialist power, Australia has always prosecuted its own predatory interests, particularly in the South Pacific, under the umbrella of an alliance with the dominant power of the day, first Britain and then the US.
It was a Labor government that effected the change of Australia’s primary allegiance to an ascendent American imperialism, amid the opening of the Pacific theatre midway through World War II. Labor has either directly overseen or facilitated Australia’s participation in every criminal US imperialist operation since.
That historical tendency has found its sharpest expression in the current Labor government. Albanese’s signature policy, since assuming office in May 2022, has been to complete Australia’s transformation into a frontline state for a US-led war against China, which is viewed as the chief economic threat to American capitalism.
Labor has pressed ahead with the plan for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, under the militarist AUKUS pact with the US and Britain. It has presided over the largest expansion of the Australian military since World War II, including the provision of missile strike capabilities to all branches of the defence force, in explicit preparation for war in Asia. And it has vastly expanded US basing arrangements, including by permitting the most potent weapons in the US arsenal, potentially including nuclear weapons, to be stationed in Australia.
Labor’s response to Trump is a signal that this build-up will be continued and deepened, under conditions where confrontation with China is a central plank of the new US administration’s foreign policy.
More generally, Labor’s alignment expresses the fact that the same processes, expressed most sharply in the coming to power of Trump, are present in Australia too. Labor’s support, particularly in its former working-class base, has collapsed, in the sharpest expression of a broader crisis of the entire political establishment.
Labor has responded by shifting ever further to the right. In addition to the war preparations and support for genocide, it has imposed the biggest reversal to working-class living standards in decades, provided a bonanza to the banks, property developers and billionaires and cracked down on democratic rights. That includes a campaign against refugees and immigrants that mirrors Trump’s policies, from an effective ban on immigration from certain targeted countries to a new law providing for the deportation of at least 80,000 people.
Labor’s march to the right is part of a broader turn by the whole political establishment. While Albanese has given his tacit support to Trump’s plans for a Gaza Holocaust, the proposal has been openly lauded by Liberal-National leader Peter Dutton. Trump, he has said admiringly this week, is a “big thinker,” who takes a “business approach” to all matters, including those affecting the lives of millions of Palestinians.
All of this shows, once again, that in the forthcoming election and more generally, working people, who are overwhelmingly hostile to war, inequality and authoritarianism, are completely disenfranchised. More than that, the response to Trump’s criminal statements is a warning to the working class. There is not one policy domestically and another on the world arena.
Governments and political parties that will support the worst crimes conceivable are signalling there are no red lines they will not cross, in attacking the social and democratic rights of the population everywhere, including within Australia.
This underscores the bankruptcy of the perspective advanced at the protests against the Gaza genocide, which is to appeal to the Albanese Labor government to stop the slaughter. Such entreaties through the weekly demonstrations fell on deaf ears but were still promoted by the Greens and the pseudo-left groups such as Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative, serving only to demoralise and demobilise opposition.
The urgent task is to build an independent movement of the working class, directed against Labor, the Liberal-Nationals and the entire political establishment, aimed at abolishing the capitalist system that is responsible for the deepening barbarism, and replacing it with workers’ power and the socialist reorganisation of society on a world scale.