So on Sunday a group of around sixty Leftists in Melbourne protested in favour of allowing a self-professed senior officer of a terrorist organisation to stay in Australia.
The terrorist in question is a lovely fellow by the name Shantaruban and the terror group he belonged to is the Tamil Tigers. Fortunately, despite the efforts of the far-left he is due for deportation on Thursday.
And deliciously it’s all his own fault.
Shantaruban arrived illegally by boat in 2012, having fled the defeat of the Tigers by the Sri Lankan army in 2009, travelled through several safe (but poor) countries, contracted a people smuggler and destroyed his documentation.
Oh the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years, we were all so innocent then.
When he arrived he furiously denied ever knowing anything about the Tamil Tigers and without any documentation to say otherwise he was assumed to be harmless and was released into the community.
Little did Shantaruban realise but in a bizarre twist, claiming to be a member of the now defeated terror group actually makes it easier to get a protection Visa in Australia. Hilariously, by the time the ex-terrorist realised this it was too late; his application was denied and he and his supporters were put in the amusing position of making numerous submissions along the lines of “Sorry I lied before, I actually am a high ranking member of a terrorist group”.
Meanwhile the Sri Lankan Prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has promised that members of the Terrorist group that return to the island nation have nothing to fear, even going so far as to publicly state: “Come back. All is forgiven”. This is good enough for Peter Dutton, who is now kicking Shantaruban out.
So knowing all this, who would be stupid enough to be actually protesting for this self-confessed terrorist to remain here?
Why the usual suspects of the Australian extreme left of course.
I know, you’re shocked. I can feel the shock all the way through the computer screen.
The event was organised by Gaye Demanuele of the facially challenged Debbie Brennan’s ultra-Marxist Freedom Socialist Party. Gaye is also the main organiser of the “Close The Camps Action Collective”.
You might remember Gaye as the midwife who got into a little bit of strife after she tried to bring her particular brand of Marxist feminism to the practice of home births. This tragically resulted in two babies and one mother inconveniently dying. I guess they just didn’t try the Communist birthing methods correctly. Ah well I’m sure it will work out next time.
But Gaye wasn’t the only Left-Wing extremist there.
In fact when you look down the list of attendees there seems to be a certain pattern.
From Socialist Alternative (the premier Australian name in violent leftist extremism) were Maria Chapple, Beth Jackson, Jordan Humphreys, Emerson Lee, Georgia Leng, Liz Walsh and Vashti Jane.
From their bitter rivals, Ian Rintoul’s ‘Solidarity” group, were Daniella Olea, Kristalo Hrysicos, Chris Breen and the now seldom seen, looong time Marxist activist (and current RMIT Senior Manager of Communications) David Glanz.
Keeping Ms Demanuele company was Janice Catherall, also hailing from the tiny bunch of demented cat ladies that call themselves the Freedom Socialist Party.
What was a surprise however was the respectable attendance by the Anarchists. Normally, members of Melbourne’s Anarchist scene would rather hold crappy-badly-attended punk gigs and sniff glue than attend a protest with no chance of attacking people or breaking things. The “Collective Action” group (formerly known as “Anarchist Affinity”) led by the pudgy, sad looking Kieran Bennett, seems to be taking a different tack. Present from their crew were Irina Kalinina, Lachlan Cribb, Jacquelyn Smith, Chloe Mackenzie and Oli Artov.
Making speeches to the crowd were long time violent Trotskyist fanatic, serial fantasist and Yarra Councillor Stephen Jolly. Old Steve is trying for a seat in the Victorian Upper house and so in the process of garnering support it can be fully expected that he’ll show up to the opening of every far-left envelope in coming months.
Also organising and promoting this event was Aran Mylvaganam of the “Tamil Refugee Council” along with about two dozen members of Melbourne’s Tamil community. Aran is a long-time associate of left wing extremists and has spoken at Socialist Alternative conferences, written an obituary for a Marxist activist in The Socialist Alternative magazine, written about West Papua as a journalist for Green Left Weekly and spoken at a Socialist Alliance conference on the topic of “combating neoliberalism in Australia”.
All of the above groups and activists believe that Australia is an illegitimate social construct which deserves to be destroyed. Every single one of them also believes that one of the best ways to complete this destruction and usher in their preferred flavour of socialist revolution is by the promotion of open borders.
And they’re spending their Sunday in beautiful scenic Broadmeadows protesting the deportation of a self-confessed terrorist.
So what kind of idiot would you have to be to let yourself be associated with this band of lunatics and still be considered a serious politician?
Well you’d have to ask Alex Bhathal, the Greens Candidate for the upcoming Federal by-election in Batman who was there and speechified to the crowd of sign wielding sociopaths.
Or maybe you could ask Federal Greens MP Adam Bandt who (fresh off his humiliation by Liberal Senator Jim Molan) dedicated a whole speech in federal parliament to pleading for Shantaruban to be allowed to stay.
Despite not advocating violence themselves the Greens seem to go out of their way to associate with the most vile and violent nutcases in Australian politics. This wasn’t a huge rally where the presence of a few radicals could perhaps be concealed by the size of the crowd; this was a relatively tiny gathering with almost no press coverage (journalists don’t want to go to Broadmeadows either).
As the Greens wind up for another dose of outrage at an online joke made by Nationals MP George Christensen for supposedly promoting violence, it’s worth stopping to think.
It’s worth remembering that as they get all huffy about humour, prominent members of their party are standing alongside violent extremists while attempting to let a man, who (by his own confession) was part of a terror group that left a quarter century trail of blood across Sri Lankan history, be released into the community.
Sometimes you have to take a breath and take stock of just how far gone the left in our society is, just how truly deranged and disordered are their priorities for our country. Just how amazingly out of touch with the average man on the street their thinking is.
And afterwards remember to take a moment this Thursday to think about Shantaruban being escorted on his flight back to Colombo. Think about how angry that will make some of the worst people in our society, and let yourself have a good little laugh.