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Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 8. April 27 1981

National Front Analysed

National Front Analysed

Dear Stephen,

It's good to see Salient publicising the presence and activities of the National Front on campus. However, I doubt whether your description of them as "deadshits" and "nutters" will do a great deal to discredit them in the eyes of the student community. This, I believe, ignores the lessons of history which shows that such people, if it is established that they are fascists, should be treated with contempt, but in a serious way.

I have seen their toilet graffitti which adorns the men's toilets in the Von Zedlitz building and I seeth with resentment that such people are allowed to spread racism and bigotry under the guise of "free speech for everyone". That these same people are allowed to become an affiliate of the Students' Association is intolerable, but that shouldn't stop students thinking about the issues at stake.

When the economy runs into trouble and conflict between groups and classes takes a more open and sometimes violent character, like the arrest of the Auckland and Ravensborne picketers, all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas about society and solutions to the problems make their appearance.

It's not only the blatant racism and pro-colonial, pro-apartheid stance of the NF that makes me bring up bile but the nauseating show of patriotism that attains some support in the community (eg Harris march) but which only covers up the yawning inequalities, the rip-offs, the hypocrisy that makes NZ capitalism tick over.

They use people's correct hostility toward Soviet expansionism to construct a plot of communist takeover on a world scale. The black people of Azania want the Soviet Union like they want a hole in the head - but they mainly want freedom from their enslavement from the concentration camp that South Africa is for them. Mugabe, and today the PAC in Azania don't receive any aid from the SU precisely because the Russians know that they are fiercely independent from both superpowers. But it is they who are genuine socialists and not the Soviet Union.

What's socialist or communist about invading and occupying countries like Afghanistan, bullying and threatening the workers in Poland or subverting and dividing liberation movements as they do in southern Africa? We shouldn't be distracted by the red herrings of communist world plots, but we should stand squarely on the side of the Afghans, the Poles and the Azanians for self determination and national independence, free from any kind of outside interference.

And for those who support the NF's right to free speech - just remember what happened to free speech and those who attempted it in Germany, Italy and Spain in the 1930s.

David Murray