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Earlier this week, a man in NSW was given a two-year suspended jail sentence after being found guilty of sexual assault of a person under the age of 10, as well as several other charges including break and enter (Outrage as man who raped girl, 4, walks free, Alexandra Smith and Bellinda Kontominas, Sydney Morning Herald, March 3, 2009). Tabloid columnist Andrew Bolt questioned the apparent leniency of the sentence, today concluding that ‘No rapist should be free for being black’ (Herald Sun, March 6, 2009). His comment follows the publication of an opinion article by Richard Ackland, Public bays for blood but the story is a fraught one (Sydney Morning Herald, March 6, 2009).
Bolt: “The more lawless the community, the more lenient should be the punishments. Which seems not just racist, but a recipe for anarchy.”
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US Trotskyist Paul D’Amato reckons recipes for anarchy are taken from vegetarian cookbooks:
ANARCHISM MAKES the error of believing that the means to achieving a classless, stateless society must prefigure the end result. Thus, if we want to achieve a society based on free association, without coercion and without bureaucratic centralism, we must build forms of organization today that prefigure the future society. Hence, the emphasis among some anarchists on vegetarianism, collectives, “affinity groups” and consensus…
His article (Refusing to be ruled over, Socialist Worker, February 27, 2009) otherwise proceeds in much the same fashion as every other critique of anarchism emanating from Trotskyist sauces.
Oh yeah… The Marxist view of the state, Socialist Worker, March 6, 2009.
