Marketing will not save the left. We need to start organising.
The work of the left is to build coalitions around our shared struggle. To do so, we need to present an alternate future of hope and prosperity, writes Nèha Madhok.
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The far right is growing, and I’m not the least surprised.
Since the 1980’s, the left have made real social gains. Marriage equality, diversity initiatives, public conversations about race, sexism, queer rights and disability. These victories are important and changed people’s lives, including my own.
But at the same time, public services have been deliberately hollowed out, housing has been recast as an investment and the cost of living is skyrocketing.
Over the last four decades, politics has been reshaped by a bipartisan embrace of neoliberalism, which Labor approached with a box of Band-Aids. Harm reduction. Hawke and Keating reshaped the labour movement via the Prices and Incomes Accord, and while it delivered critical gains, it narrowed the horizons of organised labour.
PM John Howard spent the next decade attacking the institutions incubating leftist politics. Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU) gutted student organising. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was the peak elected Indigenous representative body; it was abolished - partly why there was a campaign for a Voice.
On the waterfront, terminal operator Patrick Corporation attempted to sack its unionised workforce and replace it with non-union labour in a dispute backed by Howard. The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) survived, but every unionist watched as employers, a conservative government, and the media lined up to break one of Australia’s most powerful unions - and it worked.
Enter the NGO, increasingly important for progressive change in this climate. Many have done extraordinary work, but unlike unions, they are funded by philanthropy. Historically, it’s rare for the wealthy to fund the economic power of the working-class.
A few weeks ago, I was on SBS Insight discussing One Nation. Voters from across the country talked about housing, cost of living and this shared sense that the major parties don’t care. What’s interesting is how they interpreted these experiences.
People can see the anti-racism statements and rainbow logos. But what they don’t see are the policy choices that weakened unions, the cuts shifting wealth upwards, and the deliberate hollowing out of public services.
Ash Sarkar writes about this in Minority Rule. One of neoliberalism’s greatest achievements has been convincing the masses that the symbolic gains of marginalised groups represent a transfer of power. As though a diversity manager has more influence than a mining nepo baby like Gina Rinehart. As though an acknowledgement of country typed in size 8 font at the footer of a uni website is comparable to owning 20 investment properties.
Working-class people watched educated professionals win anti-racism commitments and diversity training from corporations that still repressed unions and kept raising prices for the consumer. Meanwhile, Barry the sparky is trying to keep your lights on, pay his mortgage and work out why everyone is furious at him for saying ‘d-ke’ when referring affectionately to his lesbian daughter; he’s still learning, but that doesn’t seem to matter.
We all remember the marriage equality postal survey. The lawn signs, that TV ad, and the result. We forget the 12 years of organising leading to that moment.
By the time Australia voted in 2017, we’d spent a decade having conversations with parents, siblings, workmates, religious institutions and communities. Ratbag anarchists stood side by side with Trotskyists and small-l liberals. People who disagreed on a LOT of policy positions found themselves in the same coalition. It certainly made for an interesting time at Equality HQ during the pointy end of the campaign, but is that not part of the fun? And more importantly, the work?
In Minnesota, USA, the community has spent years building a multi-racial working-class coalition. Communicators like Anat Shenker-Osorio developed the narrative infrastructure for that work - a shared story big enough to hold everyone. It represented all Minnesotans. Their race-class work directed attention back at the people profiting from division: Trump and his billionaire mates.
In 2018, Democracy in Colour borrowed from this work. Enter: the Stronger than Fear campaign. It shaped our work in the outer suburban area of Frankston, Victoria, where Peter Dutton was trying to stir up panic about ‘African gangs’. We focused on the object underneath this smokescreen. Who benefits when communities are divided?
In New York, Zohran Mamdani is creating public grocery stores, public preschools, and he’s filling potholes. His communication is clear, honest and easy for the average punter to understand. He’s as honest about what he can’t do, and that’s why New Yorkers trust him.
In the UK, there’s Hannah the plumber. She’s funny, and she’s a Green?! She talks about everyday issues in ways that make sense to people who work with their hands; she’s not using wonky language or media-trained weasel words.
Contrast that with PM Gillard’s ‘Real Julia’ marketing in the 2010s, which became a punchline. Or Albo’s public housing story, which infuriates many, because it points to a lost Labor tradition. Yes, Albanese grew up in public housing. It was something Labor governments built at scale, and now they tear down public housing. Now that reads like a slap in the face to the majority of Australians who are white-knuckling it through a housing crisis.
The campaign to stop the deportation of the Murugappan family in Biloela worked because it was authentic and unexpected. A white regional Queensland town rallied around their Sri Lankan friends and fought the Morrison Government. They flew to Sydney with their giant cockatoo signs and sang ‘You are My Sunshine’ outside the Immigration Minister’s office. They told their story of friendship on every major news outlet. A community from the Liberals’ own constituency embarrassed them and showed Australia just how cruel Morrison’s immigration policies were.
Right now, conservatives are organising around a shared grievance. The work of the left is to build coalitions around our shared struggle: against the billionaires leeching every cent out of us. Marketing won’t save us, and we don’t need any more ‘messaging fixes’. It’s our job to present an alternate future of hope and prosperity.
Face-to-face organising. One persuasive conversation at a time with people who aren’t the perfect leftists. That’s how we won marriage equality, that’s how Minnesotans organised, and it’s how Bilo was won. Political parties won’t do that work for us, NGOs can’t. Only we can, through mutual aid, local sport, community organising and unions. That is how we build the economic power of the working class, who will take down the oligarchs.
About the author
Nèha Madhok (they/them) is a writer, political strategist, and content creator based in Sydney. Nèha co-founded Democracy in Colour, a racial justice organisation led by and for people of colour. Before that, they worked at the Equality Campaign during the postal survey.
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This is a really important intervention comrade. We need emancipatory organising no it more marketing!
Really great piece Neha. Loved the focus on the Howard era. The book 'Silencing Dissent' was a real eye opener.