Since late 1999 and the demonstrations at the Millennium Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks in Seattle, the Western world has seen the birth of a new strand of radical activism - a strand that variously comes under the banner of anti-corporate, anti-exploitation, anti-globalisation or anti-capitalist activism. This movement, while new to the West has been a significant feature of the struggles of a variety of people throughout the majority world over the last ten years. The most popular example is the Zapatista uprisings in the Chiapas region of Mexico in early 1994, but there is similar anti-capitalist activism occurring throughout South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The movement also has many faces, from the well-known teamster-turtle (unionist-environmentalist) alliances in Seattle, to socialists, anarchists, radical religious activists, feminists, national liberation movements (for example Tibet and Burma), and queer liberationists. As well as its many faces, the movement has many foci with demonstrations against the privatisations of public services, corporate zaps, Reclaim the Streets actions and adbusting all being seen as strands of the movement. Increasingly, these strands have been coming together, identifying areas of commonality and unifying against the worst excesses of capitalist exploitation.

The year 2000 saw this global anti-capitalist movement begin to emerge in Australia with the World Economic Forum (the founder of the WTO) holding its Asia-Pacific Forum at Melbourne's Crown Casino from September 11 to 13. A large demonstration, popularly known as S11 (after the date) involved many layers of students, environmentalists, unionists and others. One particularly large and vocal group within the S11 demonstration was the Queer Bloc, a group of around 100 queer activists from a variety of Australian and international locations that came together to ensure that queer issues were on the agenda of the anti-capitalist movement and to join the movement on a radical queer basis.

Since September 2000, the growth of queer activist groups has continued. This article was originally to be a discussion of the role of queer groups in anti-capitalist action and the politics of queer anti-capitalism twelve months after S11. Unfortunately, twelve months to the day from this seminal moment in the Australian Left's history, world incidents intervened to shift the ground beneath our feet. Queer groups had been building with others for mass mobilisations against the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) that was to be held in Brisbane on 6-9 October 2001. CHOGM was postponed and the actions on October 6 were transformed into a large anti-war rally. The Queer presence was loud and vocal with anti-war and 'no-one is illegal' messages, but the changing world situation has brought to the surface many questions that had been an undercurrent throughout, questions about the future directions of an anti-capitalist queer movement, sustainability and more.

This article then, will trace the history of the new queer groups and their involvement in anti-capitalist activism over the last couple of years. In addition, it will examine the political basis for anti-capitalist queer activism before finally exploring what this means in the context of war. To start though, what are these groups and where did they come from?

History and formation

In the lead-up to the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, several groups formed in various parts of the country. Most prominent, at least initially, were Queers United to Eradicate Economic Rationalism (QUEER) in Melbourne and Queers Against Corporate Exploitation (QuACE) in Brisbane. Both were formed with the goal of getting queer people to the S11 demonstrations.

QUEER was originally formed out of cross-campus student queer groups, trade union queer groups and other community organizations, and was key in organising the convergence of around 100 people and the queer bloc at the blockade of the Crown Casino. Since the success of S11, QUEER has continued to be involved in various direct actions. These include a speakout on HIV/AIDS exploitation on World AIDS Day (December 1) in 2000, actions around sex worker harassment in St Kilda, demonstrating against Archbishop George Pell and his renowned homophobia and participating in the M1 demonstrations at the Melbourne Stock Exchange on 1 May 2001. Also, on the 20^th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS, members of QUEER uprooted flowers in Melbourne's floral clock and replaced them with white crosses as a memorial to HIV/AIDS victims and corporate exploitation of the virus, particularly in the Third World, in an action reminiscent of ACT UP's work ten years prior.

QuACE formed around the same time and drew its membership largely from the student queer collectives in Brisbane. Some members of the community more broadly began to participate around the time of the Howard government's IVF decision when QuACE called and helped facilitate a public meeting to build an action. QuACE members occupied the Commonwealth Parliamentary Offices in protest and also coordinated a 150 strong rally in opposition to the Howard agenda. This year, members of QuACE were co-ordinating the Queer Bloc for CHOGM before its cancellation and had been involved in other community events and actions.

Earlier, in 1999, a group called Collective Action Against Homophobia (CAAH) formed in Sydney to organise a response to a conference of Christians involved in 'ex-gay' ministries (Liberty Christians) at Sydney University's Moore College. Approximately 100 people from a large cross-section of the queer community attended the public meeting to launch CAAH and built to shut down the conference. Over the next year, CAAH co-ordinated a variety of actions including a picket of the Liberal Party state conference at the University of New South Wales and finally a large 400-500 strong rally recreating the route of the first Sydney Gay Mardi Gras in 1978. This was basically the final action of the original CAAH and due to a lack of those willing to take on coordination roles, it in essence ceased functioning. Sydney was without an anti-capitalist collective like Melbourne's QUEER or Brisbane's QuACE until early 2001, when activists got together to form Gays and Lesbians Against Multinationals (GLAM) to organise a float for the Mardi Gras parade in March. GLAM also involved itself in a variety of actions before re-morphing into a new CAAH, Community Action Against Homophobia.

Before any of these groups began a small group of activists in Perth got together (in the mid 1990s) to form Queer Radical. This group has been involved in a variety of actions, from alternative queer parties and art, through to speakouts on drug law reform and sex-worker advocacy, through to co-ordinating forums on racism and sexism in the queer movement. Queer Radical, like the other groups, brings an anti-capitalist, direct action perspective to queer activism as well as linking its activism to broader issues of discrimination, oppression and marginalisation. At the end of 2001 Queer Radical started meeting on a regular basis for the first time in a number of years.

One key feature of the various groups, with the exception of Queer Radical, is their strong connections to the revitalised student movement of the mid to late 1990s. Mass student upheaval over government plans to introduce up-front fees and voluntary student unionism in the late 1990s resulted in a large-scale turn to strategies of mass direct action, with student occupations of university administrations and Liberal party headquarters, and mass mobilisations of students in various parts of the country. A significant outcome of this upturn was that several student associations and state branches of the National Union of Students came under the control of sectors of the non-ALP left. Control of these organizations resulted in access to resources for left activists and a degree of confidence in articulating a left perspective on issues of identity and sexuality. This was a key factor in the upturn in queer activism and the rise of anti-capitalist queer groups.

Ideology, politics and controversy

The new anti-capitalist queer groups base their action on an explicitly anti-capitalist and implicitly Marxist analysis of queer oppression. Their core belief is that homophobia is perpetuated by the economic system of capitalism. That being said, there are certainly remnants of an identity politics within the anti-capitalist queer movements, with debates over issues of the 'patriarchy' and 'heterosexism' featuring strongly in much of the literature, debates that occasionally spill over into an 'I hate straights' mentality more typical of earlier queer autonomous activism. One of the more obvious examples of this was the publication in the 2000 Queer edition of Gravity (Griffith University's student newspaper) of a small image of a crossed-out nuclear family with the text, 'Fuck Off Breeder Scum'. While there was some accompanying text to explain the image (basically the image was meant to shock - 'how does it make you feel, hetero?' kind of stuff), its publication prompted a large-scale debate between more Marxist inclined queers and those more influenced by postmodernism and/or identity politics. These debates have largely subsided, however, with a general acceptance of a capitalist basis for queer oppression.

An equation of homosexuality with capitalism is not something new for the gay and lesbian community but it is something that is relatively rare (at least in recent times). In a pamphlet produced for a QUEER contingent in the parade on 21 January 2001 during Melbourne's major annual queer community festival Midsumma, the anti-capitalist perspective of these groups becomes evident.

The material conditions of queer people will never improve from the 'pink dollar' and consumer power alone. Our rightful place in society cannot be bought, and liberation from violence, discrimination and heterosexism will not come from consumption. Our struggle can never be left to multinational corporations, to politicians or major political parties. We are here because we believe in activism, and empowering individuals to work together at a grass roots level to fight for our rights and self-determination as queer people.

John D'Emilio's 1983 paper 'Capitalism and gay identity' is considered a landmark as it discusses the effects of industrialisation and urbanisation on the family and individual's sexual lives. He focuses on how the move in the West (under capitalism) from a society based on large families that owned and worked their properties to one where individualised urban dwellers sell their labour power to survive, led to a reconceptualization of the family. Further, this capitalist progression also began to whittle away at the belief that sexuality was simply a means to procreate. When these factors were combined with the improved individual economic conditions of the new urban middle class, some men and women were able to attain the individual power to order their lives around their sexual and/or emotional interest in the same sex (D'Emilio 1983).

At the same time, however, capitalism required the continuation of the nuclear family as a core societal institution. This impacted on the emerging gay and lesbian identity by developing a belief in the superiority of heterosexuality and the nuclear family to the exclusion of other relationships and family structures. Evidence of these groups' similar political beliefs can be found in another QUEER pamphlet produced shortly after the Midsumma one. In it, the anonymous authors argue that, 'Society and the family structure are fundamentally based on the institution of heterosexuality, which excludes all those who won't conform to the ideal of the nuclear family.'

These groups do not, however, limit their analysis to an historical examination of the development of identity nor the capitalist promotion of heteronormativity. Another aspect of this materialist analysis has been their analysis of the liberalisation of legislation and conservative queer politics. This kind of analysis argues that the liberalising of attitudes towards homosexuality over the last few decades have only been to the extent of maintaining the basis inequities in capitalist society. As materialist feminist academic Rosemary Hennessy has argued, '[J]ust because capitalism made use of heteronormativity does not mean that it is necessary for capitalist production…what [capitalism] does require is an unequal division of labor' (Hennessy 2000, p.105). This unequal division is increasingly being maintained by straight and queer people alike. As Hennessy and radical queer activists argue, if queer people are prepared to run corporations, marry and have children, provide social support such as aged care and in various other ways participate in the maintenance of the capitalist system, tolerance will develop and expand. This has been seen, to some extent, by the liberalising of certain legislative restrictions on (non-core) areas of public policy. This liberalisation process does nothing, however, to address the fundamental inequities and problems at the base of capitalist society and this is where the new movement marks its departure point from previous activist groups.

As the liberalisation of legislative restrictions against queer people has developed over the last couple of decades, the various queer movements have focussed their energies on visibility issues, particularly in the media. This has most often developed simply into another exercise in capitalist exploitation as gays and lesbians are now seen on mainstream soap operas, documentaries, sit-coms and even 'Big Brother'. We have heard often about the nature of this 'pink dollar' exploitation. The queer visibility represents a very narrow and sanitised version of the queer community (middle class, white, usually male, wholesome - like Jack off 'Dawson's Creek' or even Willow off 'Buffy'). This visibility is often utilised only to sell a lifestyle (Stolichnaya's Mardi Gras campaigns, etc.) and overwhelmingly obscures the fact that queer people still suffer from homophobic violence and intimidation, particularly those without the material conditions to be 'gay' or 'lesbian' in the ways that the advertisers say they should be. This visibility is also based on the incorrect belief that gays and lesbians are financially better off than their straight friends.

In recent years, groups such as 'Fruits in Suits' and other gay business groups have increased their prominence in the community and conservative gays and lesbians have increasingly entered the public arena. People like Julie McCrossin and Dr Kerryn Phelps are now considered some of the more high-profile queer community leaders and yet would fall into a politically conservative characterisation - Phelps is current President of traditional Liberal heartland, the Australian Medical Association, and McCrossin supported Howard's comments on children needing both a mother and a father during the IVF debate last year. In addition, in this year's Sydney Lesbian and Gay Mardi Gras, a local Liberal Party branch marched in the annual parade. Since the emergence of the new activist groups in the last twelve to eighteen months, however, the queer community press and the wider mainstream media have increasingly taken up debates on the economic basis of homophobia.

On a student level too, political debates, often a part of student activism, have reached a new level with the 2000 and 2001 Queer Collaborations (QC) student conferences descending into vitriol and violence. QC 2000 splintered over whether or not Liberal party speakers should be heard from the platform and QC 2001 became even more contentious with a large-scale split being orchestrated by the organising collective after they tried to limit public debate and discussion at the conference. The splits were largely on issues of politics and economics, between those that espoused a narrow definition of 'queer issues', meaning legal discrimination and workshops on coming out, and those that argued for a more radical perspective that linked 'queer issues' to broader problems in society. This split culminated in the walkout of the conservative queers during a discussion on racism in the queer community with their justification being that racism wasn't a 'queer issue' and therefore wasn't relevant to a queer conference.

The Australian example follows a similar progression to events in the US where over the last 10-15 years conservative lobby groups such as the Log Cabin Republicans and individuals such as Andrew Sullivan have gained a considerable degree of public profile. Sullivan and colleagues such as Bruce Bawer argue for a narrow perspective on gay and lesbian rights that limits itself to public acceptance rather than working towards changing societal values. This kind of viewpoint argues that gay marriage and superannuation issues (for example) should be a priority and shies away from any confrontation of homophobia. Rather conservatives like Sullivan are happy with an end to 'public discrimination' (in Vaid 1995, pp.174-5). As Bawer wrote in 1993, 'The general guiding philosophy of the gay populace should be one not of confrontation but of connection, not of agitation but of education, not of revolution but of reform' (Bawer 1993, p.56).

In Victoria, the conflict between conservative and radical queers reached a zenith in the debates earlier this year over the latest recruitment drive by conservative parties. 20 Liberal State MPs, including deputy leader Louise Asher and the only openly gay Member of Parliament in Victoria, Andrew Olexander MLC, took out an advertisement in the Midsumma program with the slogan 'We'll fight for you' emblazoned across the bottom.

At the Midsumma parade, QUEER members taunted and heckled Liberal Party participants with slogans such as 'Racist, Sexist, Anti-Queer, Liberals are not welcome here' prompting widespread community debate over the conservative party's courting of the 'pink vote'. QUEER pointed to Victorian leader, Dr Denis Napthine's criticism of a Bracks government plan to allocate $25,000 to a Lesbian Cancer Support group as evidence of the Liberal Party's homophobia. They also raised criticisms of the free trade and neo-liberal economic policy of the Liberal Party and its treatment of workers. In a B.NEW.S (a queer community paper) shortly after the parade, the president of the St. Kilda branch of the Liberal Party criticised QUEER as 'International Socialists/S11 gremlins'. The subsequent B.NEW.S carried an article by Adam Carr in which he quoted a QUEER media release stating, 'The Liberals are on the warpath against working people and we pointed that out - what more needs to be said?' (Carr 2001) These kinds of statements quite clearly demonstrate the distinction of conservatives and progressives. Conservatives, like the Liberals, take the Andrew Sullivan line of the fight to end 'public discrimination' of gays and lesbians whereas QUEER and other progressive groups recognise that queer people do not exist in isolation. Rather regressive policy in all areas affects queers and should be fought against.

In the months after Midsumma, the Liberal's advertisement came back to haunt them as their party room opposed the Bracks government's proposed changes to 44 sections of Victorian law to recognise same-sex relationships and remove some legal discrimination against queer people. QUEER linked up with other community groups such as the ALSO foundation and People Living with HIV and AIDS to organise protests and media actions to highlight the hypocrisy of the Liberal Party. Shirts were produced with the Midsumma ad doctored to read 'We'll lie to you!' and stories dominated the front page of B.NEW.S and Melbourne's other queer paper, MCV. In a front-page article entitled 'Community Anger over Liberal Party "Hypocrisy"', Liberal leader Dr Denis Napthine was quoted as saying that the legislation had 'absolutely horrific untoward consequences for people in long-term relationships, for families and it should be absolutely redrafted from scratch.' (Jacobs 2001) The mainstream media also picked up on the controversy with a SaturdayAge feature article entitled, 'How the Liberals lost the pink vote' (Farrant 2001) as well as coverage on commercial television and radio.

QUEER was unique compared to other groups in the debate in that its media releases and public statements reaffirmed their belief in the economic basis of queer oppression and their commitment to tackling all issues, even when they are not explicitly 'queer' issues. QUEER member and Swinburne University Queer Officer, Jess Permezel was quoted in a media release saying, 'This is a further regressive move by the Liberal party, becoming more conservative to pander to the likes of big business and corporations. Not passing this legislation will contribute further to the oppression of queers on an economic basis.'

QUEER's belief in the economic basis of oppression is shared with the other groups around the country and this belief spills over into one of the more in-depth and highly developed analyses of the commodification of queer identity. As the liberalising of legislative restrictions on queerness has continued, the promotion of the 'pink dollar' has grown. The 'pink dollar' phenomenon is based on a belief that gays and lesbians have high disposable incomes due largely to the propensity of same-sex couples to have dual incomes and no children. Various studies have demonstrated that the pink dollar is a myth however, and have shown that same-sex couples (women particularly) actually have lower disposable incomes than heterosexual couples. Regardless, there is a growing middle and upper class in queer communities and this has been identified as a prospective market by corporate interests. Magazines such as Australia's now defunct Outrage began as activist publications advocating political action, but over time began to court corporate money through advertising. Gradually this led to a decrease in the political content and a corresponding increase in advertising copy and fashion spreads. It has also led to a commodification of gay and lesbian identity. Gays and lesbians are increasingly being shown in a narrow and 'socially accepted' way in the media. Images of free-spending, commodity-focussed, middle-class queer men dominate the media and lesbians are either products of (straight) male fantasy, ultra chic or just accidents. This is particularly evident in advertising campaigns such as a recent Kirov vodka advertisement showing two attractive women snuggled together with the underlying slogan reading, 'It just happened …' with the implication that attractive women who get together only do so accidentally or impermanently.

For over ten years, queer activist groups have analysed the process of commodification of sexuality as a negative and limiting thing. This analysis, however, has rarely translated into organised resistance but more often a postmodern 'culture-jamming' approach to activism. This is most clearly demonstrated in the example of US activist group Queer Nation. Queer Nation, active in the early 1990s devoted much of their time and resources to the goal of cultural representation and visibility actions. Actions including reclamation of space through kiss-ins at straight venues, altering of corporate logos to make affirmative statements (such as replacing the P in GAP with a Y), and developing Pink Panther community policing forces wearing 'Bash Back' t-shirts. The goal of these styles of action was to demonstrate that 'the commodity is a central means by which individuals tap into the collective experience of public desire' and to disrupt the heterosexual presupposition on which that desire rests (Berlant and Freeman in Hennessy 2000, p.127). Some activists have argued that queerying commodities '[makes] queer good by making goods queer' (Berlant and Freeman in Hennessy 2000, p.128).

The problems with this kind of strategy are clear. Despite the worthy goals of resisting commodification of queer culture, the end point of these kinds of strategies is what? Simply identifying the heterosexual nature of commodities and developing queer goods? Does that mean that seeing we now have our own Queer Absolut vodka commercials that we have finished the struggle? Rosemary Hennessy argues against this strategy most clearly by saying, 'Changing the Bart Simpson logo on a T-shirt to 'Queer Bart' may disrupt normative conceptions of sexuality that infuse the circulation of commodities in consumer culture, but it offers a very limited view of the social relations commodities rely on, and to this extent it reinforces their fetishization' (Hennessy 2000, p.129).

This fetishization (or as Marx called it, commodity fetishism) is the illusion that objects have an intrinsic value rather than that their value stems from the social relations between individuals and objects. Commodities are socially produced through human labour and the extraction of surplus value and when the commodity is fetishized, this process is rendered invisible. When we open a glossy gay mag and see an ad for Gucci we don't see the row of working class women in Bangladeshi sweatshops that have stitched the buttons on the $300 shirt, we see the status, the lifestyle. This is, on some levels, the most evil effect of the 'pink dollar'. By affirming that 'real' gay people dress a certain way and spend up big, the visibility that we have struggled for effectively invisiblises the human labour that has produced the commodity. Through this mechanism, the phenomenon of the pink dollar not only ignores sections of the queer community, but also reduces the ability to build a united struggle against capitalist exploitation by fostering division.

The new queer anti-capitalist movement rejects the notion that cultural disruption in the form that Queer Nation expressed itself is a means of achieving social change. Where Queer Nation wore co-opted GAP shirts, these new groups are actively involved in the Fairwear campaign and other campaigns to eliminate sweatshops (a core basis of the GAP brand's success). Where Queer Nation individualised (and queered) policing, the new groups challenged the police in militant and direct ways through events like S11, M1 (on May Day 2001) as well as a general commitment to civil disobedience and direct action. Where Queer Nation tried to develop space within capitalism, these groups advocate the abolition of capitalism.

This stands in stark contrast to the gays and lesbians that you'll find in groups such as Gay and Lesbian business networks and Liberal Party branches. This ruling gay elite is not interested in whether or not young queer kids can get Youth Allowance because they fundamentally disagree with the provision of social services (it takes too much tax…). This ruling gay elite doesn't really mind if the inner city queer counselling and support centre closes because of a lack of government support because, 'There'll be a great real estate investment opportunity soon.' This ruling gay elite couldn't give a flying fuck if a newly out gay boy is forced to work for $8 an hour at the local gay pub (and can't join a union) because they're too busy enjoying their $12 martini that he just poured for them. And this ruling gay elite certainly doesn't care about Bangladeshi sweatshop workers so long as they look great in their new Gucci suit, darling.

So what does this all mean now?

The Afghanistan war and anti-capitalism

The events of September 11 and the subsequent American military response throw up several questions for the burgeoning anti-capitalist movement and raise others to the surface. From right-wingers such as US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick using the opportunity to push through a faster free trade agenda, with comments such as 'trade promotes the values at the heart of this protracted struggle', to pseudo progressives arguing that we should support the war in defence of freedom, the conflation by the pro-capitalists of the issues of war and capitalism is all-pervasive. Our response must equally conflate the two.

The 'War on Terrorism' is being couched as a battle of 'freedom' versus 'oppression' and some gay activists are joining the bandwagon. In an article entitled 'Why We should Support This War', Andrew Sullivan (yep, the same one) argues that war is the reason why equality progresses. He justifies this argument by characterising World War I as a moment of breakthrough for the women's movement and World War II as 'perhaps the most racially integrating event in this country's history'; he then goes one to argue that the current war could be the defining moment in the struggle for 'gay equality' as long as we fight to allow gays to openly serve in the military (Sullivan 2001). That, apparently, is the marker of 'gay equality'. It would be my guess that Sullivan has never spoken to a Japanese-American who was incarcerated in the Second World War or a Vietnamese refugee whose family died under American carpet-bombing or an Iraqi family whose children have all died from starvation because of the American-led trade embargo. Sullivan's colleague Stephen H. Miller goes further by arguing that one of the positives of this whole war will be that the 'American left in general, and the gay left in particular, [will be] now exposed as the extremist, infantile, America-hating whiners that they are' (Miller 2001). The pro-war stance amongst these gay and lesbian writers is justified with two reasons: firstly, a categorisation that seeing the Taliban is anti-gay, we should be anti-Afghanistan, and secondly the notion that equality in access to societal institutions (like an openly gay military) means equality in society.

The longer this war continues the easier these arguments are getting to counter. Firstly, the argument that the Taliban are not a friend of queer people is certainly true. The Taliban regime has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of queer people since taking government in the mid-1990s with men convicted of sodomy being crushed to death under the Taliban's strict interpretation of sharia law. At the same time, however, the racist implication of Sullivan's arguments is that the only gay people that should be defended are Americans. His argument that bombing Afghanistan to smithereens will protect 'our freedom' denies that the victims of the American war will not be the Taliban or Osama Bin-Laden but the innocent (some of them queer) people of Afghanistan. Already we have seen hundreds, if not thousands of innocent people die as a direct result of the bombings, but the UN has warned of millions dying from starvation. The general sympathy for America in the wake of the attacks is giving way to scepticism, mistrust and anger, particularly in the developing world, where people see the American attacks as a continuation of Western colonialism. As the war enters its third month, many are beginning to question whether killing more innocents to avenge innocents is really about justice or something else.

The second point is equally fraught with self-interest. In an unsurprising move, the US government has suspended the sackings of gay and lesbian military personnel, using the justification of war - as they did in Vietnam and World War II. It seems ironic that the only time a queer soldier is allowed to serve openly is during war. Anyway, rather than come out against the war, many American-based gay and lesbian human rights groups have focussed on the rights of queer military, calling on the government to not reinvoke the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy after the war is over. Again, this kind of focus can be characterised as racist, as calling for the right to (openly) kill is surely not a right that queers should be fighting for.

As well as the reactionary responses of the right, much more thoughtful analysis is occurring. Arundhati Roy, in an excellent Guardian article published two weeks after the attacks, identifies the importance of standing up against both Bush and Bin Laden. She writes, 'Both [Bush and Bin Laden] invoke God and use the loose millenarian currency of good and evil as their terms of reference. Both are engaged in unequivocal political crimes. Both are dangerously armed - one with the nuclear arsenal of the obscenely powerful, the other with the incandescent, destructive power of the utterly hopeless. The fireball and the ice pick. The bludgeon and the axe. The important thing to keep in mind is that neither is an acceptable alternative to the other' (Roy 2001).

If anything the stakes for the anti-capitalist movement have simply been raised. Public services are coming under threat from governments hell-bent on warmongering; civil liberties are curtailed; people on the margins of society, like refugees; workers are losing their jobs by the thousands. The events of September 11 and beyond have not changed the world for the better or the worse; they are simply a symptom of capitalism and should be responded to as such.

The challenge for the anti-capitalist movement, queer or otherwise, is to continue and escalate the fight against capitalism and to continue it by building in our communities. It is simply not enough to grandstand, to call 'peace' rallies or to have voted for the Greens (or the anonymous Socialist Alliance) in the Federal Election. It is equally not enough to sell a revolutionary paper in the local mall. What is called for is a continuation, and further development, of the strategies of the radical queer groups such as QUEER, CAAH (Mach 1), Queer Radical and QuACE - strategies that demand engagement, education and empowerment of communities and individuals within communities.

A war movement will develop, as it is doing in various parts of the world, as we have the courage to stand up with our communities against both the violence of terrorism and the violence of capitalism. Debates over the role we should play in the war movement, and the future of the anti-capitalist movement will continue as we continue to be active and play a role. Now is not the time for resignation, rest or reform, it is the time to continue the fight against war in all its forms, whether the weapons be missiles or mercury poisoning, guns or greenhouse gas emissions, tanks or trade. It is the time to fight war by fighting capitalism.

References

Altman, Dennis 1971, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation, Harmondsworth, UK and Ringwood, VIC, Australia, Penguin Books.
Bawer, Bruce 1993, A Place at the Table, New York, Simon & Schuster.
Carr, Adam, 2001, 'QUEER v police, Liberals', in BNewS, 15 February.
Chibarro, Lou Jr. 2001, 'Anti-gay partners join U.S. in war', Southern Voice, 19 October, online at <www.southernvoice.com/southernvoice/news/record.html?record=17303>.
D'Emilio, John 1993 [orig. 1983], 'Capitalism and gay identity', in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, eds Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale and David M. Halperin, London and New York, Routledge, pp.467-476.
Farrant, Darrin 2001, 'How the Liberals lost the pink vote', The Age, News Extra, March 24, p.2.
Hennessy, Rosemary 2000, Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism, New York and London, Routledge.
Jacobs, Ross 2001, 'Community anger over Liberal Party "Hypocrisy"', MCV, March 23, p.1.
Kane, Darren 2000, 'Revival of the AIDS Panic, in Queers Bash Back, eds QUEER, Melbourne.
Klein, Naomi 2001, 'Signs of the times: September 11 and anti-corporate activism', The Nation, October 22, online at <www.nologo.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/05/1317201&mode=thread&threshold=>.
Marcuse, Herbert 1962, Eros and Civilisation, New York.
McKenzie, James 2000, 'S11 queers demand new world', Brother Sister, 14 September.
Mieli, Mario 1980, Homosexuality and Liberation: elements of a gay critique, London, Gay Men's Press.
Miller, Stephen H, 2001, 'What's Left?', online at <www.indegayforum.org/articles/miller44.html>.
Roy, Arundhati 2001, 'The algebra of infinite justice', The Guardian (London), September 29.
Sullivan, Andrew 1993, 'The politics of homosexuality: a new case for a new beginning', The New Republic, May 10.
Sullivan, Andrew 2001, 'Why we should support this war', September 21, online at <www.indegayforum.org/articles/sullivan11.html>.
Vaid, Urvashi 1995, Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation, New York, Anchor Books, Doubleday.
Varnell, Paul 2001, 'Activism after Sept. 11', online at <www.indegayforumorg/articles/varnell75.html>.
Weeks, Jeffrey 1980, 'Capitalism and the Organization of Sex', in Homosexuality, Power and Politics, ed. Gay Left Collective, London, Allison and Busby.

© Mark Pendleton, 2001.

Mark Pendleton is a queer activist based in Brisbane who has been active in various anti-capitalist queer groups. He is also a National Queer Officer for the National Union of Students.

word is out e-journal, no.1, December 2001.
www.wordisout.info

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