Mark Aarons (born 25 December 1951) is an Australian journalist and author. He was a political adviser to

New South Wales Premier The premier of New South Wales is the head of government in the state of New South Wales, Australia. The Government of New South Wales follows the Westminster Parliamentary System, with a Parliament of New South Wales acting as the legislature. ...

Bob Carr Robert John Carr (born 28 September 1947) is an Australian retired politician and journalist who served as the 39th Premier of New South Wales from 1995 to 2005, as the leader of the NSW Branch of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). He later en ...

Biography

Aarons was born in

Newcastle, New South Wales Newcastle ( ; Awabakal: ) is a metropolitan area and the second most populated city in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It includes the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie local government areas, and is the hub of the Greater Newcastle area ...

, but he was brought up in Sydney. He was educated at Fairfield Boys High School and

North Sydney Boys High School North Sydney Boys High School (abbreviated as NSBHS) is a government-funded, single-sex, academically selective secondary day school for boys, located at Crows Nest, on the Lower North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. In 2022, Nor ...

. He is the son of the late Laurie Aarons, former secretary of the

Communist Party of Australia The Communist Party of Australia (CPA), known as the Australian Communist Party (ACP) from 1944 to 1951, was an Australian political parties, Australian political party founded in 1920. The party existed until roughly 1991, with its membersh ...

. Aarons was also a member of the Communist Party of Australia from 1969 to 1978, and a Young Communist organiser in 1977. Aarons' activism started at North Sydney Boys High School in the mid-1960s, especially in organising students to protest the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...

. His 1986

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

radio documentary series ''Nazis in Australia'' prompted the Bob Hawke government's inquiry into war criminals and formation of Special Investigations Unit.Excerpt from page 104 of A History of the Democratic Socialist Party and the Resistance, Volume I by John Percy: “........... Alan Tomlinson, one of the more conservative students in HSSAWV, who went to the same school as Mark Aarons, North Sydney Boys High, and .......” (This is accessible on internet) Aarons contends that right-wing authoritarian regimes and

dictatorship A dictatorship is a form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, which holds governmental powers with few to no limitations on them. The leader of a dictatorship is called a dictator. Politics in a dictatorship a ...

s backed by

Western powers The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania.

committed atrocities and

mass killings Mass killing is a concept which has been proposed by genocide scholars who wish to define incidents of non-combat killing which are perpetrated by a government or a state. A mass killing is commonly defined as the killing of group members withou ...

that rival the Communist world, citing examples such as the

Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 The Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, also known as the Indonesian genocide, Indonesian Communist Purge, or Indonesian politicide ( id, Pembunuhan Massal Indonesia & Pembersihan G.30.S/PKI), were large-scale killings and civil unrest pr ...

and the killings associated with

Operation Condor Operation Condor ( es, link=no, Operación Cóndor, also known as ''Plan Cóndor''; pt, Operação Condor) was a United States–backed campaign of political repression and state terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of op ...

throughout South America.Aarons, Mark (2007)
"Justice Betrayed: Post-1945 Responses to Genocide"
In Blumenthal, David A.; McCormack, Timothy L. H. (eds)
''The Legacy of Nuremberg: Civilising Influence or Institutionalised Vengeance? (International Humanitarian Law)''

Martinus Nijhoff Publishers Brill Academic Publishers (known as E. J. Brill, Koninklijke Brill, Brill ()) is a Dutch international academic publisher founded in 1683 in Leiden, Netherlands. With offices in Leiden, Boston, Paderborn and Singapore, Brill today publishes 27 ...

. pp
71
an
80–81
.

Bibliography

* * * ''East Timor: A Western Made Tragedy,'' Sydney: Left Book Club, 1992. * ''The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People'', with John Loftus, St. Martin's Press, 1994, * ''War Criminals Welcome: Australia, a Sanctuary for War Criminals Since 1945'', Melbourne: Black Inc., 2001 * * ''The Family File'', Melbourne: Black Inc., 2010. * * * ''The Show: Another Side of Santamaria's Movement'' (co-authored with John Grenville), Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 2017.

References

External links

Dynasties
a program on Aarons and his family's history broadcast in January 2006 1951 births Australian people of German-Jewish descent Jewish Australian writers Journalists from New South Wales Living people People educated at North Sydney Boys High School People from Newcastle, New South Wales {{Australia-writer-stub