Mark Aarons (born 25 December 1951) is an Australian journalist and author. He was a political adviser to New South Wales Premier Bob Carr.

Biography

Aarons was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, but he was brought up in Sydney. He was educated at Fairfield Boys High School and North Sydney Boys High School. He is the son of the late Laurie Aarons, former secretary of the Communist Party of Australia. 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. His 1986 ABC radio documentary series Nazis in Australia prompted the Bob Hawke government's inquiry into war criminals and formation of Special Investigations Unit. Aarons contends that right-wing authoritarian regimes and dictatorships backed by Western powers committed atrocities and mass killings that rival the Communist world, citing examples such as the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 and the killings associated with Operation Condor throughout South America.