via eagainst.com

A provisional assessment

After the fatal stabbing of Pavlos Fyssas in Nikea (Athens) by Giorgos Roupakias (a member of the neo-nazi party Golden Dawn, organizer and coordinator of the party’s blackshirts’), mass demonstrations took place across the country. A few days later the conservative government launches crackdown on GD, resulting to the prosecution of party leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos and five other Golden Dawn MPs, who are charged with murder,sex trafficking, money laundering, benefit and tax fraud. But it was only two weeks ago that government officials and members of the ruling coalition government were openly discussing the possibilities of a future collaboration with the far-right partywhilst for many years the Greek State was deliberately tolerating the proliferation of neo-Nazi violence against immigrants and leftists. It is also evident that the Greek police has strong ties with the far-right, given that in the past elections 50% of the various police divisions are said to have voted for GD. Thus, racist attacks are systematically being covered up while illegal methods of detaining protesters and dissidents are continuously reported and condemned by Amnesty International; the most alarming case is the story of fifteen anti-fascist protesters, who after being arrested in Athens in a clash with supporters of GD last year,during their custody in the Attica General Police Directorate (GADA) have said they were heavily beaten up and tortured by officers. Unsurprisingly,the Greek Minister of Public Order, Nikolaos Dendias denied any act of deliberately inflicting severe physical pain and injury, ignoring at the same time the forensic surgeon’s confirmation that corporal coercion has indeed been used against the detainees. In addition, the thousands of anti-fascists who took to the streets of the major Greek cities (around 50.000 marched in the streets of Athens)were confronted with tear gas, whilst the campaign group Info-war.gr recorded a scene where rocks and stones were thrown by GD’s sympathizers against protesters with the riot squads only standing by.

What did, however, urge the Greek government to order such investigations on GD after years of concealing its criminal activities? Can we deny that Antonis Samaras acted under the pressure of the public outcry against the impunity of the far-right and the erosion of the police forces by GD? This is what the leader of the left-wing opposition party SYRIZA has claimed during his recent party conference. It can also be said that ND (being a europeanist and pro-bail-out party) would do everything possible to pretend that the rule of law prevails in Greece and applies to everyone equally (hence the Greek justice system is supposedly incorruptible and trustful) and that the alleged connections of GD with members of the police forces are only some of the aberrations of the State mechanism. But there is also another scenario:a possible collapse of GD would perfectly suit Samaras’ plans to secure a stable government; according to polls issued by VPRC (September 2013; see p.9), the popularity of the far-right party has significantly decreased(after the September riots and the numerous negative discourses that appeared in the progressive press)reaching 8.5% in contrast with 14.5% a few months before the assassination of Fyssas (see p.10). The same statistics reveal that an approximate 13,0%of GD’s disappointed voters could ‘return’ back to ND (see p.17) whose agenda has adopted much of the former’s rhetoric[I]. This came as a relief to Samaras whose party was polling behind the left-wing SYRIZA for a couple of weeks, and thus by seeing ND gaining an additional 1,5% – 3%, not only succeeds in avoiding early elections but at the same time appears confident to win the next round (scheduled for 2016).

Nonetheless, an important point should be made here: it is possible that many respondents be apprehensive to admit support for a party whose leading members are associated with the organized crime. If this is true then Samaras will have no other choice but to transform GD into a more ‘europeanized’ party, removing all its members that have close relations with the underworld and are outspokenly anti-Semits, replacing them with more ‘moderate’ executives in order to collaborate with them[II]. Whether this scenario is plausible or not, what we obviously see is that parliamentarism cannot any-more be considered as a system waterproof to fascism. The empirical observation of Greece shows clearly how the serpent’s egg is incubated within the system of liberal ‘democracies’, through a regime where the so called “moderate” and “prudent” voices (as opposed to the far-left and far-right “extremist” forces) dominate. This will be further examined below.

Institutionalized ‘anti-fascism’ and the horseshoe theory

It is undeniable that GD’s nature is utterly hubristic, and as every misanthropic paramilitary gang that is attracted by totalitarianism, anti-Semitism and conspiracist scapegoating, contains all the elements that have no place in a truly democratic world. But the claim that the conservative coalitions the sole defendant of Greek democracy is entirely inaccurate. Not only because ND has absorbed the most reactionary forces of Greek society(as aforementioned) but – and especially – due to the fact that Samaras and his co-workers were always looking for the right moment, for the opportunity where under the pretext of legality and public security will suppress every voice that calls into question ND’s political platform. Indeed, Samaras in Washington, in a conference organized by the Institute for International Economics in collaboration with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation stated the following:”we are crushing extremism, [...] but we have to confront the other extreme, the one that talks of leaving the EU and NATO” (directly denoting the left-wing eurosceptic opposition parties). In another speech, he stressed that any refusal to accept that the country is exiting from the crisis constitutes incitement to extremism (using again the far-right rhetoric of “invasion of illegal immigrants,” and promising deportations to “relieve society”). As the pro-government columnist Stefanos Kasimatis confirms (in his article posted in Kathimerini on the 16^th of September 2012) the crackdown of Golden Dawn provides a vital “opportunity” for the Greek State to get rid of the other “extreme”; the anti-fascist movement.

This is the notorious horseshoe theory – constantly promoted by the Greek and European mainstream media and the political intelligentsia – which claims that the far-left and the far-right whilst being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear political spectrum share many view-points and practices. The entire Greek conservative political elites constantly defend this oversimplistic stand-point, supporting that the left (either talking about the extraparliamentary anti-capitalist voices or the social-democratic reformists of SYRIZA) is equally offensive with the far-right, that both forces are battling each other to gain control over districts and neighbourhoods descending the country into chaos. Whilst this perspective is presented as the basic principle of common sense, a deeper research on the socio-political prattein shows that it is utterly myopic and instrumental; this is obviously seen not only through Samaras’ speeches but also from the constant reluctance of ND’s government to clean up the police forces from all the fascist enclaves long before the assassination of Fyssas. Additionally, no far-right group (GD is not the only active in Greece) has been dissolved and brought to justice since ND came to power (and for the last 10 years), but instead police brutality and beatings during custody (as mentioned also in the first paragraph), repression and attacks against anti-austerity and anti-capitalist protesters has become the only reality. We should acknowledge the evictions of self-organized social centres in Athens such as Villa Amalias – a social space that is considered as the feeder of the city’s anti-fascist spirit – between December 2012 and January 2013, that were located close to areas where thugs of GD organize attacks against migrants on a daily basis, after several complaints of GD’s sympathizers who also reside in these neighbourhoods (the so-called “outraged citizens”) in the mainstream media[III].

As it becomes obvious, the theory of the “two edges” implicitly inclines towards the right-wing direction. But additionally, it obscures the complicity of the “moderate centrist voices” (which according to its logic appear the only trustful political forces to safeguard ‘democratic’ institutions and social stability) in the cultivation of the conditions that allowed fascism to rise from the dead. In fact, no concentration camps for immigrants (such as that of Amigdaleza[IV]) were ever created by Golden Dawn, no protester or HIV victim was pilloried by any far-right political organization. It was the “centrist” government of PASOK that took such measures, and its “center-right” successor that criminalized immigrants publicly, launching witch-hunts like the Xenios Zeus[V]. Historically speaking, it was not the far-right that persecuted communists and leftists during and after the Greek Civil War, but the government of the “centrists” Themistoklis Sofoulis and Giorgos Papandreou that ordered the re-opening of penitentiaries and concentration camps for dissidents and sent thousands to the fire squads in coordination with the so called dosilogoi[VI].

This, however, does not apply only to the Greek case. In Britain, for example, it was not BNP or any fringe organization that uses vans for explicit anti-immigrant campaigns, declaring that “there will be no place to hide for illegal immigrants.” It is not a fringe neonazi magazine that publishes the profiles of students who participate in demonstrations calling for other citizens to report them to the police (as the Nazi authorities were doing when they seized power) but the so-called “centrist” newspapers, like Telegraph and Daily Mail. From this it follows that, in reality, no fascist organization is actually needed to give the green light for zero tolerance against immigration and criminalization of dissent, given that the agenda of the center-right conservative parties often relies on the law-and-order ideology and justify the Weberian approach of the State as the only legitimate source of violence is the essence of occidental liberalism. Law, order, security and protection are also the main ideological bases of the far-right where the State is seen as the sole legitimized force that guarantees social peace. In other words, both the centrists and far-right ideologues recognize structural violence as a necessity to overcome personal violence. Both accept the Hobbessean motto that “covenants without the sword are about words” (Hobbes 2006, p.93) as the cradle of harmonious co-existence which practically shows that a strong connection between the far-right and the ‘centre’ exists. And this assumption leads us also to another crucial conclusion: if indeed the left has utterly failed, this is because it accepted the State as a tool of social well-being (contemporary history is full of examples where party bureaucracies exploited genuine movements and instead of leading societies to liberation, imposed their own dictatorial rule). Thus, the condemnation of any action that does not comply with the “moderate” voices – which theoretically safeguards social balance – as a “potential extremist” and any arbitrary invocation to the so called “common sense” falls into an ambivalent subjectivity. The subjectivity of this doctrine is unveiled by its ineffectiveness to secure political dialectic, as it seeks to monopolize its own defended order, eroding at the same time, the foundations of a free society towards authoritarianism and prevention of political freedoms in the name of protection and security.

Xenophobia as a self-reflection of hubris

While liberalism has incarnated all the elements that open the back door to authoritarianism and fascism [VII], to blame solely the political intelligentsia, the ruling classes and the media for the rise of the reactionary right is utterly unacceptable. Can we practically deny that all undemocratic measures are imposed with our own complicity? Can we honestly claim that the percentage of the Greeks who voted for GD were fully unaware of what they were voting for during May and June (2013)?

Many confine the rise of the far-right and the political regression we experience to the current crisis, an argument that lacks substantial depth; we can see that the first tensions between natives and immigrants in Greece (and also in Austria and France) appeared long before the financial turmoil. As I have stressed in the first Issue of Democracy Street (2013, p.27), the rise of the far-right can be understood as an indirect effect of the economic downturn since intense competition (that is also expressed in national or racial terms) over scarce resources cultivates a climate of social introversion and generalized insecurity which is exploited by ultra conservative forces. In other words, the break out of crisis has intensified the feeling of pessimism, fear and uncertainty, creating, at the same time, the appropriate opportunity for charlatans and xenophobic demagogues to increase their electorate support. The border-walls (such as that between U.S. and Mexico, of Morocco and Ebros) are not only the results of the Fordist and anti-immigrant policies of Western countries (which in an essence is only a reflection of the profiteer laws that govern and regulate labor market aiming to overexploitation). Additionally they promote the image of a protected and safe society that allows us to continue living in complete peace within the artificial and false paradises of consumerism, even though deep down we know that the years of our prosperity are numbered. The role of the ideology of security contributes to a fake image of national self-sufficiency that hides the misery, isolation and loneliness we experience as mortal beings. This ideology is not necessarily created from above and not always relies to the historico-political background of a country, but many times is generated by society itself, as the same society when it feels threatened attempts to maintain the illusion that the prosperous life of consumerist (pseudo)happiness is always safeguarded. This not only maintains the deterministic logic of the necessity of the State but, at the same time, enhances xenophobia as the massive waves of migrants arriving in the West appears symbolically as a kind of onslaught of the “Third World” in our living room. This is the obvious answer to the question “why the Greek people voted for such party”, an answer that also applies to the occidental world (where the only difference is that most of the far-right parties consist of ultra-conservative demagogues who do not oppose parliamentarism whilst GD is a neonazi paramilitary group[VIII]).

Conclusion

While Samaras and his cronies portray themselves as the only source of justice against the brutality of GD, the strong ideological and practical links between his own party’s rhetoric and policies with the neo-nazi group do not allow us to consider his claim as plausible. While reactionary forces are taking over the ‘public’ sphere attempting to fill the political ‘gap’ and the incompetency of parliamentary ‘democracy’ we must be aware of the severe consequences of racism, the worst hubris of our times that will continue to penetrate social life beyond the parliaments. GD is only a reflection of the actual problem whose solution can be only found in the struggles for social emancipation, that propose rupture with heteronomous institutions and further spreading of direct democracy and equality.

Notes:

[I] Samaras during his pre-election speech in Alexandroupoli called the clandestine migrants the tyrants of Greek society and proclaimed mass and quick deportations. “Our cities have been taken over by them” he stated a few months before the 2012 elections, promising, at the same time, to repeal Ragousi’s Law (which allows every foreigner who has been born within the Greek territory to obtain citizenship). He also ‘borrowed’ the unconfirmed but populist claim, that the number of illegal immigrants in Greece has reached two million, which during 2007-2009 was the main argument of the anti-immigrant campaign of LAOS – Popular Orthodox Rally, (the previous but more moderate far-right party that suffered heavy defeat (1.58%) during the 2012 elections).

[II] Makis Voridis (who twenty-five years ago was an axe-wielding fascist patrolling the streets of Greece chasing leftist students according to Helena Smith) was a member of the political council of LAOS and Adonis Georgiadis served as the spokesman for the same party before both joining ND in February 2012. This clearly shows that Samaras would not hesitate to collaborate with a far-right party that acts solely according to the parliamentary laws and does not support street violence. Moreover, Michaloliakos in Vergina Channel declared that “If ND promises to withdraw from the memorandum, to clean up the country from illegal immigrants and cut all ties with the economic oligarchy [...] then nothing is excluded in order to save the country.”

[III] This is not the first time that GD offers a helping hand to ND: when the government decided to shut down overnight the National Public Broadcasting TV, GD launched a smear campaign against the public sector workers.

[IV] The detention centre of Amygdaleza, else called “the Greek Guantanamo”, is located in a desolate land 25 kilometres from the centre of Athens. Approximately 1,600 migrants are currently held there (according to police) forced to live under inhumane conditions until the day of their deportation. Rights groups claim that migrants have constantly been subjected to abuse by police and denied proper health-care. Activists from the group KEERFA said that Muslim detainees had been beaten by guards during prayers. In July, the same group reported the death of an Afghan detainee from a lung infection while the guards had deliberately ignored his severe condition for months.

[V] In August 2012, Samaras and Dendias passed a new enforcement strategy known as “Operation Xenios Zeus,” aiming to detain and deport clandestine migrants who reside in the Greek territory.Roughly85,000 people were detained whilst 4,200 (around the 6%) face charges for unlawful entry, and were sent to Amygdaleza or other similar detention centres. As Eva Cosse says “the fact that such a small percentage was actually found to be in Greece unlawfully suggests ethnic profiling”, a claim that seems plausible since this strategy not only targeted immigrants but also tourists, like Hyun Young Jung from South Korea and Christian Ukwuorji (a US born Nigerian), who were also stopped and searched, then detained and beaten up in a police station.

[VI] In Greek the term dosilogos (δοσίλογος) derives from logos-λόγος (reason; or in a less strict translation account, report) and dino-δίνω (give), meaning the task to give account (to report) to a third party whatever I am obligated. It does not only refer to the nazi collaborators during the occupation who were obligated to report to the German authorities any act of resistance, but also the action of every citizen who believed that it was vital to report to the police whoever had connection (or was suspected to have connections) with leftist organizations during and after the civil war and the military junta of 1967-74. Whilst dosilogism can be found in every totalitarian state, such as that of the Nazi Germany, the fascist Italy and Spain, as well as in the Stalinist regimes, it is visible even in the liberal “democracies” (as the example of the 2010-2011 students’ protests in London confirms). It is constantly being fed by the obsession of the masses with security and blind obedience to the values of the established institutionalized norms, pointing out the heteronomy of the modern occidental world; absence of self-limitation, that is the inability of individuals to understand by themselves where their power ends, without being forced to control their desires for pride and domination or acquisition of material goods due to obedience to a superior authority or due to habitual orientation.

[VII] According to Mark Neocleous, the liberal notion of security and protection refers to the various governmental declarations, often constitutionally justified, according to which the use of illiberal means (police and army repression) are necessary aiming to the removal of an alleged potential (often suspicious and not confirmed) common threat coming from ‘violent’ opposition groups, which undermine civil liberties, social or global stability and well-being. As John Locke supported (Neocleous 2012), when public freedoms are threatened by such aggressors, the Sovereign has the right to reduce a certain amount of civil liberties, “only so that [freedom] would be preserved forever”. However, the state of emergency, as this condition is officially called, for Neocleous is nothing but a pretext for various statesmen who usually invent fictitious social enemies (or take advantage of the existence of one real enemy in order to invent more) aiming to suspend basic civil rights for their own private benefit. This simultaneously opens the back door for the imposition of harsh authoritarian measures. In agreement with Neocleous, Giorgio Agamben (2008) also claimed that the state of emergency signifies the beginning of the state of exception (or else constitutional dictatorship), where modern totalitarianism is gradually established; “the entire Third Reich can be considered as a state of exception that lasted 12 years” says also Agamben (2008, p.2) claiming that Hitler took advantage of liberal constitutional laws; “the last years of the Weimeir Republic passed entirely under a regime of the state of exception” (Agamben 2008, p.15) thanks to a systematic abuse of the 48th Article of the Weimeir which writes: “if security and public order are seriously disturbed or threatened in the German Reich”, then the president of the Reich may take any necessary measure to establish public order, even with the help of the army (Agamben 2008, p.14). The Xenios Zeus could be also taken as a state of emergency and this denotes that there is a close relationship between liberalism and authoritarianism. Nonetheless, this loss of liberty ‘for security reasons’ is significantly minor compared to what takes place in a fascist regime. But “the practices involved, the wider state of emergency to which it gives rise, and the intensification of the security obsession, have a disquieting tendency to push contemporary politics further and further towards entrenched authoritarian measures. Liberalism is not only unable to save us from this possibility, but actually had a major role in its creation and continuation”. (Neocleous 2012)

[VIII] But the reasons behind this are historical: Greek nationalism contains more ethnic elements than civic, given that the Greek State was not founded upon the imaginary of capitalist production but on “the messianic irredentist discourse, the ‘Great Idea’” (Giovanni 2012), a narrative that promises border expansion and re-occupation of territories that were lost after the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. GD is clearly a party that embraces racial theories (claiming the superiority of the Greeks) and eugenics, rather than being confined to the ideology of national borders sovereignty.

Additional references (bibliography)
Agamben, G., 2008. State of Exception. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Hobbes, Th., 2006. Leviathan. New York: Dover Philosophical Classics.
Theodosiadis, M. (2013), “The Society of Intercultural Relations”, Democracy Street, Oct 15.

via cognord; download a pdf here.

Preface

Golden Dawn (GD), as we knew it, is over. Their leader N. Michaloliakos is behind bars, along with other prominent members, while those who survived the first purge are facing added charges that emerged a few days after the first arrests. While this was happening, a number of their offices around Greece have closed down, the state funding they received has been stopped, and reports indicate that many of their members (ex or current) are forming lines outside the High Court to testify against the organization. These testimonies are used as key evidence in the legal proceedings, leading among other things to the finding of hidden weapons[1]. Even if the legal case does not bring most of GD’s members to prison, the inside fighting is bound to create enough damage to forbid the Nazi party from continuing as it has. 

This approach of the collapse of GD is not only based on an analysis of recent events. It is also based on a specific understanding of the nature of the State in the modern capitalist world, and its essentially democratic ideology. Democracy is a system of decision-making and of social relations ideal for the capitalist economy. It creates a subject stripped of any control over the means of production, but abstractly equal to the rule of law, bound by existing class, property and exploitation relations,  a subject which exchanges its need to consume the means of survival with the ability to participate in deciding who will manage these relations. This is the form that capitalism finds more suitable for the continuation of accumulation and the creation of value, and democracy has proven that it has far more tools and elasticity, as part of its social structure, to recuperate struggles and threats to the capitalist order, than the brute force of fascist/totalitarian regimes who require no consensus for their rule. The power of capital does not depend on the brute force of Nazi thugs, nor does it require coercion to further the devaluation of proletarians -in Greece or elsewhere.

As Dauvé has said, everyone would prefer (if given a choice) to live in social-democratic Sweden than being hunted down by Pinochet’s torturers. The point is that the choice is not ours, and it definitely does not depend on a set of forms such as universal franchise, civil rights and the existence of a parliament, however much these forms are fetishised. For regardless of the contingent advance that the existence of such rights might allow, they leave the fundamental social relations of class exploitation intact.

The forces that kick started the persecution of Golden Dawn, were the very same ones that the antifa/Left scene has been accusing all along (and rightly so) of aiding and facilitating the spread of its racist and fascist policies and ideology. And it requires a leap into absurdity to maintain a position under which the same forces that produce and support such anti-social elements are seen as the ones that will save one from them. Yet, this is democracy.

Though far away from the historical and material realities of fascism and Nazism, the modern State will push the limits of parliamentarism to its absolute edges (as has been the case many times in Greece with austerity measures being voted in parliament in the form of Special Acts of Legislative Content [2]), it will extend the powers of the police in ways which resemble totalitarian regimes (redefining legality through the use of anti-terrorist legislation, the Patriot Act or the German Constitutional Police), it will practically justify the emergence of the notion of “State of Emergency” as a permanent feature of modern life etc., BUT, contrary to a common approach found in the Greek anarchist scene, fascism is not a central political choice of the State.

Having said that, in order to understand recent developments in Greece, one should provide a brief trajectory of the organisation (and the extreme right) in Greece, not only in order to properly place its ideological and practical activities, but also to understand the historical context during which Golden Dawn was both supported and suppressed. Hopefully this presentation will show, among other things, that rather than running the risk of being manipulated by the Nazis of Golden Dawn, the State itself has always manipulated the extreme right for its own benefit, ready to sacrifice it when the cost outweighs the benefits.

The dawn of Golden Dawn

Michaloliakos had from a young age created a name for himself in extreme right wing circles: he was arrested for the first time in July 1974 in a protest against Great Britain and its role in the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, again in 1976 for attacking journalists who were covering the funeral of two infamous torturers of the dictatorship (assassinated by November 17^th), while in July 1978 he was arrested in relation to a number of bombings in Athens along with other prominent members of the extreme right. Though facing serious charges (being part of a terrorist organization, to start with), Michaloliakos only received a 13 months sentence, and reports of the time indicate that he entered into a deal with the authorities –in exchange for informing on his former comrades. A few years later, a document emerged in which Michaloliakos was shown to have been on the payroll of the Greek Secret Service (ΚΥΠ), and though the document might have been falsified, the accusation would make sense. If the secret service were looking for someone to fund, he would clearly be their man.

From the beginning, there was little doubt that Golden Dawn (initially the name of the magazine published by Michaloliakos) was openly Nazi.

(Continued)

Voices of Resistance from Occupied London #5: Disorder of the day

Fall 2013

Illustrations kindly provided by the legendary Leandros from Greece and the incredible Painsugar Designworks from Indonesia.

Fonts: AmazingBasic, Straw Hat, old style smallcaps and Chapparal pro.

This journal exists because of Dawn, Andy, Gal, Alessio, Painsugar, Anna, Leandros, John, Dimitris, Hara, Ali, Tucker, Magpie, Jacken, Antonis, Smokey, Elena, Idris, Jaya, Matt, Ross and Krümel.

At the editors’ seat:

Antonis, Jaya and Dimitris.

At the designer’s seat:

Jaya.

The crew can be reached at: editorial@occupiedlondon.org

Check out the other issues at occupiedlondon.org

And our blog at blog.occupiedlondon.org

via Reinform NL

Dimitris Kousouris is one of the first political victims of Golden Dawn attacks. On June 16^th, 1998, in a café outside the courts of Athens, he was attacked brutally by a group of Golden Dawn members. He had to go through a difficult brain surgery and he barely escaped death. The attackers were identified by Kousouris and his friends. The main perpetrator was back then nr 2 in the leadership of Golden Dawn, Antonis Androutsopoulos. Although the media had reported the possible places where he was hiding, he was only arrested 7 years later. Although the court found him guilty and sentenced him to long imprironment, he only stayed in prison until 2010. Dimitris Kousouris is currently a lecturer of history at the University of Crete.

In this interview, D. Kousouris points out that a general ideological denouncement of fascism is not enough to address the needs of the long-term unemployed and those ones who cannot make ends meet. What he regards as most important is the setting up of solidarity networks in order to counteract the extreme right.

An interview to Georgos Laoutaris for the weekly newspaper PRIN

15 years ago, when the Golden Dawn tried to kill you it was marginal organization, while now it is part of the political establishment. Wouldn’t you expect that its presence in the parliament would push this party to more lawful actions?

By no means. Legitimating political ideas in the broad public never resulted in mitigating its initial features. In Greece after the elections in 2012 there has been a widespread view that people would realize the violent face of the Golden Dawn and would stay away from it. This view was at least naive. As the capitalist crisis continues to affect a huge part of Greek society leading it to pauperization and impoverishment, the conditions on which fascism can grow continue to exist.

Do you believe that the murder of Pavlos Fyssas had a political motive?

It was a political assassination that had been announced by the Golden Dawn in the working-class districts of Piraeus. It was just a matter of time for this to happen. The immediate reaction of the government proves that they knew about it and they were prepared to act accordingly.

Do you believe that the imprisonment of members of Golden Dawn will be a step towards the solution of the problem?

Obviously this would change the rules of the game. However it is an illusion to believe that this would solve the problem. Even if the Golden Dawn was outlawed or if they applied the anti-terrorist law or if they just used the penal code to send some of its members to prison, the problem would be still there. The murder of Pavlos Fyssas, a working-class offspring that was engaged in the cause of social emancipation reveals the size of the damage that has been inflicted the last years. In this transitional period,where the historical defeat of the labour movement (as known till now) seems to be completed, it was inevitable that the dismantled social structure and public space of the poor neighbourhoods where unemployment and poverty dominate the lives of young and old would become the scenery where bouncers, snitches and all kinds of gangs take over. The infringement of parliamentarianism its very representatives, the abrupt narrowing of democratic legitimacy by the abolition of basic social rights, the longstanding deep roots of the extreme right in the state apparatus in combination with the reactionary and racist shift of the government and the media as well as the collapse of the two major parties of the political establishment enabled Golden Dawn to be the one that provides political coverage and ideological identity to these gangs organizing them around the rich and turning them against the remaining cells of organization and struggle of the working people. The political elites are certainly aware of the transitory nature of these political identieties that are formed in the current conditions. It is obvious that after the assassination of Pavlos Fyssas the government is trying to regain control and initiative and send a message to all directions: to the right, to the left, inside and outside the country.

Is the increased influence of the Golden Dawn a coincidental phenomenon or is it here to stay?

This will depend on each one of us and all of us together. The Golden Dawn is one of the many faces of fascism, the most repulsive we have seen after the dictatorship. In any case, in the coming period, there is going to be an attempt of approaching its electorate. The aim is gaining control over the legal or illegal paramilitary branch of the dominant power coalition. Therefore, Golden Down may disappear but not fascism itself as long as the circle of illegitimacy grows within which the domestic and international elites are trying to establish their dominance at the expense of the working people

During the last period books, articles and documentaries have shed light on the Nazi references of Golden Dawn. How do you interpret the fact that this evidence is not convincing?

Building an ideology based on the political struggle is an aspect of bourgeois politics which is rather convenient for the journalists of the so called “constitutional range” but has also created many illusions within the Left.  How can someone thatonly uses a general ideological denouncement, address the needs of the unemployed, the ones who are hungry and eat at the common meals of the church, the ones who sleep in the cold and the dark, and the young people who do not have any hopes for their future? The denouncement of Nazism is essential. However, as demonstrated in the last years, it is an illusion to be considered adequate. It is also known that applying the same methods over and over again and expect different results is an indicationof insanity or stupidity. Reading through history, fascism was born as a mass counterrevolutionary movement bred by the defeat of the labour movement in the inter-war period and was reborn as the “dark side” of neoliberalism after the retreat of the labour movement that followed the crisis of the 1970s.Two decades after the triumph of neo-liberal parliamentarism, the crisis has dramatically narrowed the possibilities for preserving and managing the status quo with purely parliamentary means in Europe, the U.S., China or Egypt. Fascism as a power optionbounces back in its European cradle: Greece, Hungary, Norway, France and elsewhere. The goal of fascism is again the defeat and finally the elimination of the labour movement. Therefore the crucial factor for the character of the fight and the outcome of the struggle – now as then – is the status and the level of organization of the working class. The historical bet of our time is who will prevail: the long-lasting darkness of the authoritarian domination of global capital or the rebirth and strengthening of the labour movement that will stand against fascism but also against the forces of capitalism which breed and sustain it.

How do you think the Left should react?

The different forces of the Left chose very often a defensive attitude by trying to preserve the limited political space that is available to them or the traditional good-old avoidance of action by referring to some abstract plan of labour emancipation that stands far away from the actual movement of the social subjects of the same plan. But if we really want to discuss how to eliminate fascism, it is high time we organize solidarity and resistance of the vast majority of the working people and the unemployed.

Who fits in the antifascist front?

If we agree that fascism is an extreme and authoritarian version of capitalism as well as an alliance between the capitalists and the middle class aiming at the preservation of the dominant ownership relationships, then we can first clarify the class characteristics of the anti-fascist front. Many fit to this antifascist front as the majority of the working people fit to the front.  Based on that, the organization of the antifascist struggle is the responsibility of all those who think and act against capitalist barbarism. It is the responsibility of grass-root local initiatives and assemblies, the numerous online or printed alternative media, several initiatives of popular self-organization and collaborative economy, students’ unions in high schools and higher education institutions, trade unions and political clubs that are either politically independent or related to SYRIZA, the Communist Party, or ANTARSYA or anarcho-syndicalism. On the other hand, fascism is both the nazi storm troopers and the emergency regime where the governments rules beyond and popular control and the repression forces act uncontrolled against the people’s movement and abolish at will any constitutional freedom Therefore, the anti-fascist front excludes by definition that consent, support or manage this reality.

If the source of the crisis is government policy, do you think a left government would be the solution?

Using fear as domination method, the political establishment attempts to stabilize the political system by forcing the left and the right extreme to restrain themselves within the parties of the so-called ‘constitutional range’. The polarization and tension strategy that is followed by the elite aims at convincing the public opinion that a left government would be an improvement compared to the repressive Samaras-government to the extent that it will try to confront the fascist elements in the state, the police and the army and to renegotiate the country’s position in the EU and the Eurozone. This assumption is flawed since the dominance of the pro-austerity forces of the old political system makes it extremely doubtful for the Left to achieve a majority in the Parliament. Even if the Left manages to form such a majority, it would be almost impossible to control a state apparatus that is deeply penetrated by the ‘praetorians’ of the ‘old’ regime. Finally, as repeatedly proven throughout modern Greek history, whenever the Left failed to take advantage of the cracking of elite’s power and abandoned the prospect of toppling capitalism and proceeding with a plan for social emancipation in favor of achieving democratic legitimacy (such as in 1944¹, 1965² and 1974³), it was driven to political and literal extermination, entrapment within the political system and marginalization.

Translated by ReINFORM