Joint Leaflet of Antinazi Initiative and OAKKE (Org. For the Reconstruction of the CPG)

(Athens, June 13, 2012)

BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!

DEMOCRATS GET ORGANIZED AND RESIST THE NAZI GANG OF “GOLDEN DAWN” (CHRYSI AVGI) WHICH IS PROTECTED BY THE REGIME

The Greek political system and a great part of society has accepted as normal the participation of a nazi criminal gang in the Parliament, which has happened for the first time since World War II. Some people that are not hardened nazis but neither politically and historically informed go so far as to vote for them. Their drawback is that they view things superficially. They believe that the nazis of GD “solve” vital problems of theirs, more vital than nazism is for them. For example, they like it when they chase the immigrants away from some spots of the city, which the state has turned into store rooms of people and where it has permitted an extra-ordinary criminality and every sort of degradation of the human social life. They also like it that the nazis say “all immigrants out”, when the state itself has been importing even now, entirely provocatively, thousands of transit immigrants week weekly, into a country with damaged industry and with one million unemployed. When this gang is stabbing, beating or throwing the immigrants out of the buses in the street, those people say that this discourages the new immigrants from coming and that generally the nazi gang does something good with all this violence that isn’t being done by the state or the other parties.

When the other day the most swaggering bully of this gang assaulted against two women representatives of two parties on the TV screen, and at that he beat up the one of them, a lot of those people said that this served them right because those two women and the parties they belong to, have also exercised violence before, and at times in a quite large degree, against political opponents even against parts of the population. And indeed they have exercised such violence. The most excited of those people, that as mentioned before view things superficially and lack information, say that this gang is the only force within Parliament that could beat this rotten and corrupt crowd from all parties that have been administrating the country during the last thirty years and that have led it to the current situation. “Why does it hurt” – they say – “a little more violence than the one we have been suffering because of this rotten political regime? Besides, if those “people’s guys” that beat up others go too far, we will get rid of them as easy as we brought them to Parliament”.

The most devastating mistake in the above in any case reactionary conceptions is the following: in fact, these new “people’s guys” are not at all against the regime. And in no way have they come to punish, even in an insignificant degree, the old political world. On the contrary, they constitute the oldest, most hardened, most rotten part of the old political world that they supposedly want to clean up of its sinners. The reason why all those bullies are free to stab, to throw immigrants out of buses, and beat up women representatives of strong political parties in front of the camera without being punished at all, or almost at all, is exactly the profound and wide political cover the regime provides for them. To be more precise, they are backed by the strongest leading forces within the whole political spectrum and within all parties. See for example how the parties reacted on the first and sole beating that took place in a TV discussion between political parties, and at that an electoral one, before the people’s eyes. No-one has ever responded to words with violence in such electoral disscussions, unlike what the nazi Kasidiaris did when he threw a glass of water towards the face of Rena Dourou. Only for that, the political party the representative of which reacted in such a way should have clearly condemned this deed. Even the more so, this party should have condemned the beating of Liana Kanelli. “Ch. Avgi” (Golden Dawn), a nazi cynically criminal gang as it is, not only refused to do it but also justified the attitude of its representative. This means that under proportional conditions, every representative of this gang is free to do it again, and at that with the incitement of the party.

After this stance the ESR (National Radio-Television Council), which is approved by all parliamentary parties, ought to expell the bullying party from every TV appearance for at least as long as it kept this stance on the beating. On the contrary, the ESR unanimously decided to oblige the radio-TV stations to invite the nazi gang to discussions and show its repulsive racist positions, without being condemned by the PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement), ND (New Democracy), SYRIZA (Coalition of Radical Left), KKE (CPG), DIMAR (Democratic Left), LAOS (Popular Orthodox Rally) parties. As some stations declared that from now on they wouldn’t invite the nazi gang to the discussions that the ESR had obliged them to, “Ch. Avgi” had to announce that it wouldn’t participate in any discussion, supposedly by its own initiative. This was done by the nazi gang so as not to embarrass, that is, not to expose, the pro-Ch.Avgi stance, of the ESR and indirectly of the other parties.

It is also typical that the so-called CPG (Communist Party of Greece) tried to degrade the importance of the hit as a fascist blow to political democracy and to present it, by leveling it, as a conflict generally of capital – labor. Even more monstrous was the stance of ND and its leader Samaras, that instead of asking at least from the people to politically isolate the nazi party, he called upon them to prevent the “national division”. That is he called upon the people and all the political parties to unite with the bullying nazis. However, no national unity can exist with the praisers of Hitler, the torturer and subjugator of the Greek people, and with the praisers of Hitler’s collaborators, the informers - members of the security battalions during the Occupation. And for all those that may misunderstand what Samaras said, Psomiadis’ statement followed saying that “Chrysi Avgi” and ND are “fraternal parties”.

But is this the only proof of the cover that this gang receives by the all-parties system? Is there any state in the world that the Authorities would allow legality for a party which defends nazism, anti-Semitism, racism and that has exercised violence thousand of times since its foundation against hundreds and thousands of unprotected people?

Many and many times the Antinazi Initiative, OAKKE, but also political personalities have insisted that such gangs must be outlawed in Greece, as happens in the whole Europe. And that’s because a citizen is able to deal with a bully or an individual killer, but not with a big gang if this is not illegal. How could a simple citizen or a migrant testify against a murderous gang, even the more so, if this gang has parliamentary seats? However, all parliamentary parties have not only kept “Ch.A.” legal during all those years but also have methodically concealed its crimes and its nazi character from the people. They concealed its positions on the German occupation and let it pass for a patriotic force. And not only that. They let it dominate over a whole neighborhood of downtown Athens, St. Panteleimonas, and impose its law and substitute the police.

And not only that. Would it be possible for "Chrysi Avgi” to participate in uniform at the pupils’ march and lay a wreath on October 28 national day in Loutsa (Artemida), if there had been some protest by any of the parliamentary party? Would it be possible that a delegation of “Chr. Avgi” led by Kasidiaris be enthusiastically applauded by PAME (All-workers Militant Front) at the steel mills factory of Aspropyrgos, and then when this cooperation was denounced at the internet, PAME to say that they did not realized who they were? Wasn’t it SYRIZA that within the field of the “no pay” movement officially cooperated with the member of Chrysi Avgi Asterios Chamos and his team at the toll gates of Katerini? Wasn’t it the leaderships and the cadres of all parliamentary and non-parliamentary parties that pleasurably sat next to “Chr. Avgi” in every meeting of the all-parties Committee in all elections and decided jointly with it on the distribution of the electoral radio-TV time? And they did it conciously, because they remained at their seats, when OAKKE called upon them in every such electoral meeting to withdraw, as itself withdrew refusing to have meetings with the nazis.

But what is the deeper cause for this long year protection the regime has been giving to Chrysi Avgi? The answer lays in the political positions of the nazis. The Chrysi Avgi party has a basic characteristic common with the whole political regime that constitutes a sort of informal national political consensus. They have the position that the country must strategically move towards Putin’s Russia. At that, while some of the other parties “soften” somehow their afilliation to Russia by also talking about a balanced relationship with Europe, “Chr. Avgi” orientates towards fascist Russia the whole strategic future of the country. So much strong is this direction of the neonazis that, contrary to those who share the same beliefs, the classical nazis who are pagans, they present themselves as fanatical orthodox christians, exactly like Putin’s Russia is. So, it is this new “national” orientation of the country that makes them the protegees of the regime.

And so, while the majority of the parliamentary parties’ voters have generally a democratic and anti-fascist disposition, thus being seriously opposed to that gang, their leaderships try to smooth this opposition, that is, to alleviate it without becoming noticeable. That’s why they now and then they denounce a bit Chrysi Avgi, especially when the smell coming from its activity cannot be confined and reaches the media. So they do every kind of hallow denouncement of “nazism” and of the “criminal” character of Chrysi Avgi till the dust settles.

But they are exposed at the basic point we’ve mentioned before: They never pose the obvious, which is applied to every criminal gang, and at that persistently and in concurrence, also perpetrating racist crimes, that is to be declared outlawed by the state itself. That is the constitution to be applied as well as the laws and the international anti-racist conventions our country has signed. So it will become possible that the victims speak with all freedom and denounce their persecutors and the latter be arrested and punished. So it is that the gang remains unaccountable and carries on its criminal job at a larger scale. If no-one stops it, then it will dominate the state mechanisms and above all the mechanisms of force, which are the police and the army. This doesn’t mean that we will definitely have an open nazi dictatorship, which would expose the regime worldwide. But we could have all the parties being “decent” and only putting up a show of some confrontations with the nazis, we would have a “decent” parliament, while the gang would do the dirty job and purge the real enemies of the new regime at choice.

So as to prevent this possibility – which doesn’t seem to be much far – the concious democrats must organize in a wide front against the nazis and not allow them terrorize the people, by posing as chief demand the banning on the activity of this criminal gang.

The precondition for this is that the democrats surpass two obstacles that the regime has been setting before every antifascist movement so far. Both obstacles are set by the forces appearing to be left-wing and supposed to lead the antifascist front. The first obstacle is the argument that “Chr. Avgi” cannot be defeated nor any concrete measure against it could be effective, unless the causes that generate the fascist movements be defeated. This means that “first, there must be some political and social overturning that will do away with the dominance of the capital, the dominance of monopolies, the dominance of neoliberalism, the dominance of memorandums, poverty, the marginalization of the people’s stratums and generally the people’s and revolutionary forces must first come to power”.

Apart from the underestimation of democracism those positions conceal, the above practically means that: we give plenty of time and space to the nazis so that they crush by force every trace of bourgeois democracy and impose their own dictatorship.

The second and more serious obstacle is the one that gives the nazis the opportunity to link themselves to the wide, popular, especially with the labor masses, and even more with the millions of the unemployed and semi-employed of the current crisis. This is the theory of the “open frontiers” for the migrants in general.

By posing slogans such as the “legalization of all immigrants” and theories that noone can prevent the entry of the migrants of the planet into Greece with its extensive sea-frontiers, the so-called left does no other than massively pushing the suffering unemployed people and the youth to the embrace of the nazis. Precondition for any effective, which means with popular support, antinazi movement today is :

A) “Closed borders” to the illegal economic migrants and open only for the real political refugees, that are a very small minority and have the right to go to the whole Europe. The provocative “open boundaries” theory today, has nothing to do with the real left, that has never posed the abolition of the borders as a matter of principle when the necessary economic, political and working preconditions were absent, even when it was in power in some countries.

B) Economic incentives – with European backing – to the transit migrants that have already entered the country to allow them go back to their countries, from where the Greek political regime brought them here so as to “channel” them towards the rest of Europe later. The calling upon those immigrants to come to Greece is indirectly done by the political regime with the “abolition of the Dublin II treaty” slogan. This slogan means that Europe – on the time of its crisis – should widely open its frontiers to the whole third world. If that happened it would lead to further strengthening of the racist and fascist currents in the whole Europe. It is not accidental that a basic slogan of “Chr. Avgi” is the all-parties “Aboliton of the Dublin II treaty”. This proves how “Chr. Avgi” does not want the migration issue to be resolved, and that, instead, it wants to make Greece a magnet for the transit migrants so that its new victims be piled up at the human storehouses. In this way “Chr. Avgi” would acquire political strength while tomorrow its sympathizers would strengthen in the rest of Europe, if the Dublin II treaty is not applied.

C) Direct and consistent application of the law for legalization of the old migrants that live in our country and that are provoked as none other by the slogans of “open frontiers” and of legalization of all immigrants.

Finally, the most important of all: with the view to convincing the people and finally getting them mobilized, an antifascist movement must resolutely differenciate itself from and denounce every practice of unprovoked violence against political opponents merely because of their positions, such as e.g. the counter-rallies and the bullying by the “indignants” that paved the way for the nazis to launch their own attacks later, also against political persons.

Democrats and patriots,

Organize and resist the nazis and every form of fascism! Struggle to outlaw the nazi gang of “Chr.Avgi”.