http://hits.theguardian.com/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.25.5/26362?ns=guardian&pageName=Article%3Agreece-ban-golden-dawn-pavlos-fyssas%3A1967650&ch=World+news&c3=Guardian&c4=Greece+%28News%29%2CGolden+Dawn+%28News%29%2CEurope+%28News%29%2CWorld+news&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Helena+Smith&c7=2013%2F09%2F18+07%3A19&c8=1967650&c9=Article&c10=News&c13=&c19=GUK&c47=UK&c64=UK&c65=Greece+moves+to+ban+far-right+Golden+Dawn+party&c66=News&c72=&c73=&c74=&c75=&h2=GU%2FNews%2FWorld+news%2FGreece
Government to table emergency legislation after murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas at ultra-nationalist rally
The Greek government has hinted that it will seek to ban Golden Dawn after the far-right party was linked to the murder of a leading leftwing musician in Athens.
As violence erupted on the streets and demonstrators protested after the fatal stabbing of Pavlos Fyssas, a prominent anti-fascist, the public order minister, Nikos Dendias, cancelled a trip abroad saying the government would table emergency legislation that would seek to outlaw the group.
Amid renewed political tensions between the extreme left and right, the new law would re-evaluate what constituted a criminal gang, he said.
"Neither the state will tolerate, nor society accept, acts and practices that undermine the legal system," the minister told reporters, adding that the attack showed "in the clearest way the [party's] intentions".
Earlier in the day, police raided Golden Dawn offices across the country, with media reporting running street battles outside branches in Crete, Thessaloniki and Patras.
Voted into the Greek parliament for the first time last June, the neo-fascist Golden Dawn has been widely accused of employing violence to further its ratings in the polls.
The socialist Pasok party, the junior member of Antonis Samaras's two-party coalition, has campaigned openly for it to be banned, saying it should be considered a criminal gang.
The 34-year-old rapper died within minutes of being stabbed in the chest when he and a group of seven friends were set upon by around 30 black-clad supporters of Golden Dawn in the working-class district of Keratsini.
Eyewitnesses said the singer was stabbed several times by a man who suddenly appeared in a car after being phoned by members of the mob. The attack bore all the hallmarks of a premeditated assault, they said.
The alleged perpetrator, a 45-year-old man who was arrested when police rushed to the scene, later confessed to being a member of Golden Dawn. His wife, who was also detained, admitted having attempted to hide incriminating evidence, including party credentials linking her husband to the extremist organisation, when he called her, panic stricken, after the murder. Greek media cited police as saying the man was not only a sympathiser of Golden Dawn but visited its offices in Keratsini "five or six times" a week.
With parties across Greece's entire political spectrum condemning the killing, the far-right group vehemently denied it had any connection with the crime or the alleged culprit. In a rare intervention, the president, Karolos Papoulias, warned: "It is our duty not to allow any space whatsoever to fascism – not even an inch."
Fyssas, who performed under the stage name Killah P, would be the first Greek to have died at the hands of Golden Dawn, which until recently reserved its venom exclusively for migrants. Within hours of his death sending shockwaves through Greek society, the killing was being described as an "assassination."
Greece's third largest party and fastest growing political force, Golden Dawn currently controls 18 seats in the 300-member parliament. It appears to have been emboldened by its soaring popularity on the back of economic desperation.
In an atmosphere brittle with anger, uncertainty and fear, politically motivated violence has escalated, with the ultra-nationalists being blamed for attacks on communist activists last week and on a rightwing mayor in the south over the weekend.
Speculation is rife that the leadership of Golden Dawn may have lost control over a party whose grassroots supporters view themselves as soldiers in an armed struggle aimed at overthrowing a political establishment they blame for the country's woes.
"It is up to the government now to deal with Golden Dawn once and for all," said Giorgos Kyrtsos, a prominent political commentator. "We know very little about the inner workings of Golden Dawn, and whether its leadership has lost control [over its members]. But what we do know is that, for the first time, the government has them in a corner."

Greece (http://www.theguardian.com/world/greece)
Golden Dawn party (http://www.theguardian.com/world/golden-dawn)
Europe (http://www.theguardian.com/world/europe-news)

Helena Smith (http://www.theguardian.com/profile/helenasmith)

theguardian.com (http://www.theguardian.com) © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions (http://www.theguardian.com/help/terms-of-service) | More Feeds (http://www.theguardian.com/help/feeds)

http://feeds.theguardian.com/c/34708/f/663879/s/3167c6d7/sc/11/mf.gif


More... (http://feeds.theguardian.com/c/34708/f/663879/s/3167c6d7/sc/11/l/0L0Stheguardian0N0Cworld0C20A130Csep0C180Cgreece0Eban0Egolden0Edawn0Epavlos0Efyssas/story01.htm)

Looks like Golden Dawn has gotten too big for it's britches, if this ain't a ruse on the government's part. Ain't no looming commie threat to justify the disruption of the business climate. As much as the bosses want to beat the working class down, and attacking KKE only got lip service, this latest murderous stupidity couldn't be ignored. Of course as the cops are largely GD sympathisers if not members, I expect that whatever measures are adopted will be blunted on the ground, and perhaps that's part of the calculation.

KKE's response:



Statement of the Press Office on the murder of the 34 year old in Keratsini

In relation to the murder of the 34 year old in Keratsini the Press Office of the KKE made the following statement “The KKE calls on the people and youth to denounce the murder of the 34 year old in Keratsini by the fascists of Golden Dawn in a mass and decisive way. The criminal and murderous activity of Golden Dawn has the aim of intimidating the workers and the youth. It grows bold due to the multi-facetted support provided to it by the rotten capitalist system and the interests of big business, which created it and nourish it, so that it can attack the people who are struggling, standing up for their rights, so that it can attack the labour and people’s movement.

The people and the youth have the strength to stop the murderous activity of the Nazis. The workers’ trade unions, the mass organizations in the cities and villages, the people’s committees must isolate the cowardly murderers of Golden Dawn, and protect the people from its poison and activity. The people’s alliance must be strengthened in order to put an end to the activity of the Nazis and the system that nourishes them.”

http://inter.kke.gr/

Yeah, I read the Trots' report on this (of course they had their obligatory KKE hate) and I thought that if the government bans this version of the Nazis, they will just come back re-branded as the "Silver Dawn" or the "Golden Mid-morning" or some such shit. These bastards will have to be stamped out sooner or later...

Large march and rally of dozens of trade unions against the murderous activity of Golden Dawn

With the slogan “We must block the fascists” to create the atmosphere, thousands of people demonstrated against the murderous activity of Golden Dawn on Thursday (19/9) afternoon in Nikaia, a historic working class neighbourhood of Piraeus with a great contribution in the struggle against the German occupation and the driving out of the Hitlerite fascists from Greece. This is in the wider area where the 34 year old was murdered by Golden Dawn. It had been announced that the Nazi gang would hold a central demonstration in this area. Under pressure from the presence of the class-oriented movement the fascists’ rally was cancelled.

The people responded to the call of dozens of trade unions and organizations ofPiraeusand the class forces of PAME gathered in the central square and later marched through the streets of the working class neighbourhood.

The seamen’s unions and the metalworkers were in the front line.

The militant date was renewed for Saturday morning. The trade unions will organize a new rally as Golden Dawn has announced that on this day it will hand out food only to Greeks in Nikaia, in order to spread its poison. “Golden Dawn out of the heroic bloodstained area of Kokkinia, we do not even accept water from the members of Golden Dawn” was heard in the relevant call, while it was stressed that the people demand that the offices of the murderous organization in Nikaia be closed.
..

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Large-march-and-rally-of-dozens-of-trade-unions-against-the-murderous-activity-of-Golden-Dawn/

The real extremism is not of the far-left and the far-right, but of the fascist center. Golden Dawn’s strategy of tension ultimately benefits the elite.


Fascism is capitalism plus murder.

— Upton Sinclair (winner of the 1943 Pulitzer Prize)

The killing of Pavlos Fyssas by a group of Golden Dawn thugs was no accident. All the evidence seems to indicate that the leftist hip-hop artist was stabbed to death in a premeditated murder. “They didn’t like him,” a former member of the neo-Nazi party said in an undercover interview with the Ethnos newspaper. “He had some lyrics dissing Golden Dawn. For me he was brave. Anyone can write whatever they want. That didn’t put a weapon in his hand, however. He was an anti-fascist and he was singing it and they knew it.” And so Pavlos was murdered, in cold blood and in front of his girlfriend’s eyes, as the notoriously fascist DIAS police stood by and did nothing.


Now, as violent riots once again engulf the country and the anti-fascist left understandably calls for revenge, Greece’s corrupt corporate and political elite can once again play its favorite trump card: the country is descending into chaos, left and right are battling for control over the streets, and so a broad alliance of the “responsible center” is the only thing that can save democracy from the imminent threat of civil war. This narrative of the “two extremes” — also known as the horseshoe theory — is the most sinister myth facing Greece today. In reality, it is nothing but a strategy of tension that serves to obscure the violent extremism of the center that is truly ripping the country apart.



After all, who created the morbid social conditions in which fascism could rise from the dead to begin with? It’s the transnational class alliance of foreign bankers, EU leaders, IMF technocrats and Greece’s own corrupt elite who — with their dehumanizing austerity measures and rabid market fundamentalism — created the arid ground on which Golden Dawn could spread its poisonous seeds of hatred in the first place. When a country loses a quarter of its annual output in just five years, and 28% of its population and over 60% of its youth are out of work, it’s no surprise that some in the disaffected middle class will end up being driven into the arms of those promising national glory in place of economic security.

But we need to take the critique further. Not only did the corrupt neoliberal elite — personified by the political leadership of Nea Dimokratia and PASOK — create the preconditions for the rise of Golden Dawn as a fascist party; they themselves have been setting the parameters of fascist policy-making for decades, long before Golden Dawn was even elected to Parliament. As Augustine Zenakos just pointed out in a hard-hitting piece for Borderline Reports, it wasn’t Golden Dawn that created concentration camps for immigrants, criminalized HIV and tortured handcuffed detainees — it was the successive governments of the center-left and center-right that did that. They have been doing it for decades and no one in Europe ever seemed to care.



The elite-propagated narrative of the “two extremes” thus serves a sinister purpose. Most crucially, it deflects attention away from the elite’s own wrongdoings and shifts the blame for the crisis squarely onto the shoulders of the weakest members of society: the immigrants — an easy scapegoat to make up for the lack of national self-esteem. In the process, it keeps the country’s powerful extra-parliamentary left distracted by focusing almost all its attention on fighting fascism instead of fighting capitalism. As long as anarchist militias are needed to run anti-fascist motorcycle patrols through immigrant neighborhoods, the banks, ministries and Troika delegates will all be safe from harm.

By wilfully breeding a climate of civil war, the ruling elite can proudly position itself as the “responsible savior” that will pull Greece back from the abyss. Here, Golden Dawn’s warmongering rhetoric and the racist and anti-leftist violence of its thugs in the streets comes in particularly handy for those in power: as long as the neo-Nazis keep the pressure on by playing “bad cop” (quite literally, as one in two cops are alleged to have voted for Golden Dawn in the 2012 elections and the party has penetrated deep into the country’s police force), the shaky centrist coalition of Nea Dimokratia and PASOK can cling to power and maintain its privileges by falsely positing as the “good cop”.


Of course, none of this is new. The US-backed military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 till 1974 make explicit use of a similar strategy of tension to keep a lid on the revolutionary left and popular resistance to the dictatorship. Right-wing terror was deployed in an attempt both to provoke a violent reaction from the left and to keep the left distracted from its struggle against the authoritarian state. In Italy, during the 1970s and ’80s, the government actively colluded with neo-fascist terror cells (most notoriously in the Bologna massacre of 1980) in order to shape the social contours of a “civil war” that would distract the left from its only real objective: revolution.

Following last week’s Golden Dawn attack on a group of Communists who were putting up posters for a KKE youth festival, Dimitris Psarras — a writer who has followed the rise of Golden Dawn ever since the fall of the military junta in 1974 — told The Guardian that the neo-Nazi organization was deliberately pursuing such a strategy of tension: “Their agenda, clearly, is to create a climate of civil war, a divide where people have to choose between leftists and rightists.” Golden Dawn’s party members and even its members of parliament often speak in exactly those terms. Last year, Golden Dawn MP Ilias Panagiotaros told Paul Mason that “there is already civil war”:

Greek society is ready — even though no-one likes this — to have a fight: a new type of civil war. On the one side there will be nationalists like us, and Greeks who want our country to be as it used to be, and on the other side illegal immigrants, anarchists and all those who have destroyed Athens several times.


In this sense, it is utterly absurd to speak of the far-left and the far-right facing off in a civil war that threatens to undermine Greek democracy. Apart from the obvious point that the centrist elite undermined democracy a long time ago, the sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset already showed back in 1970 that the horseshoe theory of political extremism is simply nonsense. Fascism, Lipset observed, is in fact the extremism of the center. Rather than the far-left and far-right bending off from the center and approaching one another in their violent means and authoritarian ends, fascism is actually the extremist perversion of liberalism, with which it shares a great aversion for the emancipatory struggles of the poor and excluded, as well as the political goal of bringing the disaffected middle class back into power.

Moreover, there’s nothing more rabidly violent and thoroughly terrorist in Greece right now than the economic policies of the “centrist” government itself. We already have plenty of evidence that austerity kills: HIV rates are up, child mortality rates are up, suicide rates are up, and with the health budget slashed in half, people are literally dying from the most preventable diseases just because they can’t get their hands on basic drugs. The measures are meant to function like shock therapy: for the past year, the people have been caught in the headlights, paralyzed by the intensity of the assault on their livelihoods. 120.000 young people simply fled the country. The millions who remain increasingly suffer from depression and anxiety.



But following the murder of Pavlos, coinciding with the resurgence of a number of struggles in the public sector, the anger is starting to brew over into the streets again. It has now become clear that the fascist para-state is the elite’s last bulwark against the rage of the masses. To further their strategy of tension and defend the capitalist state from its revolutionary adversaries, Golden Dawn will try to drag the left down into civil war with it. We must not allow that to happen. However disgusting and dangerous these neo-Nazi pigs may be, the left has bigger fish to fry. As long as austerity-loving bankers and politicians run free in government, fascists will roam the streets.

And so, if fascism is capitalism plus murder, then there is only one way to honor the memory of our murdered anti-fascist compañero: by confronting the capitalist state head on. Now is not the time to get distracted by Golden Dawn’s reactionary rhetoric of civil war. The rise of fascism is a symptom, not the cause, of the crisis that finance capital has forced onto Greek society. It’s time to go back on the offensive and remind ourselves of our one and only real objective in this struggle: to put an end to the capitalist terror that has bred the murderous climate in which Pavlos lost his life. This is our only objective: to continue the revolution for which he died. Pavlos vive!

This is from ROAR magazine. I am having great 'puter problems today and will provide link at the nearest opportunity.

EDIT: here's the link:

http://roarmag.org/2013/09/golden-dawn-myth-two-extremes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+roarmag+%28ROAR+Magazine%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail

This is an excellent piece.


Rather than the far-left and far-right bending off from the center and approaching one another in their violent means and authoritarian ends, fascism is actually the extremist perversion of liberalism, with which it shares a great aversion for the emancipatory struggles of the poor and excluded, as well as the political goal of bringing the disaffected middle class back into power.

Moreover, there’s nothing more rabidly violent and thoroughly terrorist in Greece right now than the economic policies of the “centrist” government itself. We already have plenty of evidence that austerity kills

I get it, now. But the working class has to stand up against the ruling elite in Greece and how that is done is the problem. While Nazi thugs in the government employ murder from the alley-ways, the government will imprison workers; while Nazi thugs in government employ burn homes in working class neighborhoods, the government will continue to oppress the workers. It is a pincher movement that cannot be borne. Unbelievable in its savagery...

At this point you come to expect the KKE to exhibit their trademark lucidity and clearheadedness. Nevertheless, this is a benchmark test for them, and they have passed the preliminary exam with flying colors. Sadly, it only gets tougher from here and they will need all of the material support possible.

Here Golden Dawn outs itself:


Greek shipowners prefer to take their ships to be repaired in neighbouring Turkey or Romania where labour costs are a quarter and a seventh lower, respectively. A video uploaded on YouTube shows the Golden Dawn MPs, Yiannis Lagos, Nikos Michos and Ilias Panagiotaros, and a handful of local supporters in the shipyard canteen discussing the chronic unemployment in the area. In the video Golden Dawn are heard to denounce the PAME-dominated Metalworkers Union of Piraeus, which has “held the yard to ransom and has chased shipowners away as result”.

“We are with the shipowners, we depend on them”, said one Golden Dawn supporter. In a statement at the end of the video, Panagiotaros said, “The abscess that exists here is causing all the problems... PAME will come to an end”.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/08/14/gree-a14.html

What craven scum, it cannot be clearer as to whose side they are on.

These the only passages worth quoting in an otherwise typical WSWS anti-communist rant.

Golden Dawn activities sweep through Greek police ranks; Army to follow?

Greek government is indeed alarmed about the activities of extreme-right Golden Dawn following the murder of left rapper Pavlos Fyssas by a GD member last week. It seems that the political leadership of the Greek police pushed at least two high ranking police officers to resignation on the occasion of investigation about the activities of the extreme-right party.

In an unprecedented case for Greek realities (nobody resigns easily…), two senior Greek police officers resigned on Monday and four local officers have been suspended.


The Public Order Ministry said on Monday that the general inspector for police in southern Greece, lieutenant general Yiannis Dikopoulos and the general director for police in central Greece, major general Apostolos Kaskanis, had tendered their resignations over “personal reasons”. No more details were given.

The police has also launched an investigation into a raid on Golden Dawn offices in Halkida, Evia, on Friday after it was deemed that some of the party’s members who should have been arrested were allowed to go free.

Four officers – the local police chief, the head of the Halkida precinct, the duty officer and a patrol officer – have been suspended pending the outcome of the probe. (ekathimerini)



Last Friday outside Golden Dawn headquarters in Halkida, located just a few hundred meters from the headquarters of the Police Directorate of Euboea. There were people who brought items included in the gun laws (bats, etc.). Greek media report that local police authorities did not interfere as they should have as they should have and neither did they informed the Greek Police Headquarters in Athens.

GD members claim police, army personnel has connection with GD

Soon after the murder of Pavlos Fyssas, alleged members of Golden Dawn have claimed in anonymous interviews that supporters and members of the group within the police often helped protect Golden Dawn from raids.

They also claimed that GD ‘assault squads’ have been trained by active and retired personnel of special units of the Greek Armed Forces, like the Marines.

Daily To Ethnos that has been publishing these interviews posted some pictures on Monday showing a night training of a Golden Dawn ‘assault squads’. The training allegedly took place short before the general elections of May 2012.

Ethnos: “The screenshots show one of the assault squads during a night training. The general supervision is being held by somebody whom those who circulated the pictures try to protect. Thus serious questions have been raised about his (the supervisor) professional capacity, particularly its relationship with the Greek army. Jogging, pushups, combat knives, bats, hoods and masks: the nightmarish scene that refers directly to a paramilitary organization.”

On Sunday Defence Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos issued a statement in which he makes known that he required from the leadership of the Greek Armed Forces to investigate allegations that members of GAF were involved with the Golden Dawn activities.

Over the past months, especially after Golden Dawn won entrance in the parliament in June 2012, there have been many allegations about police secret cooperation with Golden Dawn.

Many wonder why the political system decided to launch investigations now. Most probably the death of a Greek man was really shocking to the government.

http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2013/09/23/golden-dawn-activities-sweep-through-greek-police-ranks-army-to-follow/

Apparently the ruling class ain't ready for civil war, perhaps they're afraid that they'll lose.

Apparently the ruling class ain't ready for civil war, perhaps they're afraid that they'll lose.

Maybe the Emperor or his Secretary of State, "Night of the Living Kerry", explained to them that openly fascist front guys were bad PR, especially when you can achieve the same results with "good, honest, Liberalism"...

Maybe the Emperor or his Secretary of State, "Night of the Living Kerry", explained to them that openly fascist front guys were bad PR, especially when you can achieve the same results with "good, honest, Liberalism"...

The plot thickens...


In a chilling and sinister demonstration of the theory of “the two extremes,” Fyssas’s killing has emboldened the Greek government to ready a new law that designates both the Golden Dawn and leftwing parties as illegal and to expel them from parliament.

http://www.progressive.org/winking-at-greek-fascism?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+progressivefeed+%28The+Progressive+Main+Feed%29

So there is method to the madness, a bit of applied 'false equivelancy' to kill two birds with one stone.

As you posted above, Golden Dawn will be replaced, likely by 'better', fascists. Kinda like a state sponsored Night of the Long Knives, who needs a brutish SA when ya got the natty SS waiting in the wings?

ATHENS, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Greek public sector workers went on strike for the second time in a week on Tuesday, shutting schools and leaving hospitals with skeleton staff, as inspectors from Greece's foreign lenders checked if the country was meeting its bailout targets.

From municipal police to teachers, workers began a 48-hour strike against plans to cut thousands of public sector jobs, public anger fuelled by the killing of an anti-racism rapper by a supporter of the far-right Golden Dawn party.

ADEDY, the public sector umbrella union which organised the walkout, said government efforts to reduce the 600,000 strong civil service was "the most merciless plan" to eliminate workers' rights.

The government has dubbed the plan a "mobility scheme", meaning workers will have to find work in another department within eight months or be laid off. The workers say the government is firing them indiscriminately at a time when Greece in enduring its worst peacetime crisis and record unemployment.

"We call on the workers ... the self-employed, the unemployed, the pensioners, the youth and everyone affected by these policies to give their resounding presence," ADEDY said.

Various groups, among them teachers, municipal police and doctors, planned to march towards the main Syntagma square later on Tuesday.

The trio of the country's European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank, which began their review this week, were due to visit Administrative Reform Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Tuesday.

The latest review by the lenders, which have bailed out Greece with more than 240 billion euros ($323.82 billion), will determine the size of a third bailout to keep the country afloat and is expected to last at least until the end of next month.

Backed by a vocal anti-bailout opposition which has openly called on citizens to take to the streets to overthrow the government, unions have stepped up protests in recent months.

Scores of municipal police dressed in black instead of their traditional green uniforms staged a mock funeral in Athens on Monday and somberly marched behind a hearse across the city centre, carrying wreaths and singing psalms.

But the latest labour action has also turned into a protest to mark the fatal stabbing of Pavlos Fissas by a self-proclaimed supporter of the far-right Golden Dawn party last week.

ADEDY and its private sector union GSEE, which represent about 2.5 million workers, have brought people to the streets repeatedly since the crisis broke out in 2009 and plan to stage an anti-fascism rally in the Syntagma Square on Wednesday.

Syriza called on Greeks to join the rally "to defend democracy, dignity and civilisation".

"A massive presence will be the most resounding condemnation of the Golden Dawn murderers of Pavlos Fissas," Syriza said.

Golden Dawn, Greece's third most popular party, denies involvement in the killing and says the 45-year-old attacker, who has been charged with murder, was not a member.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/24/greece-strike-idUSL5N0HJ3LV20130924

ATHENS, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Greek public sector workers went on strike for the second time in a week on Tuesday, shutting schools and leaving hospitals with skeleton staff, as inspectors from Greece's foreign lenders checked if the country was meeting its bailout targets.

From municipal police to teachers, workers began a 48-hour strike against plans to cut thousands of public sector jobs, public anger fuelled by the killing of an anti-racism rapper by a supporter of the far-right Golden Dawn party.

ADEDY, the public sector umbrella union which organised the walkout, said government efforts to reduce the 600,000 strong civil service was "the most merciless plan" to eliminate workers' rights.

The government has dubbed the plan a "mobility scheme", meaning workers will have to find work in another department within eight months or be laid off. The workers say the government is firing them indiscriminately at a time when Greece in enduring its worst peacetime crisis and record unemployment.

"We call on the workers ... the self-employed, the unemployed, the pensioners, the youth and everyone affected by these policies to give their resounding presence," ADEDY said.

Various groups, among them teachers, municipal police and doctors, planned to march towards the main Syntagma square later on Tuesday.

The trio of the country's European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank, which began their review this week, were due to visit Administrative Reform Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Tuesday.

The latest review by the lenders, which have bailed out Greece with more than 240 billion euros ($323.82 billion), will determine the size of a third bailout to keep the country afloat and is expected to last at least until the end of next month.

Backed by a vocal anti-bailout opposition which has openly called on citizens to take to the streets to overthrow the government, unions have stepped up protests in recent months.

Scores of municipal police dressed in black instead of their traditional green uniforms staged a mock funeral in Athens on Monday and somberly marched behind a hearse across the city centre, carrying wreaths and singing psalms.

But the latest labour action has also turned into a protest to mark the fatal stabbing of Pavlos Fissas by a self-proclaimed supporter of the far-right Golden Dawn party last week.

ADEDY and its private sector union GSEE, which represent about 2.5 million workers, have brought people to the streets repeatedly since the crisis broke out in 2009 and plan to stage an anti-fascism rally in the Syntagma Square on Wednesday.

Syriza called on Greeks to join the rally "to defend democracy, dignity and civilisation".

"A massive presence will be the most resounding condemnation of the Golden Dawn murderers of Pavlos Fissas," Syriza said.

Golden Dawn, Greece's third most popular party, denies involvement in the killing and says the 45-year-old attacker, who has been charged with murder, was not a member.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/24/greece-strike-idUSL5N0HJ3LV20130924

Now the trick is to turn attention from the symptom to the disease.

Golden Dawn loses support after rapper killing: poll

Support for Greece’s Golden Dawn has fallen by 2.5 percentage points after the fatal stabbing of an anti-racism rapper by a supporter of the far-right party and most Greeks believe it threatens democracy, a poll showed on Monday.

The poll by Rass for the Eleftheros Typos newspaper, conducted on September 19-21, put support for Golden Dawn at 5.8%, down from 8.3% on September 15.

Pavlos Fissas was stabbed to death late on 17 September after being ambushed by a group of unknown attackers, triggering protests in cities across Greece, where economic hardship has divided society.

A man who said he had a “loose” connection with the party has been charged. Golden Dawn, which remains Greece’s third most popular party, has denied involvement.

Asked if they believed Golden Dawn was involved in the killing, 77.8% of Greeks surveyed said yes and 13.5% said no. Most – 57.6% - said they believed the presence of Golden Dawn in political life threatened democracy.

Golden Dawn rose from being a fringe party to win 18 seats in the assembly in a June election, the first time it has entered parliament.

It campaigned on a staunchly anti-immigrant and anti-corruption agenda and has since won support from Greeks struggling through a deep recession by holding frequent “Greeks-only” food handouts.

The party, with an emblem resembling a swastika, denies accusations of attacks on immigrants. Its members have been seen giving Nazi-style salutes but the party rejects the neo-Nazi label.

Asked to describe the party, 47.5 of respondents called it a “fascist organisation”, 30.7 percent called it a “criminal organisation under the guise of a political party”, and 16.9 percent described it as a “populist nationalist movement”.

http://newseurope.me/2013/09/24/golden-dawn-loses-support-rapper-killing-poll/

Greek anti-fascist rally turns violent

Police have clashed with anti-fascist protesters in Athens during a rally turned violent, triggered by the murder of a musician at the hands of a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi.

Tear gas and stun grenades were used by Greek riot police to disperse about three dozen men who threw Petrol bombs at the security officers in front of the Golden Dawn Party headquarters by thousands of anti-fascist activists. Some protesters also vandalized shops as police lines prevented them from reaching the headquarters.


Around 10,000 left-wing supporters called for the demonstration on Wednesday after 34-year-old musician Pavlos Fyssas was stabbed to death on September 18 by unemployed driver George Roupakias, a Golden Dawn member. Roupakias said he was acting in self-defence when he killed Fyssas.

“Pavlos is alive, crush the Nazis,” the protesters chanted as they marched towards the Golden Dawn office. In other cities including Thessaloniki similar rallies also took place.




Protesters hold on September 25, 2013 a banner featuring a picture of the murdered anti-fascist musician, 34-year-old musician Pavlos Fyssas, and reading: "Pavlos lives, crack the fascists", during a massive demonstration in Athens heading toward the offices of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn (AFP Photo)

The killing of the musician has sparked a wave of protests that resulted in a crackdown by authorities on Golden Dawn members. The party has denied any role in the killing.


The raids on Golden Dawn offices followed after reports emerged that the organization was hiding weapons, and that the party was conducting military-style training activities.

Golden Dawn activists have made headlines for frequently attacking immigrants. Earlier this month, they were accused of injuring nine people during an attack on Communist party members.



Demonstrators face riot police on September 25, 2013 during clashes in Athens (AFP Photo)

Allegations of police collaboration with the party have also been raised after failure to investigate their alleged activities nationwide.


Two police generals and several other policemen on the island of Evia resigned from their posts on Monday, suspended after failing to probe a Golden Dawn office that allegedly stored weapons illegally.



Riot police move toward barricades left by protesters on September 25, 2013 after a massive demonstration in Athens (AFP Photo)

Golden Dawn and their leadership have openly shared their admiration for Adolf Hitler, although they deny being neo-Nazi. In Greece’s 2012 general elections the party received almost 7 per cent of the vote and secured 18 seats in Parliament.


Despite that electoral success, a poll conducted by the Alco company, published Wednesday, said that support for Golden Dawn has decreased to 6.8 percent after the musician’s killing, compared to 10.8 percent in June’s survey.

The question that remains is how Golden Dawn managed to propel itself to becoming Greece’s third largest party.




RT’s Lucy Kafanov was on the streets of Athens talking to people on both sides of the fence. One anti-fascist activist claims the extreme party “has created a climate of fear, of bigotry and of racism. They’ve collaborated with Nazis many times and have blood on [their] hands, this is why we say down with this government and down with Golden Dawn.”

Giorgios Vathis, who claims to be one of the group’s oldest members, however, claims the exact opposite when asked about the ideological side of things.

“It’s the only party that helps pensioners, poor people, and desperate Greeks who are suffering in this crisis. We’re not extremists and we aren’t against anyone,” he says.

After re-iterating the party’s stance that immigrant shop-keepers should not be allowed to syphon money out of impoverished Greeks, he quickly tried to dispel any notion that Golden Dawn has anything to do with Nazism, saying the right-hand salute is purely incidental.

“What’s wrong with this? There’s nothing wrong with this salute. It’s just a way of saying hello. I do it myself.”

Golden Dawn is viewed as the country’s fastest growing political party. And the ideological rift between the ultra-left and ultra-right, which is evident in contradictory street graffiti messages, is unlikely to get better, because the real problem does not appear to stem from ideology, but economics, Kafanov believes.


http://rt.com/news/greece-clashes-anti-fascist-rally-360/

Any bets as to who this 'three dozen' of 10,000 were? Guess it's fun to play 'dress up', one day you're a nazi, the next an 'anarchist' and the day after that a cop.

“What’s wrong with this? There’s nothing wrong with this salute. It’s just a way of saying hello. I do it myself.”

And the toothbrush mustache? It is just a style - lots of people wear this kind of cookie-duster! The blood all over my jackboots? Why I must have stepped in something...

While we cannot help but be happy that Golden Dawn is taking it on the chin gotta be careful what we wish for.


Greek police have arrested the leader of the far-right Golden Dawn party, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, on charges of forming a criminal organisation.

Three more Golden Dawn MPs, a party leader in an Athens suburb and 12 other people have also been arrested.

The arrests come amid anger over the murder on 18 September of anti-racist musician, Pavlos Fyssas.

A man held for the stabbing told police he was a Golden Dawn supporter, though the party strongly denies any link.

Not since the end of Greece's military dictatorship in 1974 has there been a mass arrest of MPs. It is an extraordinary clampdown by a government long accused of taking a soft touch towards Golden Dawn.

Some 154 racist attacks were recorded here last year and 104 so far this year - most attributed to Golden Dawn members. Two immigrants have been killed, again blamed on the party. But only now, after the killing of the hip hop artist Pavlos Fyssas, have authorities moved in hard and fast.

The government says it is this crime that has definitively exposed a direct chain of command to the party leadership, providing the basis for Golden Dawn to be classified as a criminal group.

The party has already had the immunity provided for Greek MPs lifted and one of those arrested on Saturday was tried earlier in the year in a separate incident. But with these arrests and several suspensions of police officers accused of links to Golden Dawn, the government has done more against the party this week than it has in the past year.
One of the MPs arrested on Saturday was party spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris.

Another, Ilias Panayiotaros, told reporters before giving himself up: "Shame on them, the people will lift Golden Dawn higher."

A number of other warrants are believed to have been issued. The arrests were made by the anti-terrorism unit.

Golden Dawn has called on its supporters to rally outside the police headquarters in Athens and has vowed to fight back.

A text message read: "We call upon everyone to support our moral and just struggle against the corrupt system!"

Some 200 Golden Dawn members later rallied at the police HQ in the capital.

'Bodyguard' held

The killing of Pavlos Fyssas, 34 - whose stage name was Killah P - has sparked protests in Athens and across Greece.

George Roupakias, 45, who said he was a supporter of Golden Dawn, was arrested. He was charged with voluntary manslaughter and illegal possession of a weapon.

The government launched a crackdown, including raids on Golden Dawn premises.

Two senior police officials resigned for "personal reasons" after the killing and another two were suspended. Seven other police officers were suspended.

Greek police also arrested one of their own colleagues who was reportedly working as a bodyguard for the party, during a raid on its offices in the western town of Agrinio on Tuesday.

The government also began an inquiry into the activities of Golden Dawn, which won nearly 7% of the vote in 2012 elections.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has vowed not to let the party "undermine" democracy, and government officials say it must now be treated as a "criminal organisation".

Golden Dawn, Greece's third most popular party, has accused the government of carrying out a witch-hunt over the Fyssas killing.

Mr Michaloliakos, 56, said last week: "We will exhaust any means within our legal constitutional rights to defend our political honour. If the country enters a cycle of instability, it is those who demonise Golden Dawn who will be responsible."

On Friday, Golden Dawn threatened to pull its 18 MPs out of the 300-strong Hellenic Parliament.

Mr Samaras's coalition, which has 155 seats, would then face by-elections.

On Saturday, Mr Samaras ruled out the possibility of early elections, adding that the Golden Dawn case was "now in the hands of the justice system".

In recent months, Golden Dawn has been accused of perpetrating attacks on migrants and political opponents - including an attack on Communist Party members earlier this month which is said to have left nine people in hospital.

Golden Dawn officially denies being a neo-Nazi movement, though its badge resembles a swastika, some senior members have praised Adolf Hitler, and its members wear black T-shirts and combat trousers at anti-immigrant demonstrations.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24314319

This flexing of government/ruling class power opens the door for more of the same, and directed against the Left. Should KKE have an resurgence, as I expect, look for the government's sight to be trained upon them. The nazi/cop/"anarchist" morphs will be deployed to discredit them at every opportunity with the intention of them sharing the same fate as Golden Dawn. As I would not be fool enough to teach my grandmother to suck eggs there is no need to speculate on what KKE should do, they've been there and done that.

There is significant similarity here to the situation in Egypt.

Golden Dawn: can the elite kill the monster it created?

It seems that the Greek elite has decided to get rid of the neo-Nazi party following Pavlos’ killing. But can Pandora ever put the evil back in her box?

“Now, Master, You can dismiss Your slave…”

And so, just a few days after the assassination of Pavlos Fyssas — a.k.a Killah P — by the murderous “blackshirts” of Golden Dawn, it seems that the Greek elite has decided to get rid of the party and its dark structures. But can Dr. Frankenstein ever kill the monster he created? And can Pandora put the evil back into her box?

Pavlos’ assassination was the last drop for Greek society. And it seems it has set in motion mechanisms that will lead to the criminalization of Golden Dawn, and maybe even to its dissolution. A few days after the murder, and with Greek society still in shock and taking to the streets massively to demand justice and the end of Golden Dawn, both the Greek media and the government seem to have started taking the issue seriously, removing their previous direct or indirect support for the neo-Nazi party.

All of a sudden reports with interviews of ex-Golden Dawn members have started to appear in the Greek media. Newspapers and TV channels that previously dedicated pages and shows to the actions and the MPs of Golden Dawn — even presenting them in lifestyle shows with fake reportages, like the one in which Golden Dawn appeared to be protecting poor old women withdrawing their pensions at the banks (it appears that the “poor old lady” they selected for the reportage was… the mother of a local Golden Dawn candidate) — suddenly started publishing reports on the party’s “dark side”.

One newspaper even published a picture of Pavlos’ last moments on its front page, in which he appears dying in the arms of his girlfriend, stabbed by Golden Dawn thugs with the title: “I don’t forget fascism”. Other newspapers featured confessions of former Golden Dawn members, in which they admit that they were trained in army camps by former and current army officers; that the organization is in possession of illegal weapons, to be used “when the time comes”; that current police officers – “a lot of them”, one ex-member said — are members of Golden Dawn and cover it whenever the party gets into trouble, even providing party members with official classified police documents, including the eyewitness reports of Pavlos’ assassination.

It also appears — according to the same reports — that Pavlos Fyssas was a target of Golden Dawn because of his antifascist songs, and that the decision for his assassination came from above, from the MPs and the leader of the party who were informed and were deciding (ordering would be more precise) everything, and to whom the lower-ranking members are blindly obedient. At the same time, the country’s TV channels all of a sudden also started showing their public interviews with former members of Golden Dawn admitting to its murderous actions.

After these developments, the Greek government also finally reacted. The minister of public order, Mr Dendias, submitted a full folder with 32 Golden Dawn attacks to the district attorney of Areios Pagos (the highest court authority in the country) to examine the assaults and decide whether there are grounds for taking legal action against the party. At the same time, Dendias ordered the police authorities to examine the accusations regarding the relation between Golden Dawn and police officers, which led to the resignation of two high ranking police officers already. The minister of defense, Mr Avramopoulos has also demanded the army chief to investigate the relationship between current army officers and Golden Dawn, a case which — rumor has it — is also being examined by the secret intelligence services.

But… hold on a minute! We already knew all these things, didn’t we? The Greek antifascist movement has been shouting it for years! Videos of policemen collaborating with Golden Dawn have been appearing on YouTube for the past three years, while even on the day of the demonstration following the assassination of Pavlos one such video went viral on the web. At the same time, even the Golden Dawn MPs themselves have openly admitted that more than 50% of the Greek police are Golden Dawn voters and supporters, while the doctors and immigrant rights organizations of Greece have never stopped shouting about Golden Dawn’s murderous actions that have already cost several immigrants’ lives in the past years.

Also very well known is the case of the army’s special forces chanting racist slogans during a military parade in Athens. Yet both the media and the Greek government turned a blind eye back then, and not just that, but they were also praising the virtues of Golden Dawn and its MPs. A number of “artists” have also expressed positive opinions about Golden Dawn and were of course massively promoted by the Greek media, while the same is true for certain neoliberal politicians like the former minister of foreign affairs, Dora Bakoyianni. And so the questions arises: why were they turning a blind eye back then? And why have they decided to take action now?

The second question is easier to answer: because Pavlos’ assassination has awoken Greek society from its lethargy and made the government realize that the people will not accept Golden Dawn’s murderous actions anymore. A good indication of this is that Golden Dawn has postponed the launching of its new offices in Drama and Kavala in direct response to the popular outcry, while it has closed down its offices in Ierapetra (Crete) and is hiding its signboards from others.

At the same time, according to the latest polls, Golden Dawn’s popularity is in free fall, having collapsed to 5.8% from the almost 12% it was scoring just a few days before Pavlos’ assassination. Therefore it is easy to understand that Golden Dawn is now a “burned card” for the Greek corporate elite and political establishment (let’s not forget that the Greek newspapers and TV channels belong to a small number of conglomerates, many of which have family relations with — surprise, surprise — the country’s main political parties).

The first question is more difficult to answer, though: if the Greek media and government knew about the murderous actions of Golden Dawn, why did they decide to turn a blind eye to it until today? I argue that there are basically three reasons:

First, let’s not forget that only two years earlier, with the process that was set in motion with the occupation of Syntagma and the other squares of Greece, Greek society was radicalized to an unprecedented extent, endangering the representative two-party political system as well as the neoliberal policies promoted by successive governments. In its place, the movement of the squares demanded autonomy, horizontality and direct democracy. Neighborhoods all over the country experienced this “dream” through numerous neighborhood assemblies, while a number of local and national movements put the neoliberal policies of the Troika and the Greek governments into question. Golden Dawn played the role of stopping and distracting this radical process and re-directing it towards the struggle against fascism, which became the number one priority for the Greek left over the past two years.

Second, Golden Dawn appeared on numerous occasions as the protector of the owners’ interests, at times — like in the case of the shipyard workers of Perama — directly and violently attacking the left-wing workers’ unions. With a rhetoric of protecting “Greek” investments as long as “our ship-owners” keep employing Greek workers instead of immigrants, they have terrorized the Greek Workers’ Unions and have, in their own way, helped safeguard the political and corporate elite and push forward their neoliberal agenda.

Third, Golden Dawn was there to terrorize all free voices that were being raised against the country’s neoliberal and fascist downslide. As former Golden Dawn members have said in their interviews, Pavlos Fyssas was a target for his antifascist songs. And it is true that in the past years there was a sentiment of fear all over the country when it came to criticizing Golden Dawn. I have to admit here that even in the case of my little hip-hop group and our upcoming album, which has a number of antifa songs in it, we were concerned that we might become a target of or face threats by Golden Dawn.

It seems that after the assassination of Pavlos, though, the Greek elite has decided that Golden Dawn is not useful to them anymore, and has abandoned its former ally. At the same time, while the main opposition party of the left (SYRIZA) appeared to be surpassing the ruling conservative party (Nea Dimokratia) in the polls, it seems that the latter has decided to abandon its plan of forming a coalition with Golden Dawn — which they have admitted they had been considering — and dissolve the party instead. In order, of course, that they may take the credit for cracking down on Nazism, while stealing away the right-wing votes.

However now it is too late.

If the country’s elite and government had decided to counter Golden Dawn earlier — and they did know about its criminal actions way before — many human beings wouldn’t have been brutally beaten up in the streets of Athens and other cities of Greece. Many antifa activists wouldn’t have been tortured in the police headquarters and others wouldn’t have been injured by the fascists or their collaborators in the police during antifa demonstrations or direct actions. At the same time, the Greek left-wing movement would have been able to develop further its radical direct democratic proposition, and many neoliberal policies that led to the loss of jobs and lives (suicide rates have skyrocketed in Greece in the past years) may have been overturned. And, above all, Shehzad Luqman and Pavlos Fyssas would be alive today…

And one more thing: I don’t know to what extent it is still possible to overturn a process that both the government and the elites allowed to develop and reach deep into Greek society. I am talking here about Golden Dawn’s penetration into the police, the army, and the working-class neighborhoods of the country’s main cities. Even if the government dissolves the party and punishes its leaders, the bases of fascism are still there. There will still be numerous people poisoned by Golden Dawn’s murderous ideology, a development that will be very difficult to reverse.

The daughter of the party’s leader already wrote an open letter to its members asking them “to what extent they are ready to sacrifice themselves for the movement, to give their life.” At the same time, there are certain circles within the Greek police that are not very happy with the latest developments, and I am sure the same is true for the army. How are they going to react? And is Golden Dawn going to go down without a fight? At the end of the day, is it possible for Dr Frankenstein to kill the monster he created? And can Pandora put the evil back into her box?

These are questions that Greek society will have to answer. And the answers will not be easy.

Leonidas Oikonomakis is a contributing editor of ROAR Magazine, a rapper with Social Waste, and a PhD researcher at the European University Institute. He was also a friend of Pavlos.


http://roarmag.org/2013/09/golden-dawn-pavlos-fyssas-crackdown/

The Diversionary Crackdown on the Golden Dawn

In the midst of the international outcry against rising neo-Nazism and murderous attacks against foreign nationals and Greeks, the Greek government recently arrested several Parliament members (MPs) and other leaders of the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party.

It took the death of Pavlos Fyssas, an antifascist Greek rapper, to arouse the government from its self-imposed slumber.

It has suddenly realized that Golden Dawn is a “criminal organization… acting since 1987… and responsible for at least five murders,” per the report of the Greek Supreme.

Guns, along with large amounts of ammunition and cash, were confiscated from the homes and offices of the neo-Nazi party and its MPs. These same MPs, mind you, were entering the Greek parliament until now carrying weapons with nary a peep from the government.

The government also seized the cell phone records of the man charged with Fyssas’ murder, as well as the phone records of 300 Golden Dawn members, monitoring them for conversations implicating Golden Dawn Parliament members in the violence.

One of these officers, Demos Kouzilos of the National Intelligence Service, was himself appointed to investigate the “criminal organization” of the Golden Dawn. Kouzilos, a relative of one of the Golden Dawn’s MPs, was appointed by the Greek Minister of Public Order and Citizen Protection, Nikos Dendias.

Dendias is the very same man who not so long ago inaugurated his operation of arresting foreign nationals as “Operation Welcoming Zeus.” Under this plan, the police stopped and arrested men and women who looked foreign to them, tourists among them, detaining the people apprehended in one of several "closed hospitality centers"– incarceration camps with people “housed” in small metal containers in sizzling Greek summer heat, which led some of the detainees to attempt suicide.

It is not surprising that the government suddenly woke up. Only weeks prior, the government declared its complete failure to improve the Greek economy a “success story.” That “success story” was repeated incessantly amidst rising unemployment and the continuation of its plan to fire 14,000 more public employees by the end of the year. Other IMF and EU sponsored austerity measures continued as well – the closing or privatization of public utilities and other national industries, the sale of prime state-owned land and properties.

These ferocious austerity measures have brought unemployment into the highest in Europe. It is in this context that the arrest and prosecution of the Golden Dawn, following on international and national outcry, is a convenient diversion.

And the European Union is projecting yet another austerity memorandum for 2014 and new borrowing.

“Justice and stability, not elections,” declared Prime Minister Antonis Samaras as he left for a meeting at the United Nations and with IMF’s Director, Christine Lagarde, in the U.S. His press secretary, in the meantime, continued attacks on SYRIZA and its leader, Alexis Tsipras, repeating the tired but dangerous mantra of the “two extremes” versus the “stable” center.

If the mass arrest of the Golden Dawn’s MPs leads to their expulsion or their resignation from the Parliament, what then? The Greek constitution calls for special elections in the event of the removal from parliament of any of its members. Several MPs from the ruling parties observed, “If we go to elections for the Golden Dawn’s seats it is likely that SYRIZA will win these seats and that the government will fall.” If the government does fall, this would bring on general elections.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Samaras assured the visiting representatives of IMF and EU that no general elections would be held. This ensures the continuation of austerity, the dismantling of worker rights and of the social safety net, and the privatization of public services and utilities.

Perhaps it is possible that Greece will yet choose a new left government. Then Europe may be forced to move away from the harsh austerity programs that have impoverished hard-working people, shuttered factories, destroyed countries, and ushered in the Golden Dawn.

http://www.progressive.org/diversionary-crackdown-on-golden-dawn?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+progressivefeed+%28The+Progressive+Main+Feed%29

If it's a diversion it's not much of one, it will have no effect on hungry bellies, unmet medical needs or eviction notices.

I suppose that someone from TheProgressive would think SYRIZA 'left', a very low bar they have there.

A philosophical interlude:


By Alain Badiou

I begin with a feeling, an affect, which is perhaps personal, perhaps unjustified, but which I nevertheless feel, given the information at my disposal: a feeling of general political impotence. What is currently happening in Greece is something like a concentrate of this feeling.

Of course, the courage and tactical inventiveness of progressive and anti-fascist demonstrators is cause for enthusiasm. Such things, moreover, are thoroughly necessary. But novel? No, not at all. They are the invariant features of every real mass movement: egalitarianism, mass democracy, the invention of slogans, bravery, the speed of reactions … We saw all of these same things, undertaken with the same energy – joyful and always a little anxious – in May '68, in France. We have seen them more recently in Tahrir Square in Egypt. Indeed, these things must have already been at work in the times of Spartacus or Thomas Münzer.

Let us set out, provisionally, from another point of departure.

Greece is a country with a very long history, one of universal significance. It is a country, whose resistance to successive oppressions and occupations has a particular historical density. It's a country where the communist movement, including the form of armed struggle, has been very powerful. A country where, even today, the youth set an example by sustaining massive and tenacious revolts. A country where, without a doubt, the classic reactionary forces are very well organised, but where there is also the courageous and ample resource of the great popular movements. A country where there are certainly formidable fascist organisations, but also a leftist party with an apparently solid electoral and militant base.

Now, everything in this country happens as if nothing could stop the utter domination of capitalism, unleashed by its own crisis. As if, under the direction of ad hoc committees and servile governments, the country had no alternative but to follow the savagely anti-popular decrees of the European bureaucracy. Indeed, with regard to the questions posed and their European "solutions", the resistance movement looks more like a delaying tactic than the bearer of a genuine political alternative.

Such is the great lesson of the times, inviting us not only to support the courage of the Greek people with all our strength, but also to join them in meditating on what must be thought and done so that this courage should not be, in a despairing way, a useless courage.

For what is striking – in Greece above all, but elsewhere as well, particularly in France – is the manifest impotence of the progressive forces to compel even the slightest meaningful retreat of the economic and state powers that are seeking to submit the people unreservedly to the new (though also long-standing and fundamental) law of thoroughgoing liberalism.

Not only are the progressive forces making no headway, and failing to score even a limited success, but also the forces of fascism have been growing and, against the illusory backdrop of a xenophobic and racist nationalism, now claim to lead the opposition to the European administrations' decrees.

My feeling is that the root cause of this impotence is not, at bottom, the people's inertia, a lack of courage, or a majority support for "necessary evils". Many testimonies have shown us that the resources for a vigorous and massive popular resistance exist. Nevertheless, no new thinking of politics has emerged on a mass scale from these attempts, no new vocabulary has emerged from the rhetoric of protest and the union bosses have finally managed to convince everyone that we must wait … for elections.

I think that what we are experiencing today is instead that the majority of the political categories activists are trying to use to think and transform our current situations are, as they now stand, largely inoperative.

After the sweeping movements of the 1960s and 1970s, we have inherited a very long counter-revolutionary period, economically, politically and ideologically. This counter-revolution has effectively destroyed the confidence and power that were once able to commit popular consciousness to the most elementary words of emancipatory politics – words, to cite a few at random, like "class struggle", "general strike", "revolution", "mass democracy"', and many others. The key word of "communism", which dominated the political stage since the beginning of the 19th century, is itself henceforth confined to a sort of historical infamy. That the equation "communism equals totalitarianism" should come to appear as natural and be unanimously accepted is an indication of how badly revolutionaries failed during the disastrous 1980s. Of course, we also cannot avoid an incisive and severe criticism of what the socialist states and communist parties in power, especially in the Soviet Union, had become. But this criticism should be our own. It should nourish our own theories and practices, helping them to progress, and not lead to some kind of morose renunciation, throwing out the political baby with the historical bathwater. This has led to an astonishing state of affairs: regarding a historical episode of capital importance for us, we have adopted, practically without restriction, the point of view of the enemy. And those who haven't done so have simply persevered in the old lugubrious rhetoric, as if nothing had happened.

Of all the victories of our enemy, this symbolic victory is among the most important.

Back in the day of the old communisms, we used to heap mockery on what we called langue de bois, or hackneyed, cliched language – empty words and pompous adjectives.


Of course, of course. But the existence of a common language is also that of a shared idea. The efficacy of mathematics in the sciences – and it cannot be denied that mathematics is a magnificent langue de bois – has everything to do with the fact that it formalises the scientific idea. The ability to quickly formalise the analysis of a situation and the tactical consequences of that analysis. This is no less required in politics. It is a sign of strategic vitality.

Today, one of the great powers of the official democratic ideology is precisely that it has, at its disposal, a langue de bois that is spoken in every medium and by every one of our governments without exception. Who could believe that terms like "democracy", "freedoms", "human rights", "balanced budget", "reforms", and so on, are anything other than elements of an omnipresent langue de bois? We are the ones, we militants without a strategy of emancipation, who are (and who have been for some time now) the real aphasics! And it is not the sympathetic and unavoidable language of movementist democracy that will save us. "Down with this or that", "all together we will win", "get out" "resistance!", "it is right to rebel" … This is capable of momentarily summoning forth collective affects, and, tactically, this is all very useful – but it leaves the question of a legible strategy entirely unresolved. This is too poor a language for a situated discussion of the future of emancipatory actions.

The key to political success certainly lies in the force of rebellion, its scope and courage. But also in its discipline, and in the declarations that it is capable of – declarations having to do with a positive strategic future, and that reveal a new possibility that remained invisible amid the enemy's propaganda. This is why the existence of sweeping popular movements does not by itself furnish a political vision. What cements a movement on the basis of individual affects is always of a negative character: the sort of thing that proceeds from abstract negations, like "down with capitalism", or "stop the layoffs", or "no to austerity", or "down with the European troika'", which have strictly no other effect than provisionally soldering the movement with the negative frailty of its affects; as for more specific negations, since their target is precise and they bring together different strata of the population, like "down with Mubarak", during the Arab spring, they can indeed achieve a result, but they can never construct the politics of that result, as we see today in Egypt and in Tunisia, where reactionary religious parties reap the rewards of the movement, to which they have no true relation.


For every politics becomes the regimentation of what it affirms and proposes, and not of what it negates or rejects. A politics is an active and organised conviction, a thought in action that indicates unseen possibilities. Watchwords like "resistance!" are certainly suitable for bringing individuals together, but they also risk making such an assembly nothing more than a joyful and enthusiastic mixture of historical existence and political frailty, only to become, once the enemy (who is far better politically, discursively and governmentally equipped) wins the day, a bitter redoubling and sterile repetition of failure.

It's not in the contagion of a negative affect of resistance that we might find what it takes to compel a serious retreat of the reactionary forces that, today, seek to disintegrate every form of thought and action that refuses to follow them. It is in the shared discipline of a common idea and the increasingly widespread usage of a homogeneous language.

The reconstruction of such a language is a crucial imperative. It is to this end that I have sought to reintroduce, redefine and reorganise everything that hinges on the word "communism". The word "communism" denotes three fundamental things. First, it denotes the analytic observation according to which, in today's dominant societies, freedom, whose democratic fetishisation we're all familiar with, is, in fact, entirely dominated by property. "Freedom" is nothing but the freedom to acquire every possible commodity without any pre-established limit, and the power to do "what one wants" is strictly measured by the extent of this acquisition. Someone who has lost any possibility of acquiring something does not, as a matter of fact, have any kind of freedom, as is plain to see, for instance, with the "vagabonds" that the English liberals of rising capitalism executed by hanging, without any qualms. This is the reason why Marx, in the Manifesto, declares that all the injunctions of communism can, in a sense, be reduced to just one: the abolition of private property.

Next, "communism" signifies the historical hypothesis according to which it is not necessary that freedom be ruled by property, and human societies be directed by a strict oligarchy of powerful businessmen and their servants in politics, the police, the military and the media. A society is possible in which what Marx calls "free association" predominates, where productive labour is collectivised, where the disappearance of the great non-egalitarian contradictions (between intellectual and manual labour, between town and country, between men and women, between management and labour, etc) is under way, and where decisions that concern everyone are really everyone's business. We should treat this egalitarian possibility as a principle of thought and action, and not let go of it.

Finally, "communism" designates the need for an international political organisation. It endeavours to set people's inventive thinking in motion, to construct, in a fashion unalloyed with the existing state, a power internal to any given situation. The goal is for this power to be capable of bending the real in the direction prescribed by the tying together of principles with the active subjectivity of all who have the will to transform the situation in question.

The word "communism" thus names the complete process by which freedom is freed from its non-egalitarian submission to property. That this word has been the one that our enemies have most doggedly opposed has to do with the fact that they cannot endure this process, which would indeed destroy their freedom, the norm of which is fixed by property. If that is what our enemies detest above all, then it is with its rediscovery that we must begin.

Have these verbal exercises taken us far afield from Greece and the concrete urgency of the situation? Perhaps. However, a politics [une politique] is always the encounter between the discipline of ideas and the surprise of circumstances. My wish is for Greece to be, for us all, the universal site of such an encounter.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/03/greek-anti-fascism-protests-left
bolding added

Pretty good advice, given the origin.

..Mass demonstrations of PAME: No fear and no illusions



Thousands of demonstrators, workers, young people, unemployed and pensioners, flooded the centre of Athens on Saturday 5 October, as well as dozens of other cities all over Greece, in militant rallies and marches, organized by the All-workers’ Militant Front (PAME).

The mass and combative march of PAME in Athens reached Syntagma Square, outside the Greek Parliament. These demonstrations were organized against the political line of the ND-PASOK government, with the demands:

•The signing of Collective Bargaining Agreements together with the National Pay Agreement and the abolition of the anti-worker laws regarding contracts.
•Protection of the unemployed, unemployment benefit and medical cover.
•Abolition of the anti-social security laws, the abolition of the cuts and the return of the 13th and 14th pension, the return of the pension funds stolen by the state and the employers.
•Reversal of the dismissals in the public sector, cessation of dismissals in the private sector.
•Funds for the cover of basic needs in Education, Health, Welfare.
•Abolition of all the heavy taxes, prevention of the foreclosures and auctions at the expense of the popular families.
At the same time the demonstrations took on the character of a clear condemnation of the criminal activity of the fascist organization of Golden Dawn. The demonstrators maintained a minute’s silence in the memory of Pavlos Fyssas, who was murdered by Golden Dawn.

Statement of the GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas

The GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas, made the following statement at the demonstration of PAME in Omonia:

“The only hope and prospect is the rapid regroupment of the labour and people’s movement, the organization of the people’s struggle, the promotion of the people’s alliance between the working class, the employees, the unemployed, the urban self-employed, the poor farmers, the youth, the women. It is the joining of forces with the class-oriented trade union movement, PAME, with the other rallies, cooperating with and strengthening the KKE with the perspective of people’s power, in a direction of struggle against the monopolies, against the rotten capitalist system.

A prerequisite for the people to really have the power is the socialization of the monopolies, the disengagement from the European Union, the unilateral cancellation of the debt. And of course a power which will be able to centrally plan the economy, to develop all the productive potential of the country to the benefit of the working class, to the benefit of our people.”

PAME: A pro-people management of capitalism does not exist

Giorgos Skiadiotis, member of the Executive Secretariat of PAME, at the beginning of his speech at the rally noted that the labour and people’s movement, the movement of the youth, has the strength to isolate, to smash and eradicate from the face of the earth the fascist formation of Golden Dawn. As he said characteristically:” The fascist criminal formation can be smashed, if it is understood by every working man and woman who is suffering that Golden Dawn has nothing to do with the worries and problems of the people. It is a force that has been prepared and trained to carry out violent acts, to intimidate, to carry out crimes. It is a racist, mafia organization. Capital created it, funds it and uses it (…)

Golden Dawn struggles for precisely the opposite of what we and the workers as a whole are struggling for. We are struggling for decent salaries and wages, while they are on the side of the employers so that the wages fall. We are struggling for trade unions freed from the influence of the employers and state, while they are in their service as a thuggish mechanism. We are struggling to unite the workers, regardless of colour, religion, labour relations, against capital, while they are sowing racism, racial and religious hatred. We are trying in an organized way to resist employer and state violence, while they are a section of employer and state violence against the labour movement. We are struggling for the abolition for the system of exploitation, while they are one of the murderous tools of the system against us in order for it to maintain its power. (…)

We are also here, in this mass rally decided on and organized by PAME, in order to break and respond to the climate of fear on the one hand and the false hopes and illusions on the other that the government and the forces of capital are trying to impose.

Against the fear that if the measures are not implemented there will be worse to comes. Against the fear due to the authoritarianism and repression. Against the hopes that these measures will allegedly be the last. Against the hopes that through these measures we will have development and there will be better days for the workers. No fear and no illusions (…)

We are also here:

•Because the trade union movement, the people’s movement, can not have any other line of struggle apart from the unity against capital, the multinationals that are the source of evil, the common tyrant over the popular strata. It can not have the line of class collaboration. It can not have any other line apart from the line of rejecting all the managers of capitalism.
•Because life has confirmed it many times: there is no pro-people management of capitalism.
•Because we do not want to live with the lies, the utopia of a fairer capitalist development, an allegedly fairer distribution of the wealth that we produce, which the government and SYRIZA are promising. There can be no fair division between those who produce the wealth that belongs to them and the thieves that appropriate it.
We have proposed, to all the organizations of the working class, a general strike on the 23rd of October as an escalation of the struggle.

Because we must impede the new barbarity which is coming to add to the previous situation, making our lives an even worse hell, in every way. Because the employers and government, the foreign allies of the local beasts must feel our hot breath on their necks, at the moment when they are planning new nightmares for us. Because we must create the preconditions for the total overthrow of these measures and the forces that promoted them. All the trade unions share the obligation to take position regarding our proposal and for it to be a positive one. All the workers must take a strict stance in relation to trade unions and trade unionists who will refuse our proposal.

Some seek through alleged indefinite strikes to impede the measures and overthrow the government. Without discussing with the workers, without the right preparation, without alliances. They lead the mobilizations to degeneration in a very few days and of course they lead the workers to disillusionment, to demobilization and to the even greater consolidation of the government and government coalition.

We are talking about yesterday’s stooges which comprise the majority in GSEE and ADEDY, “Independent Intervention” and ANTARSYA, whose adventurism and anti-PAME fury know no bounds.

Up until the realization of the strike, we want to have discussed, if possible, with all the workers, all the people. We want to have integrated thousands more into the trade unions and thousands to take part in the general meetings and to decide. We want on that day for all the factories to shut down, with working men and women themselves at the gates. For the streets to be flooded with working men and women from the factories, and the services. For millions of unemployed, as well as women and immigrants to be together with us on the streets. For the self-employed to be with us who are suffering without a day’s bread, without income, the poor farmers who are having new nooses wrapped around their necks.

If we achieve all this, if the strike is a step in this direction, then the domestic and foreign tyrants will lose their sleep.”

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Mass-demonstrations-of-PAME-No-fear-and-no-illusions/

Shooting kills 2 Golden Dawn members in Greece

Saturday, November 02, 2013



ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A drive-by shooting killed two members of Greece's Nazi-inspired Golden Dawn party and wounded one outside a party office in Athens on Friday night, in what officials are treating as a likely far-left domestic terrorist attack.

The government and opposition parties quickly condemned the attack, which the left-wing main opposition Syriza said "targets democracy" in Greece.

The two victims, aged 22 and 27, were shot at close range from a motorcycle carrying two men, Golden Dawn lawmaker Georgios Germenis told The Associated Press.

"A man got off a motorcycle wearing a helmet and shot them," he said, adding the attack was captured on a security camera at the party office in Athens' Neo Iraklio suburb.

A third man, aged 29, was taken to hospital with severe gunshot wounds.

The shooting occurred amid a government crackdown on Golden Dawn following the September 17 fatal stabbing of an anti-fascist musician in Athens. A Golden Dawn supporter has been arrested and charged with murder. The party's leader and two of its lawmakers have been jailed pending trial on charges of forming a criminal group. The party has denied any wrongdoing.

Golden Dawn, which rose from obscurity during Greece's financial crisis, won 18 of Parliament's 300 seats in last year's elections and is now polling as the recession-plagued nation's third most popular political party.

Police said no arrests were made and the counterterrorism squad has taken over the investigation. There has been no claim of responsibility, but Greece still has active far-left and anarchist extremist groups that have claimed a string of shootings and bombings that killed two policemen and a journalist.

http://m.jamaicaobserver.com/mobile/news/Shooting-kills-2-Golden-Dawn-members-in-Greece_15373553

Ya just know who is going to get blamed for this, KKE. Probably a police hit, wringing some last use out of the disgarded(?) nazis. There is a law proposed to outlaw all "extremist" parties and maybe this act was perpetrated to that end. This despite the fact that this sort of thing ain't their style, since the end of WWII, anyways.

..The “wolf” of the monopolies and its leftwing “sheep’s clothing”

Comment of the International Relations Section of the CC of the KKE on current issues

There is an attempt by the Greek government to combine the exposure of the criminal activity of the Nazi organization “Golden Dawn” in Greece with the theory of the “Two Extremes”, i.e. the unacceptable equation of communism with fascism.

Nevertheless, the expose which has been published by the newspaper ‘Rizospastis” has once again demonstrated that issue is not a narrowly Greek issue, but has European dimensions. The newspaper presented a public document that shows that European Union (EU) is providing great deal of money in order to equate communism and the socialist countries with the Nazi barbarity. The relevant programme of the EU is addressed to municipalities, universities and NGOs which are invited to organize events with a reward of 100,000 Euros for every corresponding “project”. The programme is called “European Memory” and those responsible for it mention when describing it: “The subsidized projects reflect the causes of the emergence of totalitarian regimes in modern European history (Nazism, fascism, Stalinism and totalitarian communist regimes).”

This is a vulgar and despicable attempt and is doubly provocative. First of all, because it seeks to equate the humanist theory of scientific socialism with the creation of the capitalist system, Nazism-fascism and its atrocities, poisoning the people’s consciousness. To equate the attempt to construct a society without the exploitation of man by man with the cruelest inhuman and criminal form of bourgeois management, which was created by the dictatorship of the monopolies, i.e. capitalism. To equate the monster of fascism with those who played the leading role and finally were able to crush it, i.e. the communist movement headed by the Soviet Union.

It is doubly provocative because this money is being given at the same time when they are telling the employees and the pensioners that they must cut their salaries and pensions because “there is no money”. This money is being given when they are saying to the ill person that he must pay for treatment, because “there is no money”. This money is being given when the state, in the name of “cuts”, “fiscal discipline in the framework of the EU”, hands over entire sectors of social services (Education, Health, Social Security, Electricity, Water etc) into the hands of the monopoly groups.

The expose of the newspaper “Rizospastis” demonstrated in reality two things: Firstly, what really annoys the bourgeois system, which by distorting the historical memory is striving to amputate radical militant attitudes and to cut off (in the middle of the crisis of the system and the imposition of savage anti-people measures in order for the monopolies to suffer no damage) the popular strata from the leading workers, those who are always in the frontline of the people’s struggles, the communists. With the aim of keeping the people submissive so that nothing threatens their power.

The second thing that was demonstrated is that the EU also operates in the ideological field as an instrument to reinforce the power of the monopolies. As was stressed by 30 communist and workers’ parties from 27 countries in a new form of regional cooperation that was formed, the European communist “Initiative”, the EU “ is a choice of capital, it promotes measures to the benefit of the monopolies”.

In these conditions, the intention of the “European Left Party” (ELP), in which the opportunist parties of Europe participate, to support the candidacy of the head of the Greek party SYRIZA, Alexis Tsipras, for the Presidency of the Commission, i.e. the leadership of the EU, can only be considered to be a joke. A joke, not because the process for the choice of the President of the Commission is an endless procedure of backroom consultations and compromises amongst countries and EU parties, in order to balance the competition in the framework of the EU, but chiefly because with this aim the ELP is seeking to put “leftwing sheep’s clothing” on the “wolf” of the European monopolies, the EU, in the vain attempt which it has undertaken on the part of the capitalist system itself to “humanize” it.

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-wolf-of-the-monopolies-and-its-leftwing-sheeps-clothing/

The Communists saved Europe's sorry ass from the Nazis and this is how the "brave" Euros remember them? Scum, rotten scum...

Previously unknown Greek group claims responsibility for Golden Dawn shootings

A previously unknown anti-establishment group has claimed responsibility for killing two supporters of the far-right Golden Dawn party in a drive-by shooting in Athens earlier this month.

The Greek group, which calls itself the “Militant People's Revolutionary Forces”, said the attack was in retaliation for the fatal stabbing of anti-fascism rapper Pavlos Fissas, to which a Golden Dawn sympathiser has confessed.

The shooting of the two Golden Dawn supporters, who were in their 20s, outside the party's offices came at a time of growing public anger against a party widely regarded as neo-Nazi and accused of attacks against migrants and leftists. The murders had raised fears of an escalation of political violence.

Police could not confirm the authenticity of the claim, which came on the eve of rallies to commemorate the 40th anniversary of a bloody student uprising against the military junta that ruled Greece for seven years.

“The brazen murder of Pavlos Fissas was the drop of blood that made the glass overflow,” the group wrote in an 18-page letter filled with strong anti-establishment language and published on a Greek news website. It called the rapper's killing a “turning point”.

“The armed attack-response ... is the starting point of the people's campaign to send the neo-Nazi scum of Golden Dawn where they belong, to the dustbin of history,” it said.

Golden Dawn denies accusations of violence and rejects the neo-Nazi label, it also denies any involvement in Fissas's killing.

An opinion poll released on Saturday indicated that support for Golden Dawn has grown since the two men were shot. The party, Greece's third most popular in surveys, had shed almost a third of its support after Fissas's death in September.

A government crackdown on Golden Dawn following evidence linking it to Fissas's killing, led to party leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos and five more of its politicians being arrested and charged for belonging to a criminal group. Mihaloliakos and two other have been remanded in custody until their trial.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/previously-unknown-greek-group-claims-responsibility-for-golden-dawn-shootings-8945335.html

It is impossible to argue against the proposition that the only good Nazi is a dead one. But propaganda of the deed, regardless of viceral satisfaction, can only complicate things for working class organizations like KKE. This fuels the bogus argument that 'extremist are equaly bad', which will lead the philistines to claim that Golden Dawn and KKE are equally bad.

Never trust Western regimes to "ban far right parties." It’s always just being used as a pretext to ban communist parties under the guise of bourgeois liberal "anti-totalitarian" propaganda. Bourgeois liberal "anti-totalitarianism" is really just "liberal totalitarianism."

Never trust Western regimes to "ban far right parties." It’s always just being used as a pretext to ban communist parties under the guise of bourgeois liberal "anti-totalitarian" propaganda. Bourgeois liberal "anti-totalitarianism" is really just "liberal totalitarianism."

yeah I wonder what the betting line was on something like that happening. Doubt anyone would even give you odds.

No surprises here


Samaras’ former aide says PM had no idea of his talks with Golden Dawn

By Lefteris Yallouros – Athens

Former aide to Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, Takis Baltakos told a prosecutor Monday that the Greek PM had no idea of his meetings with neo-Nazi Golden Dawn MP Ilias Kasidiaris.

The former government secretary testified for two-and-a-half hours before prosecutor Calliope Dagianta as a witness, claiming the meeting with Kasidiaris had taken place “about six months ago” in his office in Parliament and was not secret or harmful for the government. He also revealed that in the beginning of the judicial investigation into Golden Dawn he had expressed his disagreement, as he was also against the anti-racist bill, which was prepared in the final days of the three party coalition government in 2013, only to be unexpectedly withdrawn by the PM a few weeks later.

Baltakos resigned last week after the spokesman of Golden Dawn, Ilias Kasidiaris, released a video showing him in conversation with the latter. Their talk was illegally video-taped by Kasidiaris and used in an attempt by Golden Dawn to prove their party members have been wrongfully prosecuted for forming a criminal organization and the PM has manipulated prosecutors and judges to land the neo-Nazi party in hot water.

The cabinet secretary is heard saying that a criminal investigation into the group was aimed at stemming losses for the ruling conservative party. “He’s afraid for himself because you are cutting his lead over SYRIZA,” Baltakos tells Kasidiaris in the video.

After causing the resignation of Baltakos, Golden awn has attempted to throw the government in turmoil, claiming there are more videos to come. Their plans were halted Monday, however, as a top Supreme Court judge warned that anyone (including MPs) found to have made use of illegally acquired recordings would be immediately arrested.

The embarrassing exchange between Baltakos and Kaisidiaris has reinforced the perception of links between the far-right and factions in Samaras’s New Democracy party. Furthermore, it has boosted main opposition SYRIZA in polls ahead of European Parliament and local elections in May.

SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras has been saying since that “the Samaras government has proved to be dangerous and cannot continue handling the country’s fate.”

http://www.balkaneu.com/samaras-aide-pm-idea-talks-golden-dawn/