Greek Bourgeoisie Show It's Not So Hard To Crack Down On Fascists After All

During Greece's ongoing Great Depression, induced by the irresponsibility, feckless mismanagement, corruption and criminality of the Greek political elite, two tried-and-true capitalist responses to economic crisis have arisen: a resort to fascist violence, and scapegoating of victims of the economic crisis as the culprits for that crisis. In Greece over the last year and a half this has meant the emergence of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn fascist party, which has followed Hitler's playbook of simultaneously employing two different and parallel routes to power: vigilante street violence and participating in electoral politics. The scapegoat of choice has been immigrants (rather than Jews).

Two weeks ago, Golden Dawn apparently overplayed its hand. One of its goons stabbed to death a well-known Greek anti-fascist hip-hop artist. [1] This apparently struck a nerve in the country (unlike the fascist terror group's long-running campaign of violence and intimidation against non-European immigrants, and the spectacle of a Golden Dawn legislator punching out two female left-wing parliamentarians on television).

Greek anti-terrorist police arrest head of Golden Dawn and several others. The fascist terrorist organization's boss was charged with forming a criminal organization. Two senior members of the “security services” and several high-ranking cops resign or are suspended because of their links to the fascist terrorist Golden Dawn group.

Typically for fascists, one of Golden Dawn’s arrested parliamentarians, Yiannis Lagos, is involved in various criminal rackets, including prostitution, “protection” (i.e. extortion under threat of violent assault), blackmail, and money laundering, according to secret service documents leaked to the Greek press. He placed a call to the G.D. Big Boss Nikos Michaloliakos a half hour after the murder. (Strange, if what the G.D. bosses are claiming is true, that the murderer wasn’t a Golden Dawn member. By the way, the slayer claims G.D. membership and was decked out in their regalia.

Golden Dawn has18 members of Parliament (out of 300). The Greek Constitution bars banning a political party. Hence the new designation of G.D. as a criminal organization. [2]

Before this murder, the Greek power establishment ignored the slaying by Golden Dawn stormtrooper-types of two immigrants and beatings and other attacks on another 250 (those are just the reported ones- police backing of Golden Dawn no doubt discouraged many other victims from going to the police, as well as fear of deportation). [3]

Well, Greece is still better than the U.S. It doesn't matter how many doctors anti-abortion terrorists murder or how many bombs they plant- there's never a crackdown on their movement, their aiders and abetters and material supporters are never prosecuted, or even jailed for refusing to testify before Grand Juries (Grand Juries are never tasked with investigating them at all). In the U.S., if a fascist killed a leftist, the leftist would be called a suicide, or blamed for their own death- just as when the FBI planted a bomb in the car of anti-logging activist Judi Bari, she was charged with making and transporting the bomb that almost killed her herself! (Eventually that frame-up fell apart, and the Oakland Police, the FBI's co-conspirators, lost a civil suit brought by Bari. But the deep state won in the end, as the CIA murdered Bari with breast cancer.)

1] Pavlos Fyssas, who was 34. The New York Times described him as a “hip-hop artist and anti-fascist,” “Party Leader In Greece Is Returned To Custody,” Oct. 4, 2013, p.A4.

2] BBC World Service radio news broadcast.

3] Ibid.