The capitalist management of the pandemic reveals in the most blatant way how barbaric and murderous the capitalist system is. A system that destroys everything in its path in the name of supposed growth.It destroys and pollutes the natural environment, the primary cause of pandemics.
It condemns entire peoples and the lower social strata to poverty, sets up hundreds of deaths from COVID 19 around the world, absence of hospitals, vaccines in African countries and other protective measures.
In Greece, and while we are in the fourth wave of the pandemic, the government continues to methodically undermine the already degraded ΕΣΥ (Εθνικό Σύστημα Υγείας, National Healthcare Service) for the sole purpose of privatising it. Moreover, a current strengthening of the ΕΣΥ will in future be an obstacle to the further exploitation of health care as a field of profit for private capital.
The law on protests, the labour and environmental bill, the new system of admission to higher education, the teacher evaluation, the university police, the reorganisation of basic goods are all coming to secure a ‘new’ reality for thousands of workers and beyond.
In this condition of an all-out attack on the popular strata, the fascists are also making their reappearance. Various far-right groups, sometimes more vigorously and sometimes not, are trying to fill the gap left by X.A. (Χρυσή Αυγή, Golden Dawn, Neo-Nazi Party) It was to be expected that this would happen. On the one hand, because fascism will exist as long as there is poverty and exploitation (acting as a disorienting factor in the struggle against the state and capital) and on the other hand, because such paramilitary groups function as a repressive complement to the official state apparatus.
The rallies at the Syntagma were the occasion for the fascists to re-emerge in the limelight; taking advantage of a reactionary mob with conservative-racist characteristics (patriotic organisations, Christian-Taliban). They sought to dominate through their militaristic image and their seemingly confrontational profile.Their reappearance continued with the recent fascist gatherings at the Meteora (Orthodox Christian site) in Larissa and Metaxourgeio against the Amal doll.**
The attacks at the Stavroupolis School of Education and in Heliopolis in Thessaloniki on members of the ΚΝΕ (The Communist Youth of Greece) in Heraklion on members of ΚΕΕΡΦΑ***, show us that we are dealing with an organised reappearance of the assault battalions and not with isolated incidents.
The attempted re-emergence of the extreme right comes a year after the conviction of the X.A. Anyone who believed that a court decision could eliminate fascist gangs, reality itself proves them wrong.
After all, just one year after the conviction of X.A., key members of the assault battalions have been released from prison, thus showing the disposition of the judiciary towards the long arm of the state. Let us make it clear that we are not asking for harsher treatment nor do we expect the civil justice system and the state to punish its children.
Against the reappearance of the assault battalions, those of us who have experienced the violence of fascism, and those of us who understand the social necessity of marginalizing and crushing it, we will erect mounds of equality and solidarity, so that the fascist poison will not take hold in our neighborhoods, in schools, in workplaces, on the street.
With the tools of our mobilizing experience and our collective power, we will judge fascism and the government policies that sustain and nourish it.
Proletarian Cell Dimitris Dagklis****
Source: Athens Indymedia
*Eleni Zaroulia, wife of the imprisoned ‘dictator’ of Χρυσή Αυγή (Golden Dawn, Neo-Nazi Party), Nikolaos Mixaloliakos. She is known to have been a member of the party and has never hidden her fascist beliefs.
**Amal, a 12 foot tall puppet representing a 9-year-old Syrian refugee named Little Amala, who was walked by people through many European countries to raise the plight of refugees. The doll was attacked with stones at one point by racists, nationalists and far-right, protested against at Meteora and in Athens, during its walk through Greece.
***Κίνηση Ενωμένοι Ενάντια στο Ρατσισμό και τη Φασιστική Απειλή, United Movement Against Racism and the Fascist Threat, a leftist antifascist group.
****Dimitris Dagklis, a 45-year-old COSCO worker at the port of Piraeus, was killed by a crane while being overworked with too many hours (12 hour shifts) like many workers in the ports and generally in Greece.