The Direct Action Cells take responsibility for the attack with an incendiary device at the house of the MP of the New Democracy and journalist of SKAI, Babis Papadimitriou, in Metz in the morning of 6/7. Wanting to honour the real freedom of speech that is persecuted and silenced in the Western countries, we gave the name of Julian Assange to the cell that carried out the action. So that we can recall what it really means to silence freedom of speech with persecution, prisons, courts, when a journalist exposes the war crimes and massacres committed by capitalism.
Babis Papadimitriou belongs to this category of SKAI journalists who redeemed the worm work he did for so many years with a parliamentary seat in New Democracy. The Anglo-Saxon model followed by the SKAI television group in defending New Democracy, as Portosalte had said, has another parameter. The function of SKAI as a political reservoir for future executives and MPs of the New Democracy.
We have mentioned the illusion of security offered by the arrogance of a dominant position of a political official or a big journalist. So now Babis Papadimitriou has crawled out of his house in front of the television cameras to protest against the state’s inability to stop terrorists.
A TV puppet with a consciously argumentative speech, whose persona has been skilfully manipulated over the years by the shipowners who have him on their payroll and the political managers of New Democracy. The similarities with Aris Portosalte are many. After all, together they have marked a period when SKAI was outraged by plaguing the social resistance to the imposition of the memorandum programmes. As a journalistic duo they provoked the anger and disgust towards them from the majority of society. It is no coincidence, moreover, that at the news of the attacks on their homes the social reactions were jubilant from a multitude of people of our class.
His occasionally provocative statements and opinions played a role in the targeting of this individual. Views that are not just theoretical rhetoric, but are at the core of the ideology of New Democracy. Opinions that are essentially the extreme manifestations of the government’s own policy on a number of issues such as the management of the pandemic, privatisations, the proposal for government cooperation between the New Democracy Party and Golden Dawn (‘Why shouldn’t we accept a more serious Golden Dawn to support, as happened yesterday in Norway, a conservative alliance? “), the deepening of the country’s dependence on NATO and the EU, support for the murders committed by the US against even state officials of other countries. Here, violence is not condemned wherever it comes from. (“Weren’t you glad to see Suleimani get his bomb?”)
Babis Papadimitriou, as an extreme neoliberal right-winger, was part of the front line of journalists who essentially staffed the propaganda machine to establish the presence of the Troika and the memoranda in Greece. It is there that he first became known with the “hold on tight IMF” that symbolizes all the rayadism and servility that characterize him as a human being. For the record, and because coincidences always have their importance, the building where his political office is housed, at 3 Santarosa Street, was home to the Security Service and the Nazi Counter-Intelligence Group during the period of occupation.
His views on economic issues are that he would like to apply the IMF to all the enslaved colonies of imperialism, as a few years ago he proposed the privatisation of even water. (“Water is, unfortunately, unacceptably cheap, its waste is outrageous. And its treatment is almost non-existent even in small towns, where things should be much more careful.”) The thousands of deaths of the poor and excluded from basic necessities that occur because of just these policies is a trivial fact for trash like Babis.
At the same time, his statements about the criminal state management of the pandemic exuded the same disrespect for those at the bottom of the social pyramid who perished on the cot of some broken public hospital. (“You went and discovered a false problem, that some people were being intubated outside the ICU. That’s the doctors’ judgment, I’m a journalist and an MP, I’m not going to do the doctor’s job. Not everyone needs to go to the ICU and many are intubated outside”). This is his cynical response to the thousands of deaths from the state’s management of the pandemic. This is his answer to those of our fellow human beings who lost their loved ones due to shortages of ICU beds and adequate staff in understaffed hospitals.
Babis -always choleric in his speech- this morning with the energy in his house, was anything but aggressive in his statements. Like a cuddly little man he now remembered his journalistic status and called for attention and protection for any government or pro-government person. Once again we have heard the tale of the blow to the freedom of the press, their freedom to actually without any shame, bombard the media with lies and directed perceptions on a daily basis. The actions we have taken in the last period of time against appointed vandals of the systemic journalism (Pretenderis, Kabourakis, Portosalte, Papadimitriou) have formed a ground where the political plan and strategy promoted by the Direct Action Cells has begun to cause disturbances and concern. Thus we have moved from a strategy of concealment and downplaying of actions to escalating state propaganda with all the ingredients that make it necessary to be effective.
One of these tools is the creation of a dichotomy and the separation on the basis of good and bad. In this case the dipole is the freedom of the press and the terrorists who want to hurt it with their attacks. In news reports, in articles in newspaper columns, in television panels, the condemnations of the democratic bloc against those who supposedly threaten freedom of speech in the country are unanimous. Let us set the record straight. Every attack on mainstream journalists is a step forward for free speech. The hired pens of Marinakis, Alafouzos, Kyriakos, Vardinogiannis, are not the defenders of free speech, but its gravediggers. The staged reports, the rape of the truth and the distortion of reality are not freedom of speech, but crude enslavement to their bosses and the system. Black propaganda and publications approved in the offices of the ruling party and in Maximou are not “journalistic work”, but a choice of camp in the class war.
On the other hand, the explosions in their homes, the smoke from their cars and the burnt publishing houses are literally the real freedom of speech in action against the dystopia that has been imposed on us. The encouraging comments and smiles of our class are the small breaths of fresh air they get when some of the violence that all these cretins perpetrate on a daily basis is given back.
The attacks we have carried out recently – apart from serving the strategy of our group which we have analysed – are aimed at highlighting the hunger strike of Giannis Michailidis. For two months now, comrade Giannis Michailidis has been putting his body and his life as the only barrier against the uncontrolled impunity of bourgeois justice and the state. He is being murdered slowly and steadily because his judges are refusing his legal release. At the same time, Lignadis, Hortarias, Korkoneas, Leventis, Filippidis are released or acquitted by summary proceedings. These releases are in addition to the hundreds of other acquittals and acquittals of bankers, politicians, journalists, businessmen, rapists of the upper classes and other people involved in the system.
It is clear now to anyone who has their eyes open and their ears closed to the non-stop propaganda that is being served to us. Civil justice is nothing more than a washing machine for the powerful. It is nothing less than a killing machine that, while coddling their own children, simultaneously crushes the excluded, the poor, the oppressed and exterminates the enemies of capitalist reality. The greatest answer is the struggle of the comrade and his fight for the obvious: freedom and life. In this supreme and great battle of Michailidis, the state seems willing to murder an anarchist. We will not dwell on threats and promises. It is a cost you neither can nor will bear. The rest we will discuss in person. Your homes are a much better place for discussion and as we have proven our visits are never empty handed.
We welcome the attack by the arsonist group Thousand of Suns of the Night on the Real News publishing complex, owned by the mainstream journalist and publisher Nikos Hadjinikolaou. Let the burning building of this particular tabloid be a beacon of light for the next actions of all fighting forces, but also a reminder to the enemies of freedom that as long as there are still people who do not bow their heads and stand up, none of you will be able to feel truly safe.
Strength to the hunger strikers in solidarity Dinos Giagtzoglou, Dimitris Hatzivassiliadis, Haris Matzouridis, Vangelis Stathopoulos
Solidarity to the member of the Anarchist Action, Thanos Chatziaggelou. Thanos and the organization Anarchist Action are an integral part of the tradition that chooses the direct attack on the material exponents of capitalist barbarism. Solidarity with the anarchist Georgia Voulgari and Panos Kalaitzis who are being prosecuted for the same case.
Immediate granting of a license to Revolutionary Struggle member Pola Roupa, who is vengefully deprived of it because of her public political interventions.
Solidarity to all political prisoners
Direct Action Cells
Julian Assange Cell
Source: athens.indymedia