[News] Golden Dawn: The Development of Greek Fascism

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*Golden Dawn: The Development of Greek Fascism*
by Tony Mckenna

2/13/2013    http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/mckenna100213.html

As was the case in 1930s Germany, Greek liberalism has revealed itself 
to be politically spent.  In dealing with the austerity measures imposed 
upon the country from outside by an international troika consisting of 
the IMF, European Commission, and European Central Bank, the government 
has failed comprehensively in the eyes of its electorate.

When the centre-right New Democracy party defeated a coalition of 
left-wing forces in the elections of June 2012, the freshly appointed 
government promised to renegotiate the terms of the 'agreement' the 
troika had sought to enforce.  However, the radical edge of their 
rhetoric was blunted by a demonstration of what they described as 'good 
faith'; they set up a directive by which Greece would comply with the 
cuts in the 2013-2014 period at a cost to the public purse of 11.9 
billion euros. <http://www.amna.gr/english/articleview.php?id=1239>  In 
seeking to gain the goodwill of their European creditors, they 
acquiesced to their demands.  The reaction of a large proportion of the 
general population was predictable.  Anguish and outrage manifested in a 
series of pickets, demonstrations, and strikes.  Slogans were framed in 
anti-neo-liberal terms directed at the banking bailouts that had 
precipitated the crisis (indeed one of the key strikes was directed 
against the ATA [Agrarian] Bank).

On the back foot, and with a practiced cynicism, the government sought 
to deflect attention from its outright capitulation to the troika by 
playing on fears of immigration.  For much of last August, police 
rounded up over 7,000 blacks and Asians, 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/07/greece-crackdown-illegal-immigrants-arrest> 
2,000 of whom were detained to be evicted from the country.  While the 
government was proactive in its persecution of immigrants, it 
simultaneously sought to protect a section of the wealthy elite: a group 
whose alleged tax evasion was compounding a crisis -- the human cost of 
which had already been evinced daily.  The cost has been experienced in 
terms of the increasing number of evictions from homes or the thronging 
cues for food in the streets; but, most seriously of all, it has been 
borne by those individuals whose poverty and desperation had rendered 
them personae non grata -- people whose suffering and misery is 
invisible to the state such that their only chances of gaining 
recognition are acts of self-immolation. 
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/23/us-greece-suicides-idUSBRE8AM08H20121123>

Such a crepuscular atmosphere is conducive to a fascist movement.  The 
government's clear ties to the elite and its adoption of policies 
designed to facilitate large financial interests both internationally 
and locally mean that it appears as a cold, out-of-touch entity whose 
patrician psychology renders it utterly indifferent to the population. 
  Members of Golden Dawn are active in those streets which people feel 
the state has long since abandoned; they offer some level of food 
services and clothes for the desperate -- provided, of course, they are 
'indigenous' Greeks.  The sinister physiognomy of the snarling fascist 
is often masked by images of local youth acting in concert to actively 
serve community interests, to look after those whom the national 
politics has turned its back upon.

But when fascist aggression becomes more nakedly visible (as is 
increasingly the case), it is bolstered by the demonization of 
foreigners through state policies and the xenophobic sentiments of much 
of the mainstream media.  It is further encouraged by the friendly 
neutrality of a great proportion of the police and the active support of 
some.  In the aftermath of the government's clampdown on immigration, 
fascist thugs carried out attacks on immigrants almost daily, 
culminating in the killing of a young Iraqi on the 12 August.

The fascist movement seeks to synthesize these two moments; it aims to 
use the xenophobic (in particular anti-Islamic) political themes as a 
means to galvanize and unify disparate elements at the street level. 
  The ultimate ends of the Golden Dawn party are not about winning seats 
but constructing a mass movement with a social basis 
<http://mediacdn.disqus.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/293/2915/original.jpg> 
constituted from business employers and entrepreneurs; the unemployed; 
skilled artisans whose labor is often sporadic and impermanent, making 
it particularly susceptible to fluctuations in the market; and finally 
those unskilled workers who are part of a collective working class but 
nevertheless subsist, politically speaking, on its outer edges -- i.e. 
those who, non-unionized and often recently assimilated to the class, 
lack traditions of radicalism and resistance.

It is these social fragments Golden Dawn seeks to filter through the 
prism of its ideology, through the forms of belligerent nationalism and 
militant xenophobia, into a cohesive political movement which will sweep 
through the country while the parliamentary democracy stalls and 
chokes.  "Voting for us is not enough," says the Golden Dawn leader 
Nikolaos Michaloliakos -- "We want you to join the struggle for Greece. 
  Don't rent your house to foreigners, don't employ them. . .  We want 
all illegal foreigners out of our country, we want the usurers of the 
troika and the IMF out of our country for ever."

All of this inevitably invites further comparison with Weimar Germany. 
  But there are substantial differences too.  A large number of the 
population still retain the living memory of the military junta of 
1967-74, and this perhaps explains why support for Golden Dawn is at 
particularly low ebb among the elderly.  Most importantly of all, 
working-class power and resistance in Greece remains considerable and 
potent.  In the same 2012 election where Golden Dawn experienced a surge 
in the vote, Syriza <http://www.syriza.gr/> -- a coalition of left 
forces -- polled extremely high, achieving second place, on a platform 
based on an outright rejection of the bailout.

Scoring almost 27%, Syriza managed nearly four times that of the fascist 
vote.  This is all the more remarkable when one considers the collective 
scare tactics employed by EU leaders designed to threaten and cow the 
Greek population into voting against the coalition of the left.  In 
addition, as mentioned above, members of Golden Dawn have been actively 
supported by swathes of the police force, and their ideas have been 
echoed and encouraged by much of the media. 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/19/golden-dawn-fascism-greece>

The current state is embroiled in what Antonio Gramsci described as 'a 
crisis of authority'.  Of the ruling classes only a tiny minority will 
manage to benefit economically from the European-imposed austerity 
measures; but at the same time the Greek elites are increasingly 
perturbed by mass mobilizations on the part of the working classes.  It 
is this specific balance of forces which has led to a level of paralysis 
on the part of the state and partially explains why certain of its 
functions have devolved to Golden Dawn militias in and through their 
community activities.

But despite such favorable external conditions the fascist activity has 
not yet coalesced in a broad-scale popular movement; it has not embedded 
itself in workplaces or at the street level -- precisely because of the 
great shift to the left on the part of an increasingly militant working 
class.  This fundamental process is refracted through a vast network of 
progressive, anti-fascist, and radical groups and community 
organizations <http://uaf.org.uk/2013/01/athens-opposes-golden-dawn/> 
possessed of the political impetus to interrupt, distort, and disrupt 
the process by which the fascist forms coagulate.  At this point there 
remains everything to fight for.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tony Mckenna is a writer based in the UK.  His writings have appeared in 
/Ceasefire/, /Counterfire/, /CounterPunch/, /Marx and Philosophy Review 
of Books/, /MRZine <http://mrzine.org>/, /The Philosophers Magazine/, 
and many others.
-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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