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<big><big><b><span class="style1">Golden Dawn: The Development of Greek
Fascism</span></b></big></big><br>
<span class="style2">by Tony Mckenna<br>
<br>
2/13/2013 <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/mckenna100213.html">http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/mckenna100213.html</a><br>
</span>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://www.amna.gr/english/articleview.php?id=1239"
class="style5">cuts in the 2013-2014 period at a cost to the public
purse of 11.9 billion euros.</a> 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).</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/07/greece-crackdown-illegal-immigrants-arrest"
class="style5">rounded up over 7,000 blacks and Asians,</a> 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 <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/23/us-greece-suicides-idUSBRE8AM08H20121123"
class="style5">their only chances of gaining recognition are acts of
self-immolation.</a></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://mediacdn.disqus.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/293/2915/original.jpg"
class="style5">with a social basis</a> 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.</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>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, <a href="http://www.syriza.gr/" class="style5">Syriza</a>
-- a coalition of left forces -- polled extremely high, achieving
second place, on a platform based on an outright rejection of the
bailout.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/19/golden-dawn-fascism-greece"
class="style5">their ideas have been echoed and encouraged by much of
the media.</a></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://uaf.org.uk/2013/01/athens-opposes-golden-dawn/"
class="style5">progressive, anti-fascist, and radical groups and
community organizations</a> 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.</p>
<hr>
<span class="style3">Tony Mckenna is a writer based in the UK. His
writings have appeared in <em>Ceasefire</em>, <em>Counterfire</em>, <em>CounterPunch</em>,
<em>Marx and Philosophy Review of Books</em>, <em><a
href="http://mrzine.org" class="style5">MRZine</a></em>, <em>The
Philosophers Magazine</em>, and many others.</span>
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