On the struggle against neo-fascism

265 Greek school students recently carried out their own political intervention regarding the developments. In this letter of theirs they condemn the racism and attacks of “Golden Dawn” against immigrants in Greece. The letter of school students from Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Leverkusen, Bochum, Essen and Gutersloh, which was published a few days ago in “Rizospastis”, the contents were the following:

“We are Greek school students in Germany. Most of us were born here. Our families were forced to immigrate to Germany in previous decades due to the difficulties and also now because of the crisis in Greece. With this letter of ours, we want to express our rage and our condemnation of the attacks against immigrants, workers and our fellow students in Greece by the Nazis of “Golden Dawn”.

As the children of immigrants in Germany, we know from experience what racist violence means, what Nazism means. We and our families have faced the activity of Nazi organizations in Germany like “Golden Dawn” on many occasions, organizations which attack foreign workers living and working in Germany. Racist violence does not distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants, it has only one goal; to divide the peoples, the workers, the youth so that they don’t see what is really responsible for their problems.

We want you to know that every time the Nazi “Golden Dawn” in Greece chases immigrants and strikes against school students who are struggling, it gives an excuse for similar fascist organizations in Germany to attack us and our parents in a similar or an even worse manner.

We see our parents every day sweat in the factories and big businesses of Germany to support us, they struggle in a restaurant at night or a small business. We as school students on many occasions work to help our parents. We know that our fellow school student of a different colour, religion or country, is not responsible for the daily torments of our family.

The fascist “Golden Dawn” and its sister Nazi organizations in Germany have one goal with their lies and thuggish attacks: to intimidate us and our parents so that we do not react with justified rage and indignation , which we feel ever day, so that the policies of capital and its governments remain untouchable, policies which make the workers and youth of Greece and Germany destitute.

We condemn and isolate the activity of the Hitlerite “Golden Dawn” and its fellow thinkers in Germany. We strengthen the struggle in Greece and Germany. This is our answer.”

This letter comes at a time when an organized plan is unfolding in Greece, so that a force of this system, the “Golden Dawn” party, with a Nazi ideology and murderous activity, can be presented as being an anti-systemic force.

So “Golden Dawn” is carrying out social policy by handing out food. But only to Greeks and not to immigrants. Golden Dawn organizes voluntary blood donations, but only gives blood to Greeks. Golden Dawn “sells protection” for free to people who are endangered by crime, but only protects them from the criminality of immigrants. Golden Dawn together with its MPs attacks immigrants, and then in a military formation together with the official authorities they parade all together in the litany with the icon. Golden Dawn shares out free food, stealing from the immigrant’s shop. Golden Dawn holds discussions with businessmen so that they hire Greek and not immigrant unemployed workers, or demands that they dismiss immigrant workers and hire Greeks with very low wages. In this way Golden Dawn operates as an “employment agency”.

This entire scenario is suitably promoted and reproduced by the bourgeois mass media, in order to allegedly show “its repulsive face” and chiefly to allegedly fight against its racist activity. But actually what they are consciously achieving is to present Golden Dawn as a mechanism which replaces functions of the bourgeois state to the benefit particularly of the destitute sections of the working class and people. And indeed as a force that does not even hesitate to use violence to solve such problems. But not against the capitalist system, not against the big businessmen, who create and reproduce these problems. They support them, because they have problems in their profitability due to the crisis. It is for this reason that they urge Greek workers to work for starvation wages instead of struggling, and they mediate for them in order to allegedly find them work.

Golden Dawn is striving to demonstrate that it is an “anti-system” force. Against what system? “The rotten establishment”, “the corrupt politicians”, the “false patriots”. It says: “NO to the memorandum of submission”, “NO to the corrupt politicians”, “NO to the false patriots”, “NO TO THE FOREIGN OCCUPATION of the Troika”,. This is everything that was expressed by the so-called “movement of the squares”, about the “treacherous politicians” who are “selling Greece out”. This “movement” of the “indignant citizens”, which was embraced and supported as a “safety valve” by the bourgeois mass media, and also by the forces of the “renewed left”, in reality “ploughed” the political terrain for Golden Dawn to sow the phraseology of indignation, which is however “empty”, because it does not take a position against the exploitation of the people by the monopolies.

This reaction of the Greek school students from Germany to the Neo-Nazis is not the first. There have already been very many examples which demonstrate that the workers can expose the “Golden Dawn”, their dirty role as the lackeys of the big employers, to deal with them, to isolate them. A volume of people’s mobilizations has already accumulated against the presence, activity and poison of the fascists.

These are reactions which are far removed from the propaganda of the system’s forces e.g. of the governmental social-democratic party PASOK, the governmental “left” Democratic Left and the oppositional “left” SYRIZA, which together with various “NGOs” organized a demonstration regarding the need for an “anti-fascist front”. A “front” which will wash away its “sins” and the “sins” of various others, who have contributed to the strengthening of neo-fascism. An attempt of the bourgeois parties, the state mechanism of the bourgeois regarding the “need” to protect the “democracy” of the monopolies and the capitalists, “against the extremes” (equating fascism with communism), against “violence wherever it comes from”, equating the demonstration and strike of the worker with the attacks and thuggish behaviour of the Nazis and neo-fascists.

The neo-fascist party cannot be dealt with by any “anti-fascist front” together with those who are responsible for its creation and who are now shedding “crocodile tears”. The labour movement must crush it!

At the beginning of November school-student members of KNE, who were carrying out political work outside a high school in Thessalonica calling for participation in the strike and PAME’s demonstration which was taking place on the same day, were attacked by fascist elements. Striking workers from the factory AGNO (dairy industry), who were participating in the picketing of the strike, rushed to assist the young communists. They disarmed the fascists and forced them to flee. Now the instances when labour unions, workers, unemployed, youth, school-students, oppose in practice the thuggish activities of Golden Dawn are multiplying. The class-oriented trade unions are waging the struggle to isolate the fascists, to practically impede all their efforts to divide, muzzle and chain the working class to the benefit of big capital.

Golden Dawn must be and is already being faced politically by the labour and people’s movement itself, by its structures and organizations and not outside of it.