From racism to the criminalization of the communist ideology and the class struggle
The initiative of the Minister of Justice in preparing an “anti-racist” draft law is provoking friction and disagreements inside the three-party government. Although the precise content of the draft law has not entered the public domain, an atmosphere has already been created, an impression of what it may contain through leaks and statements by political figures and bourgeois commentators.The social-democratic PASOK, the so-called Democratic Left, which participate in the government, as well as the “left” opposition SYRIZA claim that it is necessary for this specific draft law to be passed in order to combat the racist and Nazi “Golden Dawn”.
But the truth is that the draft law is not an initiative of the government or the Greek Minister of Justice, but is almost a copy and adaptation of the Framework Decision 2008/913 of the Council of Justice and Internal Affairs of the EU “combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law”, which Greece must incorporate in its national legislation.
According to this EU legislation all those who deny or downplay the importance of the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crimes of Nazism and fascism must be punished. However, behind the “combating of fascism and racism”, we can see the aims to criminalize ideology, politics, the assessment which is different, which is opposed to the dominant bourgeois ideology. In essence the way is being paved so that the worldview and ideology can be criminalized, the potential is being created for the criminalization of views, of the class struggle, the ideological-political viewpoint opposed to bourgeois ideology and politics, opposed to the bourgeoisie. Today this specific legislation is being used in EU countries to outlaw the Communist Parties, to ban the symbols of the labour and communist movement, to criminally prosecute cadres of the Communist Parties, who publicly question the official (anti-communist) interpretation of history.
From this standpoint, the stance of the fascist “Golden Dawn” is indicative, which on the one hand unleashes ferocious attacks against the draft law, and on the other, intensifying its vulgar anti-communism, demands that the KKE should be on the list of those that should be banned. Recycling, in essence, the misleading “theory of the extremes”.
The KKE highlighted the “cunning” designs of the draft law in this development, and the fact that it conceals specific dangers for the labour and people’s movement. It stressed that the fascist-racist ideology and practice will be dealt with only when the people isolate the fascists and racists in every workplace and popular neighbourhood, when the workers-people’s struggle is strengthened and targets the source of fascism-racism, i.e. the system of exploitation. It will disappear along with the system that created it, when the working class and the allied popular strata take the economic and political power into their hands.
Speaking in the city of Karditsa, the GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas, warned that: “we say clearly to the supporters of theory of the extremes in Greece, who, using the pretext of the anti-racist draft law, emerged to spread their anti-communist poison, blatantly demonstrating their aims, that in Greece there is the KKE and the KKE does not sign statements of repentance. They should not even think about implementing the anti-historical theory of the extremes. Because it is not only the KKE that will fight them. The people themselves, with whom the KKE has strong ties all over the country, will fight against them.”
e-mail:cpg@int.kke.gr