The Resistible Rise of Golden Dawn

Nikos Loudos

The meteoric electoral ascension of the with what they called ‘Judeo-Christian tradi- Nazi party Golden Dawn in Greece sent tion’.1 Their sub-culture worships hate, ‘pure shockwaves all over Europe. Up from the blood’, violence, guns, and martial arts. Their marginal 0.29% it polled in the elections of annual youth festival was called ‘Festival of 2009, Golden Dawn gathered just under 7% in Hate’. Their internal regime is not one of a the national elections of May and June 2012 political party; their para-military apparatus sending 18 Nazi MPs to the Greek parliament. with their members following orders from su- This, combined with the fact of Nazi squads periors up to the level of the ‘F¨uhrer,Nikos operating in neighbourhoods, with repeated Michaloliakos, has been much more important organized attacks, some of them murderous, than their political faade. Their public ap- on migrants, trade unionists, gays and ac- pearances echo the German Nazi Party with tivists of the Left, raised the spectra of the torches, dark uniforms, and goose stepping. threat of fascism in a way that had not been In their internal procedures and their publica- the case for decades. tions they have been using the swastika, while their members enjoy using the fascist salute. In their local chapters they have been prac- ticing street fighting, arms use, and stabbing. Apart from these details, the majority of their local chapters form part of local criminal net- works selling protection to bars, cabarets and brothels, and - most important of all- have been acting as local gangs attacking migrants in buses, in the streets, in their houses, steal- Golden Dawn; ‘straight out of the sewers of history’ ing, beating up, humiliating and murdering. I felt forced to provide all this information, Golden Dawn does not resemble what not because in itself gives us any clue about used to be called Euro-fascism; they are not the factors leading to Golden Dawn’s appear- fascists with ‘suits and ties’, they are not ance nor about the way to defeat them. But ex-fascists masquerading as populists. They they are proof of the scale of the political crisis come straight out of the sewers of history; and the speed with which things can change their leadership have been consistent Hitler because of the acute economic crisis. This is admirers for decades. They are not Holo- the kind of party that that has intervened in caust deniers but Holocaust nostalgics, openly the political scene, and which, according to 2 racist, calling for the annihilation of the ‘infe- many polls , may be the third largest party rior races’. Their ‘alternative history’ model after the next elections. The destabilizing ef- dreams of Greece having joined the Nazi Axis fects of the crisis are something that we all in World War 2 and ensured the establish- have to take into account, in whichever coun- ment of the Third Reich. In the ‘art’ sec- try we may live. Greece is not an exception; tion of their publications, along with poems on the contrary it can be a warning. dedicated to the leaders of the German Nazi Actually, there have been many voices party, one could find also hymns to Satan inside Greece, even in the last years while and black-metal music targeting Jesus Christ, Golden Dawn was already developing as a po- the Virgin Mary and anything having to do litical phenomenon, saying that fascism would 1One of these black-metal ‘artists’ is now a Golden Dawn MP, Giorgos Germenis. 2We should be sceptical of these polls, for reasons I will explain later.

17 never be able to get out of the margins in this ideological affiliations of the government. country. They put forward a number of ar- guments: the experience of Greece as an oc- After the German invasion, though, a big cupied country during the war; the important part of the Greek ruling class moved to col- anti-fascist tradition of the ’40s (Greece ex- laborating with the occupation forces and do- perienced the most important general strike ing business with the Third Reich. During under the German occupation, a strike that this period of collaboration, the Greek govern- managed to stop the conscription of Greek ment created the ‘Security Battalions’, armed workers as forced labour in Germany); the re- groups aiming to suppress the Resistance (by cent experience of the military dictatorship of far the most important organization of which 1967-1974, the living memory of mass emigra- was the National Liberation Front (EAM), tion which was supposed to make the Greeks controlled by the Communist Party). The immune to racism, etc. All these have been Security Battalions recruited what Trotsky important factors in the trajectory of fascism called ‘human dust’: people who were ea- and anti-fascism, but as is now obvious they ger to kill and betray just for some pocket- didn’t stop Golden Dawn from seizing the op- money provided by the government or the portunity of the economic crisis to make its Nazis. Along with them, in parts of the coun- mark on the political scene. try, more openly pro-German or clear Nazi or- In order to see how and why, we have to ganizations appear, having anti-communism examine the specific way the economic crisis as the central tenet of their ‘ideology’. In lo- made the political system implode in the last cal massacres committed by the occupation years, providing the space for Golden Dawn. forces around the country - in some cases en- Nevertheless, it’s important to note that tra- tire villages were annihilated after some act dition does matter, and despite the ‘national of the Resistance - it was these fascist groups myths’, fascists have been present in Greece who did the dirty work. The Germans in most for almost a century and in crucial periods of the cases were acting as soldiers. Tortur- they were not just ‘in the margins’. Any- ing, rape, burning or burying alive people was way, they were not born ex nihilo during the a ‘privilege’ for the Greek fascists. present crisis. Even during the 1920s, there were cases However, the Resistance triumphed and of proto-fascist organizations, connected with while the Germans were evacuating the coun- politicians of the big parties of that period try, their Greek friends threw away their uni- who were looking to the example of Mussolini forms and tried to hide (many of them didn’t as a way to cope with the rising radicalization have the chance), while a few of them fol- of the workers movement and of the Greek lowed the Nazi army into exile. For a short refugees who had come to Greece after the period after the Liberation and before the of- collapse of the allied intervention in Turkey. ficial outbreak of the Civil War (1946-1949), In 1936, a fascist politician, Ioannis Metaxas, the ‘collaborators’ were prosecuted and vil- became prime minister and very quickly dicta- ified. The Greek ruling class, though, dis- tor, establishing a regime copying many of the covered very quickly that they were in need rituals of Nazism. Fascist organisations were of these people again. Fascist gangs started implanted among the youth and in the work- a campaign of terror against the Left round places while all the genuine workers organiza- the country, under the protection of the lo- tions and parties were disbanded. Ironically, cal police. During the Civil War, they were history brought that regime - with its open in- given free rein in the countryside. The collab- clination to German fascism - into World War orators in a few years were rebranded as ‘pa- 2 on the Allied side. This was because Greek triots’ who saved the country from Commu- capitalism’s integration in West European im- nism, gaining recognition and benefits from perialism was far more important than the the state, while the Left had to go under-

18 ground.3 of the dictatorship, Kostas Plevris5. Michalo- These groups survived as ‘clubs’ in parts liakos was arrested and went to jail, but not of the country and were re-activated in the for long. He was to go to jail again some years early ’60s, when the ruling class was surprised later, after being arrested for having explo- to see a new upsurge of the Left, student and sives. His connections with the secret services labor activism. Costa Gavras’ film ‘Z ’, de- (some of his fellow fascists who remained in picted the most famous case : the murder jail for years have spoken out) enabled him to of Grigoris Lambrakis, MP for the United go free again very quickly. Democratic Left (the electoral front of the The fascist terrorism of the first years of underground Communist Party) after one of the 3rd Greek Republic became an inisignif- his speeches in Salonica, in 1963. The fas- icant footnote for official history. But those cist groups were used by the police and the were the years when Michaloliakos and other Right to intimidate gatherings of the Left nostalgics were putting bombs in offices of and the unions, organizing counter demon- the left, in cinemas playing Russian movies strations, appearing as ‘concerned citizens’. and in bookshops. Retired officers compiled These fascist networks formed part of what personal arsenals, around which they built in Greek political vocabulary was called the neo-fascist groups. They were not just nos- ‘para-state’, a nexus connecting the Palace, talgics. The recently opened British Foreign secret services, the gendarmerie, politicians Office files showed that the British Embassy and the fascist groups; at the service of the was afraid of a new military coup in Greece ruling class but running parallel to the official even until 1980. The rising workers movement state. This nexus had a strong hold inside the managed to drive all these neo-fascist groups army. In April 1967 that ‘official’ part of the and their military supporters to the margins. para-state, the junta of colonels, took power They were forced to set aside the guns and to push through with full-force the campaign the bombs, and in 1984 they were regrouped against the Left and the workers’ movement. in EPEN (National Political Union), a party The small group of leaders of the dictator- founded on the orders of the imprisoned de- ship went to jail in 1975 but a whole layer of posed dictators. Michaloliakos, who had al- cadre remained untouched. Torturers, cops, ready founded a group called Golden Dawn in military, judges, advisers and ministers either the beginning of the ’80s, became the leader of stayed in their positions or just went home as the EPEN youth6. EPEN had its best result if nothing had happened. In late 1976, at the in the Euro-elections of 1984, with 2.3% of the funeral of an arch-torturer during the dicta- vote and electing one MEP. In the following torship, some of these ‘remnants’ made their years, New Democracy was able to gather the appearance -shouting fascist slogans and at- majority of these remnants, and EPEN disap- tacking journalists. Among those bullies was peared. Michaloliakos was quickly replaced as Nikos Michaloliakos, a young cadre of the ‘4th Youth leader, and he returned to his openly of August’4 organization, founded by one of neo-Nazi ‘Golden Dawn’ project.7 the most openly Nazi-inclined ‘intellectuals’ Before their recent successes, there had 3The affinities with Golden Dawn are not only ideological. Many of its cadres have family connections with these collaborationist and anti-Communist groups of the 40s, including its most well-known leaders: Michaloliakos, Kasidiaris etc. 4Taking its name from the proclamation date of the dictatorship of 1936. 5Today Plevris is in LAOS (Popular Orthodox Party), while his son, Thanos Plevris, has left LAOS to join New Democracy. 6He had met personally the dictators in prison. 7I won’t tire the English reader with footnotes from Greek sources. The best published books, from which I have crosschecked the facts on the history of Golden Dawn, are Dimitris Psarras, Black Bible of Golden Dawn, Polis, Athens, 2012 [in Greek] and Giorgos Pittas & Katerina Thoidou, The Golden Dawn File, Marxistiko Vivliopoleio, Athens, 2013 [in Greek].

19 been three failed attempts by Golden Dawn a public appearance in May Day 1998, after to emerge into the mainstream. This expe- already trying to build some local groups in rience is important both for the way they neighbourhoods of Athens based on attack- managed to make steps forward and for the ing left-wing activists and migrants. Again way they were blocked. Their first attempt their attempt was blocked through a combi- was in the early 90s, rebranding themselves nation of workers’ resistance and the interven- as ‘Greek Nationalists’, and trying to take ad- tion of revolutionaries. Workers’ resistance vantage of the nationalist fever cultivated by didn’t just inhibit the attack, but also cre- the government, because of the tensions with ated a net of protection for migrants against the Republic of Macedonia. The collapse of racism. Teachers’ unions and hospital work- state capitalism in Eastern Europe and the ers’ unions were the first to take action against civil war in ex-Yugoslavia, made Greek cap- racist attempts of the government to exclude italism very greedy for a big share of the migrants from free education and health. At Balkan market. This was accompanied by an the same time, the counter-demonstrations ideological campaign and nationalist demon- organized mainly on the initiative of SEK (So- strations organized with the support of the cialist Workers Party of Greece) didn’t allow Church and semi-obligatory participation of them space in the streets. These two factors school students. In those ‘demos’ Golden came to a head on a single day in June 1998. Dawners made their first public appearance During a trial of neo-Nazis who had attacked and recruited some youth, trying to create members of SEK, a group of Golden Dawners combat groups to attack left-wing school col- brutally assaulted a group of left-wing stu- leagues. Their attempt failed having crashed dents and education trade unionists who were on two counter-forces. On the one hand, the in the courts for a different trial (resistance movement of school occupations managed to to the police during a recent demonstration). bring down a series of Ministers of Education One of the victims narrowly avoided death. and, combined with the workers’ resistance, Among the neo-Nazis was the vice-leader of overthrew the neo-liberal government of New Golden Dawn, Antonis Androutsopoulos, who Democracy in October 1993. Golden Dawn went underground for years to avoid arrest. could not find space in this radicalized mi- Golden Dawn had to retreat under the mas- lieu. At the same time, the intervention of sive outcry against them. the Left was able to show that nationalism The third attempt came in the mid 2000s, was part-and-parcel of the neo-liberal attack. again with racism as the spearhead but with The Union of Bus Workers that was central to Islamophobia giving an extra potential to the overthrowing the government was also an offi- neo-Nazi propaganda. The discourse of the cial supporter of the Socialist Revolution Or- clash of civilizations suited a Greek govern- ganisation8 when we were prosecuted for pub- ment which was trying at the same time to lishing a book supporting the right of the Re- be part of Bush’s War on terror and to use public of Macedonia to choose its own name. racism as a divide-and-conquer tactic against The second attempt of Golden Dawn came the workers’ movement. Golden Dawn en- in the mid-to-late ’90s. This time racism was dorsed Islamophobia and targeted Afghan, their main tool. The PASOK government had Pakistani and Arab refugees and migrants. embraced neoliberalism and was attacking ba- But the anti-war movement was the one that sic working class rights, and at the same time determined the situation. Massive majori- was cultivating a wave of racism against mi- ties expressed themselves against the wars in grants, mainly from the Balkans. Police con- Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in support trols, intimidation, deportation, went along of the Palestinians. It was actually through with the media targeting migrants as the root the anti-war movement that communities who of every evil. Golden Dawn tried to make were to play a crucial role in the anti-fascist 8The organization that later evolved into SEK.

20 action in the future (the Pakistani commu- media were trying to convince us that Golden nity in particular) were radicalized and joined Dawn was a ‘natural’ product of the threat a ranks with the Left. The neo-Nazis remained big part of the population feels coming from constantly under pressure in the streets. In the Muslim migrants. In reality, their elec- October 2005, after an attack committed by toral results have been quite the same in ar- one of its well-known thugs, a demo reached eas with big migrant populations and in areas close to their offices in Athens, and there with no migrants. were shots from shotguns coming from inside The gloss of a ‘charity organization’ on the Nazi HQ. Under the fear of the move- Golden Dawn hasn’t been anything more than ment -and also feeling the threat that under a media fabrication. The infamous photo of those circumstances even the police would at a Golden Dawner helping an old lady who last be forced to act against them, Golden ‘was afraid of migrants’ to go to the bank that Dawn’s leadership decided to suspend its ac- hit the front pages a couple of years ago has tion. Golden Dawn then disappeared for two now been exposed as nothing more than one years. of their leaders with his own mother! The There are some common elements in all ‘soup kitchens’ only for Greeks have been just these attempts of the neo-Nazis to intervene. clumsy photo opportunities out of their of- First, in all these cases they tried to ride on a fices; nothing to do with any kind of solidar- wave of reactionary ideology stemming from ity network. Unfortunately this propaganda above - from the government and the ruling had an international impact, because it fitted class. In all the cases the governments felt with a superficial approach saying that the happy to see that their ideological campaign economic crisis and the social polarization by was taking a ‘movement dimension’; for them themselves provided roots for the fascists in it was one more argument to justify the at- Greece, leaving totally out of the picture the tacks on the working class. At the same time, deliberate intervention of the ruling class to Golden Dawn had its own separate agenda. help them make a breakthrough. They were not just ‘playing the game’ of the What had actually happened was that government, but were trying to recruit and racism and Islamophobia had been already organize fascist nuclei in neighbourhoods and deeply embedded in the political agenda of schools, on the basis of controlling the streets both the big political parties. The last years and street fighting against left-wing activists of the government of New Democracy (2004- and migrants. Finally, in all the cases, their 2009) saw a culmination of racist propaganda attempt failed after coming into collision with and pogrom-like police campaigns against mi- the real movement -trade unions, students grants. The fascist arguments were becom- and the Left - and in no case because of any ing part of the official discourse. After De- action of the police or the state. cember 2008, the scapegoating of migrants So what changed and allowed them to get was even more combined with the strength- into Parliament? An easy answer is to say ening of a discourse of ‘law and order’. De- that it has been the economic crisis. This cember 2008 was the month of a rebellion is, of course, a crucial parameter but Golden that saw massive demonstrations and barri- Dawn’s rise was not an immediate result. Eco- cades round the country after the murder of nomic crisis brought fruit to Golden Dawn but a school-student by a policeman. The Greek only mediated through political actions - ac- ruling class had a glimpse of a revolution and tions in most cases coming from the govern- was really scared. The government was to sur- ment and the state and to a much lesser extent vive for some more months, but a third factor coming from the fascists themselves. The at- was already also shaping the situation. LAOS tempts to interpret the appearance of fascism (The People’s Orthodox Rally), a far-right in pure sociological terms can only reproduce party, which broke away from New Democ- their own cheap arguments. Until recently the racy, was gaining ground. LAOS entered the

21 parliament in 2007 with 3.8% and jumped to joined in. This opened the gates for Golden 5.6% in the elections of 2009. In the mean- Dawn to enter the scene. The accumulated time, they had gained 7.15% in the Euro- populist far-right dynamic had suddenly shat- elections. LAOS was the bitter fruit of the tered on the massive unpopularity of auster- constant attempts of New Democracy (with ity. Papademos’s government effectively col- PASOK trailing behind) to pull the political lapsed in three months (officially it survived agenda towards racism and ‘security’. for six months) after a succession of general LAOS needs a special note, because its strikes. The ‘technocrat’ instead of overcom- case shows that the boundaries between fas- ing the ‘conservatism’ of the established polit- cist and far-right populist parties can be quite ical system, as they hoped, actually detonated blurred. Set-up by a firebrand politician of the beginning of its end. Actually Golden New Democracy, it was not an openly fascist Dawn was just one of the ways this enormous party, in the sense of attempting to build a political crisis was expressed. The combined reactionary movement from below, or hint- vote of New Democracy and PASOK is a strik- ing in any way against the democratic sys- ing indicator (5.7 million votes in 2007, 5.3m tem. Nevertheless, its leader, while still be- in 2009, 2 million in May 2012). The vote of ing in New Democracy was trying to establish LAOS from the high point of 386 thousand links with the far-right and with the fascists; (2009) fell to 97 thousand (June 2012). A once he made an open call to Golden Dawn party of the Left, SYRIZA, advanced to be to join New Democracy, offer their ‘capabil- the second party in the elections of 2012. It ities’ and take a ministry as a reward. An- is in the middle of this political earthquake other fascist group, Greek Front, led by Makis -with the sudden implosion of the two biggest Voridis9, was integrated in LAOS. LAOS’s parties since 1981- that one can evaluate the youth section was under the control of the 440 thousand votes of Golden Dawn. fascist groups. The ideological tango went Alas, the agenda of Golden Dawn was not like this: New Democracy was fueling racism, only electoral. Since late 2008 they had es- islamophobia and fear, LAOS was gaining tablished a presence through a ‘citizens’ com- ground, the government was using LAOS’s mittee’ in an Athens neighbourhood, Agios ‘success’ as a justification for moving more to Panteleimonas. In the years to come, they the right, with PASOK tailing all this frenzy. would focus efforts on that area, promoting LAOS was advancing, using the reac- their squads, patrolling the streets against tionary ideas of the ruling class in the crud- migrants, shutting down the local playgound est form, while at the same time being able because of ‘foreign children’ playing there, to pose as ‘against the system’. This trick attacking mosques, not letting activists nor came to an abrupt end in late 2011, while the politicians of the Left to campaign. In the Greek state was in the middle of the storm of meantime, they had made their first electoral the debt crisis. PASOK’s government, despite success in the local elections of 2010, electing being elected with almost 44% could not hold Michaloliakos as a councillor who was threat- against the pressure of the general strikes. Pa- ening to ‘turn the whole of Athens into an pandreou resigned as prime minister and an Agios Panteleimonas’. ex governor of the Bank of Greece, Lucas Pa- Their project was to create similar local pademos was called to form a government of groups in neighbourhoods and towns round ‘national unity’. It would be a government the country, to frighten activists, migrants -with a banker/technocrat at its head- that and minorities. And they really put this would try to push forward the austerity mea- project forward; these last three years have sures showing no remorse towards the unions. been full of local confrontations, with fascist PASOK and New Democracy joined as ex- attacks, attempts to organize local ‘parades’, pected. But also the ‘anti-systemic’ LAOS to control other squares in Athens through 9Voridis was the official contact of Jean-Marie Le Pen in Greece.

22 replicating ‘citizens’ committees’ etc. the government was afraid of the growth of If we fast forward our description to to- Golden Dawn and turned against it to inhibit day, we can have a good sense of the balance its further advance. It is actually the same of forces in this battle. Now the whole picture argument used by the Nazis themselves: it has changed. Five of the MPs of Golden Dawn was supposedly the success of Golden Dawn are in jail, including its leader, Nikos Michalo- that caused the backlash against them. The liakos. Their attempt to organise demon- truth is exactly the opposite. It has been the strations in support of their jailed leadership failure of Golden Dawn to serve the agenda has been a total failure. Outside the Po- of the ruling class and the government that lice Headquarters, when their ‘F¨uhrer’was in made them clip their wings for the moment. handcuffs, no more than 200 Golden Dawners Golden Dawn hasn’t been able to extend the appeared, failing even to present themselves example of Agios Panteleimonas to any other with their Golden Dawn t-shirts. Many of neighbourhood. Not only that, but wherever their local offices have been abandoned. Their they tried to do it they provoked radicaliza- annual march of 31st of January has been tion and local anti-fascist activity on a unseen much smaller than last year’s. Their jailed scale. If the government and a part of the rul- MPs have denounced Nazism, racism and vi- ing class was hoping that the provocations of olence. In Agios Panteleimonas migrants can the fascists would create an ideological disori- walk with no fear, the most notorious member entation in the working-class movement and of the local fascist ‘committee’ is in jail, while would make it easier for racism to divide the the local police station officers are also being struggles, the result has been the opposite. prosecuted. More and more the workers’ movement was The turning point came in September fusing with antiracism and antifascism. More 2013, when Pavlos Fyssas, an anti-racist 34 cases of struggle against austerity were tar- year old musician was stabbed to death by a geting also ‘the Nazis who support the gov- Golden Dawner in a suburb of Piraeus. Fyssas ernment’, and more cases of struggle against was attacked first by a ‘battalion’ of Golden Golden Dawn were targeting also ‘the govern- Dawn who then stood aside and watched the ment who covers for the Nazis’. murder. The police was also near the event The summer of 2013 leading up to the and deliberately let the fascists commit their murder of Pavlos Fyssas has been crucial, be- crime. The government was forced to act, cause Golden Dawn tried to raise the stakes. pushing some judges to go on with prosecut- It was the first time they attempted to hit ing Golden Dawn as a criminal organization. directly against the Left and the trade union The same ministers who were until recently movement. Some days before the murder of defending Golden Dawn as a legitimate party Pavlos Fyssas they had organised a fighting and refusing to accept the calls of the move- squad of them, armed with sticks and clubs, ment for ‘no platform for the Nazis’ suddenly walking in military formation into the ship- transformed into anti-fascist ‘vigilantes’. yards of Perama. They physically attacked a group of trade unionists of the Commu- nist Party, while shouting slogans against the ‘communist controlled union’. In the past, Golden Dawn had organized attacks against left-wing activists and some provocations in the unions, but never such an open attack against well-known trade unionists while re- producing the calls of the ship-owners who had long been complaining that trade union- An explanation that went around the in- ism is to blame for the high unemployment in ternational media after these events was that the sector.

23 Golden Dawn was trying to intervene in coming back to haunt them, and this time a crucial moment of the class struggle. The with the possibility of anti-fascist and anti- government had attempted to advance its pro- austerity rage merging. They had to start gramme by shutting down the public TV- acting against Golden Dawn in order to save radio broadcaster in a single day. It was themselves. a message to the Troika (IMF, ECB, EU) The contrast between the sudden elec- that the government was still in a position to toral advance of Golden Dawn between 2010 fight against the stronghold of trade union- and 2012 and the reality of anti-fascist ac- ism. That attempt backfired. The pub- tion forcing the government to take action lic TV remained occupied and self-organized against them in late 2013 cannot be explained by its workers for months and in just a few through spontaneity. The protests after Pav- days the government lost one of the three los Fyssas’s death were spontaneous but they parties supporting it -the Democratic Left- were also a product of consistent anti-fascist a party with Eurocommunist origins. The initiatives in the last years. government remained with a marginal major- KEERFA (Movement United Against ity in the parliament and had lost its single Racism and the Fascist Threat) has been cen- ‘left-wing’ cover. Two possible strategies ap- tral in this. Initiated by members of SEK, peared inside the ruling party. One called for it brought together anti-capitalists, migrant re-establishing some contacts with the Left communities, trade unionists, anti-racists and and,crucially, with the trade union bureau- anti-fascists relating to most of the tenden- cracy in order to go on coping with the work- cies of the Left. KEERFA tried to put into ers resistance. This was the way they had action the rich tradition of the united front, been able to abort the all-out strike called by while at same time being able to cope with the high-school teachers, not through repres- the clear lack of will of the leaderships of sion but with SYRIZA’s trade unionists yield- the two main parties of the Left (Communist ing to calls for stability. The other strategy Party and SYRIZA) to be involved in anti- called for a sharp turn to the right, escalating fascism. Actually when KEERFA was set up the civil-war inspired campaign against the there were open criticisms for both parts of its left, racist campaigns against migrants, and goals: antiracism and antifascism. The issue more police repression. The Golden Dawn of antiracism was considered by part of the leadership decided to intervene in this debate, Left as disorientating because it supposedly creating facts on the ground in favour of this tailed the agenda of the government to shift second strategy. They were hoping to show the agenda from austerity to security. An- to the ruling class that they have the ability tifascism was said to be unnecessary because to fight against the Left and the unions in a Golden Dawn was still under 0.5%. LAOS way the normal methods of the government was considered just a ‘populist’ party and ex- and the police cannot. They miscalculated. posing its fascist cadre and discourse was con- The murder of Pavlos Fyssas generated sidered as a luxury. For good reasons or bad an immediate explosion of anti-fascist activ- these controversies are now obsolete. ity. Spontaneous demos erupted not only in In these years KEERFA has had to or- the neighbourhoods round the scene of the ganize at several and different levels. Neigh- murder but round the country. Local Golden bourhood committees to fight against the at- Dawn offices had to be evacuated. School stu- tempts of fascists to build local groups, mass dents joined massively the protests. In a few demonstrations (with 19 January of 2013 be- days the Unions of public sector turned an ing the best example) to show the power of already called strike into day of anti-fascist anti-fascism in the streets, anti-racist activity action. A march of tens of thousands reached to counter the official propaganda, action in close to the Nazi headquarters in Athens. The trade-unions not to allow any space for the government saw the ghost of December 2008 Nazis, and solidarity work with the migrant

24 communities against state racism, against fas- Pavlos Fyssas’ murder had made a long state- cist attacks or against bosses taking advan- ment on the prospects of a left government tage of the situation. These initiatives pro- without a single mention of racism or the fas- vided confidence to big layers of activists in cist threat. They were (and still are) consid- order to take action of their own. The ex- ering political-electoral pacts with nationalist- amples in the workplaces have been the most right breakaways from New Democracy, leav- impressive. Golden Dawners were trying to ing aside the ‘difficult’ issues of racism and find ways to intervene but instead of that police repression. they were generating a wall of anti-fascism. We are far from finished with the fascist In the hospitals, the campaign of ‘blood do- threat. The collapse of the political system nations only for Greeks’ provoked impromptu and the economic melt-down is going deeper. demos from hospital workers and patients. In State racism is escalating. New Democracy the schools, their campaign of recruiting stu- PM, Samaras is in the forefront of promot- dents has led to widespread anti-fascist com- ing racist policies in the European Union. He mittees organized by the local unions. In the didn’t find a word of sympathy for the hun- bus drivers, the only workplace were they had dreds of refugees drowned close to the Italian managed to enter officially, gaining seats in island of Lampedusa. His minister of Public the union leadership, they were discredited Order called the Asian migrants ‘inferior cul- and marginalized, especially after trying to or- turally’. They are building more fences and ganize provocations in general strike demon- concentration camps. The Greek ports police strations. Over the last year anti-fascism in recently deliberately murdered families with the workplaces became a movement of its small children coming from Afghanistan and own, with Golden Dawn MPs not even trying Syria. Golden Dawn will go on trying to find to visit workplaces because the unions, even ways to take advantage of all this. The tri- in small factories, were threatening to strike als of the fascists are themselves a gamble. against their presence. Activists of KEERFA are deeply involved in The murder of Pavlos Fyssas just brought the court cases, trying to make the legal con- all this on-going work to the surface. It also nections between the many different cases of exposed some other hidden truths. First, it fascist attacks in neighbourhoods with the of- showed the level of state complicity in the ficial prosecution against the Golden Dawn rise of Golden Dawn; it is revealing that when leadership. The judges and the police are still the government decided to move against the trying to find ways to present the cases as sep- fascists, they had to get rid of a big chunk arate acts of violence and not connected with of the leadership of the police and the secret Golden Dawn as an organization. services. Local police stations in areas where Of course the state action cannot, in it- Golden Dawn had a significant presence have self, save us from the Nazis. The difference been proved to be part of the explanation: po- is that now the anti-fascist movement feels lice officers were informing the fascists about vindicated and confident. Thousands of mi- possible police action and about the initiatives grants cheered seeing Michaloliakos in hand- of anti-fascists. Networks connecting Golden cuffs. Activists who had faced tough battles Dawn and capitalists were also revealed. The in the workplaces could breathe a sigh of re- most intriguing has been the case of a ship- lief. United front work can be more effective, owner who had an underground museum of since the parliamentary Left has recognized Nazism and tons of guns stored in a ware- the need of action. The streets are ours and house, who was funding Golden Dawn and we’re going to keep them that way. The 22nd was also involved in the tabloid papers pro- of March, called in an international meeting moting fascist activity. The parliamentary in Athens, will be an important day of an- Left were very slow to wake up to the danger. tifascist action in many countries. Fascists SYRIZA’s central committee not long before and far-right populists are trying to appear

25 in an organized way in the Euroelections, so the opportunity to turn this situation upside as to gain from the desperation created by down, showing to any prospective imitator of austerity and the crisis. Golden Dawn was Michaloliakos the way not only to the prison supposed to be their best example. The anti- but also into the dustbin of history. fascist movement in Greece has the duty and

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