Golden Dawn, Dark Sky

A friend has posted this in despair on my FB page. The text is by Yorgos Mitralios of the Committee for Abolition of Third World Debt

Dear Comrades,

A survey published yesterday (7/9/2012) confirms the continuous rise of the Golden Dawn neo-nazis. They are credited with 12% of vote intentions far ahead of the PASOK (7.5%) and other minor parties (the Democratic Left would obtain 4% and the Communist Party 6%). Syriza comes first with 30% ahead of New Democracy - credited with 28%. Nobody can pretend anymore that Golden Dawn is a "temporary phenomenon" and that there is no direct threat to workers movements and the left.

Indeed, a common misconception regarding the nature of Golden Dawn needs to be debunked. Golden Dawn has absolutely nothing in common with the French National Front of the Le Pen family, nor with Vlamms Belang in Belgium, nor even with any far right party of the post-1945 Europe. Golden Dawn is already publicly undertaking the physical liquidation of immigrants, gypsies, national minorities (notably the Turcs of Thrace), homosexuals and militants of the left. The constant aggressions are following one another and dead corpses are accumulating.

As for the ideology of Golden Dawn, here is a "testimony" which speaks for itself: the neonazi deputy (!) Artemios Matheopoulos, bassist of a band named "Pogrom" (!), has composed songs with "eloquent" lyrics. Here is a sample - a song called "Auschwitz":

Fuck Wiesenthal  / fuck Anna Frank / fuck Abraham's race / David's Star makes me puke / ah, Auschwitz how I love you! / You, shit Jews, / I will not leave you on the Wailing Wall, / I will rather piss on you / juden Raus! / I am burning in Auschwitz...

So Comrades, will we remain spectators to the repetition of the 1920s and 1930s European tragedy? Will we -at last - mobilize in a unitary anti-fascist mass struggle on a continental scale? And do not forget: time is desperately pressing.

Antifascist salutations,

Yorgos Mitralias

Just a couple of boxes down someone else, had posted this link from the magazine Business Insider, where the author suggests that the current Hungarian government is making a heroic stand against Monsanto and the IMF. The commenter prefaces it with:

An interesting article. I know that none of us support the anti-Semitism in Hungary. I do, however, support their stance regarding Monsanto and the IMF. What I find so disturbing in this article is the collaboration between our diplomats and Monsanto as revealed by Wikileaks.

My response to that, slightly extended here:

This is a rather one-sided article. The constitution has been completely changed to ensure the dominance of Fidesz long beyond the next elections. The retirement age of judges was lowered so the government could appoint its own supporters. The govenment has placed its supporters in every possible centre of power including the arts. It has tried to rewrite history for schools and to rehabilitate not only Admiral Horthy, but some Hungarian Nazis of the 30s and 40s. It brought in over 350 new laws in its first year, with hardly any scrutiny of any of them. It has brought in laws that threaten press independence... I could go on.

Fidesz is not a bunch of socialist anti-capitalist heroes - it's a right wing nationalist government, moving ever further right. Fidesz is Hungary's version of UKIP but with a much nastier wing, merging into the fascist party, Jobbik

Prime Minister Orbán's moves have been primarily fuelled by the need to big up Hungarian pride, independence and to draw electoral benefit from the national yearning to re-establish a Greater Hungary in the Pre-Trianon territories.

The withholding of financial benefits is one way the EU tries to hold the government to account. Orbán rubbishes the EU, of course when it suits him (chiefly at home).

I, for one, am not going to support this government just because of its attitude on Monsanto.

Under the heading of the letter from Greece, I add, and want to add here too, the following:


This is a complex situation that varies from country to country, in which the one common factor is a withdrawal from the sphere of the international and global (with both its faults and virtues) into a much tighter, aggressive tribal sphere.

In the aftermath of the near-collapse of the Euro and the credit system, which is related to, but is not the same as, the pooling of values represented by the EU at its best - an internationalism that, for all its faults, brought a high degree of luxury to a good number in societies (the wealth of Greece and Ireland), that resulted in ease of travel and trade, and a degree of security from the likelihood of conflict in Europe at least - the loss of security has brought about what it always does: an assertion of the tribe against the outsider, and of the local against the international.

This has resulted - to various degrees, in various places - in an extreme xenophobic nationalism in which the old international taboos are deliberately broken.

It is a confusing situation because there are conflicting values within the international and global sphere, the issue of the venal effects of capital on one side versus the civilising effects of international agreements that are bound within the same economic network.

When both finance and consensus break down, this is the kind of result we may expect to see. And it has to be fought on the basis of the best consensus of values we can manage.

*

Just how far are the strands of the international financial system tangled up with what we - at least most of us - consider to be a fallible but generally working system of social values, manners, and rights?

What is the consensus we may agree on in a climate where the clock is being turned back to the thirties so violently that parts of our own world are already living there?