The colorful river that flooded Athens and all the cities of Greece in the morning of October 7th marked the conclusion of the antifascist movement that managed to impose in court what had already been achieved in the consciousness of the vast majority of the working class and the youth: Golden Dawn to be condemned as a criminal organization.
Tens of thousands of workers, members of trade unions and political organizations, unemployed, immigrants, youth, antifascists, erected a wall against fascist barbarism and put an end to a historic cycle, sending the Golden Dawn and its offshoots in prison and in the junk of history. Pavlos and Sahzad, but also the Jews of Thessaloniki and Ioannina, the murdered of Kalavrita and Viannos, the heroes of Kokkinia and Kalogreza stood and shouted with us. It was a clear class victory, a victory absolutely ours.
The Neo-Nazis were not condemned thanks to the government’s alleged democratic character. Mitsotakis‘ government, like Samaras‘ government before it, was forced to sever its blood ties with the Nazis and drag them to court under the weight of the massive and multiform antifascist struggle that, especially after the assassination of Fyssas, escalated into an avalanche in every city and neighborhood across the country. New Democracy was not suddenly interested in cleansing society of the fascist murderers, who for so many years acted undisturbed with open support from the police, financial support from shipowners and bosses and laundering by the systemic media. The bourgeoisie feared that the antifascist movement might develop into a generalized class uprising, and thus decided that it could not at that stage invest in fascism.
The Neo-Nazis were neither condemned by the cowardly, institutional antifascism of SYRIZA. The constant invocation of bourgeois democracy and normality, especially in conditions of memoranda and depreciation of parliamentarism and the political system, only succeeded in enabling the nazis to appear as those who fight “against all”. Even worse, the marked institutional tolerance by the SYRIZA government and the delay in conducting the trial acted as wind on the sails of the Nazi gang.
The condemnation of Golden Dawn was exclusively a conquest of the class antifascist movement. A few years ago, the Nazis seemed invincible and powerful on the streets and in the neighborhoods. The conscious role of the political organizations, which highlighted the need for a united front policy antifascist movement, antifascist committees and assemblies, mass action, even physical confrontationwith the Nazi gang; the invaluable contribution of the lawyers in civil litigation in the court; the class instict among the working-class neighborhoods and workplaces; the antifascist reflexes of the youth; the collective memory of the atrocities of the Nazis; the mass democratic feeling that still excites the majority of the people every year at the anniversary of the revolt of Polytechnic University: all the above created a completely different situation within a few years.
The antifascist movement has matured impressively over the recent years and that fills us with hope. As OKDE-Spartakos, for decades, long before the Golden Dawn became a parliamentary party, we had read the fascist phenomenon with its historical special features and highlighted, to the best of our ability, the urgent need to address it, far from the logic of interclass “democratic” fronts, as well as views of it as “simply” parastate or simplistic offsets of the fascist violence with the state repression, the employer’s arbitrariness, the violence of unemployment or social conservatism. The contribution to the understanding of the phenomenon and the many years of consistent participation in the antifascist mobilizations make us consider ourselves an organic part of this much wider movement that defeated the Golden Dawn.
The historic victory of October 7 opens new perspectives for the antifascist and the class movement in general. It is obvious that ND, wanting to present itself as a guarantor of “democracy and normality” will put forward the rhetoric of the “horseshoe theory”. The repression and dispersal of yesterday’s rally in Athens shows that the government cannot tolerate tens of thousands of antifascists celebrating the condemnation of the Nazis. The suppression of any mobilization lately shows its attitude towards those whoever fighting. It is up to us not to allow the movement to be stifled.
The fight against racism and national myths remains relevant and important. After the crushing of Golden Dawn, we will also crush the policy of extermination of refugees and immigrants, the national ideas of greatness and expansion and the arms race against Turkey and the rest of the neighbors, sexism and patriarchy, the various so-called “indignant” far right-winged, who will try to fill the gap left by Golden Dawn. There is no time for rest, but neither is there time for pessimism. Everything is ahead of us.
