New, Golden Dawn for Greece

Congratulations to Χρυσή Αυγή / Chrysi Avyi/Chrysi Avgi / Golden Dawn on entering the Greek Parliament… again. Certainly, it’s interesting times ahead for Greece. As teacherdude says, “the real fun and games start when the world’s stock markets open on Monday”.

*Stockmarket. Not. Happy.

• Greek shares crash nearly 8%
• Euro tumbles on election results
• Mediterranean bond yields, credit default swaps rise
• EFSF head says Greek euro exit would be “catastrophe”

See also : Meet Greece’s Golden Dawn, Fire and Flames, May 8, 2012.

About @ndy

I live in Melbourne, Australia. I like anarchy. I don't like nazis. I enjoy eating pizza and drinking beer. I barrack for the greatest football team on Earth: Collingwood Magpies. The 2024 premiership's a cakewalk for the good old Collingwood.
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5 Responses to New, Golden Dawn for Greece

  1. LeftInternationalist says:

    Frightening. But then again Syriza did excellently, now the second biggest party in Greece. That’s quite an accomplishment for a radical left party/organisation, and has displaced the Stalinist KKE from being the main rallying centre of the left, which is of course good news. Hell, Syriza even has anarchists among its ranks! At least according to Aljazeera http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/05/20125120322955327.html That’s got to be a good sign that there is a wide range of opinions within the coalition. Though how much they can actually do in government is in question… unless they start getting radical and encourage popular mass mobilisation and democratic/libertarian struggle.

  2. @ndy says:

    Well…

    Greek neo-Nazis and fascists have been utilised as an auxilliary force by the Greek police/state for some years now, w varying degrees of success. That role will naturally increase, and so too, inevitably, attacks, including murderous ones, upon immigrant populations, radical social movements and critics generally. What’s significant, I guess, is that Golden Dawn’s vote has increased quite massively since the last national election (tho’ an indication of this shift occurred in local elections in Athens in November 2010, where it got just over 5%); it’s now got parliamentary representation; a much higher (national and of course global) profile; much greater (tho’ obviously still v limited) popular support and, w access to parliament, access to greater resources for organising and consolidating its relationship with other reactionary forces, esp within the military and police, but also local business and other elites.

    Basically, what appears to be happening is the (further) political polarisation of Greek society in a context of chronic economic dysfunction; possibly — with the apparent disintegration of New Democracy and PASOK — the beginnings of a new era in Greek politics. This is somewhat ironic given that one of the concerns of Greek and, moreover, European elites as they pursued the re-structuring of Greece’s financial and economic system via the imposition of neo-liberal austerity measures is/was this form of political and social ‘instability’. It seems likely that a functioning coalition will not form and a further election will be called for in the coming weeks: what happens then will be v interesting. My reading of the situation is that Greece is once again likely headed for some form of military dictatorship.

    Re SYRIZA, yeah, it appears to have been the principal political beneficiary of popular discontent, the common factor with its increased popularity, alongside of Golden Dawn, being opposition to austerity measures. I dunno about anarchist participation in it: it’s the first I’ve read anything to that effect. The quote in Al Jazeera (“Made up of 16 ideologically diverse left-wing parties, SYRIZA includes “social democrats, radical ecologists, radical socialists, Trotskyists, and even anarchists”, according to Matthaios Tsimitakis, a SYRIZA supporter and an editor of political blog Greek Left Review”) comes from the blog ‘Greek Left Review’; GLR contains no other ref to this that I can find. Possibly, there are some elements on the fringes of the Greek anarchist movement who’ve joined SYRIZA, but obviously the bulk of the anarchist movement(s) in Greece direct their energy elsewhere. Otherwise, I tend to look for infos and analysis on WTF is going on in Greece from Occupied London (see below), teacherdude or TPTG. Finally, I don’t think SYRIZA’s role is really to foment “popular mass mobilisation and democratic/libertarian struggle”: rather, they are one of its chief beneficiaries. Further, its own, internal stability will come increasingly into question as events unfold.

    The not-so irresistible rise of Nazism in Greece (but where the hell are we, the anarchists?)
    Monday, May 7, 2012

    The future historian will easily draw a line at the end of the Greek Metapolitefsi (the post-dictatorial regime) somewhere between May 5th, 2010 and yesterday — the date of the first elections in this new era. Nothing resembles what we used to live a few years ago. As anarchists, anti-authoritarians, people opposed to any form of representation, the electoral process does not concern us. And yet, it is crucial in tracing societal changes — and what is happening in Greece at the moment is immense. For the first time since the Nazi occupation, an openly nazi party has officially entered the echelons of political power. While the Left celebrates a “victory” it will be unable to capitalise on in any tangible way, few seem to be reading through this temporary, murky shift-around of the mainstream political balance of power.

    Society in the Greek territory is polarising rapidly. The one pole, the pole of the far-right, the misanthropic facade of the current system of capitalist exploitation, is forming quickly. The crucial task ahead is for our pole to form faster even; for us to understand that the times (not so far) ahead will involve a fight to shift society as a whole in an emancipatory direction. A struggle to keep our cities, our streets, our spaces clean from misanthropic nazi scum. But also, and most importantly, a struggle and a race to occupy the space left behind by a crumbling, retreating system of order; we’d better get going.

  3. @ndy says:

    wsws.org line on Greece:

    “In Greece, the conservative New Democracy (ND) and the social-democratic PASOK, who have ruled the country alternately since the end of the military dictatorship 37 years ago and jointly imposed the austerity diktat of the EU, have been decimated. Compared to the last election three years ago ND fell from 2.3 million to 1.2 million votes. The votes for PASOK dropped from 3 million to 0.8 million. Together, the two traditional bourgeois parties received less than one-third of the votes cast. Although the ND has the greatest representation in parliament due to an undemocratic electoral clause that awards it an extra 50 seats, it still does not have enough support to form a government in the 300-seat parliament.

    The Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) emerged as the real winner of the election and was able to triple the number of its voters from 315,000 to more than 1.1 million. SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras is working closely on an international basis with Mélenchon’s Left Front and the German Left Party. Like them, he uses anti-capitalist rhetoric while supporting and defending the existing bourgeois institutions, including the European Union. During the campaign, he had always stressed: “We are not against the euro but we are opposed to the policies being pursued in the name of the euro.”

    On the far right, both the chauvinist Independent Greeks and the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn made significant gains, winning 11 percent and 7 percent respectively, based on nationalist demagogy against the austerity policy of the ND-PASOK coalition.

    As the second largest party SYRIZA now plays a central role in Greek politics and will be closely involved in the negotiations for a new government. ND leader Antonis Samaras, who according to the constitution was first asked to form a government, announced on Monday he was unable to form a viable coalition and the job has now passed to the chairman of SYRIZA, Tsipras. If a government with a working majority is not formed by May 17, then new elections must be held by June 17 at the latest.”

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