The question we want to investigate is the reasons
for which a Nazi party, with violence as an elementary component of its
inner structure, succeeded in working off the marginal character it
maintained for years, and gained parliamentary representation. Golden
Dawn was founded in 1980, but became more active during the decade of
1990s, taking advantage of two issues that were overstressed by the
media as "problems of major national importance": the Macedonian
question and the immigration from the Balkans. The Greek Left had taken a
stance towards those issues, while the bourgeois parties were uneasy.
Golden Dawn, despite the bloody attacks against
leftists and foremost immigrants, despite its penetration in schools
from the 2000s and onwards, has never been subjected to serious
parliamentary or judicial inquiry. When the Nazism was baptized Greek
nationalism, it was allowed to this party to participate in elections,
first in municipal elections in Athens in 2010 and two years later, in
the parliamentary elections of 2012, where they soared by almost 7% in
both.
The reasons why a Nazi party gained such momentum in
Greek society was generally due not to the economic crisis as such, but
mainly to the dominant, national and European narrative about the
crisis and its management. Extreme Right played an important role in
this narrative. First, before Golden Dawn, LAOS was the parliamentary
spokesman of the Far Right in Greece from 2000 onwards. LAOS rallied
until then the Greek Far Right, which remained fragmented after the fall
of the dictatorship, including even at times some Golden Dawn members.
Already, since 2008, this populist, far-right party -marginal until
2007- began to gain a central role in the political system. It was
during the time when major riots broke out in Athens and other urban
centers, that a radical shift on the sidewalks was recorded in Greek
society, which had been simmering since the late '90s and was expressed
by SYRIZA. Throughout the period that followed the fall of the
dictatorship, when the divisional balance between the Left and the Right
was dominant and PASOK prevailed the space of the Left, the Left
constituted the power of historical warranty of division. During the
late 90s, when PASOK solidified its role as the carrier of neoliberal
modernization in Greece, a new division started to appear: that of
modernizing vs. anti-modernizing space. This new modernizing space, that
included both PASOK and New Democracy, did not leave any room for the
Left. On the contrary, it paved the way for the inclusion of far
right-wing into its ideology.
With the outbreak of the financial crisis at the end
of 2009, the far-right party of LAOS gained an enhanced mission at the
national and European narrative of crisis. The reason being, that the
narrative for the crisis, at a national and a European level, was
established outside the notion of classes and in terms of national
responsibility rather than class responsibility. Within this narrative,
the citizen concept shrank to a vague notion of a common, classless
identity, while the democratic rule of the state was not defined in
terms of commitment to guarantee civil, political and social rights, but
in terms of reproducing the "mystical" identity of the nation and its
European nature. Therefore, narrative for the crisis, according to
which the citizens and their rights were responsible for the crisis,
presupposed and entailed the construction of a neo-liberal nationalism:
the salvation of the nation (ie of its “Europeaness”) first and
foremost. This salvation was to be undertaken by the "excellent" -the
responsible spokesmen of the European identity of the nation,
irrespective of whether those same "excellent" were the ones who led
Greece to the crisis. In Greece, from 2009 onwards, SYRIZA undertook
dynamically the historical role of the Left: the continuous struggle to
preserve the rights of the citizen in order to maintain the democratic
state itself. Within this tough battle, the ruling political elite
counter-attacked in two ways: First, they allied with the far-right LAOS
party in the government of Lucas Papademos (former banker), a product
of partnership between PASOK, LAOS and ND. Second, they legitimated the
traditional (old) nationalism, as well as the anti-immigrant discourse
of LAOS, as a reason for saving the nation's “Europeanness” (European
identity). Thus, they created the historical depth that neoliberal
nationalism so desperately needed. LAOS, by offering national
historicity to neo-liberalism, gave historical legitimacy to
depoliticizing the citizenship concept, historical legitimacy also to
anti-immigrant fury, which in the name of emergency, was expressed with
"concentration camps" for the immigrants, with their exclusion from the
public health system etc.
The exercise of marginally legitimate state
violence against the grandiose demonstrations -an expression of
legitimate resistance and disobedience of the Greeks- transformed the
state from a field of democratic consultation to a carrier of power and
suppression. Papademos' government violently delegitimized the
democratic ways of resistance and disobedience by calling them extreme
and anti-national and by presenting SYRIZA as an extreme party. In this
context, where democracy was designated as the essence of the problem,
Golden Dawn found the ground to act openly. It is worth noting that
Golden Dawn never took part in any demonstration but on the side of the
police against demonstrators. At the same time the government, in order
to divert the justified wrath of the citizens, pursued political pogroms
against immigrants, thus familiarizing the Greeks with the
anti-immigrant racist activity of Golden Dawn. Simultaneously the
brutality of Golden Dawn -which did not puzzle the government at all-
was very useful to construct the theory of the two extremes. This theory
was and still is used in the most vulgar way with the single aim to
marginalize, not the Golden Dawn of course, but SYRIZA. What's more,
this theory suits perfectly Golden Dawn since the system used the theory
in order to endow Golden Dawn with an anti-memorandum baggage that the
party did not carry until then and thus making it more appealing to the
eyes of the voters. The criminal, racist, undemocratic activity of
Golden Dawn has been identified with the democratic, anti-capitalist,
and therefore the anti-austerity policy of SYRIZA.
However, as it was recorded during the critical
elections of 2012, SYRIZA claiming an alternative governing mandate,
brought again to the surface and at the same time deepened the
historical division between the Left and the Right. The Greek citizens
after many years voted absolutely driven by class criteria, which
resulted in the division of the country based on the following factors:
geography, age and economical status. Half of the country was under 55
years of age, resided in large urban centers (Athens, Thessaloniki,
Patras, Heraklion and others), and its social groups were affected by
the crisis (unemployed, public and private sector's employees,
impoverished middle-class, etc.). This half of the country was
expressed by SYRIZA with 27%. The other half of Greece was much older
age-wise, and rich thanks to the clientele practices of PASOK and ND.
They perceived the rise of SYRIZA as a threat. This democratic, “class
division" imposed by SYRIZA, overthrew to a large extent the national
division the neoliberal forces wanted to impose, and from which Golden
Dawn benefited. The latter used the dominant discourse of national
disaster in its own context, and undertook the duty to express against
SYRIZA (and not next to SYRIZA) the national rage against the political
forces of the system.
We need to carefully observe that: the Golden Dawn
spoke the dominant system's own language, not SYRIZA' language, in the
sense that it suggested a national, classless rage for the national,
classless disobedience to the system. We would say that Golden Dawn
became the carrier to reduce the class character of the vote, it became
nevertheless the oppositional, violent both in expression and action,
version of neoliberalism. During the two elections held in 2012, mainly
during the period between the two elections, Greece experienced an
unprecedented intervention in the history of democratic Europe, of
European leaders and officials in our internal political life. By
directly threatening that Greece would get expelled from the euro zone
in case the Greeks voted for SYRIZA (not for Golden Dawn), SYRIZA was
connected in political advertisements with the lowering of the Greek
flag and with Greece in ruins leaving the EU. In this dark climate
SYRIZA claimed the mandate to form a government in the name of a
leftist, democratic “Europeaness” of societies in solidarity. So while
the sovereign Greek political system, with the full support of EU
leaders and officials, marginalized SYRIZA as an extreme, anti-European
power, because it was against the austerity measures, and strengthened
the theory of the two anti-European extremes, the vote for SYRIZA by the
Greek people, proved to be European because it was against the
austerity measures. In this sense SYRIZA determined the intersection
between the class awareness of European consciousness of the citizens
and the neoliberal classlessness of European identity of the nations.
Golden Dawn on the other hand, taking advantage of
the class-less, substantially nationalist “Europeanness” of the
neoliberal system, claimed a vote of nationalist hatred and rage for the
humiliation the nation undergoes because of its enemies, the Zionists,
the immigrants and the leftists. This vote of nationalist hatred and
rage in favor of Golden Dawn accurately reflects the contradiction posed
by the neoliberal European class; a contradiction inherent in
capitalism: while they violently create a homogeneous political-social
time for all states, this time is internally fragmented into several
national times, that are defined competitively to each other, and carry
the dynamics of a conflict among them. The ground could not possibly be
more fertile for the growth of the extreme right, since the salvation of
the nation does not depend on building institutions of solidarity and
reciprocity among European citizens, but by setting forth mechanisms for
the extermination of national enemies.
Golden Dawn is far more than a Nazi party that
fights the system. It expresses the deeply traditional (reactionary),
anti-leftist Right. Slogans calling to honor Nazi collaborators with
direct references to the civil war, demonstrate its main rival: SYRIZA.
Golden Dawn therefore claims a part of the historical tradition of the
Right, which had incorporated all the far right, both of the civil war
and of the military dictatorship. The crisis offers Golden Dawn an
opportunity to destigmatize the fascist, nationalist and anti-leftist
mentality that existed in Greece under the guise of the Right. It is
worth noting that in the elections of 2012 Golden Dawn succeeded its
highest scores in traditionally hard-right areas, while as a far-right
populist party it either infiltrated areas that were already wretched by
the crisis, or petty bourgeois strata which see their life worsen day
by day. Golden Dawn, using striking and shocking elements of Nazism, is
trying to impose itself socially and communicatively as a power of
"purifying" the political system and the society from their enemies.
Thus, the goal is to gain a position as a radical right-wing party in
the place of what they consider as incompetent Right, a political force
that humiliated the Greeks and allowed the eternal enemy, the left, to
lift his head.
The political response to the rise of Golden Dawn,
as well as of the extreme right in Europe, is not the creation of a
unified anti-fascist front of all "democratic forces". This front, which
would lead to a decisive shift from the classical division between
Right and Left to the tandem Democrats vs. Fascists, will play the role
of a leftist "purification" of neo-liberalism. This would be in my
opinion the fatal political mistake that would dash the extreme right to
the heights and would undermine SYRIZA. The creation of a classless
front, at an era when the problem for societies is predominantly tied to
classes, would make the Left part of the problem. The European Left at a
national level first, should claim institutionally and socially the
isolation of the action and the influence of the extreme right. It
should demand the intervention of state institutions and mechanisms,
such as the Police and Justice, especially when the latter idle in
Greece, against the criminal activity of members of those parties. It
should also socially set up solidarity networks for populations
dramatically affected by the crisis. Most important however is the claim
to establish a substantial, democratic immigration policy. For SYRIZA
in Greece, but also for the European Left, immigration is a major
political issue, because it is a matter of social struggle and battle
against nationalism and racism. By demanding a new law on citizenship in
Greece, SYRIZA must assert the redefinition, from a class and
ideological point of view, of the nation, of the very notion of
Republique.
In political terms the time has come for the Left,
confronted with the neoliberal logic of entrusting politics to the
"excellent", to demand the strengthening of representative democracy
with institutions of direct democracy, such as the referendum or the
recall/withdrawal of elected politicians. The class struggle needs to be
asserted democratically, in the sense that the society which is
affected by the crisis must be directly involved in politics. Especially
in European level, the Left should dynamically claim a different
European narrative about the crisis, and consequently a different
construction of EU. It is time to realize that the neoliberal "imperial"
structure of the EU favors the rise of right-wing parties. So the
problem is not only that of a coherent leftist resistance to the
austerity measures, but claiming institutional change for an EU of
societies in solidarity instead of nations in conflict. Specifically,
the issue of national sovereignty, the nation-state, the European
exercise of political power etc., should be placed at the front page of
the European Left agenda. I will conclude by saying that we abandoned as
Left the hegemonic discourse about concepts like Republique, nation,
Europe, to bourgeois forces. In order to break the dominant European
narrative about the crisis which has been constructed on the North-South
division, a division that is nationally reproduced by dividing locals
from foreigners, we are compelled to assert the hegemony of defining the
content of these critical concepts.
Δημοσιεύτηκε στην ιστοσελίδα του δικτύου Transform!
