Golden Dawn in the light of Italian fascism

Poster for anti-fascist demonstration in Athens

Several public postings about the activities of Golden Dawn cry out for a serious answer, says Radoslav Pavlovic. In fact what we are dealing with, really and truly, is typical fascism which shares common features with all such undertakings.

Deliberate provocations in front of television cameras and direct actions against certain sectors of the populations started with Seselj in Serbia, who got elected into parliament in a by-election with the complicity of the “socialist” Milosevic. The wars which followed allowed him and other criminals to test out the fascist method on a large scale and with complete impunity on the Croatian and Bosnian population. But they did not have time to go on to the next stage: justifying Hitler, swastikas, anti-semitic songs …  For a long time after the war the swastika was the prerogative of fascist groups in the north, in Germany or Norway,  but it has recently started to appear in Greece, Serbia or Russia (even though these countries paid a high price in their war of liberation against Hitler) and each time under the black cloak of the Orthodox Church.

Now Golden Dawn has established its presence on the street: 7% of the vote, 18 MPs, 12% in the opinion polls at the moment; in short, they have the wind in their sails. The pauperisation of Greece is proceeding rapidly. But, instinctively, fascism knows that the legal route is no guarantee of victory, you have to take over the street, terrorise the population, act with carefully-calibrated violence. You have to take the initiative politically, win dominion over the growing mass of  lumpen elements who are only waiting for a “guide and saviour”. Who they target is not important: if it’s not Jews, then there are foreigners, migrants. What matters is to get on the pitch, test public opinion, forge a tool, an iron bar, so that tomorrow you can smash the spine of the old enemy, the working class.

Several characteristic features which crop up include “bottle” — initiative, calculated violence, mobility … anything rather than waiting around

Anti-fascist school students on the march

passively  — and links to state patronage, of which the police, the army, the judiciary and the church are merely expressions. And they enjoy almost total immunity within a bourgeois state! They have a tactic of harassment and targeted killings which they can inflict rapidly by motorcycle. While the government discusses, they act. In their own way they have understood that Greek democracy, corrupt as it has been, has no future. If they do go into parliament, it is not with any illusion about winning a majority one day, but to burn it down.  They understand, better than the left, that the country’s bankruptcy cannot be solved by negotiation, and they are getting ready to sort it out their own way. Whether they are tomorrow in the shadow of the colonels, or the colonels are in their shadow, they don’t really care. They need to get ahead of the “reds”. They are not wasting a single day!

And what of Syriza? They came within an ace of winning the election. When will they get another chance, and can they hold out that long? Will they be able to put the question of power squarely? For now, are they able to combine the ballot box with an energetic riposte to the fascists on the street?
We find very instructive testimony from Angelo Tasca, a former Communist turned Socialist, in his historic book, The Rise of Italian Fascism 1918-1922.

Golden Dawn on the march

Nearly a century later, his testimony is disconcerting: how were a few small groups of determined scadristi able to defeat a massive but irresolute workers’ movement? Trotsky mentioned this example more than once in order to persuade his young supporters not to rely on bourgeois legality to fight fascism, but to establish workers’ self-defence groups based on the method of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”.
Modern Greece does not yet immediately face a general fascist offensive, but only its birth. The fascist offensive in Italy followed the defeat of the great strike in Turin in 1920. The Greek working class has suffered blows, but has not yet had a decisive defeat. But there will be no victory without remembering previous, costly, defeats. You cannot depend upon capitalist democracy at bay, with its one-eyed legality, to stand up to Golden Dawn. That is a job for the workers’ movement, using its own methods.