Release Date: May 13, 2012

By Yiannakis Colocasides, Member of the Political Bureau of the C.C. of AKEL
 
13th May 2012, "Haravghi" newspaper
 
The black stain of the elections in Greece is the election of the "Golden Dawn" party to the Greek Parliament and indeed with a high percentage. The neo-Nazi party will be represented in the Parliament of Greece, the country which wrote one of the most glorious pages in the resistance against Hitler fascism during the Second World War and sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives to rid Greece and the world from the curse of fascism.
 
Correctly politicians and analysts link the rise of "Golden Dawn" with the economic crisis and recall the historical precedent, namely, the all-round exploitation of the impact of the 1929 global crisis by the Nazi Party of Germany, which led to Hitler seizing power.
 
Social demagoguery and the exploitation of existing problems was and is one of the main characteristics of classical fascism, but also of neo-fascist movements in the modern era. But social demagogy is not the only characteristic of fascism. Fascism also built and builds on rampant ultra-nationalism, chauvinism, extreme anti-communism, racism and xenophobia. The "Golden Dawn" party as their brother party of ELAM (Note: the National Popular Front founded in 2008) in Cyprus represent the same inhuman ideologies. "Golden Dawn" and ELAM did not emerge out from nowhere. Certain forces and circles planted the seeds for the flower of evil to thrive today. For decades, both in Greece and Cyprus, specific and ideological-political spectrums cultivated and cultivate the ideology of nationalism, the "Great Idea" (Note: an irredentist concept of Greek nationalism that expressed the goal of establishing a Greek stat through the revival of the Byzantine Empire), anti-communism and racism.
 
In the case of Cyprus, nationalism and anti-communism are combined with "Grivasism" (Note: Georgios Grivas was a Cyprus-born general in the Greek Army, ultra-nationalist and fierce anti-communist leader of the EOKA B paramilitary organisation) and the attempts to vindicate EOKA B and the coup d'état. In truth, how hard is it for a person who has been convinced that immigrants and communists are to blame for everything, to end up joining organizations like "Golden Dawn" and ELAM?
 
Consequently, all those who from time to time cultivated or continue to cultivate the ideological concepts of the ultra-right and "Grivasism", who are trying to whitewash EOKA B of its guilt or to vindicate the coup d'état and all those who articulate a racist outlook and spread xenophobia, all those who consider the members of ELAM as "good guys", those who are exploiting through demagogy the problems caused by the economic crisis, bear an enormous responsibility for whatever influence the extreme fascist elements may gain in society.
 
This is so because they are the ones who are driving people to these organisations through the slogans and political messages they are propagating. Furthermore, they have no right, on the pretext of the electoral success of "Golden Dawn" in Greece, to give to others lessons in democracy. Their indignation at the rise of "Golden Dawn" would be more honest if it was accompanied also by self-criticism about the ideologies the Right is cultivating for decades because the womb that gives birth to the snake of fascism is precisely these ideologies.