Picket Of The Greek Embassy, Saturday 31 August: Defend Savas Michael-Matsas; Defend Communities Against The Nazi Golden Dawn

The Socialist Fight has called a picket of the Greek Embassy for Saturday 31 August between 1 and 2 pm and propose to hand in the following letter. We are requesting that your organisation participate in the picket and endorse the letter as an organisation so you name can appear as supporters.

The Ambassador
 H.E. Mr. Anastase Scopelitis
Greek Embassy in London
1A Holland Park,
31 August 2013

 Dear Mr. Anastase Scopelitis,

 We, the undersigned, are protesting today against of trail of Savas Michael-Matsas a Greek Jewish Marxist intellectual and General Secretary of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party (EEK) of Greece and Constantino Moutzouris, the former rector of the University of Athens, on 3 September 2013.

 Savas Matsas is accused of “defamation” against the Greek openly Nazi party, the infamous “Golden Dawn”, for “instigation of violence and chaos” and “disruption of the civil peace” because, four years ago, in May 2009, the EEK has issued a leaflet calling for participation into an antifascist demonstration of protest against a murderous attack by the Nazis against the immigrant communities in Athens covered by the Greek police.

 In December 2008, an important youth revolt had shaken the entire country following the murder of a 15 years old youth, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, by two police guards. The revolt continued for nearly for two months, in what Dominique Strauss Kahn, head of the IMF at that time, had rightly described as “the first political explosion of the current world financial-economic crisis”.

 The police pogroms against the immigrants reached a climax in spring 2009, in Athens, in the neighbourhood of Aghios Panteleimonas, where Golden Dawn thugs terrorised the immigrants with the support of the local police. Left organizations had called for anti-fascist demonstrations. The EEK took part and issued a leaflet calling on the people to participate. The leaflet signed by the EEK as a political party was also published in the party newspaper NEA PROOPTIKI and presented in the party’s web site. This is the “crime” for which the General Secretary of the EEK is accused and put on trial.

 In May 2009, leading members of the Golden Dawn, including Ilias Panagiotaros, now a member of the Greek Parliament, and Themis Skordeli (a woman with dark connections with the underworld, was accused of the assassination of an Afghan immigrant but who never was been charged), posed a lawsuit against the entire spectrum of the Greek left, from the Communist Party of Greece(KKE) and SYRIZA to the extra-parliamentary left, ANTARSYA and EEK, all the immigrant associations, and independent personalities like the Dean of the National Technical University of Athens Constantinos Moutzouris (accused to allow the alternative web site Athens Indymedia to broadcast from the space in the campus).

 The lawsuit was not acted upon until late 2012, after the Greek elections of May and June 2012, when, the Golden Dawn was catapulted to Parliament from the margins of political life and the shadow of the State repressive apparatus. In November 2012, at the day celebrated nationally for decades now as the anniversary of the 1973 youth revolt in the Athens National Technical University(Polytechnic) against the military dictatorship of the colonels, the Greek Police, after receiving orders from the judiciary, started interrogations of all the accused in the Nazi lawsuit of 2009. In June 2013, from the dozens of the accused in the legal action of 2009, and interrogated in 2012, only Savas Michael(Sabetai) Matsas of the EEK was called to trial on September 3, 2013, together with the former Dean C. Moutzouris.

 Simultaneously with this preposterous “legal” action, the Nazis have intensified a non-stop, vicious anti-Semitic and anti-communist campaign against the Secretary of the EEK, accusing him of being “an instrument of the World Jewish Conspiracy to foment civil war among Greeks to impose a Judeo-Bolshevik regime in Greece”. Pictures of Savas Michael are presented combined with anti-Semitic insults and openly death threats: “Crush the Jewish vermin!”

 We wish to express our total opposition to the Greek state and government collaboration with the Nazi Golden Dawn in bringing these persecutions. We wish to express out outrage at the collaboration of the Greek state and government in failing to oppose and thereby collaborating with the vile anti-Semitic campaign against Savas Michael-Matsas and thereby against all Jews.

 We demand that the charges against Savas Michael-Matsas and Constantino Moutzouris be dropped immediately and that the Greek state and government protect the immigrant community against the fascist assaults of the Golden Dawn and cease prosecuting their defenders. Signed:

Steve Hedley, on behalf of the Rail and Maritime Union. Weyman Bennett, on behalf of Unite Against Fascism D.R. Rayner Lysaght, on behalf of Socialist Democracy (Ireland) David Yaffe, on behalf of the Revolutionary Communist Group Michael Holden, on behalf of the Irish Republican Prisoners  Support Group Michael Pröbsting on behalf of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) Alex Steiner on behalf of permanent-revolution.org Martin Ralph on behalf of the International Socialist League To add your organisation to the list email:  Socialist_Fight@yahoo.co.uk

Greek Trotskyist, Savas Michael facing charges of “incitement to violence” against Nazis

Savas Michael (66), a longtime Trotskyist and former Secretary of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), is facing serious charges after a complaint by the fascist party “Golden Dawn”. The slogan “smash fascism” is considered an incitement to violence against them. The VOAG re-publishes an interview with the Greek-Jewish Trotskyist and Workers Revolutionary Party (EEK) of Greece member.  Interviewer: Wladek Flakin of the Revolutionary Internationalist Organization (RIO).

Greek Trotskyist facing charges by Nazis

You must appear in court in Athens on September 3 together with the former rector of the National Technical University in Athens. You are facing charges of defamation and incitement to violence – after a complaint by the Nazi party “Chrysi Avgi” (“Golden Dawn”). How did these charges come about?

 In early 2009, after the revolt of the Greek youth in December 2008, the right-wing government – with the assistance of the Nazis of “Golden Dawn” – unleashed pogroms in neighborhoods with lots of immigrants. The Greek left organized a number of antifascist demonstrations in which our party also participated.

“Golden Dawn” made a legal complaint against all the parties of the left – including the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the left alliance SYRIZA, the anticapitalist alliance ANTARSYA and also the EEK – as well as immigrant associations and independent activists. This complaint was resurrected by the right-wing Samaras government in 2012 and the police began interrogations of those named in the complaint. In June 2013, of the 80 people accused, two were selected: Konstantinos Moutzouris, the former rector of the National Technical University in Athens, and I.

What are you accused of?

I am accused on the basis of a leaflet produced by my party, for the antifascist demonstrations of May 2009. As general secretary of the EEK I am – according to the complaint – responsible for every text from the party, even if it doesn’t bear my signature.

The fact that I am a Jew makes my case worse. On the internet there are slogans like “kill the Jewish rat”, saying that I am an agent of a “World Jewish Conspiracy” to establish a “Judeo-Bolshevik regime” in Greece.

The charge of defamation refers to our condemnation of the fascist attacks against immigrants. The slogan “smash fascism” is considered an incitement to violence and the call for participation in a demonstration as “disturbing the civil peace”.Konstantinos Moutzouris is accused of allowing the independent news portal Indymedia to be run from the university campus.

Why did the fascists choose this legal attack?

Just like the Front National in France, the Greek fascists choose the legal path to provide a basis for state attacks against the left. But these “legal” means are always combined with illegal physical attacks against left-wing activists and immigrant communities as well as Jewish synagogues and cemeteries.

How could “Golden Dawn”, in the four years since the complaint was made, develop from a tiny splinter group to a party with 21 members of parliament?

Their rise is insolubly linked with the destruction of the living standards of the population. In the last three years of draconian austerity measures, imposed on Greece by the Troika made up of the EU, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, millions of people – especially from the middle class – have been thrown into unemployment and pauperisation. In the context of this social tragedy, the bourgeois political system which ruled the country for decades is totally discredited. A major part of the population voted for the left reformist party SYRIZA and made them the official opposition, while another part turned to the extreme right.

The Nazis have connections to the repressive state apparatus from the time of the Greek civil war in the 1940s and the dictatorship of 1967-74. But these connections have gotten stronger after the youth revolt of 2008. Due to the crisis, the fascists are getting help from the state: they are protected from criminal prosecution, while prosecutors raise charges against antifascists. It is no coincidence that half of the police voted for “Golden Dawn” in the last elections.

How can the fascist danger be confronted?

We urgently need a united front of all organizations of the working class, the immigrants and the left against the Nazis. The collapse of the welfare state has created a vacuum that the Nazis try to fill with offers “for Greeks only”. To resist this, social solidarity networks must be created, as well as workers’ self-defence groups against fascist attacks. 

But above all, we must fight for a socialist solution to the current crisis, with an emergency program of measures against the social catastrophe. We have to bring down the capitalist government of troika servants, cancel all debts to the international usurers of capital and end the measures of social cannibalism. We need a workers’ government, via an internationalist struggle, together with the workers of all Europe, against the imperialist EU, and for a United Socialist Europe. Original source of interview: Unknown. 2013