Savvas Michael-Matsas: From the trial of the antifascists to a murder by the fascists

Savvas Michael-Matsas:

From the trial of the antifascists to a murder by the fascists

From UK Left Network, September 2013.
The trial of Savvas Michael-Matsas, General Secretary of the EEK (Workers Revolutionary Party of Greece), and of Konstantinos Moutzouris, former Rector of the National Technical University of Athens, took place on September 3-4, 2013, after a lawsuit deposed by the Nazi party “Golden Dawn” on May 8, 2009, and promoted in 2013 by the Greek “democratic” State and its judiciary arm, after the entry of the “Golden Dawn” in the Greek parliament in June 2012. The trial had enormous repercussions and produced a huge outrage internationally and nationally.

As many statements by many organizations noted, from well known as well as little known personalities from the cultural and political arena, including the mainstream international Press from all parts of the world: it was the first time after the end of the Second World War, and the defeat of Nazism, that two antifascists, including a Jewish communist intellectual and leader of a Trotskyist Party, in the case of Savvas Michael-Matsas, were brought to court by Nazis, with the complicity of the official State institutions in a member nation of the European Union.

It was this powerful tsunami of protests and solidarity that created a political dynamic permitting the victory of the “accused” in an initially very difficult trial. Parties of the Greek Left, many trade unions, anarcho-syndicalist and anarchist collectives, cultural associations, and dozens of artists and intellectuals issued public statements of solidarity or sent witnesses for the defense of Savvas Michael-Matsas. About a thousand people gathered in and around the court in the two day trial. The trial concluded with a unanimous ruling by the court of “not guilty” for both of the accused.

The three interconnected aims of this outrageous prosecution were, as Savvas Michael pointed out in his final “apology” to the court:
· To outlaw any antifascist discourse and action in conditions of social polarization and mass upheaval, in a country where the ruling class in a state of emergency uses the fascist gangs as an instrument to re-impose its control;

· To begin, starting from the Trotskyist party, the process of outlawing the entire Left and the dismantling of democratic popular rights in Greece ;

· Last but not least, to institutionalize the virulent anti-Semitism that accompanied from the start, the persecution of Savvas Michael-Matsas, an “instrument of the world Jewish conspiracy to impose a Judeo-Bolshevik regime in Greece in crisis”, according to the Nazi non-stop hate campaign.

The organizers of this witch hunt failed. For the first time, after its ascent, the Golden dawn lost a trial in Greek courts – a fact which says a lot about the current state of the judiciary in Greece. An important tactical victory was achieved, hailed by all throughout the workers movement (particularly in general assemblies where strike action in the public sector was decided) and among the popular masses identifying this battle with their own struggles against the escalating social disaster and barbaric repression by the bourgeois State forces and fascist paramilitary gangs.

But, as the EEK stressed in its first statement after the trial, a battle was won but the class war continues. What followed proves the truth of that statement: Within minutes after the trial concluded, many youth participating in it in solidarity with the accused were stopped and bullied by the special DELTA police forces, shouting to them “are you coming from the trial of the dirty Jew?” This is the same DELTA force, which had attacked the EEK in a peaceful demonstration in December 2009 nearly killing comrade Angeliki Koutsoumbou and seriously injuring dozens of comrades. A similar attitude was expressed by the police after the massive workers demonstration in Thessalonica on September 7, where 130 demonstrators were arrested, including many comrades of the EEK who were insulted by the police as “dogs of the dirty Jew Matsas”. The same insult was used the next day against another comrade arrested in an antifascist demonstration in Larissa. Even more sinister was the murderous attack, the day after the trial, on September 5, by a fascist gang in Pyrgos, Peloponnesus, against the 19 year old young son of a well known trade unionist cadre of the EEK, an attack that sent the young man to the hospital with serious injuries.

The fascist criminal activities escalated the last two weeks after the end of the trial: there was another murderous attack by dozens of Nazi storm troopers – a gang financed and supported by Greek ship-owners- in the Perama shipyards area against a group of members, trade unionists and supporters of the KKE (Communist Party of Greece) peacefully campaigning for the Festival of KNE (Communist Youth of Greece).

The climax of these activities was the murder, on September 18, of the 34 years old Pavlos Fyssas, a young left wing antifascist activist, musician and metal worker- a cold blood murder organized at the highest level by the Nazi Party and by its protectors in the bourgeois State, and executed by the “Golden Dawn” Nazi Mafia in the working class area of Nikaia, a historic stronghold of the communist movement. The murder produced huge popular uproar and anger, and sharpened the political crisis of the bourgeois regime and the Samaras government. Nevertheless, and despite the hypocritical crocodile tears of the government and the announcement of the “imposition of the rule of law”, the mass antifascist demonstrations that followed the murder were savagely repressed by the riot police, sending dozens to the hospital with serious injuries (one demonstrator lost his sight), and arresting hundreds of demonstrators.

This on-going confrontation is insolubly tied to the new phase of the class struggle, the eruption of a powerful strike movement of the workers in the entire public sector, in Education, in the Health services, the struggle in three major industries (including the LARKO factory, one of the biggest in the country and in Europe) facing closures under the diktat of the hated troika. The LARKO workers, who have been fiercely resisting the closure of their factory by blocking passage on the Athens-Thessalonica motor way, have been met with brutal attacks by the hordes of riot police sent by the government.

The murder of comrade Pavlos Fyssas, the fight with the murderous Nazi gangs, and their protectors, the repressive State apparatus, the sharpening struggle against the social devastation imposed by the troika of the EU/ECB/IMF and the Samaras government deepen the crisis of the regime, and reveal the bankruptcy of bourgeois parliamentary democracy.

The EEK fights throughout the country to bring together all these struggles into a General Political Strike – with no expiration date –
to bring down the government,
to kick out the imperialist troika,
to smash its catastrophic policies,
to build a United Front of the workers and popular organizations,
to organize Workers Self Defense groups and workers militias against the Nazis and State repression,
to open the road to workers power and a socialist way out of the crisis,
for a socialist Greece in a United Socialist States of Europe.
Savvas Michael, 9/24/2013

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

2011 August Uprising One Year On – The VOAG reviews the RKOB’s analysis

Marking the anniversary of the 2011 August uprising, The VOAG has received with interest a series of documents from the RKOB (Revolutionary Communist Organisation for Liberation).  The Austrian RKOB originated as a left wing split from the LFI (League for the Fifth International), and has since founded the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency of which it is the Austrian section.

The VOAG would like to thank the RKOB for coming over to Britain in solidarity with the workers and youth who bravely fought Street battles against the police in defiance of austerity, unemployment, police harassment and oppression.

The VOAG would like to applaud the RKOB for its internationalism and sincerity. Whilst the RKOB sent a delegation from Austria, many Trotskyist groups based in London were no where to be seen on the streets of London. Left wing groups in Britain, as the RKOB have pointed out, limited themselves to standing on the sidelines, issuing impotent statements of half hearted sympathy and understanding toward the workers and youth. Many within the Labour movement even condemned the communities that participated in the resistance, labeling them rioters.

The VOAG also congratulates the RKOB on its forthright analysis of those August Days and the attitudes of the British labour movement toward them. (4) The uprising was a test which the labour movement universally failed. The RKOB asked the question “What Would A Revolutionary Organisation Have Done” (3) The RKOB says a revolutionary party would:  “have criticised all those reformist and centrist forces which restrict themselves to merely explain[ing] why the poor and oppressed take to the streets,(…) or who only call for abstract solidarity without raising a finger for practical participation and support for the uprising.”

A revolutionary organisation would have visited the communities, distributed propaganda, and directed those involved in the uprising, as much as was possible, away from targeting small shops and personal property and towards multinational chain stores, police stations and barricades. How embarrassing, how utterly shameful that this work had to be done by a group based in Austria, whilst so called revolutionaries in London stayed at home, ignoring historical opportunities to make connections with working class youth and their  communities.

As a member of the LFI –known in Britain as Workers Power, (since expelled for being working class and left-wing) I was amazed at the attitude of my own organization toward the protests. The RKOB correctly criticises Workers Power for not participating in the uprising, even though its annual international youth camp was taking place only two miles away from some of the protests.

The VOAG agrees with the RKOB’s characterisation of the uprising and its conclusion that the lower working classes are central to the struggles to come. The VOAG echoes the RKOB’s criticisms of groups like Workers Power  for being petty-bourgeois and for turning their back on the poorer, oppressed layers of the working class, in favour of the labour aristocracy and organised workers.

However The VOAG considers the RKOB has strayed too far in the opposite direction. It puts too much emphasis on the youth and the poorer, more oppressed sections of the working class. It is true that: “ after the mass protests of the youth in the education sector and the strikes of the trade unions, the lower strata of the working class and migrants have now entered the battlefield of class struggle with their uprising”. (1)

And further: “It is precisely the poorer, the lower, the oppressed layers of the working class – including the young, the racially and nationally oppressed layers – that are often ready to resist against the massive oppression and exploitation. And this part of the working class constitutes the largest mass, the heart of our class. How absurd is – given the present development – the theory of the League for the Fifth International that the labour aristocracy constitutes the core layer of the working class (at least in imperialist countries like the UK). In fact, this part of our class is – as Lenin put it – “the craft-union, narrow-minded, selfish, case-hardened, covetous, and petty-bourgeois “labour aristocracy”, imperialist-minded, and imperialist-corrupted, (…). That is incontestable. In contrast to the false assumption of LFI, the oppressed, the lower layers of the working class can play a central role in taking the class struggle against capitalist oppression on to the streets. This is what we see today in Great Britain.”(1)

However, the corollary of the petty-bourgeois tendencies of the labour aristocracy and trades unions is the alienation and lack of leadership of the unorganised precariate, youth and unemployed. Like it or not only the organised labour movement – however aristocratic- as expressed through the unions, has the ability, organisation and wherewithal to mount effective strike action and economic resistance to capitalism.  It still comes down to who has the economic power in society. And it is they, the organised labour movement, in their aristocratic unions – with their ability to withdraw their labour in a general strike – that hold the power in society.

Whilst the poorer and oppressed layers of the working class can provide a vital push from below, the organised labour movement can give their resistance organisation and economic clout.  Both these categories of the working class have positive and progressive features as well as negative and reactionary features.

The RKOB writes: “it confirmed to us how serious the political mistakes of the unions are not to organize lower layers of the workers en mass”: These aren’t mistakes. The Trades Union bureaucracy wants nothing to do with the lower working class. The bureaucracy is implacably opposed to the radicalisation that would surely follow a serious recruitment drive among the precariate, unemployed and poor.

For this reason the VOAG agrees with the RKOB when it: “advocates that the labour movement organises the most oppressed layers.“  (2) That we need a: “revolutionary Workers International with nationally rooted combat parties…based on the working class and in particular the lower and middle strata.” (5) And that our goal must be: “an indefinite general strike in connection with the organising of youth uprisings”.(2)

 Workers Power, who along with other pretendy trot groups, have clearly chosen petty-bourgeois and labour aristocratic forces over the precariate, youth and unemployed. We as Marxists choose scientific socialism. We make objective assessments of how the class struggle is playing itself out, based on an analysis of the constantly shifting interplay of class forces. We don’t seek to subjectively counter pose one force against another; we seek a revolutionary alliance of these forces.

Note:  The VOAG broadly agrees with the RKOB’s analysis. However – No.4: Five Days That Shook Britain is an excellent document that summarises the attitudes and positions of a number of left groups toward the uprising. If you decide to read any of the original documents linked below, The VOAG recommends you definitely read this one.

1. These Are Not Riots – RCIT 10-08-2011
2. The August Uprising Report Of The RKOB Delegation – RCIT 13-08-11
3. What Would A Revolutionary Organisation Have Done – RCIT 18-08-11
4. Five Days That Shook Britain – RCIT 01-09-11
5. On The Anniversary Of The August Uprising – RCIT 07-08-12
   Revolutionary Communist Organisation for Liberation (RKOB)

We Are Not The 99%

From Socialist Fight. January 2012
Occupy movements have sprung up all over the world attracting large swathes of society, and while we see homeless people, the unemployed, regular workers through to concerned clergy, hippies and even disaffected bankers affiliating themselves with this trend it is largely middle-class in character, at least in Britain and Ireland anyway.

We have posters reading ‘Reform Now!’ and projections telling us to ‘Occupy your mind!’. There is a strong bent towards education, with a library and ‘tent univer-sity’ at St Paul’s. They even have a regular newspaper, ‘The Oc-cupy Times’. General assemblies are held: everyone with a right to speak, some on the left could learn here, and democratic votes are held to solidify positions. Anti-violence is key, as the protesters seem to be on the whole very media savvy and PR aware. But how dedicated are these protest-ers to the eradication of poverty? Is their cleverness and education of the right sort, and are they really the 99%?

This media-relations side to things is telling: the prevailing hope is that through being inoffensive they can convince an electorate of their position, which will in turn sway the government (their suggested vehicle for change) which will then start behaving itself properly. Little need be said about the fruitlessness of this liberal and reformist approach.

In Leeds however public relations took on a darker note, as when someone offered the Occupy Movement there a wood-burning heater, it was rejected for fear it would attract the homeless. Whilst we wish upon these people the most profound frost-bite, it is indicative of a certain mode of thought. In some ways these protests are analogous with the punk movement, once the middle-class discovers something they begin to believe they invented it and then quickly set about cleaning it up, sani-tising it into New Wave. The roots of protest can be found in class conflict and the working-class have made it what it is today; a tool which pro-motes solidarity, a mechanism for raising class-consciousness and massive bloody megaphone. The middle-class may borrow use this, of course, but we still retain the accreditation.

So far so harmless, but danger lurks. When the middle-class claims to be the majority, watch out! Class consciousness is severely lacking in #Occupy: a person distributing a paper claims that we’re all working-class now, an inversion of the often bandied about New-Labourish idea that the working class no longer exists in this country, ‘we’re all middle-class now’. The for-mer sentiment is born of bust times and the latter of boom, but both are unremittingly neglectful of vital social distinctions. A poster reads ‘Tarhir Square’, as though these protest-ers are facing the same challenges and are fight-ing the same fight as those brave Egyptians. The problem is that the squeezed middle does not face the same challenges as workers here and abroad, and whilst they are actively trying to avoid becoming working class, they arguably do not see the situation of working class people worldwide as unacceptable, but merely see that situation as unacceptable for themselves.

When they talk for us, they have their own interests to look out for, and we know all too well from the lessons of history how quickly and viciously the middle-class can swing to the right. Herein, for example, lay the roots of fascism. Low and behold, our man Trotsky has some-thing to say on the matter in “Thälmann and the ‘People’s Revolution’”

Now the new turn: the people’s revolution in-stead of the proletarian revolution. The fascist Strasser *leader of the ‘left’ Nazis+ says 95 per-cent of the people are interested in the revolution, consequently it is not a class revolution but a people’s revolution. Thälmann *German Stalin-ist leader] sings in chorus. In reality, the worker-Communist should say to the fascist worker: of course, 95 percent of the population, if not 98 percent, is exploited by finance capital. But this exploitation is organized hierarchically. He goes on to explain that the middle-class are what we might class sub-exploiters, or sub-subexploiters.

Events unfold, Otto Strasser was the ‘workers representative’ in the German fascist move-ment. His ‘left-wing’ faction, which included Joseph Goebbels, was in favour of strikes, nationalising the banks and industry, was not anti-Semitic, admired Stalin and wanted to ally with the Soviet Union. He was expelled from the NSDAP by Hitler in 1930, his brother Gregor was killed and his faction wiped out in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. Hitler then became the undisputed party leader.

The subsequent demonization of the working-class and its organisations becomes entrenched, and minorities were scapegoated in the most staggering manner. (As a side note, there is practically nothing said in defence of Muslims against the ever-growing acceptability of Islamophobia by this movement, apparently it is not a key enough issue). What is evident how-ever, and which seems to be sneak-ing into lefty news outlets, is this false notion of ‘the people’, Stalinist in tone and mis-educated in content. As any fool knows – we’re not all in the same boat, and it’s frankly insult-ing to suggest we are.

With such a broad range of ideas and opinions it becomes awkward to offer a critique of this trend as it manifests itself in these Isles, one minute someone suggests we ‘grow our own future’ and the next that a Rothschild lizard blew up the twin towers as a double-indemnity insurance scam. But the character of the thing as a whole is middle-class, probably the better part of this entity, perhaps exempli-fied by their sterling organisational skills. We cannot let them speak for us however, for not only does it rob the true majority of a voice, but also misrepresents our interests. Note that the Glasgow Occupiers have now declared them-selves not anti-Capitalist at all and in Dublin members of the far right have been spotted acting as stewards.

Censorship should always be approached with utmost caution, because the old adage ‘I may not agree with what you’re saying, but I’ll de-fend your right to say it’ is defiantly in play here. These are on the whole nice people with good intentions, despite being ultimately clueless.

Maybe in this light it’s lucky that this movement is going nowhere quick, because occupying a park is hardly the strategy of the century, this thing is not Tiananmen Square, and it’s defi-nitely no industrial strike action. In short I suggest that when a middle-class person from this movement invites you to occupy your own mind, nod and smile, suggest some reading material, but find something better to occupy yourself with instead.

On The Aniversary Of Trotsky’s Death – Russia Today Speaks To Workers Power

 On the 70th anniversary of Leon Trotsky’s death, Russia Today spoke to Workers Power, a leading British Trotskyist group and member of the League for the 5th International.

 

Russia Today wrote: It has been 70 years since Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, was assassinated by an undercover Soviet agent.

Trotsky spent his last days in Mexico, after being deported for opposing Joseph Stalin’s policies, but his socialist ideas are finding more support among those hit by Europe’s financial downturn.

To many, the ideas of Leon Trotsky embody genuine socialism – revolution, an international coalition of the working classes and fighting bureaucracy. They might seem like outdated ideas, but they are alive and well across Europe.

Trotsky’s assassination at the hands of an undercover NKVD (forerunner of the KGB) agent took place 70 years ago in Mexico. Regardless, in many other places around Europe his theories live on through organizations, such as Workers Power, which calls for the working classes to seize power from the capitalists and start a revolution.

Workers Power is a movement active in 20 countries from the United States to Sri Lanka. Simon Hardy from the organization believes it is relevant today more than ever, as ordinary people feel they are suffering most from an economic crisis brought about by the rich.

 “A lot of the work of socialists now is focusing on talking to working people about how they are suffering under the recession and engaging them in the political arguments and ideas which will help them fight back against the governments, against the capitalist class, so they don’t have to bear the brunt of the crisis,” Hardy said.

Amid discontent in Europe about cuts in public spending and job losses, this summer has seen violent protests, most notably in Greece. Socialists around Europe believe those demonstrations were successful. In their view, they stopped the Greek government imposing harsher austerity measures.

According to German Trotskyist group SAB, it is just the beginning. Michael Koschitzki, an activist with the German Socialist Alternative, says “I think if they can develop a real program which does, for example, stop all debt payments, starts the nationalization of banks, starts the nationalization of bigger companies and puts them under workers control and management, I think that will lead to where you can really fight back the measures of the government. Also spread these struggles to other countries in southern Europe, for example, but also countries such as Germany.”

According to the Trotskyists, the world is heading for an Autumn of Discontent, with demonstrations and general strikes across Europe attacking austerity measures and governments. The aim is to spread left-wing ideas, and plant the idea the economic crisis wasn’t brought about by individual policies – it stems from capitalism itself.

 “When capitalism went into its bust phase in 2008, went into the recession, the governments decided to give the banks as much money as they wanted, there was billions and billions of dollars given to the banks in bailouts, but when it comes to ordinary people, we suffer cuts, we suffer austerity measures, so it is about making that political argument and making it clear that the problems are capitalism itself, and therefore the alternative is socialism,” Simon Hardy concludes.

Marxist-Trotskyists say genuine socialism, minus the cult of personality and the bureaucracy, was never given a chance to prove itself. In Europe, it has never managed to get more than token support at the ballot box. Now its supporters think capitalism is on its deathbed and it may be time to finally implement Trotsky’s philosophy.