Greece's Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos held

[JackRiddler]

27. Your concerns about the government crackdown are valid...

You've got to understand this was not simply a move of ideological preference or political opportunism by the government.

To review:

A criminal organization explicitly devoted to German National Socialism engaged in racketeering and typical gangster activities in addition to many violent acts based on racism and ideology.

At their local chapter in the Nikaia neighborhood, they put together at least one showcase attack force of dozens of men, which they called the "attack battalion." G.D. MPs praised this group in public as the model for the party throughout Greece. This attack battalion would do public shows but was also dispatched to hit targets, sometimes for show or business reasons.

A couple of weeks ago the attack battalion were sent in helmets with clubs to assault the KKE in Perama, hospitalizing nine people whom they caught distributing leaflets. Leaflets! Then they were present at the killing of Fyssas, in which they surrounded and fell upon a group of seven coming out of a cafe. Activists coming out of a cafe, are you getting the picture yet? Does this sound like something a lot of DUers may do on a daily or weekly basis, meet activists at a cafe? One of the Nikaia chapter executive committee members stabbed Fyssas in a fashion of a professional killer, according to the coroner.

At that point hundreds of thousands took to the streets in response to the escalation of murdering a well-known Greek activist. Greece was on the brink. There were also protests in multiple cities each of UK, France, Germany and Spain, as well as New York and Copenhagen, and many other manifestations.

The crime here on the government's side is not that the authorities are finally moving against this organization. It's that the authorities didn't respond after earlier murders and assaults, because these acts were directed mainly against immigrants and didn't bring hundreds of thousands into the streets in protest and raise international attention.

It's that people in the police were protecting G.D. and feeding them information. At least one cop is among those rounded up yesterday.

Concerns about the government promoting a "narrative of the extremes" that equates the left with the Nazis and later turning the repression on others who state opposition to austerity and neo-liberal policies are entirely appropriate.

Concerns about austerity as the bigger problem also. The government, the memoranda, the debt deals and state authoritarianism remain the main problem, and provide the main context that helped the rise of Golden Dawn. You are right that in the long term you end fascism by dealing with the conditions that foster it. Repression is not the ideal way and this government is doing the opposite, as far as the conditions are concerned. They have employed a great deal of repression so far, against all opponents to their policies, and have begun to dismantle democracy in Greece. Before this, many N.D. party members were talking about going into the next elections with G.D.! To reabsorb their votes, N.D. has largely adopted their anti-immigrant rhetoric and committed extremely harsh crackdowns on immigrants - Athens is a stop and frisk town for foreigners or those who look foreign, by the way.

But the rounding up of Golden Dawn as a criminal organization was overdue, absolutely necessary. And it wouldn't have happened without outcry from the antifascist movement and the civil society following the assassination of Pavlos Fyssas. Whatever happens next (and things can get a lot uglier), what happened yesterday was an initial victory for justice.