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Marching to the Greek parliament with a Nazi salute
by Thanos Kalamidas
2012-05-01 10:47:13 |
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The night of May 30th 1941 marks semantically the Greek modern history. Two young men, Manolis Glezos and Apostolos Santas climbed on the Acropolis and tore down the swastika, which had been there since April 27, 1941, when the Nazi forces had entered Athens. The act beyond its suicidal bravery – climbing from the difficult side the hill guarded by a Nazis party – was symbolic. Acropolis is the essence of democracy’s symbolism, the reminder of Pericles era and the foundation of democracy and Hitler’s swastika was all evil on earth. And in the Greek conscience the swastika and the Nazi salute is essence of every evil. The certain act was often reminded and became a symbol through the hard years of the seven years military dictatorship as a stand against anybody that threats democracy in Greece, democracy that is conjunct with the Greeks.
Democracy survived the Nazis and the Greek flag returned to her rightful place, survived civil wars and dictatorships but I’m afraid will have to deal with a new reality, Greek parliamentarians performing the Nazi salute inside the Greek parliament, the temple of democracy. And they will do so in the name of democracy however twisted this might sound.
Neo-Nazis there are in every single country; parasitic political parties in the far right of the political spectrum balancing between legality and crime just like the original Nazis in early 1920s. Paramilitary groups that often decide that lacking arguments violence is the only way, endangering with their acts the society and lives of innocent. The last few years there is a rise of those parties in the form of assertion, populists protesting for anything in “support” of the poor and promoting national clarity blaming everything on immigration or minorities; just like their political ancestors.
Parenthetically I often laugh with arguments like during those times there was no unemployment! Of course during the Greek dictatorship – to go to more resent events I hold personal memories and personally know what exile means – when you have nearly 25% of your population disappeared, in prisons or in exile and the rest not daring even to recite Sophocles because of the mention of the word democracy, then you don’t have unemployment and the 20% contemporary unemployment seems like a joke.
However promoting things like that the only thing they do is veiling their real faces. Their real face can be constrict in one phrase, our way or the highway – where highway = prison, concentration camps, exile, death – where there is as much opposition as much there was in USSR, Saddam’s Iraq or the Taliban’s’ Afghanistan. Where everybody is a suspect, everybody is followed and prosecuted in the name of the new order. Where democracy is plainly dead and they cannibal-eat her flesh. The Golden Dawn (Χρυσή Αυγή), the Greek neo-Nazi party is in the centre of all that and not alone. There are others covered still under patriotic and “democratic” names like “Independent Greeks” (Ανεξάρτητοι Έλληνες) of the former conservative MP Panos Kamenos, who balance in exactly the same political spectrum. Mr. Kamenos is a nostalgic of the dictatorship and his flirt with left parties reminds the Ribbentrop Molotov pact. But the point is that all these people using the people’s protest against the economic measures and the betrayal feeling from the politicians are going to ender the Greek parliament.
And then what? Nikolaos G. Michaloliakos, the leader of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn on 17th of January 2011, participated in the Athens Municipal Council accompanied by a paramilitary group of “bodyguards” he demonstrated the Nazi salute marking a new era for him and his party, masks were out and the road to the parliament in the name of democracy was open.
Perhaps you wander what the rest of the parties are doing. The left is in its usual apologetic mood, apologizing still for Stalin and the right seeing that is losing votes instead of fighting the enemies of democracy competes them into who is more patriotic. The leading conservative party, New Democracy elected for leader somebody with a history in extreme conservative and nationalistic stands, a man who in the past has betrayed his party in front his personal ambitions and agenda. And of course there is the socialist party that has betrayed the hopes and dreams of whole nation involved in a carousel of corruption, nepotism and crime.
And then is democracy, the Greek democracy, the flag on acropolis and on may 6th 2012 the long marching to the Greek parliament with a Nazi salute!
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