 |
| "It is both them who are at fault!" SPD Poster, 1932. |
Yesterday, "Iskra" --the name is true to the pompous self-styling characteristic of Left Platform cadre, which is the definition of "labor aristocracy", i.e intellectuals and trade unionists who have seized the opportunity to transform their often communist past into an asset and a key to state appointment-- published an article by SYRIZA CC and Left Platform member Christina Soultanidou which, for the first time in my count, openly admits to the fundaments of the Left Platform's real role. Following is the relevant passage:
"If the government does not change its policy, even at the last moment, SYRIZA will have unwittingly contributed to the greatest success of the system. It will have converted the vast majority of the Parliament into a mechanism for the imposition of Memoranda, and the only non Memorandum parties, according to the political map that derives from the electoral process of January 2015, will be the KKE and Golden Dawn."
Note the poisonous admixture of cynical deception and unwitting candor here:
a) The false binary between "pro- and -anti Memorandum" parties is fully sustained. This despite the fact that ND was itself "anti-Memorandum" under the George Papandreou government only to become fanatically pro-Memorandum when it won entry into government cabinets, or that SYRIZA has followed exactly in the same footsteps, as the KKE has long warned would happen.
b) This deception is transferred now onto Golden Dawn, which the Left Platform has to admit, as everyone admits, is a fascist party. How can a fascist party be "anti-Memorandum"? What is being asserted here, if one accepts the idiotic binary that catapulted SYRIZA to power, is that Golden Dawn is currently to the "left" of SYRIZA! For Golden Dawn, this is effectively promotion and endorsement from the "left"!
Of course, "pro- and anti- Memorandum" means nothing if it does not mean "for or against the ruling class of Greek capitalists who have endorsed and abetted the systematic attack against labor rights and the economic sovereignty of the country". Given that history has never seen a fascist party that is against its own ruling class, it is absolutely self-evident that Golden Dawn's current rhetorical posture is patently false, as it was in Hitler's NSDAP, a party that posed as "anti-capitalist" even while it was being funded by the major capitalist monopolies of Germany against the communists. Which is precisely what Golden Dawn has been doing, at least in the Perama dockyards, where it was expressly set to destroy communist influence on trade unions on behalf of Greek shipowners. Incidentally, though the KKE has submitted a full proposal for the abolition of all Memoranda and Implementation Agreements since 2012 (and again, after the January 2015 elections), Golden Dawn has never done anything but give grand speeches about "traitors"...
These fundamental aspects of history and of current Greek experience are intentionally hidden so that
d) The poisonous and expressly anti-communist "coupling" of fascists and communists that Social Democracy has always undertaken is put in place. But
e) This can't be done without also openly admitting that the Left Platform's concern is to stop SYRIZA voters from turning to the KKE, "one of the two extremes" that SYRIZA's capitulation lets emerge as allegedly commonly "anti-Memorandum" parties, though Golden Dawn is not at all really "anti-Memorandum" and though KKE is only "anti-Memorandum" to the extent that it is an anti-capitalist, because it is a communist, party.
I invite anyone to argue against the incontrovertible fact that this ostensibly "equal distance" gesture toward fascism and communism openly endorses fascism as preferable, by falsely ascribing an anti-capitalist character to it and by simultaneously slandering communists through false implicit association with fascism.
The treacherous privileging of fascism in what poses as an "equal distance" policy in the Left Platform member's argument becomes even more apparent a few lines later:
"With such a situation in the Parliamentary system, and while the lives of citizens will be inevitably mortgaged by the third Memorandum, it is not at all impossible for Golden Dawn to emerge as a powerful voice for anti-Memorandum policy, with everything this implies as a consequence for the movement, the situation in Greek society, the possibility of disengagement from Memoranda, and more than anything, for democracy."
"Equal distance" is thus patently not equal distance. One of the poles of fascism and communism is always privileged from the standpoint of the craven Social Democrat, and that is fascism. And it is fascism, most basically, because it is the Social Democrat herself who refuses to reveal what fascism really is, it is the Social Democrat herself who confers on it a false "anti-systemic" image she then bewails will "dupe" others!!! The rotten, despicable role of Social Democracy in circumstances of acute capitalist crisis and the crisis of political legitimation that follows it could not be more apparent.
But even this is not enough for the Left Platform. Soultanidou goes on to explain why this morbidly ludicrous group does not quit its Parliament seats despite its ostensible disagreement with SYRIZA's "leadership" (they are in fact an organic aspect of that very leadership, as several of them are founding high cadre members of the party):
"Thus, in my view, it is NECESSARY for the 39 MPs of SYRIZA who did not vote for the first Memorandum legislation, and who will not vote for Memorandum laws to stay in the Parliament: so that there is a left anti-Memorandum expression of the people in the Parliament. For unfortunately, it has been proven that the KKE cannot express this people beyond its existing electoral percentage."
In simple English:
a) A false binary is used to conflate fascists and communists
b) This conflation creates an imaginary role for "Left Platform" Social Democrats
c) This imaginary role consists in supposedly preventing left voters from turning to fascism
d) While this is precisely what is endorsed by "Left Platform" Social Democrats through refusal to expose fascist collusion with the ruling class and its interests (but then, who would expose a collaborator? SYRIZA and Golden Dawn compete as all bourgeois parties compete, in terms of who will get the endorsement of "servant of the bosses")
e) Fascism's prospects are actively endorsed, albeit as a "threat"
f) Communism's prospects as an alternative to another Greek fascist dictatorship are actively pronounced nil.
This is the politics of the "left of SYRIZA" that US media like Jacobin embellish, falsify and promote. Unsurprisingly, it is exactly the same politics the "right of SYRIZA" (infamously anti-communist journalist and SYRIZA MEP Kouloglou) promotes:
It is incumbent for friends of the Greek people rather than accomplices of poisonous and internationally dangerous Social Democrats to expose and denounce the Left Platform's dishonest and politically reactionary stance before it can do more damage than it already has done; before the Social Democratic conspiracy against a communist and for a fascist alternative to its own rule has borne its fatal fruits.
Note the poisonous admixture of cynical deception and unwitting candor here:
a) The false binary between "pro- and -anti Memorandum" parties is fully sustained. This despite the fact that ND was itself "anti-Memorandum" under the George Papandreou government only to become fanatically pro-Memorandum when it won entry into government cabinets, or that SYRIZA has followed exactly in the same footsteps, as the KKE has long warned would happen.
b) This deception is transferred now onto Golden Dawn, which the Left Platform has to admit, as everyone admits, is a fascist party. How can a fascist party be "anti-Memorandum"? What is being asserted here, if one accepts the idiotic binary that catapulted SYRIZA to power, is that Golden Dawn is currently to the "left" of SYRIZA! For Golden Dawn, this is effectively promotion and endorsement from the "left"!
Of course, "pro- and anti- Memorandum" means nothing if it does not mean "for or against the ruling class of Greek capitalists who have endorsed and abetted the systematic attack against labor rights and the economic sovereignty of the country". Given that history has never seen a fascist party that is against its own ruling class, it is absolutely self-evident that Golden Dawn's current rhetorical posture is patently false, as it was in Hitler's NSDAP, a party that posed as "anti-capitalist" even while it was being funded by the major capitalist monopolies of Germany against the communists. Which is precisely what Golden Dawn has been doing, at least in the Perama dockyards, where it was expressly set to destroy communist influence on trade unions on behalf of Greek shipowners. Incidentally, though the KKE has submitted a full proposal for the abolition of all Memoranda and Implementation Agreements since 2012 (and again, after the January 2015 elections), Golden Dawn has never done anything but give grand speeches about "traitors"...
These fundamental aspects of history and of current Greek experience are intentionally hidden so that
d) The poisonous and expressly anti-communist "coupling" of fascists and communists that Social Democracy has always undertaken is put in place. But
e) This can't be done without also openly admitting that the Left Platform's concern is to stop SYRIZA voters from turning to the KKE, "one of the two extremes" that SYRIZA's capitulation lets emerge as allegedly commonly "anti-Memorandum" parties, though Golden Dawn is not at all really "anti-Memorandum" and though KKE is only "anti-Memorandum" to the extent that it is an anti-capitalist, because it is a communist, party.
I invite anyone to argue against the incontrovertible fact that this ostensibly "equal distance" gesture toward fascism and communism openly endorses fascism as preferable, by falsely ascribing an anti-capitalist character to it and by simultaneously slandering communists through false implicit association with fascism.
The treacherous privileging of fascism in what poses as an "equal distance" policy in the Left Platform member's argument becomes even more apparent a few lines later:
"With such a situation in the Parliamentary system, and while the lives of citizens will be inevitably mortgaged by the third Memorandum, it is not at all impossible for Golden Dawn to emerge as a powerful voice for anti-Memorandum policy, with everything this implies as a consequence for the movement, the situation in Greek society, the possibility of disengagement from Memoranda, and more than anything, for democracy."
"Equal distance" is thus patently not equal distance. One of the poles of fascism and communism is always privileged from the standpoint of the craven Social Democrat, and that is fascism. And it is fascism, most basically, because it is the Social Democrat herself who refuses to reveal what fascism really is, it is the Social Democrat herself who confers on it a false "anti-systemic" image she then bewails will "dupe" others!!! The rotten, despicable role of Social Democracy in circumstances of acute capitalist crisis and the crisis of political legitimation that follows it could not be more apparent.
But even this is not enough for the Left Platform. Soultanidou goes on to explain why this morbidly ludicrous group does not quit its Parliament seats despite its ostensible disagreement with SYRIZA's "leadership" (they are in fact an organic aspect of that very leadership, as several of them are founding high cadre members of the party):
"Thus, in my view, it is NECESSARY for the 39 MPs of SYRIZA who did not vote for the first Memorandum legislation, and who will not vote for Memorandum laws to stay in the Parliament: so that there is a left anti-Memorandum expression of the people in the Parliament. For unfortunately, it has been proven that the KKE cannot express this people beyond its existing electoral percentage."
In simple English:
a) A false binary is used to conflate fascists and communists
b) This conflation creates an imaginary role for "Left Platform" Social Democrats
c) This imaginary role consists in supposedly preventing left voters from turning to fascism
d) While this is precisely what is endorsed by "Left Platform" Social Democrats through refusal to expose fascist collusion with the ruling class and its interests (but then, who would expose a collaborator? SYRIZA and Golden Dawn compete as all bourgeois parties compete, in terms of who will get the endorsement of "servant of the bosses")
e) Fascism's prospects are actively endorsed, albeit as a "threat"
f) Communism's prospects as an alternative to another Greek fascist dictatorship are actively pronounced nil.
This is the politics of the "left of SYRIZA" that US media like Jacobin embellish, falsify and promote. Unsurprisingly, it is exactly the same politics the "right of SYRIZA" (infamously anti-communist journalist and SYRIZA MEP Kouloglou) promotes:
It is incumbent for friends of the Greek people rather than accomplices of poisonous and internationally dangerous Social Democrats to expose and denounce the Left Platform's dishonest and politically reactionary stance before it can do more damage than it already has done; before the Social Democratic conspiracy against a communist and for a fascist alternative to its own rule has borne its fatal fruits.
No comments:
Post a Comment