Good evening to all. It is a great pleasure to meet with comrades to exchange opinions and thoughts for such important matters, such as the ones mentioned in the topics of our talk, but also to exchange our experiences since we last saw each other.
Since our last meeting, 3 months ago, in Moscow, a lot has happened. In particular, there are two characteristics that the ongoing events seems to have, that indicate the seriousness of the global situation. The first is their territorial spread all over the planet and the second is their duration shrinkage, meaning that the time it takes from the moment they appear until they complete is increasingly shrinking, in a degree that makes it difficult to follow even.
Under the neoliberal policy the people are struggling, countries seem to fall apart, social structures to dissolve. The collapse of the social state, the degradation of the state mechanisms and its structures and the massive population movements, through immigrants or refugees are now functioning as the cause to a final stagnation of the economy. A faltering for many years’ economy, relying on parasitic mechanisms of over-exploitation of the resources of poorer countries (through the credit capital, over-debts etc) but also, at the same time, drowning itself from the structure of the capitalist system, unable to control and serve the needs and capabilities of the people that created and served it.
The dissolution of the nation through the neoliberal policies has a direct impact on the lives of the lower classes. Because only through organized social groups, with similar characteristics is possible to make manageable the problems that a lot of people face, people that don’t have the means of buying off services for them. And it is only through organized societies that the lower classes exploit their possibilities stemming from the geomorphology of their location, their common history and tradition and the know-how that it produces.
This is why today the fight for the freedom and independence of our fatherlands is of the outmost importance. Because only through free and independent countries the people can create economies capable of growing according to their capabilities and needs, but at the same time free to cooperate with other economies around them, exchanging experiences, roads, resources, goods and able to produce economy development and a social share from it.
Unfortunately, nowadays, and especially in our continent, Europe, or at least in a big part of it, the fight for the homeland has been surrendered to the hands of the fascists, for historical, political and economic reasons, for which we had a conversation last time. Fascism always wears the mask of the patriotism, but history has proven, emphatically, that this is indeed just a façade. Wherever fascism occurred before and today has brought the destruction of the country itself and of the people.
And this is the only potential result of fascism. Because fascism serves, is supported and comes ideologically and socially, not from the lower classes, that are the only ones who truly need the state/nation-homeland we talked about before, but from those who promote and gain from the dissolution of the social structures.
It is not a coincidence that today the fascism abortion in all cases, be it in the Ukraine and the supposed maidan, or in Middle East and the supposed ‘’spring’’, or in Brazil and the supposed purification, all these phenomena, but also the political subjects who emerged were financed, guided and supported openly and blatantly by the imperialist circles of USA and NATO.
It is for this reason that the fight against fascism is of enormous importance. It is for this reason that the fight in Ukraine, both in Donbas and the rest of the country, that seems to flare up, is exceeding the country itself and is reaching our counties too, giving us the starting point.
Bringing this fight of yours in our countries, believe me, is not an easy task. I will not dwell on the anti-Russian hate that is being cultivated and that I tried to analyze last time as best as I could. In the Western Europe countries in general, and among them my country too, it is prohibited not only anything that isn’t anti-Russian, bur anything that is even slightly anti-American. I will bring some examples to prove that.
Our fight, always had the anti-fascist flag and always preaching with every way possible of the fight in Ukraine, pointed at the struggle of Donbass. And often promote actions such as events and campaigns but also open protests about this issue. A few days ago, we made such a protest in Synatgma square. The reason was another protest of some supposed ‘’Ukrainian’’ groups at the Russian embassy in Athens.
As soon as we learned about this protest, we mobilized, made announcements on the internet, talked with other anti-fascist organizations, and organizations of Ukrainian people living in Athens. The result of this mobilization was initially to change the place of this supposed ‘’protest’’. For some days they were playing hide n’ seek, changing the place and time of their meeting and finally they concluded to make a protest in Syntagma square in the afternoon of last Sunday, gathering about 30 people only.
But we were there too. And although we did not have time to organize our movement, it ended up a demonstration with banners, with the flags of Lugansk and Donetsk and with dominant slogan ‘’NATO OUT OF UKRAINE’’. Once more the media concealed the incident, although it was good that they did not dare to show the movement of the 30 gathering Ukrainians as well, It’s however impressive the fact that our clearly peaceful demonstration was forced with absolutely no reason to face at least 6 squads of police special forces, that were waiting there fully armed with chemicals and guns and surrounded us once we arrived.
In this situation we have decided to increase our actions and speak directly in an antifascist spirit that is powerful amongst the Greek people and particularly in the youth. Already next Thursday, we are organizing a political memorial for the fighter Motorola and we have started to organize our massive intervention for the celebrations of the Athens Polytechnic uprising in 17th of November.
The fight that at this time is focused in Ukraine, also touches us as our own fight, since our country also is being destroyed day by day by the neoliberal policies that the only way of overcoming them is through the fight for a free and independent country, the very same fight you give. And this is why we want to take part in this fight, as a common fight. It is a fight that we have to give with all our strength until the end, because the only prospect for this fight is winning it.
