The responsibility for the fascistisation of consciences
1st November 2020 ‘HARAVGI’ newspaper
By Giannakis Kolokasides – Member of the C.C. of ΑΚΕL
The long trial of the Golden Dawn party ended with a court ruling that responds to a great extent to the popular demand.
The criminals have ended up in prison. Lawyers, politicians and journalists are constantly stressing that the criminal offences committed by the Golden Dawn were on trial and not their ideology. But the crimes they were convicted of did not come out of nowhere. They have their roots precisely in the Golden Dawn’s fascist and inhumane ideology. It was the implementation of this ideology in practice. From this point of view, the court sentence concerned, although indirectly as well, the Golden Dawn party’s fascist ideology.
Everyone celebrated the verdict. Even those – political parties, organizations, priests, political analysts, journalists and the mass media – who had tolerated the Golden Dawn, flirted with it, assisted and projected it as “another point of view” in the fermentation of ideas. What an abundance of hypocrisy. And this hypocrisy brings us to the question concerning the general responsibilities for the fascist phenomenon in our days.
People who support fascist parties such as the Golden Dawn and the Cypriot ELAM are not born fascists. They do not wake up one bad morning and decide to vote for fascism. This is preceded by a long period of an ultra-right elaboration of the people’s consciousness, which prepares a section of the people to take, under certain conditions, the decisive step and to subsequently vote or even join a fascist formation. And this long period of fascistisation of people’s consciousness is not carried out just by the fascist formations. On the contrary, these formations will come at the end of this long procedure to reap the benefits of the work that others have done for them.
Fascist ideology is based on certain ideological concepts such as nationalism/chauvinism, anti-communism, racism – racial and social – anti-Semitism, intolerance in all its forms, the denial of diversity and democracy, a supposed anti-systemic stand, cleanness from corruption, blind fanaticism also including religious fanaticism and violence. At times and depending on the specific circumstances, some of these ideological concepts are projected in particular, while some others are subdued and lie in wait. Thus, for example, as far as Golden Dawn is concerned, hatred of immigrants was always at the forefront. Our own Golden Dawners in Cyprus promote themselves as particularly ‘Turk-haters’ and as fierce opponents of the solution of federation. While on the contrary, anti-Semitism lurks, because with the trilateral meetings between Greece/Cyprus/Israel and the like, we are currently in a “honeymoon” period with the Zionist state of Israel.
Fascist ideology includes and brings together everything mentioned above. Whether in isolated cases or not, we come up against fascism’s ideological concepts among a large section of bourgeois society and its institutions. For example, anti-immigrant mania covers a very wide range of the political world and the mass media in Cyprus, “educating” and generating fanaticism among the people accordingly. Immigration, with the willing assistance of the mass media, is being weaponized by the Anastasiades-DISY government to divert people’s attention from the problems it itself is causing. The cultivation of nationalism and anti-communism has a permanent presence in education, in the army and in the church. Nationalism and the exploitation/manipulation of patriotic feelings coexist in the policy of various parties and are expressed in their opposition to the solution of federation. The theory propagated that “everyone is to blame and everyone is corrupt” is being widely cultivated by political parties and the media. And as much as they do not admit it, the logical conclusion of this theory is the acceptance of some “untouchables and immortals” who may be imposed on us even by force in order to supposedly clean the dirty cesspool.
When the consciousness of the people has for years and from many directions been the subject of this reactionary brainwashing, then it is no wonder that a section of this people, at any given moment, will take the next step and be drawn to fascism as it has been prepared for it long ago. From this point of view, those forces and circles who are cultivating nationalist, anti-communist, racist and all reactionary ideological concepts for their own purposes/expediencies also bear an enormous responsibility for the fascistisation of society.
Consequently it is not enough for certain forces and circles to applaud the court ruling on the Golden Dawn, to ask for a similar treatment for its branch in Cyprus, that is to say ELAM, and to curse fascism. They must fight it in practice by combating the ideological concepts of anti-communism, racism, nationalism, leveling and fanaticism. Can they do that?
