Golden Dawn – Greek Fascists
In the wake of the U.S. Presidential election in 2012 much of the world appears to be in chaos. Much like the global “Great Depression” that began in the last century our current economic mess was largely created by barely legal financial instruments. These practices, fed by the deregulation of the financial industry were designed to siphon off municipal funds, pensions and the retirement of working people and transfer the wealth to the banking elite.
They succeeded.
Investment models pioneered on Wall Street and in London were shifted to the economies of smaller nation-states around the world. As excessive funds were lent out in Europe to insure membership of smaller countries into the European Union and currency, many of these “designed to fail” financial instruments fell through.
As financial bubble after bubble was blown up to burst, the chips were called back in and just as millions of American homeowners went “underwater”, so did countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.
This economic distress left Germany, the strongest economy in the E.U. in the drivers seat.
We will dedicate much more time to the German financial enigma in further posts, but suffice it to say German policy has been to impose severe austerity on fellow nations in a carrot-and-stick financial stranglehold.
What we are seeing is the return of “Fascism”, from Spain to Greece to the U.S. police reaction to “Occupy Wall Street”.
The origins of fascist idology go clear back to the opposition to The French Revolution.
Through the writings of philosophers like Rousseau and “The Social Contract”, the ideas of modernity were born. The slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” sparked unprecedented changes in society and the concept of “The Social Contract” was woven into governments around the world.
Fascism is a direct reaction to those concepts. It is by nature reactionary and undemocratic. Out of the rubble of World War One emerged varieties of athoritarian nationalism, combined with the new methods of industrialism and resource extraction.
This includes the United States, as we shall see later.
It was the Italian dictator Mussolini who is credited for coining the term fascism, though the ideology was long in the works. Mussolini equated the term fascism with the merging of state and corporate power. The extremes of Italy’s Mussolini, Spain’s Franco, and Germany’s Hitler were at last realized when the power of industrial giants threw in with their authoritarian ideology.
Little do most Americans know, but this was done with the help of U.S. corporate and industrial giants.
Flash forward to what’s happening in parts of Europe now. At the top of this article is the flag and leaders of a minor Greek political party, the “Golden Dawn”, which is steadily gaining power. Golden Dawn is stepping in as food providers, neighborhood security and general strongarms against a preceived threat posed by immigrant communities.
Note how the symbol clearly resembles the Nazi Swastica. When communities are at their weakest, that’s when fascism steps in to offer support – often at the bloody expense of outcasts and non-natives.
The Greek police are increasingly linked to supporting the Golden Dawn party, and you can bet some of the authoritarians in neighboring countries are also fascist sympathisers.
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This is a good place to wind up the first of this series of posts by addressing this issue:
What about Communism?
Here’s a rough comparative definition:
In Communism, the “State” owns the means of production, (industry and finance).
In Fascism, the means of production (industry and finance) owns the State.
The Communist model, even in China and Cuba, has run it’s course and various forms of capitalism are now incorporated into State policy.
But Fascism never went away, and is only getting stronger.
More in following posts.
