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Speech of the GS of the CC of the KKE Dimitris Koutsoumpas at the round table on “The dangers of Fascism in Europe”

Friday 9 May 2014

 

Dear friends and comrades,  

69 years ago, on this very day, the Red Flag was raised over the Reichstag marking the victory of the peoples, with the Soviet Union and the communists of Europe at the forefront, in the titanic battle against fascism, the most horrible, the most inhuman ideology and practice; an ideology which was bred by capitalism itself and led to the maximization of the exploitation of man by man, to the absolute nadir of human existence.

Millions of people sacrificed themselves in this battle, in the dugouts and the inhuman concentration camps. Today we honour all those who were killed in the trenches, on the battlefields, those who defied the firing squads. Leningrad and Stalingrad in Russia, Kokkinia and Kessariani in Greece are imprinted in the peoples’ memory as well as thousands of places where the outcome of this tough battle was determined, places which were marked by the barbarity of capitalism on the one hand and the on the other by the magnificence of the people’s struggle against this creature of capitalism, fascism.

Almost 70 years after, some people are doing everything in their power to extinguish the flame of the true history which was written with the blood of the peoples. They do whatever they can in order to distort history, to justify, directly or indirectly, the fascist brutality. The imperialist centres, first and foremost the EU,  are playing the leading role in this propaganda of falsehood. The EU has actually transformed the 9th May from the Day of the Antifascist victory into the “day of Europe”, seeking to erase the antifascist character of this anniversary from the memory of the peoples. In this dirty and slanderous ideological-political operation they do not hesitate to equate communism with fascism. In order to promote their geopolitical interests in the region of Eurasia the EU and the US as well they do not hesitate to rely on and support the darkest and most reactionary forces that ascended to the government of Ukraine via a coup as had previously happened in Baltic countries. Over the past 25 years, after the overthrow of socialism and the dissolution of the USSR, a systematic ideological anticommunist brainwashing has been taking place in these countries whereby the “SS legions” and the other pro-fascist armed groups are presented as if they “liberated” the country from Bolshevism.

However, let them breathe fire and brimstone, let them spill tons of ink, the objective reality can not be altered. 69 years after the end of the World War II, millions of people all over the world appreciate the unprecedented sacrifices of the communist movement for the defeat of fascism. The communist parties, headed by the party of the Bolsheviks were the basic force, the soul and leader of this titanic struggle. Millions of communists laid down their lives for a better world.

The capitalist system, the competition that inevitably takes place between imperialists and monopolies should be imprinted and stigmatized in the consciousness of the peoples as being responsible for the two world wars, for the millions of dead and disabled, the millions of people driven from their homes. They have never hesitated to commit any crime in order to serve their profits, their rule and the capitalist power. This holds true even more so today given the sharpening of the competition and their conflicts.

Historical truth cannot be distorted in the consciousness of the people because it was written by the very struggle of the people, with the blood of the peoples, the national-liberation and anti-fascist movements in the capitalist countries like the heroic EAM (National Liberation Front), ELAS (National People’s Liberation Army) and EPON (Unified Nationwide Organization of the Youth) in our country that rallied and stirred the people to rise up.

It was the result of the sensational and titanic battles of the Red Army in Stalingrad, Kursk, Leningrad, Sevastopol, in all the battlefields inside the Soviet Union and in a series of countries of capitalist Europe. The great victory of the peoples over the fascist-imperialist axis powers i.e. Germany, Italy, Japan and their allies was achieved thanks to the decisive role of the Soviet Union, its countless sacrifices and its more than 20 million dead.

Dear friends and comrades,

Today we see that fascism seeks to rear its head in the Ukraine, in the Baltic countries and in other countries of Europe, including our country with the Nazi-criminal formation of Golden Dawn.

The heinous crime last Friday in Odessa where neo-Nazis of the “Right Sector” burnt Russian speaking protesters alive and the bloody operation of the coup d’état government of Kiev in the eastern regions are shocking our people and all the conscious people across the planet. The people of Ukraine are being slaughtered by the open intervention of the imperialists of the USA, the EU and NATO that support the government of the nationalists and the fascists of Kiev and come into conflict with Russia over the control of the energy resources, the pipelines and the market shares. Once again it is being proved that the imperialist alliances not only do not safeguard peace for the peoples but on the contrary they lead to war and misery.

The fascist monster is a product of the capitalist system, both today and in the past; it merges from the bowels of the system itself;it does not come from outside the system as they like to present it. Fascism is the extreme expression of capital which is utilized as a spearhead of the capitalist power against the labour movement.

It utilizes the conditions of the bourgeois parliamentary democracy so as to become stronger, with the support of capital, or sections of capital as well as of the state apparatus. Its aim is to exercise the power of monopolies in a harsher way as the National Socialist parties of Hitler and Mussolini did in the past in order to subjugate the labour and people’s movement.  This has been its main characteristic feature; this is the source of the naked anticommunist hatred that historically characterizes all fascist forces.

Of course, although the National Socialist parties express the interests of capital, like other bourgeois parties, they also trap in their ranks popular strata, seeking to form a broad popular basis. For this purpose they use the “instrument” of open intimidation, racist policies, chauvinism and irredentism, distortion of history etc. taking advantage of the sharp destitution of popular strata which is a result of the economic crisis and the weaknesses of the other bourgeois parties regarding the management of the system in order to drag to politically backward popular strata into their sphere of influence.

The strengthening of the fascist parties in the Ukraine, of the party Svoboda and the “Right Sector” as well as of the Golden Dawn in Greece have some similarities: e.g. it occurred after the resounding failure of the promises of the social democratic parties in power. No one can forget the misleading promises of PASOK in Greece just before the outbreak of the crisis. Because when social democracy, the liberal bourgeois parties and all kinds of bourgeois governments promise pro-people measures and in practice follow a harsh anti-people policy in favour of the monopolies then the disappointment of the ruined popular strata, the self-employed, the farmers, the unemployed, the inexperienced sections of the working class is  likely to take a more reactionary direction. A similar situation has been formed in the Ukraine with the promises of the government of Yanukovych.

 And this development requires our attention today, as we are hearing a lot of talk in our country about a “patriotic government of the Left”, which SYRIZA is promising, and which inside the framework of the EU and NATO and the capitalist path of development will allegedly relieve the workers, will resolve the people’s problems. There is no greater deception and unfortunately, as has been demonstrated historically, such a “left government” following the well-known model of social-democracy may constitute a “bridge” for an even more rightwing, harsh and anti-people political line.

 

This has been confirmed by recent and past experience, because the sloganeering and promises for pro-people changes by the one or the other form of management of capital’s interests, capitalist barbarity, the strategy of the EU, which are refuted in practice, foster retreats at the level of the people’s consciousness.

 

Today, when the fascist forces have ascended e.g. into the Ukrainian government, it is being demonstrated with compelling evidence that fascism, as was true 80 years ago, can be the choice of the bourgeois classes, and not merely as a force to attack and intimidate the people’s movement, but also as a force to manage bourgeois power.

 

We know from history that the bourgeois political forces, both the traditional right and social-democracy, at times lent support to the fascists, who proved very useful for the capitalist system at crucial moments. Due to their fear of the rise of the people’s movement, the danger of capitalism losing power, they made a choice based on class criteria to temporarily abandon the form of bourgeois parliamentary democracy and did not hesitate to support the fascist form of exercising capital’s power.

 

In reality, we can see e.g. that the US President, whose election was celebrated a few years ago by SYRIZA’s newspaper and whose management of the system is regularly praised by this party and its leader, is providing clear support for the fascists of Kiev, with the aim of satisfying the interests of the American and European monopolies in Ukraine, in the framework of the tough competition with Russia over the control of the market shares, the energy routes, the wealth of the region.

 

The EU and the Greek government, which is the president of the EU, undertook an active role in these plans. On the one hand the EU characterizes any governmental change that is not based on bourgeois choices as “totalitarian”, denounces violence, on the other hand it does not hesitate to utilize violence in order to overturn governments when this serves its interests, as in the case of Ukraine. It does not hesitate to utilize the activity of extreme nationalist-fascist, anti-communist elements, Hitler nostalgists and of course the destruction of the Lenin monuments, and the other Soviet and anti-fascist monuments.

 

In our country as well, quite a few people “worked” in recent years to strengthen the fascist Golden Dawn, not only by generously funding them, but also by preparing the ideological terrain for its development. These are the people who fostered hatred against the KKE and PAME, against collective politics, trade union organization and the resistance to the anti-people political line, praising at the same time “blind” indignation, spontaneity, exonerating the capitalist system regarding the grave consequences of the capitalist crisis. We are even talking about those who, as has been proved, set up political “channels of communication” with the fascist formation, even promising government positions, at the same time when they were cultivating the unacceptable “theory of two extremes”.

 

After so many crimes, murders of immigrants, murderous attacks against PAME’s trade unionists, the murder of P. Fyssas, we can see that the system is following a policy of “pruning” Golden Dawn, and not dealing with it in a substantial way. And this has to do not only with the government, but also with other parties, as is demonstrated by the decision of the Municipal Council of Athens regarding electoral facilities. This says something, demonstrates something. That the bourgeois political system is not interested in rooting it out, but in beautifying and decorating this formation, and does not exclude the possibility of utilizing it in the future against the labour and people’s movement.

 

The KKE considers that it is an immediate and urgent duty to isolate Golden Dawn, which is the sworn enemy of the people and their struggles and seeks to attack the KKE and the labour-people’s movement. Golden Dawn can not be dealt with from the standpoint of allegedly defending bourgeois democracy, of defending the capitalist system that creates it, but by the People’s Alliance in an anti-monopoly anti-capitalist direction, by a people’s movement that will dispute and will confront the strategy of the monopolies.

 

Friends and comrades,

 

We learn and prepare ourselves, with a KKE capable of fighting in all conditions, in all seasons.

 

The developments in the wider region (Middle East, North Africa, the Balkans, Eurasia) are tempestuous and in the years to follow could lead to new local, regional or more generalized wars. In conditions when wars and imperialist interventions in general are being prepared, the bourgeois class and its governments are taking measures against the labour movement, also utilizing nationalist-fascist parties, and may seek to impose repressive measures against the communist and workers’ movement.

 

For this reason, the labour movement, its allies and the part must be prepared in a timely fashion, powerful, focused on shaping and implementing its strategy, which will correspond to the satisfaction of the workers’-people’s needs, with the disengagement of the country from the EU and NATO, from every imperialist union, with its disentanglement form the imperialist plans and the capitalist development path.

 

On this road, our next stop is the impending local and EU parliamentary elections.

 

The EU, which supported all the reactionary developments in Ukraine, must be directly and clearly condemned in these elections. And it did not support these accidentally, due to an oversight, mistaken estimations or because of a “negative balance of forces” or because it is “subservient” to the USA. It supported them because it is an alliance in the service of the European monopolies. It is by nature deeply reactionary, as it has the safeguarding of the capitalist profits as its “cornerstone”. It is continually contriving new ways to exploit the worker, the self-employed, the pensioner, the young person; through the breaking of labour-people’s rights, cuts to pensions and salaries, through the commercialization of health and education, through flexible forms of employment, unemployment, privatizations, the CAP and many other things. A reflection of its reactionary nature is the aggressive reactionary foreign policy of the EU. For this reason it creates both mechanisms to supervise the countries, i.e. permanent memoranda and it also forms the euro-army and closely cooperates with NATO.

 

The vaunted “stability” that is invoked by the ND-PASOK government is nothing other than the continuation of this barbaric anti-people political line inside and outside its borders in the course for the stabilization and recovery of the profits of the plutocracy. The people must not be fooled. Whatever recovery emerges from the profits of the few has nothing to do with the overwhelming majority of our people.

 

On the other side, the official opposition is promoting the following dilemma in the elections: “SYRIZA or Merkel”. It implies that without affecting the EU and capital, i.e. without affecting the development path that has brought us here, allegedly a SYRIZA government will bring salvation. It has the clear intention of trapping the workers inside the EU, inside the reactionary framework of a society that supports the Minotaur of profit.

 

These illusions that there can be a better capitalism, a better EU, have been experienced by the workers for many years and have been completely refuted. The EU can not change for the better. It is inextricably linked to capitalist decay, something that can not be concealed by the “cosmetics” that SYRIZA intends to apply. It is not a question of changing the correlation of forces inside it. The EU can not become a Europe of peace, solidarity and cooperation of the peoples.

 

And once again SYRIZA has sown such illusions, as it did two years ago with the election of Hollande and the formation of the so-called “front of the South”, the “wind from the South”. Today we can only treat what was said about Hollande two years ago as a joke. This is also the case regarding the claim that the candidacy for the position of head of the Commission, of the hardest core of this reactionary edifice, will change it in its entirety. These fairytales of the representatives of SYRIZA, who claim that if they receive the people’s vote in the impending elections, they will build a new EU, a better capitalism, have no basis, they are extremely arbitrary and dangerous for the people’s interests.

 

The EU is and will become an even greater and crueler hell for the peoples, regardless of whether SYRIZA comes first or second in the elections. The only way is to strengthen the struggle against the EU, for disengagement from it, with unilateral cancellation of the debt, the socialization of the wealth, with workers’ people’s power.

 

And a step in this direction will be the decisive condemnation of the EU in the forthcoming elections, together with the condemnation of capitalism, which gives birth to fascism and imperialist war. And this can only occur through the decisive strengthening of the KKE in the EU parliamentary elections, of “People’s Rally” in the municipal and regional elections.

 

For this reason, we also call on the people from the podium of our round-table to mobilize alongside, join forces with and strengthen the KKE, which is the only guarantee for the people themselves to become strong and to be able to determine their present and future.