Pavlos Fyssas was murdered in Greece on 18 September.
He was a musician and noted left-wing activist. He was killed by a man who admitted to be a member of the far-right Golden Dawn ; which has brazenly adopted the apparel and tactics of the 1930s. They are not simply a neo-Nazi organisation – they represent Nazism reincarnated. Like Jobbik in Hungary, they are not simply a thuggish, marginal movement so easy to dismiss, they are an organised party, whose uniform – and, yes, they adopt the clothes and tactics of the past – is an obvious visual indicator of their political views.
They have seats in the national assembly, and have their eyes on returning candidates to the European Parliament in May next year. With the general rise in populist, extremist, and perhaps more pertinently, anti-political feeling in Europe right now (especially in economically marginal countries like Greece), the rise of parties like the Golden Dawn makes some kind of sense.
It used to be a crass generalisation to accuse someone of being “a Nazi” if they had vaguely right-wing views, but in certain, newer, cases it appears that has become the case. It is as if the famous maxim by George Santayna has horrifically come true, “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”
It seems that the past has been forgotten; not just in terms of the longer historical view of
European wars, but also in the fact that the post-war ideal that brought about European integration in the first place, and which stemmed from a desire to escape the kind of horrendous political ruptures that divided the continent, should be put t an end. Sadly, there is an upsurge in the opposite feeling.
Greece and Hungary are the most visible examples; but other illustrations exist. In the Netherlands, for instance; in Denmark and Finland also. The National Front in France is already making moves to secure a political group (and with it, therefore, more speaking time and funds) in the European Parliament. They crave respectability. Sadly, there are those who are seemingly only too willing to give it to them.
There has been some talk about the Greek government moving against the Golden Dawn. Maybe this is the, for want of a different cliché, the smoking gun. The fears are genuine from the political establishment; that the party (which mobilises local support horribly efficiently, hence their ongoing recent success). But without a willingness to engage in a proper political debate, the threat is useless. The current political establishment – and Greece should not be signalled out by any means – is not willing to do this. It would only expose their own lack of ideas. On a local level, this happened in Italy with Beppe Grillo, and that didn’t last long, you can only stretch a joke so far. But parties like the Golden Dawn, Jobbik, True Finns and the rest, are not a joke. As the murder of Pavlos Fyssas expose, there agenda is not political engagement but murderous contempt for the current system.
The current system is flawed. But murder is no solution. Banning political parties is one solution, but maybe, and this would require a huge effort on behalf of those in power who quiver at the thought of rhetoric, rather that recognise it as the greatest weapon in their arsenal, we might just remember the words of Germaine Greer: “To kill a man is simply murder; it is revolution to turn him on.”
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