This article is cross-posted on Naked Capitalism
See the guy in the photo there, dangling an ax from his left hand?
That’s Greece’s new “Minister of Infrastructure, Transport and Networks”
Makis Voridis captured back in the 1980s, when he led a fascist student
group called “Student Alternative” at the University of Athens law
school. It’s 1985, and Minister Voridis, dressed like some Kajagoogoo
Nazi, is caught on camera patrolling the campus with his fellow
fascists, hunting for suspected leftist students to bash. Voridis was
booted out of law school that year, and sued by Greece’s National
Association of Students for taking part in violent attacks on
non-fascist law students.
With all the propaganda we’ve been fed about Greece’s new “austerity”
government being staffed by non-ideological “technocrats,” it may come
as a surprise that fascists are now considered “technocrats” to the
mainstream media and Western banking interests. Then again, history shows that fascists have always been favored by the 1-percenters to deliver the austerity medicine.
This rather disturbing definition of what counts as “non-ideological”
or “technocratic” in 2011 is something most folks are trying hard to
ignore, which might explain why there’s been almost nothing about how
Greece’s new EU-imposed austerity government includes neo-Nazis from the
LAOS Party (LAOS is the acronym for Greece’s fascist political party,
not the Southeast Asian paradise).
Which brings me back to the new Minister of Infrastructure, Makis
Voridis. Before he was an ax-wielding law student, Voridis led another
fascist youth group that supported the jailed leader of Greece’s 1967
military coup. Greece has been down this fascism route before, all under
the guise of saving the nation and complaints about alleged
parliamentary weakness. In 1967, the military overthrew democracy,
imposed a fascist junta, jailed and tortured suspected leftist
dissidents, and ran the country into the ground until the junta was
overthrown by popular protest in 1974.
That military junta—and the United States support for it (for which Clinton apologized in 1999)—is
a raw and painful memory for Greeks. Most Greeks, anyway. As far as
today’s Infrastructure Minister, Makis Voridis, was concerned, the only
bad thing about the junta was that it was overthrown by democracy
demonstrators. A fascist party was set up in the early 1980s in support
of the jailed coup leader, and Voridis headed up that party’s youth
wing. That’s when he earned the nickname “Hammer.” You can probably
guess by now why Greece’s Infrastructure Minister was given the nickname
“Hammer”: Voridis’s favorite sport was hunting down leftist youths and
beating them with, yes, a hammer.
After the hammer, he graduated to law school– and the ax; was
expelled from law school; and worked his way up the adult world of Greek
fascist politics, his ax tucked under the bed somewhere. In 1994,
Voridis helped found a new far-right party, The Hellenic Front. In
2004’s elections, Voridis’s “Hellenic Front Party” formed a bloc with
the neo-Nazi “Front Party,” headed by Greece’s most notorious Holocaust
denier, Konstantinos Plevis, a former fascist terrorist whose book,
“Jews: The Whole Truth,” praised Adolph Hitler and called for the
extermination of Jews. Plevis was charged and found guilty of “inciting
racial hatred” in 2007, but his sentence was overturned on appeal in
2009.
By that time, Makis “Hammer” Voridis had traded up in the world of
Greek fascism, merging his Hellenic Front Party into the far-right LAOS
party, an umbrella party for all sorts of neo-Nazi and far-right
political organizations. LAOS was founded by another raving anti-Semite,
Giorgos Karatzeferis—nicknamed “KaratzaFührer” in Greece for alleging
that the Holocaust and Auschwitz are Jewish “myths,” and saying that
Jews have “no legitimacy to speak in Greece.” The Anti-Defamation League is going ballistic about it; for some reason, the media hasn’t taken notice, except in Israel.
Symbol for the LAOS party (above) and symbol for the KKK (below)
Funny thing is, as far as LAOS party leader “KaratzaFührer” was
concerned, while he liked Makis “Hammer” Voridis just as much as the
next neo-Nazi, he was worried about what the public might think of
putting “Hammer” up for elections on the LAOS party list. Here is LAOS
party leader Karatzeferis explaining why to a newspaper last year (big HT to the Greek site “When The Crisis Hits The Fan” for this and much more):
Giorogos Karatzaferis: I was simply afraid that Voridis has a history which I have managed to cover after considerable effort…
Christos Machairas (journalist): What exactly do you mean by “history”?
Giorgos Karatzaferis: About his relation with Jean
Marie Le Pen, the axes and all the rest. I am just thinking that
suddenly, on the 30th of October (i.e. a bit before the local elections)
some guy from New Democracy or from Tsipras’ team (i.e. SYRIZA leftist
party) can throw a video on the air and drag me explaining about all
these things.
See, that’s the problem with elections, referendums, democracy and
the rest: You don’t really know just how qualified and technocratic a
guy like Makis “Hammer” Voridis is, which is why it’s such a good thing
that the banks instructed the EU to impose “Hammer” on Greece. To
deliver some pain. It’s for their own good.
No pain (for the 99%), no gain (for the 1%).
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“KaratzaFührer” (left) and Minister “Hammer” (right) |
And that is how today, thanks to the EU and the banking interests
that control it, Makis “Hammer” Voridis is the new Infrastructure
Minister.
Which brings me back to the history of Greece’s coups, and the talk
of coups today. Readers who follow our “What You Should Know” section
have been reading for months now about all sorts of strange things going
on in Greece’s military, culminating with (now ex-) Prime Minister’s
Papandreou’s decision to fire his entire military leadership. He fired
them on November 1, the same day that he announced that he was putting
the EU austerity program to a democratic referendum vote. Here is an account of the firings:
Meanwhile, in a development that has stoked fears of a
potential military coup in the country, Papandreou on Tuesday also fired
the entire high command of the armed forces along with some dozen other
senior officers and replaced them with figures believed to be more
supportive of the current political leadership.
The heads of the country’s general staff, army, navy and air force
were all dismissed following the meeting of the Government Council for
Foreign Affairs and Defence, the supreme decision-making body on
national defense.
The ministry maintains that the change in the military high command
had long been scheduled. But such reshuffles, which take place every two
to three years, do not normally result in the dismissal of the entire
leadership.
That came during a month of bizarre mass weapons purchases by the
Greek military, with the creditor nations—France and the US—as the
weapons sellers: In early October, we learned that the US was taking a
breather from pushing austerity and bashing lazy Greek public employees
to extend a new line of credit to Greece’s military:
According to information of the “Hellenic Defence &
Technology” magazine, the U.S. authorities approved to grant 400 M1A1
Abrams tanks to the Greek Army, which will include options between
simple refurbishment – worth tens of millions dollars for all the tanks-
and upgrading to a higher level of operational capability, with a
higher corresponding cost. The relative Letter of Offer and Acceptance
(LOA) is expected soon.
Also according to exclusive information of the” Hellenic Defence
& Technology” magazine, a Price and Availability letter was sent to
U.S. authorities regarding 20 AAV7A1 and a low cost upgrade program for
them. This is the first step to cover an operational requirement for
75-100 vehicles.
A couple of weeks later, France extended fresh lines of credit to the
same military for desperately-needed stealth battleships, leaving
Germany feeling angry and left out, according to Der Spiegel:
A huge arms deal is threatening to put French-German
relations under strain. According to information obtained by SPIEGEL,
France wants to deliver two to four new frigates to the Greek navy and
to allow the highly indebted nation to postpone payment of the €300
million ($412 million) purchase price per ship for the next five years.
Under the deal, Greece will have the option of paying up after five
years, with a significant discount of €100 million, or returning them to
the French navy. The “stealth” frigates are designed to avoid detection
by enemy radar and are built by state-owned French defense company
DCNS.
The deal is being criticized by German rivals that have been competing for the contract for years.
That last part says it all: What pissed off the Germans wasn’t the
profligacy, but losing out in a contract they’d been competing for. What
this shows, again, is the lie of “austerity”: They pretend that Greece
is too deeply in debt to borrow another penny, yet think nothing of
lending a few hundred million to the military.
Looking back at the last-minute maneuvers, it seems pretty clear that
Papandreou’s decision to fire all the military leaders on the day he
announced his referendum on austerity—his attempt to counterbalance
Western banker power and local military power with democratic people
power–was essentially an imperialist power-struggle in an uppity colony,
whose inhabitants are seen as little more than sources of extraction
for banker profits. So we have the creditor nations trying to buy off
the military as Banker D(efault)-Day approaches, and Papandreou trying
to counter that by both bending to their will, realizing he’s through,
and trying to save himself by empowering the people in his country. But
Papandreou was far too weak and far too compromised. Ultimately he was
no match; he never had a chance. And the popular will of Greece’s
citizens is barely an afterthought.
This is how bankers deal with banana republics; it’s how they ran
their colonies. Take care of the military, give them gifts and get them
in your pocket. The people only exist to be extracted. And when they
squeal, characterize them the way the Brits characterized the Irish
during the Great Famine: lazy, profligate, it’s all their own fault,
what they need is more painful medicine and a swift kick in the ass…for
their own good, of course.
And just in case it wasn’t clear to everyone, Forbes magazine came out in favor of a coup. Here is how one Greek columnist reported it:
“Instead of pouring euros down the drain, it would be
much wiser for Germany to sponsor a military coup and solve the problem
that way.” No, this extract is not from a fascist blog. It is from Forbes
magazine and it’s just another one of the provocative articles that
follow this insane ongoing anti-Greece campaign of international media.
In the end, the bankers and the West got their coup. And they didn’t
need an ugly military spectacle to make it happen. Papandreou was
overthrown, the referendum was withdrawn, an austerity regime put in
place to carry out the bankers’ demands, without democracy getting in
the way. Nice ‘n’ clean.
Not only did the West get its coup, but fascists like Makis “Hammer”
Voridis got what they’ve been struggling for all their lives: Power, and
vindication for far-right nationalism over democracy.
That’s where we are today. Greece drowning in debt, its democracy
broken, and despite fighting the Nazis in World War Two, and taking back
democracy from a fascist junta in 1974–in the end, it was the EU and
the Western banks that put a guy like Makis “Hammer” Voridis, the guy
who patrolled his law school with a makeshift ax, in power,
administering banker-pain.
The implications of the EU and bankers forcing Greece, the birthplace
of democracy, to cancel a popular plebiscite as “irresponsible,”
forcing instead an austerity regime composed partly of neo-Nazis
fascists to administer more “pain”–is something that should frighten the
shit out of everyone. Because like it or not, we’re all in the
cross-hairs of the same banking interests, and we’re all going to face
it again and again. Greece just happens to be the first in line.
Would you like to know more? Read Mark Ames article on Austerity Nazis, “All Pain, No Gain: A Brief History Of Austerity Program Massacres & Disasters.” Also check out “Class War 101: Meet The Reptiles Who Are Making Meat Out Of You” and “How The Bums Lost The Class War of 2009.”
Mark Ames is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine.
The Exiled