Solidarity with Savas Michael-Matsas and Constantin Moutsouris!
Professor and secretary of the Workers Revolutionary Party of Greece (EEK), an internationalist organisation, dr. Savas Michael-Matsas was put on trial in Greece, fatherland of democracy, because he has characterised the Golden Dawn movement as Fascist and has called for demonstrations protesting against the murders and attacks of this movement against the immigrants from Athens.
These are the only charges against Dr. Savvas Michael-Matsas, but in virtue of them he may be put in jail.
The whole story – the real extreme-right type behaviour of Golden Dawn: its anti-humanist and anti-rationalist slogans, its restrictive and xenophobic representation of man, its attacks and intimidation as practical manifestation of negation of human rights; the defenceless immigrants and the real harm they suffered and suffer from the “Golden Dawn tendency” of the present Greek state; the leaflet of the EEK published in 2009 calling to mass opposition against Golden Dawn; the lawsuit initiated by Golden Dawn against the entire Greek left in 2009 and, after an adjournment till the elections of May and June 2012, when Golden Dawn entered the parliament, the interrogations of the defendants; from which were to be charged only Savas Michael-Matsas and the ex-rector of the National Technical University, Constantin Moutsouris, called to trial on September 3, 2013 – can be read at http://forum.permanent-revolution.org/2013/08/defend-savas-michael-against-golden.html, at the links of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savas_Matsas and on many other sites.
The supplementary cause of Savas Michael-Matsas’ prosecution, his Jewish origin, only illustrates the real appurtenance of Golden Dawn to the radical/new right issued in the system crisis of capitalism and opposed even aggressively to the human rights, and represents in fact an argument against the Golden Dawn claimant: but the whole accusation, of both Savas Michael-Matsas and Constantin Moutsouris, is more than a re-edition of the persecution of Jews, it should not be reduced to this. It is the uncovering of the real essence of the capitalist state as instrument of the domination-submission relations and, as in the time of crisis we live in, which not accounts for human rights, for moral and for logic when the leading stratum has no longer legitimacy nor reserves. With all the anti-Semitic attacks of Golden Dawn against him, Savvas Michael-Matsas is not accused because he is Jew, but because he is Marxist, revolutionary and internationalist. And this is well understood by the representatives of the Jewish community, and should be understood by all who know about the trial of Athens.
Where is the logic? Golden Dawn utters anti-Semitic declarations, but no public prosecutor does act ex officio against these attacks against the democratic state, while an entire state machine takes care of a political force opposing the human rights. No, the insults against Jews and immigrants (most of them Muslim) do not constitute “freedom of speech”, because any freedom is irrational and anti-human.
Would not be Golden Dawn fascistic or Nazi? Leaving aside the historical change of the words, Golden Dawn, as many similar open extreme-right organisations – as well as all the extreme-right, intolerant messages issued from “respectable” “democratic right”, in all the countries – is the present form of the old Nazism: as this one has constituted with the complicity of the old liberal right (as well as of the social-democratic “left”) by mimicking the alleviation of the social suffering and aiming to control the power relations and the confused and desperate population.
The significance of the trial of Savas Michael-Matsas and Constantin Moutsouris is emphasised by all the real facts – not only in Greece – that confirm Savas Michael-Matsas and Constantin Moutsouris’ position in front of Golden Dawn, as well as the Marxist analysis of the present capitalism in crisis (see Savas Michael-Matsas’ last paper, 2012, http://www.eek.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1268:-global-capitalism-in-crisis-universal-particular-and-singular-aspects-by-savas-michael-matsas&catid=79:englishtext&Itemid=76). But the entire attitude of so many people who are aware of the social problems, who are indignant against oppression and moral and political abjection, who think farther than the disparate fragments of reality presented by the laudatores tempori acti, and who act, who fight is consonant with the theoretical attitude of the most consistent thinkers.
The prosecution of Savas Michael-Matsas and Constantin Moutsouris is not the logical following of the inquiry and interrogations but, on the contrary, opposed to the logic of their elements. The trial is not the manifestation of the rule of law but, on the contrary, its infringement. It is, at the same time, a warning and a precedent: as the motifs of the prosecution are ridiculous, as it is shown that not the logic and accurate motivation of the future trials is which will be pursued but the will of the power; not the strict observation of the human rights, including that to a fair act of justice, but the will of the power; not the rule of law, but the will of the power. Not at least the keeping up appearances, the facade of democracy, but the open violation of all human rules, if it is necessary for the survival of capitalism.
For this reason, the prosecution does not regard only our two comrades, but us all. We all are prosecuted through their prosecution. We all are threatened by this new phenomenon in the post-war “civilised” Europe. Consequently, not only the near friends from sister organisations should show their solidarity with Savas Michael-Matsas and Constantin Moutsouris, but the entire left – does it do this? – and all those who think that rationality and rights are values for which they should fight.
Obviously, as Savas Michael-Matsas has shown seven years ago, the end of justice and the cunning of political reason, though contradictory, intertwine (Savas Michael-Matsas, “La dialéctique et la revolution-maintenant”, in Dialectiques, aujourd’hui, ouvrage coordonné par Bertell Ollman et Lucien Sève, Paris, Syllepse et Espaces Marx, 2006, pp. 237-239). The problem is that the end of justice is not simple justice within the pattern of the political reason but human universal emancipation, and to tune the political reason with the human end means to subvert the traditional intertwining as well as the political reason itself. Among others – to struggle against the sacrifices imposed to the defenders of democracy and emancipation by the political reason.
Ana Bazac
P.S. Follow http://diki-savvas.blogspot.ro/ in order to know the weight of the trial for Europe and the world.