Austerity & Fascism In Greece - The Real 1%
Doctrine

By Mark Ames
Naked Capitalism
November 16, 2011

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/11/mark-ames-austerity-fascism-in-greece-%E2%80%93-the-real-1-doctrine.html

See the guy in the photo there [
http://tinyurl.com/84rvu4o], 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.

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"
Vordis 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%).

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.
__________

Mark Ames, is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder
and Rebellion from Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's
Columbine.

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