The left has failed to learn the terrible lesson of past associations with the far right!
By Yorgos Mitralias
Why republish this text written and published in 2018? Because, unfortunately, it is even more relevant today than it was then. Because in six years, the drift of part of the Greek left, but also of the European left, towards the far right has accelerated, intensified and deepened, bringing it ever closer to its final mutation into the exact opposite of what it had wanted to become.
Exaggerations? Rather not, if we remember that this left not only doesn't seem indignant, let alone revolted, by the systematic violations of the most elementary democratic rights and freedoms in countries whose regimes it likes or even supports (e.g., Russia, China, Syria, India, Hungary, Iran, . ...), but lately tends to "theorize" this attitude by treating these democratic rights and freedoms as Western "luxuries" of secondary importance that its beloved "multipolar emerging world" doesn't need. Thus, instead of advocating the expansion of the rights and freedoms that the bourgeois regime is forced to concede under the pressure of popular and workers' struggles, this left advocates the reduction, or even abolition, of these rights, such as the freedom to speak and write one's opinion, to create and organize political parties, workers' unions and social movements, etc. As for all those who fight, often under the most difficult conditions and often at the risk of their lives, to defend these fundamental democratic rights, not only does this Left show them not the slightest solidarity and turn its back on them, but it even goes so far as to reproduce the vile slanders with which the executioners sully the honor of the victims!
So, while continuing to trumpet its anti-fascist credentials, this Left is borrowing whole swathes of the traditional program of far-right and even neo-fascist currents and organizations: disdain, even hostility, towards feminist and LGBT movements; climate scepticism, often leading to the denunciation of climate change as a "swindle of imperialism"; attribution of anti-systemic virtues to authoritarian, police or even dictatorial regimes, idealized in the name of an anti-imperialism that chooses to support one imperialism against another, and open sympathy, even thinly veiled support, for dictators or would-be dictators like Trump, presented as the victim of establishment conspiracies, and so on. etc. And "of course", ever fewer references to the class struggle replaced by ever more numerous and insistent references to the fatherland, patriotism and the "Europe of nations", which almost inevitably leads to praise even.... the traditional family ("Greek Orthodox" in the case of the Greek Left!) and other conservative, reactionary and patriarchal "values", which are supposed to be threatened by the enemies of the supposedly beleaguered nation, etc, etc.
So, since we've already had experience of this kind of sorcerers apprentices in the inter-war period, and remember the catastrophic consequences of their policies, and since our times are looking more and more like that inter-war period, we choose to republish the following text, even if we do so without the slightest illusion that it will change anything in our immediate future, which looks increasingly bleak, all the more so as the international far right expands its influence ever further. But we do so confident that no one has ever lost by learning from the mistakes of the past the lessons necessary for the present and the future…
When the Greek left fails to learn the lesson of past dangerous games with the far right!
By Yorgos Mitralias
Starting point and at the same time motivation for the following brief account of the "Radek-Schlageter affair" is the critical situation created by the behavior of the leaders of a significant part of the Greek radical left towards the far-right rally (against the recognition of the Republic of Macedonia) that took place in Thessaloniki on January 20, 2018. So beware, because the similarities, coincidences and analogies with the European tragedy of the interwar period are more than obvious...
It's Spring 1923, and the Ruhr, Germany's industrial heartland, is under French military occupation as a form of war reparations, but also as a form of revenge by France, victorious in the First World Slaughter, on defeated Germany. Predictably, the humiliated, impoverished and unemployed German people resists the foreigners who plunder their country and bayonet popular protests. A wave of emotion and indignation sweeps through Germany when the French military occupation authorities try, convict and execute veteran, right-wing Frei Korps leader and Nazi Albert Leo Schlageter, arrested while carrying out one of his many sabotage campaigns.
A few days later, on the occasion of Schlageter's execution, Bolshevik leader Karl Radek delivers a speech to the Executive Committee of the Third International, a speech that was to mark the history of the last century in a decisive but also catastrophic way. Here, then, is a characteristic extract from that speech, as reproduced in his book "Moscow under Lenin"(1) by the French revolutionary Alfred Rosmer, present at the meeting as a leading member of the Third International.
“Throughout the speech of Comrade Zetkin on the contradictions within Fascism, the name of Schlageter and his tragic fate was in my head. We ought to remember him here when we are defining our attitude towards Fascism. The story of this martyr of German nationalism should not be forgotten nor passed over with a mere phrase. It has much to tell us, and much to tell the German people. We are not sentimental romanticists who forget friendship when its object is dead, nor are we diplomats who say: by the graveside say nothing but good, or remain silent. Schlageter, a courageous soldier of the counter-revolution, deserves to be sincerely honoured by us, the soldiers of the revolution. Freksa, who shared his views, published in 1920 a novel in which he described the life of an officer who fell in the fight against Spartacus. Freska named his novel The Wanderer into the Void. If those German Fascisti, who honestly thought to serve the German people, failed to understand the significance of Schlageter’s fate, Schlageter died in vain, and on his tombstone should read: “The Wanderer into the Void”.
And Rosmer remembers and recounts what happened immediately afterwards: "The delegates were dumbfounded. What did this strange preamble mean? What followed didn't explain it; on the contrary, it reinforced the initial impression. Continuing his speech, Radek spoke of a dejected Germany, crushed by the victor. Only fools," he said, "could have imagined that the Entente would treat Germany any differently than Germany treated Russia. "Schlageter is dead. He cannot supply the answer. His comrades in arms swore at his graveside to carry on his fight. They must supply the answer: against whom and on whose side?”. And Rosmer concluded: "Only (Radek's) conclusion was plausible: 'We believe that the great majority of the nationalist-minded masses belong not to the camp of the capitalists but to the camp of the workers."
When the party leadership finally put the brakes on the catastrophe of the "Radek line" and abandoned joint actions, the damage had already been done, at least in large part. Instead of being fleeced, the Nazis have emerged from their isolation and become an almost respectable rising political force, proving how far-sighted was not the communist Karl Radek, but rather the... Nazi Goebbels. But why? Because Joseph Goebbels was quick to praise (!) the shameful speech by the sorcerer's apprentice of the Third International, because he immediately understood that its practical consequences would be disastrous for the KPD (Communist Party of Germany), whereas it would be a real boon for his Nazi party... (2)
Unfortunately, it's almost a tradition of the labor movement, and above all of the communist and socialist movements, not to learn from its mistakes. Not only then, but now, almost a century later! And if, in pre-war Germany, the KPD, which blindly applied the dictates of the Stalinist bureaucracy, and which later repeated - albeit occasionally - joint actions and acquiescence with the Nazis, could take advantage of the mitigating circumstance that fascism and Nazism were a new and hitherto unknown "phenomenon", what can we say about the sorcerer's apprentices of today's Greek left, who seem to have learned nothing from the tragic experiences of the European interwar period - hitherto unparalleled in their savagery and catastrophic consequences?
So it is that some, i.e. those of the ruling Syriza party, claim to be fighting fascism while overzealously applying the neoliberal policies that feed it, while others, those of the KKE (Greek Communist Party), boast of facing up to the Nazi threat by faithfully following the notoriously bankrupt example of the German Communist Party and its then leader, Ernst Thaelmann, made infamous for his unfortunate prediction.... "The Nazis will only stay for six months, and then it will be our turn"! Finally, those who concern us most today, namely the leaders of a large part - but fortunately not all - of the radical left, fight fascism by discovering and praising the hidden "virtues" - totally non-existent - of its profoundly barbaric and racist social public! Both are committing a real crime! And if they continue on the dead-end path they've chosen, it's almost certain that the future looks bleak, unfortunately, not only for the unjust but also for the just - in other words, for all of us...
So, instead of competing with the far right - fascist or otherwise - to see who is the most "patriotic", the most authentically Greek and the most "fighting for Macedonia", it would be far better, even for them, to urgently join forces in a united anti-fascist front. A united anti-fascist front that will dispel the current confusion, inspire youth, restore confidence among democrats, resurrect the good old values of solidarity and internationalism, and finally move on to the counter-offensive we so desperately need.
Notes
1. See “Karl Radek, Leo Schlageter: The Wanderer into the Void (June 1923): https://www.marxists.org/archive/radek/1923/06/schlageter.htm
2. The Nazi regime named streets and squares, ships and barracks, towns and military units after Schlageter, while a play was written about him, to which the infamous line "When I hear the word culture, I pull out my revolver" is attributed. Schlageter's alleged whistleblower to the French authorities was murdered by Rudolf Hoess, future commandant of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, and Martin Borman, Hitler's right-hand man and confidant.
January 26, 2018