Declaration of artists, academics, etc, on 19 January

Against fascism and racism…

Six months after Golden Dawn entered the Parliament, no one can say: I do not know.

The serpent’s egg has hatched. The venom from its bite is threatening lives: poor people who happened to be born with the “wrong” skin colour and have the misfortune to cross the path of Golden Dawn stormtroopers, immigrants, leftists or anarchists, trade unionists, Roma gypsies, gays, anyone who is “different” from the brownshirts’ tastes.

The rise of the neo-Nazis is frightening. Especially in a period of economic crisis such as today’s. The governments of the last three years that have implemented the politics of the austerity Memorandum have legitimised the Golden Dawn agenda. They brought racism against immigrants, operations to sweep them off the streets, the concentration camps and the walls against migrants, and the Orwellian project “Xenios Zeus”.

To meet the tranches of cash to the bankers, they have stooped to playing dice with the lives of 17 and 18 year old kids. The announcement by the Samaras government of the scrapping of the already inadequate Bill for Citizenship for immigrant children born in Greece is the modern version of the human sacrifice of the Athenian youth to the Minotaur – this time not of Crete but of the Troika and the EU.

In the faces of the children of immigrants who will leave school and become treated as migrants from a motherland they have never known, we cannot but see a portrait of a generation of Greek young people in general, who once again are obliged to take the route from this country to foreign lands.

Against the midnight of Golden Dawn and the politics that feed it, we draw hope and optimism from the shafts of resistance: the anti-fascist demonstrations in the neighbourhoods; the pupils who paraded with anti-Nazi armbands on 28 October; the Pakistani immigrants who weren’t afraid to demonstrate on 24 August in Omonia Square against police and fascist attacks; the artists who continue their work unafraid of the Nazi terrorism.

And even more so, every lonely act of resistance – in a bus, a public space or a park – against the Nazi gloom, is giving us strength for the battle ahead.

… 19 of January is your chance to cry out!

In the history of fascism, the struggle against it has hung between two moments: the “too early” and the “too late”. For those of us who sign this initiative, it is neither too early nor too late. The time to fight against fascism is now.

Can we concentrate the many scattered acts of resistance in one day of massive action against the fascist threat? We say yes. This is why we begin the movement for 19 January – to unite all the different forces who want to fight fascism.

But, most crucially, to unite all the anti-fascist sensitivities, whatever part of society or whatever starting point they come from, in a massive movement that will push back the neo-Nazi gang of Golden Dawn and finally drive them where they belong – into the sewer of history.

The most logical place to assemble this anti-fascist clarion call is nowhere other than Syntagma Square. This square still echoes with the shouts and slogans of the big strikes of the last three years and still reeks of the tear gas of police repression by a regime that has long lost any democratic legitimacy. We choose this square to organise a massive anti-fascist assembly and concert that will show who is the majority.

People from the cultural scene, the arts and science, have a specific duty to support this initiative. There cannot be true art or science behind closed doors while outside we can hear the boots of those who have burned books and then moved on to human beings.

Through this battle in this epoch of monsters, we will find out from the beginning the true meaning of art and science.

We are optimistic that we will be victorious, if we fight back united – all together.

The time for that fight is now.

[Signatures can be sent to the email address: antiracismfascism@yahoo.gr].