Greek Elections Thread

I started writing this in another thread but it got long, and I thought other anons might find it interesting and that we could get some discussion going. I've also noticed some other greekposters over the years, so feel free to contribute if you feel my analysis is shit (it probably is).

I also think there is another critical issue which arises here, and is not just an issue in this country, but internationally as well, which I think should be discussed more in leftist circles, and that is the cooperation of the "populist" right with neoliberals, or atleast in other countries their surface level disagreements with them, and how the base of many neoliberal parties is made up of nationalists, religious nuts and such far right elements. This also goes the other way - neoliberals are always claiming they are for "freedom" etc but they seem to be constantly going hand in hand with borderline fash, something which is obvious to us as leftists, but seems to go over the wider public without much inspection.

I've been reading quite a few international news outlets' takes on the Greek election, which I feel are generally slightly biased in favour of New Democracy (right wing opposition party set to win the next elections, and most probably with enough seats in parliament (>150) to form a government on their own).
Many of these news outlets talking about a "maturing greek political conscience" or some trash in similar vein, but this is untrue, even in the liberal/bourgeois sense. Usually, these claims center on the fact that Golden Dawn is doing much worse - and they are, both on the street and in the ballot. However half their vote how now moved to a new nationalist-with-batshit-insane-characteristics party called "Greek Solution" (the leader did telemarketing and tried to sell the "letters of Christ", but we've had various other complete frauds over the last few years, including a guy who claimed he had a gorillion dollars in the bank and would save the country, so this isn't new), because of internal conflicts in Golden Dawn. GD is extremely (surpise!) corrupt, to the extent that many of the old members are actively involved in organised crime, and combined with the leadership playing favourites and having a very tight grip on the party (even tough the guy is in prison) has caused much discontent in their ranks, so this "split" of their vote was not unexpected.
Now, there are some interesting facts are about the so-called "center right" New Democracy, which these outlets don't talk about (probably because they don't know jack shit or are complicit). A few years ago there was a populist-nationalist orthodox christian party (LAOS), which split up. Their members went in various directions, some going to GD, one of them forming the before mentioned "Greek Solution" and most went to, you guessed it, New Democracy. This so called "neoliberal", "center right" party has a vice president who promoted literal fascist, anti-semetic and holocaust denier propaganda on TV (he hosted a telemarketing show on which he sold books) not more than ten years ago, dog whistles to fash all day long, all while pretending to be a "respectable" (and he is treated as such by the media) neolib. There are several other very high ranking people in ND who are like this.
There are photos of these people, which are well known, doing shit like walking in areas that are tradionally leftist holding axes in the 80's. They have had several leaders in the past who in their youth actively repressed leftists violently forming paramilitary groups, though these died down after the 80's (a school teacher was killed by them at a rally which caused massive outcry, but the guy who did now has a I also think there is another critical issue which arises here, and is not just an issue in this country, but internationally as well, which I think should be discussed more in leftist circles, and that is the cooperation of the "populist" right with neoliberals, or atleast in other countries their surface level disagreements with them, and how the base of many neoliberal parties is made up of nationalists, religious nuts and such far right elements. This also goes the other way - neoliberals are always claiming they are for "freedom" etc but they seem to be constantly going hand in hand with borderline fash, something which is obvious to us as leftists, but seems to go over the wider public without much inspection.comfy job at a bank).
If one looks behind the very thin veil of "neoliberalism" behind ND's leader, Kyriakos Mitsotakis (pic related, more on him later), there are many other far right people in the party - both in quantity, and in quality, in the sense of them holding important positions.

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Other urls found in this thread:

politico.eu/2019-european-elections/greece/
ekloges.ypes.gr/current/v/home/en/parties/
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

A quick history of ND and the center right in Greece, even after the fall of the Junta, proves that they have always had a close relationship to undemocratic and even fascist tendencies, including violence against leftists, fraudulent elections an deep seated corruption. Not to mention the nepotism.
Just to put this into perspective, this motherfucker here. FUCKING Look at him. Does he look like he has the intelligence, the skill, to climb the ranks through a party and become the leader? Guess why. Because he doesn't. He talks like a fucking retard and his whole conception of politics is "Thatcher-Reagan good, money will trickle down if rich people hoard it", and has no real control of the far right nationalists in his party.
So how did he get there you ask?
Because his fucking daddy was prime minister that's how. The entire family is parliament, and we're talking actually the whole family. His sister was mayor of Athens, is an MP and will probably become a minister soon. She was an extremely corrupt Mayor, so guess what the good citizens of Athens did. They elected her fucking son as the new Mayor. I fucking swear this country deserves this shit.
Back to Kyriakos, he finished school- did he take the extremely competitive entrance exams for Greek University? No, because daddy was PM he went to Harvard or some shit, and then he got a comfy job at McKinsey (economic management/advisory firm in London), through his family's connections.
And what does the motherfucker do? He comes back to Greece where he has a warm seat waiting for him to become a minister. The guy was born to be prime minister, handed to him on a silver plate, and worst of all he's running on a platform of "meritocracy" and "removing corruption and nepotism", as a nice way of saying "we're going to privatise everything, and our rich friends are gonna get richer, while you poors get poorer".
He has no skills whatsoever, is a complete fucking moron who would lose a debate to a potato (he has said some of the most retarded shit in parliament) and most importantly, he has no control of the far right wing in his party which is constantly gaining more ground, and will be in charge several ministries soon (though not the ministry of economics, they have some neolib dweeb ready for that position). My only hope is that the guy is so incompetent he will even fuck up fucking the country up.

Now, there is also something else that is critical to understand in this election, and that is the role of the media. I've already written way too much for my poor brain to handle going over all this bullshit again, so do me a favour. Do you remember Berlusconi? Guy owned papers, TV stations, ships, football teams the whole lot. We have a few guys like that here.
They have their own personal fucking armies because football hooligans are so fucking retarded they don't understand when they are simply being used by oligarchs as pawns. They will literally stab someone for speaking badly of the "president" (ie the owner of their football team).
And what do these people do? They slam the SYRIZA government through their media all day (which is objectively incompetent and shit, but they just throw bullshit accusations at them and "the Left" over trivial issues), and promote ND so hard it's disgusting. Especially over the last year, I cannot put into words just how hard they have been shilling. A few years ago there were columnists who I disagreed with but I would read because they had interesting things to say, now they are all surface level trash trash trash. This also include bullshit nationalism that they have been promoting in order to promote ND against SYRIZA, making the far right wing of ND even stronger.
Just from one news station, 2 top journalists are running as MPs with New Democracy and their main news anchor is married to Kyriakos' nephew (the one I mentioned just got elected as fucking mayor of Athens). Tell me this isn't a fucking clown world.

fucked up the second to last paragraph, should read:

There are photos of these people, which are well known, doing shit like walking in areas that are tradionally leftist holding axes in the 80's. They have had several leaders in the past who in their youth actively repressed leftists violently forming paramilitary groups, though these died down after the 80's (a school teacher was killed by them at a rally which caused massive outcry, but the guy who did now has a comfy job at a bank).

politico.eu/2019-european-elections/greece/
we have the early polls kids

ekloges.ypes.gr/current/v/home/en/parties/

Well fuck, looks like the KKE hasn't made it to third place as was hoped and they're performance is weaker than last election. And it seems Varoufakis' party hasn't really achieved anything other than take away votes from the KKE and SYRIZA (not that Tsipras deserves any votes)

It's kinda shameful because the KKE has been preaching that Syriza is reformist SocDem bullshit that will fail because the EU can't be reformed and they'll just sell the country out from before Syriza was even elected, and now they are proven right and don't even gain any vote from disappointed Syriza voters. Instead people vote for another conservative boomer party, very fucking shit.

The left really needs to start incorporating the times they were right about literally everything into their propaganda, people have short memories.

Very interesting analysis. Thanks, Greek user!

Do you think Greece will go fascist when the recession hits?

What else could he have done?

I thought the recession already hits Greece.

Well not really
KKE voter base is always stable, sometimes they don’t care enough to go vote…(a big percentage of the Greek radical left prefers to go to the beach rather than voting)
Varoufakis actually took many votes from Left wing Syriza splits (though not all) and also mesmerized the celebrity loving/hipster centrist/liberals
We are still recovering from the 2008 one

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Also some pro-eu leftists/eu reformists) voted MeRa25
We had them in our second largest far left party (Antarsia) that took very few votes yesterday (in general the “non-parliamentary left” aka our smaller left wing parties , came forth as very disorganized )

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Golden Dawn is pretty much as fashy as you can get and they got 7% of the vote in 2015, so it's not impossible but I can't really tell.
Keep in mind we had a nationalist military junta (1967-74) which was extremely anti-communist and imprisoned, exiled and tortured tons of people for being "leftists/communists", including people on the center left, and even a few liberals who would go on to join ND later. Also the Nazis complete fucked the country over, so the general sentiment is quite antifascist, though as is quite obvious the far right is very deeply rooted in society (and correspondingly their ideology in the collective subconscious).
There are a few people who have nostalgia for the junta but they are generally considered idiots. I don't particularly trust the army, but I also don't think the material conditions for them to pull any funny shit exist, and I'm not sure they even want to.
Those are the conditions right now, I'm not making any predictions for the future because there are too many unknown parameters and only brainlets do that.


The KKE was probably the best choice in this election but they are still quite shit imo.
Extremely socially conservative (though I completely understand their tactical reasons for this), dog whistling to the far right (calling Varoufakis "a man of George Soros", talking about "George Soros NGOs") in a pathetic attempt to bring in people from the far right, which only succeeds in entrenching fascist propaganda deeper in our society.
They are very much a part of the status quo and play a crucial maintaining the power balances in parliament and out of it, and often in their attempt to take control, by undemocratic means, of many spontaneously formed protest groups or other institutions, they just kill them or stop them doing anything other than just being one more outlet for the party line, which stifles any actual radical potential.

By like 0.1%, they will always be at 5.2 - 6% of the vote, which is in my view part of what I said as being entrenched in the system.

I think you're wrong on him taking votes from the KKE, my guess would be pretty much only SYRIZA, maybe some more left-wing POTAMI people(?), we'll have to wait for the statistical research to be done and see what's up with that.
Kinda liked his party at first as a group that would have the ability to produce some more radicals but they have gone full retard and have allied with "glorious old pasok" people and neolibs.
I guess anyone that makes conservatives REEE about 100 gorrilions is okay though, it's not like SYRIZA would have done something with that 3%.


Fucking Tzimeros got more votes than them, all their youth probably voted SYRIZA anyway.

Also fucking lol PASOK is back

I hate to be the Amerikan ITT and talk about "what this all means" for us here but I think it's kind of lol to watch Syriza bork it like this while the U.S. left gets on board with Bernie. Like this fantasy of a kinder, gentler, social-democratic Europe is pretty much how the left here thinks and wants to emulate but that's going away, and if anyone here bothers to pay attention this will shatter a whole lot of psychological assurances that has guided campus-rooted left organizing and misplaced faith in transforming the Democrats or whatever.

Also maybe some racial coding here as well. Like Syriza is the respectable white left because they went through the normal liberal bourgeois path to getting owned, while the KKE are scary dark nigger Greeks and are only treated as people to be mocked and so on. Though I'm just making this up as I write and I don't know if there's any truth to this.

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Yeah that's shit. There are a lot of Zig Forums types here who will endorse this kind of thing for cynical, tactical reasons but it's really the same mistake that liberals make when they decide to crank up the racism or anti-LGBT dial a bit to try to make reactionaries like them. The average fascist though is going to think you're a phony and keep on consuming right-wing propaganda because his hate is quite pure.

Well if you talk to any boomer Antarsia or Lafazanis voters you will realize they hold some…..very patriotic views
Although tbh KKE tried to get some non-typical votes("Even if you disagree with us ,you know we are at the side of the people")
They aren’t only socially conservative they are also extremly archaic on workers organizing
They don’t push so much for tourist or fast food workers unionizing
Unironicly now, who the fuck votes for Tzimeros
Lolberts have ND if they want to go full autism

Don't trust Soros NGOs they crashed the USSR
I hope Soros regrets what he did
His recent alliance with the koch brothers is sadly a good thing

There is nothing wrong with not being socially liberal, pretty much the entire western left is and look what it has brought them.

Stop being retarded, theupper class is evil. China makes him butthurt as fuck though, especially DENG GANG kicking him out.

I don't like SYRIZA, because I've seen that with bourgeois democracy and capitalism, anything won by reform can also be lost by it.
But SYRIZA actually did better than I expected (compare "shit" to "complete monkey ass diarrhea shit") in holding back some neolib reforms, and implementing some much needed social and educational reforms. They also supported the public universities (which are FREE and provide some of the best STEM education in the world, we do the equivalent of US graduate level courses by our third year, for F R E E), and to some extent the public health system as well. It's not good, but cuckdem is better than neoliberal, any day.
Sadly it's all for nothing now, but at least it gives us a good chance to agitate when some of these start getting repealed.
They also removed some of the really really bad cops for 4 years, so that was nice.


I mean, I get what you're saying but I wouldn't quite put the ANTARSYA people (at least not all) in the "absolute lel" category of Lafazanism, the most infantile of disorders, especially on the "patriotic" part, otherwise very much agreed with all you said here.


X does Y and X is bad so Y must be bad: the argument.
My main problem is them promoting the same line with actual fascists, thinking that it will help them fish fascists when all it does is help the fascists.
The left has a duty to stand against the far right, because only the left has a coherent and deep analysis of what the far right is, ie. the deepest reaction taking the guise of "national and traditional values". There is literally not one good reason to not be "socially liberal" (though I question the phrasing), especially when the opposite feeds reactionary politics.

The answer to fascism is not the inverse of its idpol, that is the liberal "antisfascism" and utterly impotent. They are to be exposed as the dogs of capital and fought for their (attempted) repression of the poor, not some abstract "racism" or whatever. Just like the fascists alienate those of identities they dislike, so does anyone who plays the identity wars from other sides and prevent division along class lines, which is the goal of reaction but not that of the KKE.

No one here believes this, and no one argued for this. You post this same strawman in every thread.


Our antifascist movement defeated GD. It was mainly comprised of leftists, including participation from radical immigrants and lgbts.
It is not a "liberal", but mainly a leftist movement.
It is a fact that in Greek society lgbts and immigrants, especially working class, are treated as second class citizens.

Who is?

Racism is abstract? Golden Dawn members murdering immigrants because of their nationalities is abstract? Assaults and murder of lgbt are abstract?

Imagine having political analysis this infantile.

No one is doing this, except you who thinks it's okay to ally with people who hate parts of the working class for abstract and pseudo-moralistic reasons.

The goal of the KKE is to fish votes (hence the George Soros bullshit) from the far right, but all it does is reproduce fascist propaganda, making the far right stronger.


Not a single reason for why we should not be accepting of lgbt and migrants within our movements was presented, and everything you said was wrong or a straw man.
Your analysis of the situation is so shit that it's obvious that you are simply trying to derail one more thread will your bullshit, please fuck off.

Not that poster, but literally who is saying the working class movement shouldn't accept gays and migrants? It's so fucking annoying to see this strawman again and again when one is simply arguing against idpol. Yes, we should accept trans members, but no, gender ideology can't be allowed to become the litmus test by which peoples "leftism" is judged. You know as I know, that there are many people who call themselves "Leftists", who'll call you a reactionary cis-het proto-fash if you don't believe that men can get pregnant and give birth to babies and that such matters shouldn't have any space within Socialist political programs. Since you're against "inverse idpol" could you explain to me what differentiates Leftist lgbt and minority politics from liberal idpol?

We are talking about the KKE supporting reactionary positions in order to farm votes.

KKE voted against a law that legalised a form of gay marriage (called a "living agreement") and trans rights laws.


Class. Now fuck off and stop derailing every thread with this bullshit.

TAKE THIS SHIT HERE

Yeah I think non-Greeks have a more abstract view of fascism but Golden Dawn will literally roll into your neighborhood in motorbike squads and start busting your friends' heads in with baseball bats with nails driven through them

Like it gets very real and directly terroristic because Greece and then some moronic and comfortable leftist from the United States or Canada goes "hrm I dunno how I feel about these identity wars oh gee"

And this isn't most leftists in Greece of course but you have better odds knowing a communist or anarchist with experience firing rocket-propelled grenades.

But yeah I agree with you because Golden Dawn would recruit through terrorism. I'm not Greek but from what I've studied they would roll in wearing t-shirts with the logo, lighting flares and flying flags and chanting spooky Nazi slogans and then go to town on people. The violence is recruitment propaganda and what the KKE does by just abrogating the defense of various groups is they open up fronts for Golden Dawn to attack and grow.

the problem is that greece unlike the US does not have economic independence and political autonomy
any policy needs to be ok'd by the eu

ok paei sto dialo
¿Qué?

meme komma re file, stis ekloges oloi oi eakkites pshfisan syriza etsi kai alliws, afou phrane ligoteres pshfous apo ton tzhmero (nomizw ~20k?)
gia na kavlantizoun kamia gkomenitsa sta panepisthmia kaloi einai, alla genika exw gnwrisei poly ligous pou einai syneiditopoihmenoi genika/exoun anoi3ei ena vivlio sthn zwh tous kai den akolo8oun apla thn grammh tou kommatos/kapoia edgy apopsh twn filwn tous.
Ntaksei profanws yparxoun kai atoma ekei mesa pou einai kala paidia kai ligo pio panw apo ton oxlo tous

speak english nigger

I'm not Greek, but I know someone involved with KKE, and from what they tell me the gay marriage law was a skeleton of legistlation rushed out to draw attention away from austerity measures that were being implemented. If this was the case, I wouldn't have supported it either.

Just saying that word means absolutely nothing in this context unless you elaborate. LGBTQ idpol has consistantly and effectively been used as diversion and PT for the neoliberal hegemony, while in the working class movement it has only created division. So, how does working class idpol differ from radlib idpol?

Idpol is relevant to this discussion, because almost every objection you make to KKE is connected to idpol.

First of all let me stress that I have many friends in the KKE, and that I consider them allies on most fronts.

SYRIZA had already (pre-election) said they would be passing such legislation. To some extent what your friend said is true, but it could apply to any legislation ever in bourgeois democracy, including women's suffrage and the abolition of slavery.
Just because we don't like SYRIZA doesn't mean gays shouldn't have equal rights and the right to marriage. This is obviously a cheap excuse for them not to support this bill, because they never support any fucking bills not proposed by them, and certainly no bills relating to "idpol" issues, which in Greece means basic rights like the recognition of hate crimes and lgbt rights/marriage.
They have this thinly veiled homophobic stance, which they don't openly admit to other leftists, because a large part of their voting base, along with people they aim to get votes from, are people who are deeply socially conservative.
I mean it's not even a year since their leader met with a bunch of fucking priests lol stop trying to defend this shit.


No, you just chose to focus on the "idpol" issues, please read these again:

But yes, these are important issues, and I won't support a party that promotes homophobia and fascist propaganda.

Apart from the before mentioned, I also have issues with how poor they are on the theory part, and how shit most of their analyses aimed at the wider public are. Like their official positions on complex matters are ususally edgy one-liners.
I'm not saying that they don't have good analysis and theorists, but what they promote to the general public is trash.

Just to make it clear that I fully agree with you on this, but I just don't consider it a valid reason not to allow rights for lgbts.