The following text was written back in 2015 (but was published only in 2016) by Anazopyrosi [a Greek word meaning both rekindling and resurgence], a libertian collective active in the N. Ionia and N. Heraklion suburbs of Athens, Greece, that broke-up in 2016 and we were members of. We decided to translate it in English for comrades from abroad because the main narrative about Golden Dawn tends to leave aside some GD’s aspects that we find crucial to interpret its rise and fall. This is due to the mainstream left parties/organisations, and it has become clear with the GD’s trials. Golden Dawn is indeed a criminal organisation as the left asserts. But, in order to highlight the criminal character of GD, those leftists are speaking almost exclusively about its illegal activism in the streets such as the attacks against immigrants and antifascists. But GD’s criminal activities aren’t confined to these: their main criminal activities were those in relations with mafia, the criminal fractions of capital. Golden Dawn seems to be involved in sex/drugs/weapons trafficking. This issue is nowhere to be found in the GD’s trial because it will reveal their relations with some of the biggest Greek capitalists and their criminal activities (you can check here the case files of the Golden Dawn trial, with any mafia activities being conspicuous by their absence). The left organisations involved in the trials remain mainly silent on this aspect, either out of fear or due to their political agendas – for some years, the antifascist movement against Golden Dawn was the only thing keeping alive many left (as well as anarchist, etc) organisations due to a general recession of other aspects of class struggle.
The title of the text is parodying a book series of a Greek far-right conspiracy theorist called Why and How They Live Among Us, which combine ancient Greeks, aliens, angels, Illuminati, Jews, Putin, modern geopolitics, etc, in a so ridiculous mixture that could send you in an acid trip straight to outer space.
Finally, the notes weren’t part of the original text. We added them to somewhat explain some things that in Greece are considered well-known.
2009: The year of terror
The riot of December 2008 was an incident that shocked Greek capital and its state. The conflicts -lasting some weeks, not only in the center of Athens and not exclusively in Athens- with the police, the destruction of businesses, the destruction/expropriations of commodities, the partial blocking of the circulation of capital (e.g. obstructions in the flow of commodities and/or labour power due to riots on main streets) created a huge shock to the Greek state. The murder of Grigoropoulos was the cause of the riot, but its deeper cause cannot be attributed there. This police murder was neither the first nor the last one, but it created a chain of events that we’ve seen only a few times. Of course, a great role in “making people taking the streets” played the special characteristics of the murder -the teenage age and the Greek nationality of the murdered- that caused emotions and anger even in social groups that are generally indifferent, or at least temperate, in front of other police murders. All of these groups, though in the streets and thus part of the riots, weren’t the main subject that gave to the protests their insurrectional characteristics. It wasn’t the trade unions or left parties who “starred” in the barricades: many of them even played, mainly through their announcements and not through undertaking reppresive actions, the role of the counter-insurrection. Those who eventually gave December 2008 the characteristics of riots were mainly those who had neither a past nor a future. By this we mean those who were already in unemployment, precariousness and undeclared work and didn’t see any possible change in the horizon (the economic recession was already in progress), mainly the young Greek proletarians and immigrants. So, capital and its state officials had to find solutions, fearing the repetition of similar, or even larger, riots, as the capitalist crisis would intensify. The need for the management of the proletariat therefore proceeded from two conditions. On the one hand, the process of depreciation of our labour power -which, in retrospect, was just in its initial stages[1]- and on the other hand, in response to the riot. And it was this response to the revolt that prompted the fierce management of the proletariat to appear with a “bang”, even before the major policies of managing the capitalist crisis and capital restructuring.
One of the many solutions to the issue of managing the proletariat that was implemented by the Greek state was found in the ever-eager part of the state’s branch called Golden Dawn (GD). The “GD” card the state decided to play in the social poker offered solutions in many areas, but its main role was that of being a part of the law enforcement apparatus, and this is evident by the events of 2009. Let us note at this point that we will not analyse the role and actions of GD before that date, not because we find them insignificant or irrelevant (on the contrary), but because we do not find it particularly useful for the purposes of this text. Therefore, the “salutory” year of 2009 we observe a quantitative and qualitative change in GD compared to previous years, bringing it back to the same and even greater “glories” than those of the early and mid-90s with the antiMacedonian protests and the Bosnian War[2]. So, in 2009, it was a milestone year for GD, with a strong presence in the streets such as the attack with a military grenade at the Steki Metanaston [Immigrants’ Social Center] at Exarcheia, the racist residents’ committee in the neighborhood of Aghios Panteleimonas, its collaboration with the police against the immigrants who squatted the old court in Omonoia, the arson of the camp of Afghan immigrants in Patras, the motorcycle militias with more than 30 attacks on, mainly Pakistani, immigrants in the neighborhoods of N. Ionia, N. Heraklion and Galatsi, and many other incidents that would need many pages to list. And all these in just one year. After a few years of relative inertia, GD reentered the game.
What the police cannot do, is done by GD
We won’t present a quasi-journalistic record of GD’s attacks all these years as they are more or less known. It suffices to say that every year GD added more and more victims in its record with beatings, stabbings, arsons, pogroms and murders. If we compare the actions of the state with those of GD in the period 2008-2013, we’ll see that these are totally parallel (sometimes also coinciding, with police and GD joining forces actively), and we find that the attack on the proletariat was coordinated by the state. It is safe to say that the parts of the management of the proletariat that couldn’t be done officially by the police, the burden of their application fell to GD. The largest part of GD’s activities was the continuation of the process of disciplining the workforce and the surplus populations with mafia-like practices where the arm of the police-military complex couldn’t reach. From the state we have immigration detention centers and “Xenios Zeus”[3], and from GD pogroms and murders of immigrants. From the state the repression of class and social struggles, from GD attacks on militants and organizations of the broader left and anarchist milieu. And, of course, we couldn’t fail to note that the phrase “if you cause me troubles I’ll bring you the Golden Dawn” had become the motto of many bosses when faced with labour demands.
Playing hide-and-seek with the black economy
However, the role of GD wasn’t exclusively repressive. The identification between state and GD can also be seen around the attack on our direct and indirect wage, with GD, on the one hand, opposing the increase in shipowners’ taxes and, on the other hand, trying to organize the slave-shopping mechanism “Job Searching Association for Suffering Greeks”, creating clientist relations like PASOK and ND so many years before them, finding for the employers cheap undeclared labour with less than minimum wage, without fixed working hours and stamps. And, of course, clientist relations don’t stop there, but they also continue in the manning of various jobs within the criminal capital by members of the Golden Dawn. Are you a beefcake? Do you use weapons and are excited with danger? GD will find you a job in the organized crime.
From bouncers to pimps and from killing contracts to arms trade, GD had “goodwillers” and connections for everything. In Aghios Panteleimonas, an Athens’ neighbourhood where GD was “in control”, were the HQ of the “Choriotiko” bakery chain, which was laundering money from prostitution. Oh, also in this neighbourhood, GD’s member George Vathis had a furniture store, which was then revealed to be a dummy corporation for prostitution. Oh, prostitution is the kind of business that blooms in this neighbourhood[4]. A little further down, at Attica Square, is the day-use hotel “New Dream Hotel” owend by Eleni Zaroulia, wife of GD’s founder and leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos. One of the main target-groups of this hotel are the clients of escort prostitution agencies. Do you see a pattern here? And, of course, who forgets the attacks on immigrants’ shops for the sale of mafia protection[5]? The age-old “give me two hundred euros or I’ll break you and your shop”.
But on the other hand, in GD there are some brilliant personalities like the former director of the Nikaia Hospital, Aris Spinos. Whoops, it was revealed that he was involved in blackmailing and mafia protection. However, Ilias Panagiotaros looks like a pretty fly guy. As Panagiotaros, founding member of the fascist group Patriotic Alliance [a brach of GD], stated back in 2005 in a state TV channel, he was an honest breadwinner and at that time he had a business deal on jockey hats with Apostolos Vavilis. Vavilis, apart from the hat trade with Panagiotaros, was also trading drugs and weapons. Hmm… Is there any possibility that at some point Vavilis sent to Panagiotaros, accidently of course, drugs and weapons instead of hats? Maybe the orders got messed up or something. We wonder, could the illegal weapons trafficking by Vavilis be related to the Panagiotaros police/military equipment shop “Phalanx”? Wasn’t Panagiotaros also an importer and supplier of the Greek police? And wasn’t Vavilis related to “Tactical”, a company that sells equipment to Greek police? And who dealed Vavilis’ drugs? Hmm…
Skordeli was in the residents’ committee of Aghios Panteleimonas, right? Also in that neighbourhood, the fascists were gathering at the bar “Piles” which served as their base. That bar was owened by another GD member, Christos Rigas. Rigas was the henchman of Babis Lazaridis, owner of the nightclub “Muses”. But Lazaridis’ buiseness was having some hard times because his partner George Voutirakos left “Muses” and opened his own nightclub, “Caramella”. So Rigas went to settle the affairs of his boss, but eventually his attempt to assassinate Voutyrakos failed.
But let’s have a change of enviroment. Flash several years back to Anastasios Pallis. Pallis and his buddy, partner and best man Victor Restis enjoyed a morning coffee while trying to answer the most excruciating philosophical question of the magnates: Since we do some shady business, why don’t we also sell illegal weapons? We believe you guessed the answer to the question. Therefore, these two major shareholders of the newspaper “Proto Thema”, Pallis also involved in cases with phone sex lines and in the Vatopedi case (as was Vavilis)[6], Restis also a banker and a shipowner, decided to expand their business activities.
Restis, who had business at the Perama shipyards, was also one of the shipowners and contractors who funded GD to create a trade union at those shipyards. Of course, GD was already doing business in Perama, as Periklis Moulianakis, secretary of the local organization of GD, was the owner of Periklis Shipping Services CO, a contractor company for shipping services. Of course, there’s more. Yannis Lagos, member of parliament of GD, told his friends that Michaloliakos, through his shipbuilders’ friends, found him jobs as an armed guard on merchant ships sailing in seas dangerous for piracy. Restis, Pallis and two more people had the company IMS Enterprises SA which, in short, was a private army against piracy. Isn’t it nice to have friends? But Lagos also had friends, so he did some anti-piracy mercenary jobs with another GD member, George Patelis, who was the head of local GD’s organisation in Nikaia, one of its most infamous local organisations. Eventually, the only loser from the whole affair seems to be the cinematographic companies, as unfortunately the dynamic duo of GD didn’t happen to stumble upon the filming of “Pirates of the Caribbean”.
Laundry service “The Aryan Race”
These was few of GD’s relations with mafia and some of their activities as mafia. Of course, these aren’t the only ones that can be mentioned. For example, we have not mentioned GD’s activities in other neighbourhoods, e.g. Nikaia. Nor did we mention the reason why the invertebrates “settled” in Aghios Panteleimonas, the real estate games that are played there and the upcoming (?) gentrification of the centre of Athens, but those example are enough to understand the games hidden behind GD and its the dual role and character. At this point, however, one will reasonably ask: why a part of organized crime become a political party, and why as a political party it remained an active part of organized crime?
Similar examples of mafia entering the “political life of our country” is the case of Mpeos in Volos and Marinakis in Piraeus[7]. The former political mediation of their business interests is now considered inadequate and so they begin to play themselves, without pretexts and coverages, a dominant role in the public political sphere by acquiring themselves institutional positions in politics. The so-called “godfathers” no longer need the “veil of night” to hide them, and they come out on the political stage in broad daylight to defend their interests. The path that Golden Dawn followed is parallel to that. And we say parallel as Mpeos and (mainly) Marinakis are first-class heads of the criminal capital, while GD are its lower strata: their like “small vendors” in front of shipowners like Marinakis, they’re just “arms for rent” to carry out the small tasks.
However, since GD seems like a shrimp before the sharks, and since sharks are coming themselves out to swallow waters, why did GD turn into a “dummy corporation” between the state and sharks?
But, of course, because between the mafia and the state are laundry machines! Golden Dawn has links both with the Greek secret services, the police, the military, ministries, the Church and generally anything that can be called “deep state”, and with dubious capitalists of dubious “purity” before the law. This, coupled with its legal status as a political party, and actually a parliamentary party, made it a first-class intermediary between the “black” and “white” economy. And since you can fund and donate anonymously a party, whoever wished could make a donation without attracting attention, giving money from his “dirty” pocket to GD, from GD to the offshore companies in Cyprus that GD’s financial manager had created, and so the money was “laundred” and could now get into the “clean” pockets. And, of course, the descendants of the ancient Spartans were holding some of the money for their trouble. Like this, GD had set one of the biggest money laundries in Greece. However, a storm was coming…
Gangster blues
On the evening of September 17th to September 18th, 2013, in Keratsini, Pavlos “Killah P” Fyssas fell dead by a GD knife. We won’t insist on telling the events of that evening, they are well-know. The murder of Killah P [his rap nickname, as he was generally known by this] triggered a domino effect, initially with the arrest of the perpetrator George Rupakias, then the arrest of other members of GD who were involved in the assassination, eventually reaching to high-ranking executives and members of GD, up to its leader. This chain reaction is still in progress as, while we write this text, the GD’s trial has just begun[8].
Why were there so many arrests? If this had remained at the level of the arrest of Roupakias and some other GD’s members that were directly involved in the murder, then the explanation would be simple. The murder was carried out by a big team of fascists in front of dozens of witnesses so it would be difficult to sweep it under the mat. Also, this time was murdered a Greek citizen, not an immigrant, which caused reactions to the so-called “public sentiment”, perhaps even to a minority of voters of GD. Because of the circumstances of the murder, there had to be some arrests and convictions of the perpetrators. But the matter got out of hand and the GD members are brought en masse to the court. The state is eating its own children, and this cannot be explained just because the issue was too big to be covered up. Thus, the killing of Killah P was just the pretense behind the repression against GD and something else is hiding behind it.
Initially, the parliamentation of a part of the Greek organised crime through GD was ultimately a more successful experiment than the ones who promoted it had hoped. They wanted GD to do their chores and it nearly became the largest opossition party[9]! Okay, maybe we’re exaggerating here, but you got the point. And if this could be accepted domestically, it was something that would create problems abroad with the, at least until now, criteria of the capitalist West. The European Parliament aren’t the Junior Woodchucks but there’s a limit to who it can accept, and the Greek state couldn’t go there with swastika-tattooed henchmen as European MPs.
The second problem was the excessive expansion of GD’s members. As mentioned above, as a part of organized crime, GD gave to its members appropriate jobs as a part of its clientist strategy for recruitment. But, as we have said, GD isn’t Don Corleone. It can give a certain number of jobs in the organised crime. Thus, on the one hand, the need to maintain its base and, on the other hand, the feeling of Superman it had due to the cooperation with the police and its high electoral rates, pushed GD to expand. But the illegal activities of capital weren’t created yesterday, so there is no “virgin territory” to expand without entering the “fields” of your neighbour. So, GD could either open a war with other mafia circuits older and bigger than it, or it would have to push the brake and abandon its mood for expansion[10].
But, beyond that, at the beginning of our text we argued that GD was acting as an “informal” group of law enforcement after the riot of December 2008. Could it, however, take on this role? Did GD played out this role adequately?
We could say that initially yes. Its action in the center of Athens from the beginning of 2009 to shortly after mid-2011 is worth congratulations and awarding of an honorary plaque from the cops for the work they performed side by side. However, since that time, GD seems to lose its role regarding the discipline of the proletariat. When the central opposition to the then managers of the crisis and the restructuring of the Greek capital are Spitha, EPAM, the (now manager of the Greek capital) SYRIZA, GSEE [General Confederation of Greek Workers], ADEDY [Supreme Administration of Liaisons of Public Sector Employees], and Nikos Fotopoulos, then we can say that capital and its political staff play against no goalkeeper. The existence of the Greek indignados movement and the general strikes of 2011 created a real problem of public order, as in the gatherings and demonstrations infiltrated subjects who gave these protests the characteristics of riot – albeit this time, unlike the December 2008 riot, immigrants were absent. However, despite the riots, these protests eventually didn’t represent a real threat to the capital relation, as they generally sought their recognition by the state and created a new national unity that was produced from the grassroots. Characteristic of the national character of the indignados movement was the presence of the far-right in the so-called “upper Syntagma square”. In these protests, the dominant element was a claim to the nation-state to stabilize “normal” wage-labor – and those who were excluded from it, demanded the revocation of their exclusion[11]. Not only did the GD not tried to repress this movement[12], but various fascists also participated in several of the protests – sometimes they were expelled with force by anarchists and some leftists.
Finally, as TPTG has pointed out, GD wasn’t a direct reppressive force in no labour struggle that has taken place in recent years. No strike was hit by GD. The class antagonism didn’t retreat due to the tentacles of the deep state. The repression, either physical (cops) or legal (strikes being declared illegal and workers being ordered to return to work or else they’ll be sent to courts) from the official apparatuses of the bourgeois-democratic state was sufficient. And of course, we could not leave out the left, namely SYRIZA, claiming the monopoly of repressive manipulation from within the workers’ mobilizations with tactics leading to defeat.
Even in the field of immigration management, the specialty of the GD, the official policies of the state were found more effective than GD. What’s the point of having some knifewielders and pogroms when the presence of police on the streets increased and new motorcycle police units were being created, when “Xenios Zeus” is part of the daily routine, when detention centers for immigrants are being built to store their labour power, when fences are being erected on the borders at Evros, when the bottom of the Aegean is full of shipwrecks and corpses of immigrants?
Day by day, the management of the capitalist crisis drives over our bodies in all its cruelty, and the state tells us not to make too much noise as we die. The nation-state does not need at this stage the GD to manage us on a large scale, it can do it through its official apparatuses. And somewhat like this, the fascists came to create more problems than those they were needed to resolve. The prolonged and intensive presence of GD in the public sphere, both on the streets and in the parliament, has created in the past few years an wave of antifascist struggles while (on the “central level”) there was no other struggle from 2012 onwards. If we don’t count the antifascist mobilizations, then we see that in recent years there was a drought of struggles – without wanting to reduce even the most molecular struggle that took place. In short, they brought GD to put us in our homes, but what was done was that it took us out to the streets. The protest the day after Killah P’s murder was something of December 2008, a mini-riot took place, and suddenly the things were reversed: while GD had to suppress the proletarian upheavals, it eventually became the cause of their outburst. Why, then, have them unleashed disturbing the civil peace and public order that prevails from the beginnings of 2012?
Thus, the solution for the state was to hold back GD and rely on its institutional disciplining forces: cops, fare inspectors[13], tax collectors, evaluators, economists, trade unionists, etc.
After GD, what?
So? What does all this mean? Are we trying to convince you that we’ve got rid of the fascists? No. Though we don’t like to pretend being fortune-tellers, we’ll pretend to be Pythia[14]. And like her, we’ll say some things relatively vague and generic so that our predictions will eventually come true.
Our previous statement that “the state is eating its own children” is a little provocative. GD will not break into its constituent parts. What we believe is that GD is just under a “grooming” process, since it didn’t have a good feng shui. A denture bleaching, a fountain in the background and a pedicure never harmed anyone. Anyway, the counter-insurgency requires not only the parliament but also a presence on the streets. The bourgeois violence is structural in the management of the crisis and the paradigm shift, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be confined to a single entity, i.e. the official nation-state’s institutions.
We’ve referred above to the “export” of GD to the European Parliament. This issue can give us some clues about the future of the GD. GD’s nominees for the European elections are entrepreneurs, lawyers, freelancers, doctors, engineers, military officers, etc. These could also be the nominees of LAOS[15]. The selection of these nominees points itself to a certain direction. First of all, the fact that after the assassination of Killah P, with GD emerging as the super-villain of the domestic political scene, the fact that GD’s nominees are such “revered” personalities like the retired military officers Synadinos and Epitidios -who in the end got elected as members of the European Parliament- means that these nominees had assurances from their friends in the deep state that GD has a future and they won’t suddenly find themselves in the courts with charges of taking part in a party that eventually turned out to be a criminal organization and was involved in a murder. Secondly, we see that instead of henchmen now come to the foreground some people wearing suits and ties.
Another evidence that GD gives us is the fact that just a few hours after the murder of its two members in N. Heraklion, Kassidiaris didn’t make his usual statements about the “land that will be trembling as we [GD] come”, and was instead content to say “these days the Greeks must remain united and calm”. Over the next few days, while we were preparing for the worst as we’re active in the neighborhood of N. Heraklion, an absolute calm prevailed. Neither an attack, nor a dynamic presence in the streets, at least for the sake of it, or anything. Only some peaceful and moderate marches and gatherings linked to the funeral and memorial service of the GD’s members. This GD’s attitude came just after being transformed by the mass media from perpetrators to victims, meaning that they had the “moral law” on their side and they could say or do something more. Weird things…
Where do all these point to? This is probably the first step towards a “serious” Golden Dawn[16]. Perhaps this process is aimed to trasnform GD to something like LAOS, just with a “street” past, with some parts of GD leaving it to carry out the activism. Perhaps the “serious GD” won’t even bear the name “Golden Dawn”, maybe some of its big personalities will change. Maybe GD will continue in almost the same way and the same roster as earlier, after being “cleansed” at the bourgeois courts with the imprisonment of some “crazy people” who “intruded” GD and murdered Killah P. Maybe GD’ll return to its 2005-2008 condition, and in GD’s place will emerge another far-right organization/party, with either some new faces or some of the same. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…
Notes:
1. At least since 2006, mainly for the young Greek proletarians entering the labour market for the first time, there was the so-called “generation of 700 euros”, the minimum wage at that time. Of course, the wages for immigrants, usually in undeclared work, were far below that. The labour power of immigrants compared to the Greek workers was depreciated since the 90s, and the depreciation of the Greek workers started before the global crisis in 2007-2008 and the first Memorandum in 2010.
2. Members of Golden Dawn participated in the Bosnia War as volunteer soldiers, collaborating with the Serbians, the “christian orthodox brothers” of the Greek people.
3. “Xenios Zeus” means the hospitality of the ancient Greek god Zeus. This name was given to a police operation of searching for, arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants. It was the police itself that gave this name to the operation. Their sarcasm against immigrants is obvious.
4. Aghios Panteleimonas and its surrounding areas are one of the places where the Athens’ “cheap brothels”, both legal and illegal, are concentraded. The prostitutes there are mainly immigrants from the former Eastern Bloc and the Balkans. We can safely say that most of them are victims of trafficking. Also, Patision avenue, a main street near Aghios Panteleimonas, is a place with illegal street prostitution at nights, where the prostitutes are all immigrants from Africa. In this case, the entirety of them are victims of trafficking. As of the Choriatiko bakery chain, one of its big shareholders, Aggelos Giannakopoulos, was the owner of some strip clubs and studios (studios: the “expensive brothels”) and engaged in sex trafficking women from Russia through an employment agency in the city Khabarovsk. When the women arrived in Greece, they were taken in hostage condition. He was laundering his profits from his sex businesses by investing them in the bakery chain. The trials for this case about the criminal organisation of Giannakopoulos are still continuing to this day, ten years after the first arrests back in 2008. See also these English articles for some informations about prostitution in Greece:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/world/europe/prostitutes-greece-crisis.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/prostitution-the-hidden-cost-of-greeces-economic-crisis/
https://www.vice.com/gr/article/exmddm/the-attendants-the-key-players-in-greeces-sex-trafficking-crisis
https://www.vice.com/gr/article/znwv4y/remembering-greeces-hiv-witch-hunt
5. In Aghios Panteleimonas and its surrounding areas the rents are low, so they’re neighbourhoods where many immigrants live.
6. Vatopedi is a christian orthodox monastery in Greece. The monastery was engaged in a scandal involving acquiring land via the state (never forget that in Greece the Church is an official institution of the state) to sell it to offshore companies.
7. Many things can be told about Mpeos and Marinakis, but this goes beyond the scope of this text. Check the English article below to get a taste. We must also note that the shipowner Marinakis is also the owner of Olympiakos FC, and the hooligan clubs of Olympiakos in Piraeus and the surrounding areas had many direct connections with Golden Dawn, and the majority of Greek hooligan clubs of all football teams have direct connections with their local mafias, with hooligans many times working as henchmen, drug dealers, etc, but it would be too lengthy to get into details on all these.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/mar/26/greek-football-crisis-evangelos-marinakis-nottingham-forest-drug-trafficking-charges-olympiakos
8. Today, in 2018, the trial is still going on.
9. Today, in 2018, GD is the third biggest political party in national elections.
10. As it turned out, something that we were assuming since the first moment, the armed attack to the GD’s local office in N. Heraklion leading to the death of two GD’s members, was a “settling of scores” between GD and another mafia. (One of the two murdered GD’s members was working as a bouncer at the nightclub “Deep” in N. Heraklion. We can’t be sure if this fact is related with the attack, since there’s no clue on what kind of activities had the mafia that attacked the GD’s office). So, its expansion was indeed something bigger than what it could chew and GD had to be put to a halt. After a confession of Panayiotis Vlastos, a mafia’s long-term convict, the police investigation turned towards that the attack was a murder contract for “settling of scores”, but the man that Vlastos pointed out as one of the two people carrying out the attack was murdered with two bullets on his head before the cops got to him, so the investigation came to a dead-end. Someone here could exclaim: but, an armed struggle group took responsibility for the attack in N. Heraklion! There are 3 explanations about this text taking the responsibility for the attack: (i) it was written by the mafia itself to turn the police investigation away from them and towards the antiauthoritarian milieu; (ii) as the days were passing and nobody was taking the responsibility, some anarchists leaning towards the armed struggle just took the initiative to write a fake text from a fake armed struggle group as pro-armed struggle propaganda; (iii) the attack was carried out from a collaboration of a new armed struggle group and a mafia group – there are various evidence pointing towards that some Greek armed struggle groups are collaborating with mafias in order to fund themselves, even to the point that some of their attacks were just carrying out mafia’s murder contracts, but that’s a story for another time. Also, keep in mind that: (a) there are videos from the attack and it seems very professional; (b) the armed struggle group that took the responsibility of the attack, called Popular Militant Revolutionary Groups, has never made any other apperance, neither before this attack nor after that; (c) the text taking the responsibility of the attack was a political mess, combining various contradictory left and anarchist ideas; (d) some time after the first text taking the responsibility of the attack, there was published a second text bearing the name of this group, blaming both the left and some anarchists as reformists who are pacifists avoiding violence against fascism, and instead of undertaking revolutionary action following the paradigm set by their attack they just accuse the attack either as being a provocation or as being a mafia’s “settling of scores” disguised as armed struggle.
11. Of course, here we talk about the general strikes. But also in the general strikes, this labour demand was mediated through the rhetorics of the indignados movement about Greece’s debt, etc, thinking that writing-off the debt would mean a return to the era before the crisis.
12. Just 2-3 weeks before the first appearance of the indignados in Syntagma square, GD was having for many days a pogrom against immigrants in another part of the centre of Athens, in the areas around Victoria square.
13. The summer of 2013, Thanasis Kanaoutis, a 19 year old man, was thrown out a moving bus and killed by fare inspectors for not having paid the bus fare.
14. Pythia was the name given to the high priestesses of the Temple of Apollo in ancient Delfi, Greece. They were known for their ambiguous prophecies.
15. LAOS (People’s Orthodox Alarm) is another far-right political party that was founded by Georgios Karatzaferis after he was expelled from New Democracy. It plays by the book and completely lacks the street activism of GD.
16. Some ND’s MPs had stated that ND could form a coalition government with a “serious Golden Dawn”, i.e. a GD without the street activism and the neonazi themes.
Alerta Comunista 
German transation: https://kommunisierung.net/Warum-und-wie-die-Goldene
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German translation: https://kommunisierung.net/Warum-und-wie-die-Goldene
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