GREECE is currently having its books and the success of its austerity measures examined by the EU Troika, made up of the representatives of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF.
Greece has run out of cash and its bosses are desperate to secure another 130bn euros of loans, in order to pay back a portion of their earlier loans. To help get this cash, its unelected Prime Minister has decreed another 11bn euros of the most savage cuts.
Meanwhile, the Greek working class is fighting for its life. Many workers and youth are now dependent on soup kitchens, while both the bank workers and steel workers are taking strike action against wage cuts, job cuts and privatisation.
The SEATE trade union at the Agrarian Bank of Greece (ATE) has unanimously decided to continue the indefinite national strike against the privatisation of the Bank.
It is in this developing revolutionary situation that the masses of the Greek workers have set up assemblies in a number of towns and cities to defend themselves and their families. They are discussing such measures as the working class establishing its control over food supplies, establishing a workers militia to fight state attacks, and organising a general strike and an uprising to bring down the EU’s Greek dictatorship.
It is therefore only natural in this situation of approaching revolution that the ruling class should seek to save itself by diverting the struggle and by trying to split the working class, the rural poor and the youth.
Public Order Minister Christos Papoutsis has made a declaration that more than 100,000 people have entered Greece illegally in the last year and that they must go. He is seeking to open the floodgates of racism with his pogrom politics.
The EU-IMF-ECB-imposed three-party coalition government of conservative prime minister Antonis Samaras has now unleashed an unprecedented attack against immigrant workers and their families in the capital Athens, and on the Greek-Turkish border.
Athens city centre and adjacent poor workers’ districts are under the occupation of armed riot police squads. 5,000 people have been arrested in an operation targeting illegal immigration in Athens. Many more arrests are expected as the ruling class looks for its scapegoat for the crisis of capitalism.
Fear is now their mode of communication. Their message is that Greece will be overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of ‘illegals’ fleeing NATO’s war in Syria. They are strengthening their border defences with Turkey to keep the ‘illegals’ at bay and are building their Israeli-style Separation Wall to keep the ‘illegals’ out.
In one evening 200 Pakistanis were rounded up in Athens city centre and are to be immediately repatriated.
The Greek bourgeoisie is being egged on by the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, whose representative, Cecilia Malmstroem, has said the numbers of illegals are ‘dramatic’, while Public Order Minister Papoutsis says that Greece can ‘no longer tolerate this’.
This state attempt to develop a wave of racism is not a Greek issue. In all of the crisis-ridden EU capitals the ruling classes are turning to the same poisonous tactic – divide and rule.
Workers must answer this onslaught by a 100% defence of immigrant workers and minorities.
It is capitalism and the practices of its bosses and bankers that are ‘illegal’ and unacceptable. These must be put an end to by revolution.
It was Marx who said ‘Workers of the World Unite – you have nothing to lose except your chains!’
This must be our battle-cry. We must build sections of the Fourth International all over Europe to organise the working class to carry through socialist revolutions to smash capitalism and imperialism and its by-products racism and fascism.
