On Sunday comrades from the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) received a message about a series of attacks on anti-fascist students. Several KNE members were injured and have been in hospital.
Over the past few days, the Vocational Gymnasium (EPAL), located in Stavroupoli , the western suburb of Thessaloniki , Greece’s second largest city, has become the focus of anger and outrage.
On the morning of Tuesday, September 27, a group of hooded fascists armed with bats left the schoolyard and, like an assault battalion, attacked university students who were gathering outside the school. The gathering of the latter was caused by an attack by the fascists on three university students, which took place a few days earlier in the neighborhood of the same school.
Similar events took place on Wednesday 28 September. However, this time the fascists even used Molotov cocktails. However, the police did not touch them and instead attacked – with the use of chemicals – university students and members of the KNE, who gathered in the same place and called for the mobilization of anti-fascists.
The school administration is responsible for what happened, since it allowed the fascists to freely enter and leave the school along with their equipment and use the school as their base.
This EPAL school is one of the largest school complexes in Thessaloniki with over 1200 students. This complex is located in the heart of the western suburbs of Thessaloniki, surrounded by large neighborhoods inhabited primarily by the working class. The students of this school have been at the forefront of the rise of school mobilization in recent years. KNE has done a great job at this institution.
However, it is important to highlight the reasons for the emergence of fascist groups in these particular schools.
The facts are that the same school leadership, which during these two days was simply idle, watching the attacks of the assault battalion from inside the school, last year, during the mobilization of communist and anti-fascist youth, even called the anti-terrorist unit to meet with the schoolchildren! Over the past year, students with their mass gatherings have succeeded in isolating and marginalizing fascist groups and at the forefront of organized mobilization.
Fascist groups are extremely irritated by the strengthening of the KNE in these schools and, in general, by the militant attitude of schoolchildren and students in the region. Their discontent is also caused by the fact that thousands of young people gathered for the KNE Festival, which was held a few days ago in the same municipality. It is even more obvious that they, and the system they serve, are alarmed by the fact that young people and children from the working class and common people are breaking the shackles of vague disillusionment and beginning to explore the radical ideas of the KNE and the Greek Communist Party (KKE). They know that these young people, who are the new generation of the working class, together with revolutionary ideology represent an explosive combination that those in power see as an undeniable threat to themselves.
Thus, it is clear that fascism cannot die by court order. On the front page of the newspaper Rizospastis (the central organ of the KKE) on the historic day of the condemnation of Golden Dawn (the most famous fascist party in Greece) said exactly about this: “We must not indulge in complacency! We continue to fight against fascism and the system that gives rise to it.”
The Greek people and youth fought incessantly against the germ of fascism and its organised manifestation, Golden Dawn. They managed to isolate them, because it became the business of the entire popular movement, its unions and organisations. The KKE and KNE were at the forefront of this struggle. This is also evidenced by the events in Stavroupoli, where the active presence of KNE sets the tone for the suppression of any attempts to instill fear. KNE forces are at the forefront, so they can raise the issue of isolating such fascist groups in all major organizations in the city; they immediately took to the streets in large numbers in response to the attacks on the students. The daytime rally silenced everyone who thinks to get out of the cracks into which the popular movement has driven them. Because fascism can be defeated on the streets only by targeting its core, the system itself, which gives rise to it!
This article was originally published in Russian on Rot Front
