Austerity & Fascism In Greece: The Real 1% Doctrine

Class War For Idiots / November 16, 2011

By Mark Ames

This article is cross-posted on Naked Capitalism

See the guy in the photo there, dangling an ax from his left hand? That’s Greece’s new “Minister of Infrastructure, Transport and Networks” Makis Voridis captured back in the 1980s, when he led a fascist student group called “Student Alternative” at the University of Athens law school. It’s 1985, and Minister Voridis, dressed like some Kajagoogoo Nazi, is caught on camera patrolling the campus with his fellow fascists, hunting for suspected leftist students to bash. Voridis was booted out of law school that year, and sued by Greece’s National Association of Students for taking part in violent attacks on non-fascist law students.

With all the propaganda we’ve been fed about Greece’s new “austerity” government being staffed by non-ideological “technocrats,” it may come as a surprise that fascists are now considered “technocrats” to the mainstream media and Western banking interests. Then again, history shows that fascists have always been favored by the 1-percenters to deliver the austerity medicine.

This rather disturbing definition of what counts as “non-ideological” or “technocratic” in 2011 is something most folks are trying hard to ignore, which might explain why there’s been almost nothing about how Greece’s new EU-imposed austerity government includes neo-Nazis from the LAOS Party (LAOS is the acronym for Greece’s fascist political party, not the Southeast Asian paradise).

Which brings me back to the new Minister of Infrastructure, Makis Voridis. Before he was an ax-wielding law student, Voridis led another fascist youth group that supported the jailed leader of Greece’s 1967 military coup. Greece has been down this fascism route before, all under the guise of saving the nation and complaints about alleged parliamentary weakness. In 1967, the military overthrew democracy, imposed a fascist junta, jailed and tortured suspected leftist dissidents, and ran the country into the ground until the junta was overthrown by popular protest in 1974.

That military junta—and the United States support for it (for which Clinton apologized in 1999)—is a raw and painful memory for Greeks. Most Greeks, anyway. As far as today’s Infrastructure Minister, Makis Voridis, was concerned, the only bad thing about the junta was that it was overthrown by democracy demonstrators. A fascist party was set up in the early 1980s in support of the jailed coup leader, and Voridis headed up that party’s youth wing. That’s when he earned the nickname “Hammer.” You can probably guess by now why Greece’s Infrastructure Minister was given the nickname “Hammer”: Voridis’s favorite sport was hunting down leftist youths and beating them with, yes, a hammer.

Close-up of Minister “Hammer” Voridis’ homemade ax.

After the hammer, he graduated to law school– and the ax; was expelled from law school; and worked his way up the adult world of Greek fascist politics, his ax tucked under the bed somewhere. In 1994, Voridis helped found a new far-right party, The Hellenic Front. In 2004’s elections, Voridis’s “Hellenic Front Party” formed a bloc with the neo-Nazi “Front Party,” headed by Greece’s most notorious Holocaust denier, Konstantinos Plevris, a former fascist terrorist whose book, “Jews: The Whole Truth,” praised Adolph Hitler and called for the extermination of Jews. Plevis was charged and found guilty of “inciting racial hatred” in 2007, but his sentence was overturned on appeal in 2009.

By that time, Makis “Hammer” Voridis had traded up in the world of Greek fascism, merging his Hellenic Front Party into the far-right LAOS party, an umbrella party for all sorts of neo-Nazi and far-right political organizations. LAOS was founded by another raving anti-Semite, Giorgos Karatzeferis—nicknamed “KaratzaFührer” in Greece for alleging that the Holocaust and Auschwitz are Jewish “myths,” and saying that Jews have “no legitimacy to speak in Greece.” The Anti-Defamation League is going ballistic about it; for some reason, the media hasn’t taken notice, except in Israel.

Symbol for the LAOS party (above) and symbol for the KKK (below)

Funny thing is, as far as LAOS party leader “KaratzaFührer” was concerned, while he liked Makis “Hammer” Voridis just as much as the next neo-Nazi, he was worried about what the public might think of putting “Hammer” up for elections on the LAOS party list. Here is LAOS party leader Karatzeferis explaining why to a newspaper last year (big HT to the Greek site “When The Crisis Hits The Fan” for this and much more):

Giorogos Karatzaferis: I was simply afraid that Voridis has a history which I have managed to cover after considerable effort…
Christos Machairas (journalist): What exactly do you mean by “history”?
Giorgos Karatzaferis: About his relation with Jean Marie Le Pen, the axes and all the rest. I am just thinking that suddenly, on the 30th of October (i.e. a bit before the local elections) some guy from New Democracy or from Tsipras’ team (i.e. SYRIZA leftist party) can throw a video on the air and drag me explaining about all these things.

See, that’s the problem with elections, referendums, democracy and the rest: You don’t really know just how qualified and technocratic a guy like Makis “Hammer” Vordis is, which is why it’s such a good thing that the banks instructed the EU to impose “Hammer” on Greece. To deliver some pain. It’s for their own good.

No pain (for the 99%), no gain (for the 1%).

“KaratzaFührer” (left) and Minister “Hammer” (right)

And that is how today, thanks to the EU and the banking interests that control it, Makis “Hammer” Voridis is the new Infrastructure Minister.

Which brings me back to the history of Greece’s coups, and the talk of coups today. Readers who follow our “What You Should Know” section have been reading for months now about all sorts of strange things going on in Greece’s military, culminating with (now ex-) Prime Minister’s Papandreou’s decision to fire his entire military leadership. He fired them on November 1, the same day that he announced that he was putting the EU austerity program to a democratic referendum vote. Here is an account of the firings:

Meanwhile, in a development that has stoked fears of a potential military coup in the country, Papandreou on Tuesday also fired the entire high command of the armed forces along with some dozen other senior officers and replaced them with figures believed to be more supportive of the current political leadership.
The heads of the country’s general staff, army, navy and air force were all dismissed following the meeting of the Government Council for Foreign Affairs and Defence, the supreme decision-making body on national defense.
The ministry maintains that the change in the military high command had long been scheduled. But such reshuffles, which take place every two to three years, do not normally result in the dismissal of the entire leadership.

That came during a month of bizarre mass weapons purchases by the Greek military, with the creditor nations—France and the US—as the weapons sellers: In early October, we learned that the US was taking a breather from pushing austerity and bashing lazy Greek public employees to extend a new line of credit to Greece’s military:

According to information of the “Hellenic Defence & Technology” magazine, the U.S. authorities approved to grant 400 M1A1 Abrams tanks to the Greek Army, which will include options between simple refurbishment – worth tens of millions dollars for all the tanks- and upgrading to a higher level of operational capability, with a higher corresponding cost. The relative Letter of Offer and Acceptance (LOA) is expected soon.
Also according to exclusive information of the” Hellenic Defence & Technology” magazine, a Price and Availability letter was sent to U.S. authorities regarding 20 AAV7A1 and a low cost upgrade program for them. This is the first step to cover an operational requirement for 75-100 vehicles.

A couple of weeks later, France extended fresh lines of credit to the same military for desperately-needed stealth battleships, leaving Germany feeling angry and left out, according to Der Spiegel:

A huge arms deal is threatening to put French-German relations under strain. According to information obtained by SPIEGEL, France wants to deliver two to four new frigates to the Greek navy and to allow the highly indebted nation to postpone payment of the €300 million ($412 million) purchase price per ship for the next five years.
Under the deal, Greece will have the option of paying up after five years, with a significant discount of €100 million, or returning them to the French navy. The “stealth” frigates are designed to avoid detection by enemy radar and are built by state-owned French defense company DCNS.
The deal is being criticized by German rivals that have been competing for the contract for years.

That last part says it all: What pissed off the Germans wasn’t the profligacy, but losing out in a contract they’d been competing for. What this shows, again, is the lie of “austerity”: They pretend that Greece is too deeply in debt to borrow another penny, yet think nothing of lending a few hundred million to the military.

Looking back at the last-minute maneuvers, it seems pretty clear that Papandreou’s decision to fire all the military leaders on the day he announced his referendum on austerity—his attempt to counterbalance Western banker power and local military power with democratic people power–was essentially an imperialist power-struggle in an uppity colony, whose inhabitants are seen as little more than sources of extraction for banker profits. So we have the creditor nations trying to buy off the military as Banker D(efault)-Day approaches, and Papandreou trying to counter that by both bending to their will, realizing he’s through, and trying to save himself by empowering the people in his country. But Papandreou was far too weak and far too compromised. Ultimately he was no match; he never had a chance. And the popular will of Greece’s citizens is barely an afterthought.

This is how bankers deal with banana republics; it’s how they ran their colonies. Take care of the military, give them gifts and get them in your pocket. The people only exist to be extracted. And when they squeal, characterize them the way the Brits characterized the Irish during the Great Famine: lazy, profligate, it’s all their own fault, what they need is more painful medicine and a swift kick in the ass…for their own good, of course.

And just in case it wasn’t clear to everyone, Forbes magazine came out in favor of a coup. Here is how one Greek columnist reported it:

“Instead of pouring euros down the drain, it would be much wiser for Germany to sponsor a military coup and solve the problem that way.” No, this extract is not from a fascist blog. It is from Forbes magazine and it’s just another one of the provocative articles that follow this insane ongoing anti-Greece campaign of international media.

In the end, the bankers and the West got their coup. And they didn’t need an ugly military spectacle to make it happen. Papandreou was overthrown, the referendum was withdrawn, an austerity regime put in place to carry out the bankers’ demands, without democracy getting in the way. Nice ‘n’ clean.

Not only did the West get its coup, but fascists like Makis “Hammer” Voridis got what they’ve been struggling for all their lives: Power, and vindication for far-right nationalism over democracy.

That’s where we are today. Greece drowning in debt, its democracy broken, and despite fighting the Nazis in World War Two, and taking back democracy from a fascist junta in 1974–in the end, it was the EU and the Western banks that put a guy like Makis “Hammer” Voridis, the guy who patrolled his law school with a makeshift ax, in power, administering banker-pain.

The implications of the EU and bankers forcing Greece, the birthplace of democracy, to cancel a popular plebiscite as “irresponsible,” forcing instead an austerity regime composed partly of neo-Nazis fascists to administer more “pain”–is something that should frighten the shit out of everyone. Because like it or not, we’re all in the cross-hairs of the same banking interests, and we’re all going to face it again and again. Greece just happens to be the first in line.

Would you like to know more? Read Mark Ames article on Austerity Nazis, “All Pain, No Gain: A Brief History Of Austerity Program Massacres & Disasters.” Also check out “Class War 101: Meet The Reptiles Who Are Making Meat Out Of You” and “How The Bums Lost The Class War of 2009.”

Mark Ames is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine.

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43 Comments

Add your own

1. jonnym | November 16th, 2011 at 6:29 pm
Amazing find, as always, eXiles.
Question, though: Cui bono? If the fascists take over Greece, what do they gain from it? I suppose the Greek Isles are a strategically important part of the Mediterranean… Wait, never mind. A quick Google search just told me Greece has some oil & natural gas reserves. (sigh) Same ol’ story, I guess.
2. RanDomino | November 16th, 2011 at 6:55 pm
@jonnym The same thing they always want- to be wearing the boot stomping on the human face, forever.
3. dh | November 16th, 2011 at 8:55 pm
Slam-fucking-dunk.
4. pavachuck | November 16th, 2011 at 9:15 pm
Thanks for being so awesome and helping to bring the deeper game into focus for all those with the stones to look behind the curtain. Keep on
5. boson | November 16th, 2011 at 9:49 pm
great article, fuckin’ scary.
some eastern european countries (hungary is a foremost example) are also moving toward a far-right régime, you should check out that too.
only with the iron fist of the far-right can you push through the kind of austerity measures that capitalists are demanding now all over europe.
6. helplesscase | November 16th, 2011 at 10:23 pm
Great stuff. Seems to be the basic plan over in the U.S., as well: keep pumping money into the military-industrial-predator drone complex, militarize local police departments, shift the economic conversation so far to the Right that simply advocating for Social Security to remain unchanged makes one a “radical,” and keep the plebs precariously employed, heavily indebted, and hopelessly uninformed (keeping Americans in the dark is probably the easiest part).
7. Mirroring | November 16th, 2011 at 11:42 pm
Just perfect execution…military precision without all those troublesome mass killings. Soon rises the always percolating Grecian xenophobia, fanned heavily, and, justified by the seeming absence of pickpockets in Mykonos, or Athens for that matter, and actual some demeaning actual new jobs to had. The bulk of the nation soon will be reduced to towel-boys and tour guards, whilst carefully selected metrics will show a graph of wonderful business boom times the next 4 years (all ending in the same hands, ie buddys of these same wanna-be-greedy, whish they were Austria (circa 39 prefereably) fashist shits. No new stories in the world…even in a land with some of the best and oldest of them…hang on.
8. EL BARTO | November 17th, 2011 at 12:03 am
And people bitch about Communism. lol
9. John Figler | November 17th, 2011 at 12:16 am
But now they have managed to stage the whole rutine just skipping the messy-coup-maybe-bloody-civil-war part. Isn’t progress great? They are working to improve, you know, they really take care about ways and manners… one should give them credit for that.
10. Trevor | November 17th, 2011 at 6:10 am
The whole Greek “crisis” always struck me as an elaborate money laundering scheme. “No, we’re not just handing euros to insolvent French and German banks – it’s those damn, lazy Greeks!” So okay, they got their stealth money tunnel so the EU governments can flush their money away on failed financial institutions… Then what? Yeah, the banks can buy out the governments and take us into the Weyland-Yutani future predicted by Aliens but, well, these people are pretty goddamn stupid. We’re talking about the same lot who thought it was a good idea to loan money to Berlusconi. Nazi Germany didn’t fall because it was evil, its ascendent hick ideology caused a national brain-drain, leaving only the morons in charge who naturally thought, “Hey, let’s invade Russia in the winter! They’d never expect it ’cause it’s so retarded!”
Bad as it is, the reign of the bankers is gonna be very short lived…
11. John Figler | November 17th, 2011 at 7:21 am
@10 -> “Bad as it is, the reign of the bankers is gonna be very short lived…”
No. It’s going to be a long, dark and gloomy one. Morons had always outnumbered their oponents but right now the level of moronism is getting too big to tackle, even counting genius on the other side, which I find harder to spot with each passing minute.
Weyland-Yutani at least produced something -spaceships, robots, evil-, and when you have power and control productive means is kind like… oh, God, Socialism. Goldman Sachs is a mere parasite. Even the “productive” kinds of that folk, our so beloved Kochs make their money mostly… out of plundering mineral wealth. They’re not interested in the Greek harbours by themselves. They’ll just take them, squeeze them of all their posible revenue and them leave them as empty carcasses to rot, or handle them to any sucker stupid enough to pay for what is left at overprice.
And people don’t give a shit about that. Moronism is going to be the “ism” of the XXI century. And there is simply no alternate ideology. Being smart has been despised as elitism, pedantic or uppity for too long. Acting wisely throughly ridiculised. Creativity is at Hollywood levels. Thinking?… Gives headache. Violence?… rude.
Weyland-Yutani?
I’d be gladly a loyal subject of Weyland-Yutani as long as it secures me a reasonable low wage, decent food and assorted commodities for recreation (as in that Sean Connery flick about a mining facility in the moon of somewhere).
12. wengler | November 17th, 2011 at 10:12 am
I suppose I am much more familiar with Nazi fascism than the original Italian kind, but aren’t the fascists going to need some sort of popular program eventually?
Fascists love killing and torturing people but it’s hard for me to see them keeping control of Greece when the boil is being turned up. What is the answer for them? Attack Turkey? Attack Macedonia?
I think that Greek governments will keep falling as the ECB continues laundering its giveaway to the 1 percent through Athens. They will attempt to keep control through whatever means possible, but in the end they really don’t know what they are doing.
13. par4 | November 17th, 2011 at 10:48 am
Coming soon to the good old USofAssholedom.
14. CensusLouie | November 17th, 2011 at 11:39 am
This makes me think back to Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here about how fascism would look in America. Although 1984 brilliantly showed us the techniques that authoritative regimes employ, the end result was a little too fantastical for most people to grasp.
What It Can’t Happen Here does is show the most relateable end result of fascism: putting dangerous morons in charge. It takes the time to let you get to know the idiots, the cruel, the spineless toadies, the bitter incompetents blaming everyone else for their failures, then has the fascist government put them in middle management positions over every day people. THAT is the most immediately recognizable end game for fascism. Imagine the person that everyone knows, the guy everyone thought “That kid is going to get thrown in jail for killing someone someday”, suddenly getting promoted to mayor or town councilman with full police powers and full reign to run his fiefdom any way he sees fit.
15. darthfader | November 17th, 2011 at 11:48 am
Hang all fascists.
16. adam | November 17th, 2011 at 1:14 pm
“Imagine the person that everyone knows, the guy everyone thought “That kid is going to get thrown in jail for killing someone someday”, suddenly getting promoted to mayor or town councilman with full police powers and full reign to run his fiefdom any way he sees fit.”
That’s exactly what some Greeks have to be thinking about Makis Voridis. Trying to imagine what that feels like – that is fucking scary.
17. Sean the Sorcerer | November 17th, 2011 at 2:12 pm
Well to be honest, I would find *competent* fascism refreshing after all the wretched propaganda and directionless, dysfunctional democracy we’ve been subjected to in recent years. There comes a time in human affairs when you need men of action, ability and will to cut through the bullshit and do what needs to be done, and we’ve clearly reached such a time today. I see little evidence that a rabble of 99 percenters can do much of anything, since their very ideology is at odds with wielding power. At the end of the day, theirs is a tale told idiots, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.
Also, please note that the conflation of fascism with rightism, Nazism, anti-Semitism, etc. is simply erroneous, though it is a convenient club which has been employed to great effect by fascists of the Left. The essence of fascism is simply the recognition that POWER AND HIERARCHY are primary in human affairs, not any liberal ideals. This is a point that Lenin and friends understood as well as the black- and brownshirts. I suspect that a futuristic fascism on an Asian model is going to become the dominant form of government in the 21st century (assuming civilization survives), but it will be fully multicultural and global.
Finally, let me say that if there really is a sociopathic, Satanic, fascist elite manipulating world events, setting up and knocking down governments like bowling pins, making vast profits from war, peace, revolution and the status quo, rigging every game, winning on heads or tails, forever raining on your parade and preying upon the 99% like vampire-supermen, then my only question is: where do I sign up?
18. Paul Morel | November 17th, 2011 at 2:59 pm
Sean, your growing insanity is starting to worry me.
19. darthfader | November 17th, 2011 at 4:32 pm
I love that, Sean, “where do I sign up”. You don’t. The elite doesn’t want you. They’ll never want you. They’ll never love you and they’ll never jack you off in your Mom’s Buick.
20. schwarze sonne | November 17th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Sean, although I agree with everything you said, you are a complete and utter nutjob. Keep working on your dark side jedi ninjutsu kid, I’m sure the new masters of the world will be clamoring to make you part of the future elite.
21. CensusLouie | November 17th, 2011 at 6:17 pm
Ha ha, speaking of the novel It Can’t Happen Here, the entire first couple of chapters are full of people making the EXACT same speech #17 Shawn did. Every character who would later go on to support the fascist government makes the same speech at some point: “Democracy is a great idea in theory, but what we really need is a strong leader who’ll knock some sense into the young people today and all these lazy welfare cheats!”
What amazes me is that novel was written in the 1930s, yet it’s full of the exact same talking points you hear from the likes of Fox News today. Where the richs are saints, every problem is the fault of lazy communists, and anything that refutes a fascist point is dismissed as “liberal”.
Reactionaries never change. Who would have thought?
22. Sean the Sorcerer | November 17th, 2011 at 6:38 pm
Thanks for your words of encouragement schwarze sonne, and be sure to visit my blog in a few days, when I’ll be announcing my most diabolical world domination cult yet, heavily influenced by the Sith but with strong doses of Weimar Germany, esoteric fascism, H.P. Lovecraft and a dash of Steampunk just for fun, to be called, serendipitously enough, “The Order of the Black Sun”.
23. ArgonHalibut | November 17th, 2011 at 8:22 pm
@1: What do the fascists gain? A clearer, closer view of the backs they plan to firmly sink their knives into for the sake of Dominion. The scorpion can’t sting you until you let it ride on your back, after all. Remember, this is EXACTLY how Hitler came to power; the bankers and industrialists -fearing the left- put him and his cronies in government positions thinking they could control their brown-shirted dogs. Of course, we all remember how that turned out, though it seems the Junkers of our current Gilded Age need to crack a history book.
24. ArgonHalibut | November 17th, 2011 at 8:38 pm
@12 They were appointed by the ECB; why would they care about having a popular program? The people who put them in government aren’t the Greek people; they are German and French politicians and financiers. The people funding them aren’t Greek tax-payers; they’re banks in Dusseldorf, Paris, Denmark, and the US. Those are the interests they are beholden to; those are the people they want to keep happy.
Their internal policy (beyond the fascist perennial of “beatings and extra-judicial murders for all”, of course) will be that which is dictated from Brussels, and coincidentally, not dissimilar from that of the Junta many of them so admired in their youth. Arrest, torture, and kill the opposition. Keep Greece impoverished with austerity. Bleed Greece dry to cover the losses garnered by idiotic foreign investment bankers remembering, of course, to skim enough off the top to become wealthy men. Keep the foreign governments and banks funding us happy, and when the people are quiescent, go pick a fight with Turkey over Cyprus.
Heck, as big a hate-on as Sarkozy has for Turkey, he’ll probably pay our new Greek Fascist Friends to pick a fight with them, just so he can use that as yet another excuse to veto Turkey’s EU accession yet again (though I doubt they would still want to join at this point).
25. QiaoZhi | November 17th, 2011 at 8:43 pm
This is a truly phenomenal piece. Mark Ames I salute you.
26. Al | November 18th, 2011 at 2:41 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Greece
guys – so far it’s still an overwhelming majority of PASOK in the government of greece. and they have the interior.
13 PASOKs to 1 LAOS.
al
27. Machak | November 18th, 2011 at 2:58 am
Fascist filth.
Should’ve executed the lot back in ’45.
Death to all those diseased mongrels.
28. Elijah | November 18th, 2011 at 7:50 am
Well researched!
29. Mac | November 18th, 2011 at 10:04 am
“LAOS is the acronym for Greece’s fascist political party, not the Southeast Asian paradise”
Paradise? Yes, if you’re a backpacker with a fat wallet visiting for sightseeing and booze-filled evenings. But try living there and earning $2 a day, under a communist one party regime. Did you know why restaurants and bars close at 11:30 PM in Laos? Becaause the locals who work there have to be home by midnight when the curfew sets in, as is mandated by their betters in the Communist party. Paradise indeed…
I’ve got no love for a fascist with an axe, but a commie with a pencil is way more dangerous.
30. Fissile | November 18th, 2011 at 12:31 pm
It’s interesting that this Voridis Nazi wannabe is scene with an ax. The word fascist derives from “fasces”, a bundle of sticks with an ax blade in the center. The fasces goes back to the time of the Romans….a symbol of power and the rule of law. I wonder if Voridis knew about this? Nah, if I was gonna bet money, I’d say he’s just a violent head-case, like most of post war “fascists”.
31. super390 | November 18th, 2011 at 7:21 pm
#29:
What makes fascists dangerous is that giant corporations are willing to replace their axe with an actual government and army to wield. Like Krupp did for Hitler. At that point, there is no limit to the crimes they will try to commit, because the cult of inequality has no logical limit.
Remember, slavery is actually a private-sector institution.
32. pj | November 19th, 2011 at 6:17 am
The scary truth is that all fascist dictatorships in the world were created by Western bankers to fight the left and socialism.
Only when the left (USSR) destroyed bankers’ best fascist dictatorship (Nazi Germany) have they decided to separate capitalism from fascism, pronounced themselves fighters against its horrors, and came up with fake similarities between socialism and fascism.
Fascist dictatorships were never confronted by Western countries for as long as fascist countries were not to be taken over by USSR – look at Spain and Greece after WWII.
33. UpperCut954 | November 21st, 2011 at 7:59 pm
“give me control of a countries currencies, and i dont need to control it’s military” . Rothschild, circa 1920’s(?). – which is just after the federal Reserve was created, and around the time JP morgan intentionally caused the run on the banks that led to the depression. The federal reserve is private, and controls the money of the united states. Im not a conspiracy theorist, but i’m watching the money control, via the creddit system, credit cards, and coming, …. ‘the RFID chip’, carrying our financial info and buying power. Once we’re all chiped, if that is where we are heading, we can be “turned off’ , and effectively neutralized and ex-communicated in one shot. Check out fed reserve, 1913 (FDR), gold standard withdrawal- i.e. gold recall, & council on Foreign Relations
I’d say more, but this damn alien probe is causing me another hemm rupture, gotta head to the john for now. More later. Nanu-nanu.
34. iSockpuppet | November 22nd, 2011 at 4:35 am
@Super390
Remember! Remember? Seriously?
What does that even mean, “private sector institution”?
Would you please go read a book and stay away from keyboards.
35. Fight Fascism! | November 22nd, 2011 at 6:03 am
Next task is to topple this temporary emergency regime! Greetings from Finland here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpMv0uZjJrM
36. Alan Bickley | November 23rd, 2011 at 1:30 pm
Every old man on a stationary bike at my gym spouts that disdain for democracy and the “lower orders.” When they direct it to impressionable young people I challenge them. When they keep it to their own fearful and befuddled kind I take it to be a kind of mutual masturbation, and I stay out of it. But from what I see and hear around the USA as well as here in Madison the old men on bikes and the younger fascists they so shamelessly adore are a doomed breed.
37. Bloodnok | November 24th, 2011 at 8:27 am
Having admittedly only ‘skimmed’ comments here dare I point out that Hitler and the Nazi fascists, foul though they undoubtedly were, are accredited with less than half of the genocide carried out by the USSR under “Uncle Joe” Stalin.
Hitler 7M (ish) .. Stalin 20M+
Both totally evil bastards, but do the maths before you praise the Left too much.
Granted, my sources are completely full of shit and this attempt at false equivalency is classic rightwing trolltardery, but still, my point stands. I mean just because Hitler’s idiotic war led to the deaths of about 50 million Europeans, including Nazi civilian genocides: 6 million Jews, 13 million Soviets under Nazi occupation, up to a million Roma, and millions of Poles…add to that about 5.5 million Germans who died for Hitler…and yeah, you get something like 7M (ish).
Some day, I’ll move out of my mom’s house, and then a real rain will come and wash away my pee stains.
38. Infidel753 | November 26th, 2011 at 6:16 am
Who more appropriate than fascists to carry out a coup against democracy in the country that invented it? It would be interesting to take a similar look into the backgrounds of the similarly-imposed quisling regime in Italy.
Europe needs to make an end to this ghastly failed experiment the EU. The southern countries would be better off without bail-out loans if it means they can regain democracy, national independence, and the ability to pursue independent economic policies that will lead them out of recession instead of austerity that just buries them deeper.
39. John Doe | November 27th, 2011 at 10:52 am
I don’t doubt your comments above but you need to understand that anyone who says that “fascism” is NOT a far-right ideology as you appear to think is a complete sucker tool who doesn’t read history and believes anything that Jonah the thumb-sucker Goldberg writes. Believing that fascism is communism is in fact a form of socialism-of-the-retarded. All fascists in the 20th century came up through the ranks of socialism (that is every fascist except for Hitler, Generalissimo Franco, General Pinochet, the Croatian Ustashe, Romania’s Iron Guard, Austrian fascists, Jean-Marie Le Pen, even Mussolini got his start as an MI5 agent for Britain in 1917. But yeah, besides all of them, as anyone who reads Jonah Goldberg knows, fascism is really leftwing socialism. Now excuse me while I pull this spiked butt-plug out of my ear.
40. Russell Cavanagh | November 27th, 2011 at 1:08 pm
I am burning all of my Limahl posters, albums and other paraphernalia after reading this. You have opened my eyes!
41. Rehmat | December 9th, 2011 at 6:03 am
Well, Abe Foxman, the “hammer” of ADL – was never concerned that even after 350 years under Muslim rule, there is no proper mosque left in Athens by those ‘anti-Semite’ Greek fascists. At the time of Greek “independence” the city had 72 mosques.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/11/12/jewish-groups-censor-new-greek-government/
42. Niekko | January 13th, 2012 at 6:57 pm
Rehmat,
Unfortunately you are ill-conceived and therefore thoroughly uneducated in this matter altogether”.
The Muslim world is under threat to the core of it’s foundation. They have the numbers but cannot find common ground to unify them once and for all”.
The reason being, is simply because they are sell-outs to certain agents ? Can you guess particular to who ? Gutless and cowards the Muslim world is at this point in time.
Dragging the rest of the world into their messy backyard. Imbeciles they most certainly are unless otherwise.
The world exists because of “Greek ideology” and most importantly, It has given more to the world than the elite establishment can ever dream of !!!
Believe it or not. People actually have the power to turn this on it’s head if they really wanted to”. However, that will be for a later date and time.
43. kindaupdate | April 25th, 2012 at 7:04 am
The axe-wielding guy was kicked out of the LAOS party in February 2012 after supporting the government’s newest austerity measures vote in parliament. He resigned his MP seat but remains minister, having in the meanwhile joined the Nea Demokratia party. He’s running on their ballot in the May 6th elections and one has to assume that the purported “technocrats” of greek austerity have high regard for his “skills”, whatever they may be.