Gwynne Dyer: Tunisia and Greece take brave steps towards harmony
Two governments did bold, brave things last week.
One of them quit and called a new election even though it had a viable majority in parliament. The other arrested the leaders of a neo-fascist party on charges of heading a criminal gang.
And you can’t help wondering if things would have turned out a lot better if a couple of other governments had had the courage to do the same thing.
Last Saturday (September 28), the Tunisian government that has been in power since the country’s first free election in 2011 announced that it would resign. Ennahda, the leading party in the ruling coalition, had not tried to impose its Islamic values on the whole population, and it had brought non-Islamic parties into the coalition, but the situation in the country was starting to feel like Egypt. So Ennahda quit.
Like any post-revolutionary government, Ennahda faced a huge economic challenge, and its inevitable failure to create enough jobs to meet the expectations of the young had eaten into its popular support. But what really brought it into a confrontation with the secular majority of the population were two assassinations of high-profile opposition leaders.
Nobody thinks that Ennahda was involved in the killings of Chokri Belaid last February and Mohammed Brahmi in May (both with the same pistol). At worst, people think that the government was not severe enough in cracking down on the Salafists, the Islamist radicals who are widely suspected of responsibility for the murders.
In fact, the killings may really be the work of a single nutcase, or of figures from the old regime trying to subvert the new democracy, in which case even the harshest anti-Salafist measures would have made no difference. Yet the first prime minister of the Ennahda-led coalition quit after Belaid’s assassination, and now the whole party is leaving office because it failed to prevent the death of Brahmi.
With many of its former voters suffering from the dire state of the economy, Ennahda will probably not win the next election (which is to be organized by a caretaker government). But Tunisia will still be a democracy, Ennahda will still be a legal party, and there will not be thousands killed by the army in the streets. Unlike Egypt.
You can find some excuses for why Egypt stumbled back into a military dictatorship last July. The Muslim Brotherhood overplayed its hand and made secular Egyptians feel that they were under attack. The army had been running the country for decades, and wanted to protect its many privileges. But if President Mohammed Morsi had had the wisdom to do what Ennahda has done, even at the last moment, Egypt would still be a democracy today.
And now to Greece, where the ruling coalition of centre-right and left-wing parties have taken decisive action against Europe’s most violent political movement, the neo-fascist Golden Dawn Party, over the past two weeks. The sweep culminated in an anti-terrorism operation early last Saturday morning in which police stormed the homes of party leader Nikos Michaloliakos and five other Golden Dawn members of parliament.
Only three years ago, Golden Dawn was a tiny fringe party that ranted about “subhuman foreigners” stealing Greek jobs and polluting the Greek gene pool, and got less than one percent of the vote in the 2010 election. Then came the debt crisis that has plunged Greece into poverty—and in last year’s election it got seven percent of the vote.
Waving Greek flags and the party’s logo (which looks quite like a swastika), Golden Dawn’s bully-boys took over the streets, attacking immigrants, gays, and leftists. It had the support of some senior police officers, and its members were arming themselves for some final confrontation. But Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s government moved first.
“Golden Dawn tried to test the endurance of democracy,” said Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias. “Today it got an answer from state justice.” The charge sheet against the party’s senior leaders runs to nine pages, detailing instances of murder, extortion and money-laundering. If those charges stand up in court (and they probably will), Golden Dawn may well be banned.
Golden Dawn’s members openly admire Adolf Hitler, but the only reason they even know his name is that the German state failed to take similar action against his National Socialist (Nazi) party in the last years before Hitler took power in 1933.
Like Golden Dawn, the Nazis’ share of the national vote jumped sevenfold after the onset of the economic crisis in 1929, but they were still a small minority in Germany, and their violence against their opponents and the Jews gave the state ample reason to act against them.
It didn’t, and as Germany’s economic situation worsened the Nazis’ support grew further. In the 1933 election they got one-third of the vote, and Hitler was appointed Chancellor. That was the end of German democracy and much else besides.
Greece is not a great power, so what happens there matters much less, but without this prompt action it could have ended up the same way. It’s a lot easier to be wise after the fact, but it is the job of politicians to be wise before the fact. Some pass the test; others do not.
Comments
5 Comments
Zseiss
Sep 30, 2013 at 7:32pm
Dyer, in his usual disingenuous manner utterly fails to address the other factors which saw the rise of Golden Dawn. The party made major inroads by actually helping out their fellow Greeks through food and medicine distribution, as well as providing security for potential victims of largely (illegal) immigrant perpetuated crime.
Through all this the MSM waged a relentless campaign trying to demonize Golden Dawn as “Nazis” and thugs. However, it generally failed, and Golden Dawn weathered that storm well. Recent polls have put them as high as 15-20%.
With elections looming next year, the mask has fully come off the “democratic” establishment. Dyer calls it a “decisive action” but in reality it means throwing GD members in jail on trumped up charges. When a state starts to jail political dissidents, it has lost all legitimacy. By not acknowledging the full set of facts behind this story, Dyer simply shows himself as he is—a tacit supporter of the current filthy and rotten political establishment of Greece.
James G
Oct 1, 2013 at 11:03am
The last time Mr. Dyer wrote such a starry-eyed column of nothings was when he tried to compare the FARC of Columbia with the MILF in Mindanao (FARC is the class-based revolutionary movement in Columbia inspired by Castro and corrupted by the cocaine trade while MILF is the Islamic sepratist movement in Mandanao inspired by Jinnah and corrupted by jihadis). His pitch was that both of these lengthy struggles were in hopeful talks and were about to finally conclude.
Cynicism, not courage was the cause of the un-related events in Tunisia and Greece. In Tunisia, the pattern of events showed that the ruling Islamists could not follow the example of Egypt's Islamic brotherhood but that extra-parliamentary etremists were free to run amok. The supposition that the Islamists will surely lose an election during this climate of fear fostered for the secular left is anyone's guess. Dropping the writ instead of aggressively pursuing the guilty is not courage. If anything, it is a chance to claim a new mandate. It's equally possible that a re-elected Ennahda might engineer the exact same sequence of events that then forces the Tunisian army to either stand by or to act to apprehend an Islamic insurrection by it's own elected officials. All involved do at least now have the Egyptian example to consider.
In Greece, the Golden Dawn bears all the hallmarks of a fascist party. It has had a lot of support from the members of the police and military. It's members have been used to stifle left opposition to the crisis and make fighting against the crippling austerity measures impossible. The left is largely now defeated, both in elections and in the streets. Greece has achieved a miserable stability as the political storefront through which the European banks launder private debt into European public debt. It's government can now attempt to pretend normalcy. They can now put aside but not eliminate this tool they used in the streets. If there is an analogy, it would be Hitler's dispensing of the SA, once it's usefulness was fulfilled in the 'night of the long knives'. There won't be knives though, since these tools may be needed again. It's the night of the long but comfy jail cell! Those so passively walking into custody will likely see lots of familiar and helpful faces amongst their jailers and police. This is not courage.
Zseiss
Oct 1, 2013 at 7:06pm
@ James G
Calling BS on your post.
Golden dawn has been very vocal about opposing the austerity measures, and has certainly not prevented others from doing so. They’re the ones on the street helping out their fellow Greeks who have been hardest hit. And the left in Greece is hardly defeated—in fact the antifa thugs there have a major reputation for violence, all with the consent of the police in the past week. They even murdered a shopkeeper in cold blood because they suspected him to be involved with GD.
Then of course there is the prime minister of Greece reporting to his masters, promising to “eradicate” Golden Dawn, and to “deracinate” the Greek people.
http://news.yahoo.com/greek-pm-vows-eradicate-far-golden-dawn-191120758....
Their so-called democracy is nothing but a façade. The mask is off—take a good look.
McRocket
Oct 2, 2013 at 5:26am
Right wing extremist groups like Golden Dawn always pop up when governments completely screw up like the recent Greek ones have.
They appeal to the ignorant, the desperate and the sickos...and they ALWAYS fade away.
The question is: How much nonsense/pain do they spread before they do?
Zseiss
Oct 2, 2013 at 4:18pm
No, they’re not going to fade away. That’s why the government had to declare them a “criminal organization”. This is what happens in a democracy when the sheeple don’t vote the way the nanny tells them to.
The current political establishment with their antifa “rent-a-mobs” are the people who are responsible for the rise in popularity of Golden Dawn.
For years they have ignored (or worse name called and ostracized) those who have tried to have a debate about mass immigration. They have ignored the legitimate claims of people who are witnessing their cultures being genocided, their wealth expropriated and the birthrights of their children mortgaged.
Clearly with 22% popular support the Greek people feel these issues require a national discussion.
You don’t have a discussion with these people by jailing those they democratically elected to have that discussion for them.