The provocative show which took place two weeks ago, by members of ELAM (who also have a 5-year temporary contract working for the Cypriot national army) wearing Golden Dawn t-shirts in a cafe in Faneromeni square in Nicosia, could only get a dynamic antifascist response. By the time they were spotted in the square, a lot of people isolated them and threw them away shouting antifascist songs and showing them efficiently that there is zero tolerance in neo-nazism expressions. Why did all this happen? Why did a group of people attacked people wearing Golden Dawn t-shirts? Isn’t it a democratic right for anyone to wear anything he wants and to drink his coffee where he wants? Why such a reaction?
Because of a simple reason…
The antifascist fight for us is not a just a call for democratic feelings. It is not the equation of “extremes”, the triumph of bourgeois democracy and the propriety of the society which stands inactive towards the crime besides it.
- For us antifascism means daily fight at work, at school, at neighborhoods against the supports of the nazi horror.
- It means an effort for the society to win their freedom, for a new culture based on solidarity and companionship.
- It means stubbornness for a construction of a society free of the boundaries of hate and fascist elements.
- It means persistence and effort in the public space for a free mind for a humanly socialization in the square, in the road, in the neighbors.
The square of Faneromeni, like every other neighborhood should always isolate and expel those who actually want to destroy that world. Because the inaction and the tolerance leads to the legalization of the actions of the fascists and sooner or later it makes us get used to the “face of the monster”
We are living in a period where the crisis and the first movements of workers describe the tale in Cyprus. At this particular moment the fight against measures, poverty, job dismissals and cuts should only be connected to the culture and the ideologies which describe the society and the humans far away from the distortions caused by nationalism, racism, homophobia, misogyny and militarism.
The capital onslaught in our city reached an unprecedented manifestation and the neighborhoods are the easy terrains for profit by their owners in a collaboration with the local authorities and the businessmen. The square of Faneromeni has been in these plans for a long time. Plans that would thrive in a steriled public space with a lot of consumption and touristic activity along with an increase of land value. In this manner, the dominant political discourse prepares the ground to “clean up” the square from the people who gather, hang out and act there, giving them fringe characteristics. Immigrant neighborhoods, places for political thought and other free places will be next.
The fascist gangs live and breathe from the provocations, the display of power towards the weak and the alliances with the system itself. No Pasaran! As they didn’t have the courage to show up in the latest anti-memorandum movements of the populations they will be defeated again before they get the chance to prepare themselves to an ideological level.
So we don’t get to live EOKA B (militarity organisation responsible for the coup d’etat in 1974) coups and juntas.
For a society of freedom, social equality and justice
Neither in Faneromeni, nor elsewhere, we crush the fascism everywhere
Antifascists
