Day 4. Thursday, July 2, 2015
The build-up of tension is accelerating as the D-day of the referendum approaches. The intensive cultivation of mass fear by nearly all bourgeois media to manipulate public opinion for a victory of the 'Yes' to the troika's ultimatum on July 5 is coordinated with non-stop provocative statements by the heads of the European Commission , the European Council, the ECB, the European Parliament, by Chancellor Merkel and her finance minister Schäuble, by the French President Hollande and his minister et tutti quanti calling for a 'Yes' to their orders and, now, openly for an overthrow of the Tsipras Government to be replaced by a new government of “national unity” or a government of appointed technocrats. Democratic European imperialism demands openly the strangulation of parliamentary democracy, in the name of which it governs.
The role of the mainstream international mass media also should not be underestimated. The “serious” Reuters News Agency published a photo of the magnificent pro-NO popular rally of June 29 in Syntagma Square as a picture of the ...pro-Yes reactionary rally of the next day, June 30, which was significantly smaller!!
Manifestations of fear but also of defiance are seen every day in the streets of the cities all over the country. Civil strife emerges. A small but characteristic example: a group of comrades of the EEK was campaigning for the 'NO' and our revolutionary program in the streets of the working class neighborhood of Petralona (not far from Acropolis of Athens) when it was brutally attacked by pro-Yes “civilians” and finally arrested by the police, to be later released.
Today, the Stalinist Communist Party of Greece (KKE) held quite a crowded central rally in Syntagma. In his speech the General Secretary of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumbas, advocated a null vote in the referendum. Specifically he advocated the use of a special leaflet printed and distributed by the KKE to serve as a protest. The leaflet says 'No both to the Syriza government and to the EU Memoranda'... This is not just sectarianism: it is reactionary political blindness in an extremely crucial and dramatic moment of the history of the working class. It manifests the alienation from reality of a sclerotic bureaucracy, which puts its self-preservation above the class interests of the workers and in the service of the capitalist system in crisis. In conditions where, the orchestrators of the hysterical pro-EU campaign revive all the old slogans of the anticommunists and imperialist propaganda during the Greek civil war of the 1940s, the bureaucrats at the head of the KKE discredit communism.
Today also ANTARSYA, the coalition of about 20 centrist organizations, together with a small front of nationalists named MAS, had their own central rally in front of the old building of Athens University (at the same place where the EEK held its own independent rally yesterday). They call for a No vote next Sunday, criticizing, at the same time, Syriza with a KKE-like rhetoric, demanding a break from the EU and the euro and a return to the drachma, without breaking from the framework of capitalism.
Tomorrow, Friday July 3, is the last day for the public political campaign before the Referendum. In Athens there will be two central rallies of the opposite camps of the Yes and of the NO.
The right wing reactionaries of the “civil society movement”(?) “We Stay in Europe”, the self-proclaimed Greek “Euro-Maidan” will assemble in the Stadium of Athens.
The popular rally for the NO called by Syriza will take place again in Syntagma Square. The EEK will participate in the rally with its own banners. On the contrary the KKE, as well as the Maoists (who call for abstention in the referendum) will boycott it. Antarsya is split on the issue with one part participating and another boycotting it.
The State and private TV stations offer hours and hours to the proponents of the yes, much less to Syriza as proponents of the No. For the EEK, the Ministry allows only 10 minutes on the National TV for tomorrow...