Americans and Tsipras are murdering SYRIZA.
By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
September 22, 2023
Stefanos Kasselakis– unless we are to have a big surprise and witness a reversal of the trend – will most likely be elected, perhaps even with a large percentage next Sunday as President of SYRIZA-PS, through a completely flimsy procedure and despite the fact that he is completely irrelevant to both the party and the country he wants to govern!!
It is true that the media, even many supposedly “alternative” sites, do everything they can (I wonder why?) to cover up the complete and profuse ignorance about the Left and about Greece of a “human robot” that was poorly assembled to be “sent” to run the opposition in the colony. Whatever they do, however, very soon he will be forced to speak and then he will be the butt of jokes. It so happens that as soon as he tried to say something about the Cyprus problem, in his unintelligible and strange Greek, he immediately got confused and started uttering all kinds of incongruities.
As far as we know, there is no precedent for the election of so irrelevant a person and by such a procedure, to any party, all the more so a left-wing one, in the world. Needless to say, his election will have violated all the basic political, moral and historical principles of the left and the criteria that define the consciousness of the young and old, the living and the dead of the Left, that is, the collective consciousness and the collective unconscious of this political group.
Of course, one could argue that SYRIZA is no longer a left-wing party in any sense of the word and that the candidacy of Kasselakis marks its transformation into something completely different. If that is the case, however, it would be advisable for the friends of SYRIZA not to deceive the almost one million voters who voted for them three months ago believing that SYRIZA is a left-wing party.
The election of this unlikely person as leader of SYRIZA lacks both political and representative legitimacy and raises serious questions of moral, democratic and national order. Of course, it seems that all this is of no importance to a portion of our left-wing cadres who are giving everything for a seat of power and the pocket benefits that accompany it, but also to the “journalistic world” of the country, which has never in modern Greek history experienced such decadence and decline.
The election of Kasselakis is likely to cause a major crisis in the opposition party, if not a split, and will leave the country largely without an opposition in a period that is extremely critical at all levels (major economic problems, climate crisis, collapse of infrastructure and the state, looting of public and private property, US pressure for serious concessions of national sovereignty, etc.).
From the King’s “gardener” to the “American friend”
It is a two century old debate in Greek political life whether the Head of State, that is to say, until 1973 the King, is entitled to appoint whomever he likes, even his “gardener” as Prime Minister, as he had the right under the Constitution, but not the corresponding legitimacy.
The last time we had a relevant discussion in Greece was with the governments formed by defector MPs from 1965 onwards, when the King, acting as an instrument of the Americans, first staged a coup by firing the popular Prime Minister of the country (George Papandreou) and then started appointing various unofficial persons as Prime Ministers.
Even if things are not exactly the same, the “election” for leader of SYRIZA, through this flimsy process, of an unknown, irrelevant person with a history hostile to the ideas of the left bears resemblances to the history of 1965. Furthermore, similarly to the dismissal of Papandreou, the appearance of Kasselakis from (transatlantic) space is certainly a product of American behind-the-scenes intervention in Greek political affairs, most probably orchestrated by the former US ambassador to Greece, Jeffrey Pyatt, through Tsipras. Only someone who has no idea about Greek history can believe the opposite, that Polakis (a SYRIZA deputy and Tsipras personal friend) met Kasselakis in a tavern and that’s why SYRIZA is now about to be dismantled!
Throughout our history, such American interventions have always preceded tragic developments in Greece.
The main argument of Kasselakis’ supporters is that with him we “get the elections”, while with Achtsioglou or the others we don’t. Woe to us, however, if the parties, in order to “get the elections”, become what their opponents are, or start obediently applying every absurdity the American ambassadors have planned for their own reasons.
We know that Achtsioglou and the others cannot win elections. Neither can Tsipras; after all, Achtsioglou is his creation, he pushed her to run for the leadership before selling her to bring in Kasselakis.
In order to solve the problem of how to win the elections, which is so much on its mind, SYRIZA should sit down and think in depth about what went so wrong in the whole course of the party, do a general overhaul of the party, get in touch with the grassroots, get in touch with the popular strata that need a left, listen to them, and work out a serious plan for the country. The question of politics is not reduced to various tricks as Tsipras believes. I don’t know if SYRIZA can do these things, I have serious doubts, but of course it is ridiculous to try to become a better right-wing party than Mitsotakis’ right-wing party, and this is the only plan that Kasselakis can serve. After all, that was Tsipras’ whole political line after 2015, i.e. trying to be liked by the domestic oligarchy and foreign Patrons. And this is exactly why SYRIZA’s percentage is collapsing from election to election.
Now, by blessing Kasselakis from behind the scenes, without having at least the basic courage to defend publicly and courageously his choices, Tsipras is pushing his party into a very big crisis and giving a huge gift to Mitsotakis.
Deceiving the voters, violating the principle of popular sovereignty
Three months ago, almost a million voters – about a fifth of those who voted – supported a party that claimed to be of the radical left and opposed to the extreme neoliberal model implemented by Mitsotakis, and apparently voted for it for this very reason, to have a counterweight to total Mitsotakism.
Now the voters of SYRIZA will find themselves having elected to parliament a party led by a banker and shipowner, should his CV be valid indeed, who was completely unknown three months ago and who can be anything but a leftist – which by the way he never claimed to be.
It is not only that Mr Kasselakis is not and cannot be a man of the left and has nothing to do with Greece and the left, in any version of it, as is easily presumed from his biography and his career so far ; moreover, what this career shows is that throughout his life he has acted as a champion of neoliberalism, i.e. of ideas that are the exact opposite of the left, as for example when he worked at Goldman Sachs bank, one of the main bastions of neoliberalism worldwide. In fact, this bank played a leading role in the destruction of our country and it is used to training its executives and then placing them in critical posts in the USA and Europe, where they work in the interests of itself and of the International of big financial capital, the real centre of global power and of rising totalitarianism.
It’s not just Kasselakis, it’s a series of “Kasselakis” operating internationally to control, through a travesty of democratic processes, nations, societies, peoples, states. What is strange in our case is the very direct way in which a Goldman Sachs veteran is directly attempting to control a European left-wing party. As far as we know it is another (sad) global novelty of our country.
Apart from working in the sanctuary of the sanctuaries of neoliberalism, he also collaborated with CSIS, the den of the American deep state and the American “War Party”, the forces that led to the destruction of a dozen countries over three decades, culminating in the current NATO war against Russia. The same centre was previously home to the butcher of Cyprus, organiser of the junta coup on the island and the subsequent Turkish invasion, Henry Kissinger. Is it possible for a leftist to cooperate with such a centre?
Neither do Mr Kasselakis’ personal life style and conceptions have anything to do with the left, as they represent the opposite model: the rich man who does what he likes because he has money, even by “renting” people, to bring his child (cf. Americans, Tsipras, Kasselakis and … surrogate mothers).
(We leave aside the fact that no one knows how much money Kasselakis spent to become leader of SYRIZA and where he got it. To come out with such costly and obscure election campaigns, the leader of a left-wing party has no precedent in any country of the world. Here we are, world champions again, world champions in ridicule!)
Yes, but the Central Committee of SYRIZA approved the candidacy of Kasselakis
It did approve it, even forgiving the fraud that the SYRIZA Presidential candidate initially committed, when he showed 30 supporters of which only 28 were actually members of the CC as required.
The fact that it approved it does not mean that it was a legal (or at least legitimate) decision to do so, for the reasons mentioned above. For, even if Mr. Kasselakis had the formal requirement of 30 members supporting him, it is simply unthinkable and utterly absurd to nominate as leader of a left-wing party someone who is demonstrably not and cannot be a left-winger.
Could Mr Georgiades (an extreme rightist Minister) run for leader of Syriza or Mr Koufontinas (the convicted for terrorism leader of the organization “17th Novemeber”) for leader of the New Democracy? That’s how logical it is for Mr. Kasselakis to run for leader of Syriza or for me to run for Chairman of Goldman Sachs. This takes the intelligence of a seven-year-old child to understand. That this is not understood by an entire country only shows the depth of the crisis this country is going through – and the corruption that characterizes both the party for which Kasselakis is “destined” and Greece as a whole.
The fact that the issue of Kasselakis’ obvious unsuitability was not raised certainly shows how much the Central Committee of SYRIZA has degenerated and decayed. But it does not make its decision legitimate (lawful) or at least legitimized, because this decision conflicts much higher principles of right, the ideology of the left, but also common sense itself!
The electorate electing Kasselakis
The percentage obtained in the first round of the elections by a sheer opportunist certainly means something. It shows how far the erosion of Greek society has progressed, how much confusion and despair have dominated large parts of the population, how much the underground currents of Rayadism (raya=a serf to the sultan in the Ottoman era) have grown stronger, as a result of a series of heavy defeats, disasters and betrayals of the Greek people – and to what extent we have been living under a harsh colonial regime since 2010, while our politicians claim the opposite (in brief: pie in the sky).
But that is one aspect of the issue. The other has to do with who is participating in the Syriza elections. Of course the members of SYRIZA have the right to elect the President they want. But this is not about SYRIZA members. This is about any resident of the country over the age of 15 who wishes to vote to elect the President of this party by paying two euros.
As friends from all over Greece tell me, among the voters in the first round were members of the New Democracy, Velopoulos’ party and PASOK, the “small armies of the oligarchs” and a good number of LGBT people who vote on non-political criteria. I don’t know if this is true, but no one can check it either, since the very constitution of the “electorate” was made on the basis of the principle of “anyhting goes”.
Moreover, before the elections there was not the slightest serious programmatic, political discussion within the party, but an election campaign conducted according to the rules of pure and simple communication, and we do not know (we think it is very likely though), if the various international companies that use to intervene in elections were present here and working for Kasselakis, who has not even given an interview or participated in a debate. After all, they showed him up at the last minute, with an excellently staged blitzkrieg to prevent him from collapsing on his own, talking about things he is completely unaware of.
The method of electing the leader imposed by Tsipras on his party does not constitute a democratic way of election but an undemocratic way of taking the party away from its members.
Members of a party, much less the left, do not join the party on election day. They go through a probationary period before they become full members, they have an activity as members of the organisations they join, they have a physical and not just internet presence, they pay a monthly subscription. They have the right and should have the right to elect their own leadership, although the super-leadership model imposed by Tsipras (even more Stalinist than Zachariadis’ model was (*), though using very different methods) is, in our opinion, out of keeping with the very nature and character of a genuine left-wing party.
Given the ability of organisations and agencies hostile to the left political and economic interests, to interfere, both “communication”-wise and with the economic means available to them, combined with a system that allows practically anyone to go and vote, it is obvious that the election by the method chosen is not a democratic election from the grassroots, but a sneaky way of distancing the party from its real base for the benefit of the domestic oligarchy and the foreign powers that occupy Greece.
Nothing that is happening today in SYRIZA has the slightest connection with democracy, with the left and with the needs of the Greek people. On the contrary.
The shock of the Syrizites
Only now, with huge delay, are the core of the party and its organised forces realising what has happened, – the attack they have received from the Americans. They also realise, willingly or unwillingly – rather unwillingly, to be more precise – that this cannot have happened without the approval and participation of Tsipras himself. The shock is frightening, because Tsipras is for Syriza the Patriarch and its totem. The shock within Syriza is such that it is reminiscent of what happens to the hero of Giuseppe Tornatore’s film “The Best offer” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1924396/?ref_=tt_mv_close
As a person in charge of one of the party’s organisations in Crete told me the other day, “I know members of the New Democracy who voted for Kasselakis. Now I understand that I have long known what Tsipras was but I didn’t want to see it. Now I cannot fail to see it. We are going to vote for Achtsioglou on Sunday and then, if Kasselakis comes out, we will all resign on Monday and go into deep seclusion. We have other things to do.”
One hopes that this will not happen to those Syriza forces that, regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with their particular character, remain left-wing, democratic and progressive. Not to surrender the flag of this party, but to work for the creation at last of a democratic, collective left that is worthy of the rivers of blood and struggles that the camp of the Greek Left has gone through in the past, fighting a concerted battle to first of all change the way the leadership of this party is elected and to elect a different leadership in due course in a democratic way.
This is the way to go if they want to limit the already great disaster caused by Alexis Tsipras with his choices, – although, in light of our experience with SYRIZA, one can hardly be optimistic.
(*) The article is a translation of an article by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos published in Greek. Kasselakis has come out of the blue and has declared himself a candidate to become President of the Party, using a US-imported procedure which permits to any resident of Greece to vote for President of SYRIZA paying two Euros and becoming automatically member of the party (https://www.defenddemocracy.press/americans-and-goldman-sachs-kidnap-syriza-with-the-help-of-alexis-tsipras/).
(**) Nikos Zachariades a stalinist appointed by Moscow General Secretary of the CP of Greece (KKE) in 1931. He was responsible for the assassination of leading Greek communists, like Aris Velouhiotis, the leader of the Partisans Army (ELAS) during the German nazi occupation, of Kostas Karagiorgis, director of the Greek communist newspaper Rizospastis and one of the most brilliant intellectulas of the CP and many other Communists. He shares the main responsibility for the defeat of Communists in the third phase of Greek civil war (1946-49). Probably this is what Moscow wanted at that moment.
