Monday, August 21, 2017

Marxism is the Opium of the Intelligentsia

By Con George-Kotzabasis--July 22. 2017

The following is my contribution to a lecture given by Professor Vrasidas Karalis in the Greek Community Centre, in Melbourne, two years ago.

Bravura performance professor Vrasidas! Papaioannou’s head would lift from the grave in approval with a big smile on his face, unlike the skulls of Communism, which according to the ex-Marxist Polish philosopher, Leszek Kolakowski, will never smile again. Papaioannou was a bright star amidst a constellation of co-stars, like Raymond Aron, Ernst Nolte, Ayn Rand, and Hannah Arendt, not to mention others, who had foreseen, identified, and exposed the murderous traits of Communism.

However, the cocottes of the ideology of Marxism were able to allure with their bawdy charms and false historical promises nipple-fed intellectuals, whom Lenin had dubbed “useful idiots,” into the ranks of the Communist mirage. Intoxicated by the brilliant form of Marx’s writings they were blind to its toxic content.

The dragon’s teeth spawned by Marx on the cerebral landscape would give rise to the monstrous leadership of Stalin, Mao, and the Althusserian trained ideologues of Cambodia, who would try to build their utopia on Gulag Archipelagos and killing fields. And when Communism would be achieved on these brutal homicidal grounds, then human concerns would take over: man fishing in the morning, playing the flute in the evening and writing romantic poetry in the night. Thus, the Marxian birth of the “all-sided man,” of the “politropos Anthropos!”

Marxism is not merely tragic drama, it is worse: it is kitsch, a pretentious worthless play staged on history. And the wrathful hallucinations and platitudes of Marx became murderous instruments in the hands of the epigones of Marxism.

Presently, a repeat of Marxist omniscience is to be re-enacted in Greece. The Tsipras Government, a politically arriviste, incompetent bungling blend of a withering crop of epigonistic Marxists, pseudo intellectuals, and populist sycophants, are pushing Greece into the abyss of their own “killing fields”. Failure in negotiations with the Troika will lead to the debt default of Greece and return to the drachma, with annihilating consequences to the standard of living of the ordinary people and to a political danger by the rise of dictatorship. Marxism is the opium of the intelligentsia.
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Sunday, August 6, 2017

Is Tsipras and Close Comrades Plat to Set-up Marxist Dictatorship in Greece

By Con George-Kotzabasis July 18, 2017

The beginning is the sign”. David Hilbert, German mathematician

In the doom and gloom of the political and economic landscape of Greece, a spectre haunts the country, the spectre of Marxist dictatorship. There are ominous signs that Prime Minister Tsipras and some of his closest associates are working on a sinister secret plan that would prolong their staying in power beyond the date of the expiration of their tenure. There are several signs (they will be identified and explained below) and all of them are showing clearly, like lighted roads that lead and meet at a central junction, that this central square is named dictatorship.

All the latest polls are indicating that the Tsipras government will get a merciless thrashing at the next election, to be held in 2019, at the hands of the electorate, as back payment for the historically unprecedented deceptive promises and prodigious lies that Syriza had told the people, for the purpose of winning the 2015 election. These lies include but are not limited to the severe cuts in pensions and increase of taxes that Tsipras has introduced, breaking all his promises to the contrary, and imposed relentlessly and with no compunction, even upon the most indigent parts of society. Tsipras, therefore, and his bosom comrades are realising with great panic that their proud slogan of “First Time Aristera” (Left Government) will be transformed into the terrifyingly shameful “Never Again Aristera.” To prevent this from happening, they will not hesitate to extract the most nefarious means from the arsenal of Bolshevism in order to remain in power. And as the game is up for them, politically and electorally, they have nothing to lose by taking these extreme measures, since they are fated to be consigned into the graveyard of history.

Yet this coup d’état of Tsipras will not occur under the rattling of the tanks but under the scratching of the pens. By making changes to the political processes of the country, apparently by abiding with the Constitution, that would open the road toward dictatorship. (Not that he has any moral scruples in using the tanks--after all his ideological kin the Soviet Union, used them in Czechoslovakia--but only because he has no direct control over the armed forces.) However, before he comes to the real McCoy, i.e., the setting-up of a Marxist dictatorship, he will initially postpone or suspend the next election. And to do this he will use a proschema (pretext), a contrived national threat or a real one, such as provoking a military incident with Turkey. Hence by creating a casus belli he will render to himself extraordinary powers, enabling him to suspend normal constitutional processes and govern the country by plebiscite.

What methods will Tsipras use to achieve his goal? Whether he will fabricate a fictitious internal enemy such as an association of so-called right-wing politicians of New Democracy, and even throw mud at its president, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, by implying its association with big corrupt business and bigwig criminals involved in the importation of vast quantities of heroin, or whether he will create a real enemy by provoking a military clash with Turkey, Tsipras will use the rationale, by which he will attempt to convince the people, that in order to fight either of these enemies successfully he must be given the right to make the necessary amendments to the Constitution and hence will call the people to agree to them through a plebiscite. It is hard to imagine, that in conditions of great dangers to the country, in the first case, the importation of heroin, with its deleterious effects upon the wellbeing of Greece’s children, by a so called evil combination of politicians, businessmen, and criminals, or a takeover of the country by a rapacious cabal of right-wing politicians and big commerce and industry, which will profit at the expense of the ordinary people, or the threat of war with Turkey, that it will be difficult for the people to be convinced of either of these dangers and will therefore render to Tsipras the right to make the appropriate changes to the Constitution. Furthermore, the crescendo of violent demonstrations by anarchist extremists of the left, in which the minister of public order deliberately refuses to take a strong stand against this disorder, as todays incidents in the heart of the retail trade centre of Athens shows, whose shops were broken and vandalized, may also be a part of the conspiratorsplan that will facilitate them to declare emergency measures or even martial law.

Tsipras therefore is confident that there will be no mass reaction to his moves, and rests this trust on the passivity of the people as well as on the passivity and indifference of the armed forces, which, since the experience of the Junta, stand at arms-length from politics. What other forces therefore could oust Tsipras from power, when all the key posts of government will be held by people of his own ilk?

However, it will not be easy for Tsipras to convince the guardians of the Constitution, the Judiciary, of the necessity or correctness of these changes to the political processes of the country. This is the reason why from the beginning of this year there has been a concerted and vicious attack against the Judiciary by some ministers of the government, and even by the Prime Minister himself, who has stated in public, that the Judiciary is a “hindrance” to some of the policies of his government. And the primo uomo of this attack is the Minister of Health, Polakis, whose cursing cacophonous mantinades (Cretan couplets) against the Judiciary, may sound noetically jarring and stupid but they hide behind them a clever purpose, i.e., to degrade, erode, and weaken its authority. Also, the involvement of the Minister of Defence, Kammenos, in the investigative operations of the police in regards to this huge quantity of heroin that was smuggled into the country by criminals, which is a blunt violation of the separation of powers, i.e., of the Executive, the Judiciary, and the Legislative, has also the same aim, that is, to debilitate the Judiciary and its personnel. All the above are lucid signs of the Tsipras government plot to disparage the judiciary and wear down its authority. The Tsipras government perceives, that the main obstacle to turn itself into a proletarian dictatorship, is a robust and independent Judiciary, that espouses the separation of powers and checks that the actions of government are in tangent with the rules of the Constitution. The conspirators, however, will attempt to make ‘tailor-made’ interpretations of the Constitution to suit their actions which will creepily lead to their dictatorship.

But the most significant revealing sign is the appointment by Tsipras, of the former Chief Justice of the High Court, Vasiliki Thanou, as head of his Legal Office. Mrs. Thanou, is known for her skills as a lawyer as well as for her political credentials of being a left-wing supporter of long standing. She served, with the support of SYRIZA, as interim prime minister prior to the election of Lukas Papadimou in Government. It is obvious that Thanou, will be advising Tsipras on changes in the legal and political processes of the country and on possible changes to the Constitution that would facilitate him to consummate his secret plan. Indeed, she will be knitting, with her skilful fingers, the regal toga that Tsipras will be wearing as dictator of the proletariat. Since her appointment, she launched a vehement attack against New Democracy for its audacity to criticise her appointment.

The question arises with no easy answers. How can one kill the plan of Tsipras at the initial stages of its incubation? But there is an answer, and it comes from an unusual quarter, by which the Tsipras plan will be dead in its first breath: Ancient Greece comes to the rescue of modern Greece, Iphigenia in Aulis: Since it is impossible presently for the Opposition to force an election, the only way that would impel an election is by the resignation of Prokopis Pavlopoulos from the presidency. The reasons for his resignation would be plausible and cogent, that is, that he is unwilling and it is repugnant for him to preside under the fiendish machinations of the Tsipras government to undermine the Constitution, and its attacks against the Judiciary, that would lead to the subversion of democracy. Hence, Pavlopoulos will be summoned to be the modern Iphigenia whose sacrifice would release the storming winds that will sweep Tsipras and his comrades from The Maximou House (The White House of Greece). In this solution time is a crucial factor, and those persons who are close to Pavlopoulos will have to move swiftly and persuade him to accept this summons and go to the Euripidean Aulis, to his rendezvous with destiny. The question is: Will Prokopis Pavlopoulos have the spiritual and moral fortitude and intellectual insight and strength to sacrifice himself for the sake of Greece?

PS There might be within SYRIZA some righteous people. But if they do not oppose this insidious plan of Tsipras, they will suffer the Aeschylian fate. “A righteous man by himself is formidable. But a righteous man conjoined with the wicked perishes with them.”