Note: this is an excerpt from a speech by Sonia Mitralia, "member of the Greek Committee Against Debt and the Women’s Initiative against Debt and Austerity Measures, ... delivered at the meeting organised in Marseille [France] on 17 February, by the French campaign for 'a citizens’ audit of the public debt'."
The parallels that this speaker describes between what is now happening in Greece with what happened in Spain in 1936-37 is striking. In the 1930s the economy of capitalist countries collapsed, and, then as now, capitalist elites unleashed the forces of fascism against working people. Working people lost that battle and, as we've seen, really lost that war. Yes, I know that the German fascists lost, but the Anglo-American fascists won. What we have seen since WWII is the development of a vast capitalist Empire dressed in democratic clothing.
The key organization that engineered this development was the CIA. The CIA was essentially a creature of Wall Street. Its influence spread like a cancer throughout all US institutions after its establishment in 1947 under the naive President Truman and continued under former General Eisenhower when he became President. (There are a number of books on this subject, some of the best that I've read are the following: The Old Boys Network by Hersh, The Mighty Wurlitzer by Wilford, The Secret Team by Prouty.) I think that Ike was just covering his guilty ass when he made his widely quoted (and only) warning on his last day in office about the growing power of the "military-industrial complex".
Under the current economic collapse, the capitalist Empire operated by the One Percent is increasingly shedding its democratic costume to launch an all out attack on working people throughout the world. We must not lose this war...because it may be the last!
Greece is going to become a test-case for us as well, for the labour movement, for the social and women’s movements, for the peoples and the exploited throughout the whole of Europe! Yes, let us make them understand that we are all Greeks indeed, because we are fully aware that the struggle of the Greek people is our struggle now more than ever. Once they break down their resistance and subjugate the Greek people, it will then be our turn, and the turn of all the other European people, one after the other, to undergo the same treatment….
