Having now bestowed the honor owed to the heroes of the Polytechnic School of Athens as I had previously announced and which I devoted to the memory of my father and to this of every such freedom fighter, fallen or living, who sacrificed either part of the whole of his life for our Country fighting for the chance to live as Human Beings and not as serfs in our own Country, on that very day of the 17th of November 2011, here is what I witnessed:
During my whole walk from Neon Iraklion to the Polytechnic, there was no policeman to be seen. Nor were there any police present on Patission Avenue leading directly to the Polytechnic or around the building. Of course there was not a single policeman in the building either. Police forces were far from the Polytechnic, stationed around metro stations, guarding banks and probably at the spots where pre-arranged and well-known by now episodes of the staged clashes between demonstrators – hooligans – arrests, all prescribed in the…. ʽprotocolʼ or ʽresistanceʼ shows that have been overtly allowed and promoted by all the so-called post-junta ʽdemocraticʼ regimes.
Approaching the Polytechnic bearing our Greek Flags, I bore witness to one of the most pathetic and at the same time disrespectful views which proved just how much the particular fallen fighters and the specific anniversary are being molested and perverted precisely because the people against whom this anniversary stands are still in power: the Polytechnic was nowhere near the proud building that had to be, and neither did it shine forth the owe and respect that can be seen and felt in the 1973 photos of the uprising, where it is seen adorned by the white and blue national flags, while slogans were substantive and meaningful for the lived everyday reality of the Citizens who were not party cronies or supporters (ʽpartyʼ in that time had been supplanted by ʽrevolutionʼ). To our surprise, when we arrived there on Thursday, 17 November 2011, the Polytechnic resembled a pathetic ramshackle, ragtag makeshift open-air market filled with flapping red Communist Party flags, probably associated with Parliament-based KKE and its side-groups and nothing else. Everywhere in the vicinity small tables could be seen and other open-air stalls selling KKE-published books, a Risospastis- conceived, influenced and executed funfair where not a single Greek Flag could be seen, despite the fact that the official banner of the Polytechnic bears no sickle and hammer, and neither is it red or green or blue or orange-yellow and black.
The parties of the so-called left, had vulgarly transformed and had gone to great pains to match the Polytechnic uprising with their own party rhetoric, carefully sidestepping the fact that during the days the bullets were flying and the police truncheons were quite busy, there were no party identities flashed – only fascist junta followers against Greeks. (Why indeed no one mentions that a central 1973 slogan was ʽthe land of the Greeks belongs to the Greeksʼ, a slogan usurped by the great demagogue and traitor of the dreams and demands of the People, Andreas Papandreou?).
In such vulgar manner of course every party attempts to usurp feats and achievements off the glorious pages of Hellenism, just as the epic of 1940 has been ʽreservedʼ by the right and the far-right fascists-junta lovers of the likes of Karatzaferis and Golden Dawn boys, as well as of various ʽbluishʼ new-democrats, whereby if it were completely in their power, they would forbid every non-fascist, and non-junta loving Greek to hold his own Flag. And let us not forget, how much he has shown his ʽpatriotismʼ, this ʽsuper-Greekʼ Karatzaferis, by willingly signing the Memorandum and his current support of a junta (government by Papandreou – Papadimou – Samaras), which, apart from being completely destructive for the Greeks themselves reaching the point of genocide, they are also completely treasonous and relentlessly defeatist at the level of foreign policy.
Entering with the Greek Flag in the courtyard of the Polytechnic, my daughter and I brought there the first in fact Greek Flags, amidst dumbfounded and speechless students and party instructors who were supervising them. My daughter tied the Greek Land Flag she was holding at the approximate spot that the Greek Flag was hanging back in 1973, on the marble staircase of the Polytechnic and remained there to ensure that no one would attempt to remove it, along with another co-Greek. I stood by the monument itself (which deliberately bears no list of names or the date of the anniversary), and it was there that I had the following encounter, which is unfortunately so classically representative of how real Greeks are treated by the Greek-speaking rascals who usurp power each time because they simply can do so: two people, visibly crushed and low-shouldered, red-eyed from crying, appearing to be twice victims, who after having had to live with the first crime committed to their families, they now had to watch their vindication being stolen away from them, approached me and speaking in a subdued, low voice spoke to me as if they were scared of re-watching the invasion tank into the Polytechnic, and told me how much they are still haunted by what they saw that day and what happened to them afterwards; to what great extent they have been led to despair, because we have been led to an even worse situation than the one they fought for in their time. Because I was holding the Greek Flag which bore the sign 120Σ in big blue letters, they approached me, talked to me and brought their grandchildren to be photographed holding this Flag with their little hands, in front of the monument.
They kept away from party open-air stalls, they had no party flag or leaflet in their hands, they were just Greeks, filled with bitterness and despair in their souls, asking to receive some hope from the only Symbol they could find in all that ragtag funfair able to express their feelings and their thirst for our Greece: the Greek Flag and 120Σ, referring to the only article of the Constitution which demands that the People resist when power is snatched from their hands, the very thing that the Polytechnic uprising stands for, and the thing which the traitors have been viciously trying for 40 years to bury under tonnes of red and green flags (let us not forget that the Polytechnic, during the 1980s was not the preserve of the red so-called ʽleftʼ but of PASOK, the so-called ʽsocialistʼ party). The same message – mandate that the slogan 1-1-4 stood for and the very same concept for which Rigas Fereos wrote his march.
There is only one positive thing that the junta / occupation of 2009 has shown up until today: every party is nothing else but a poor excuse of a little shop fabricating the usurpation of power from the Greek People by means of deceit and fraud. No party has been able or willing to topple the junta we are witnessing nowadays, simply because each little shop of horrors is part of the same scheme. Only the People hane shown their will to reinstitute National Sovereignty, Justice and Legitimate Power back into their own hands, first by means of their reaction on 28th of October 2011, and second, by the fact that no politicians and governmentals dared show their face on the day of 17th of November 2011 in the area surrounding the Polytechnic (which up until last year, they shamelessly monopolized and exploited) to avoid being subjected to the same humiliation they tasted during the 28th of October. The politicians, scared shitless of the rightful anger and wrath of the People made themselves scarce, and took with them all their praetorians (riot police / regular police forces), whom they stationed at the spots where they were certain that pre-programmed and fake ʽresistance fightersʼ (party-led youth and other cronies bought off by them, who would effectively control every one who would honestly wish to demonstrate in the well-known demonstration) would once more stage the usual theatrical act of ʽepisodesʼ during the demonstration.
But let us all keep in mind that every such anniversary honouring the Heroes of the Polytechnic (as well as every Hero in our History) in which the odd one out is sadly the very Hero whom they supposedly honour, furnishes proof that the regime which this Hero threatened remains unfortunately in power and must be brought down forthright.
One wonders who, how many and in exactly what manner are they prepared to show up in the upcoming anniversary of the Gorgopotamos?
Translation courtesy of Michael T.