hi, here is a new text from my friends from anti-fascist cultures from Greece in solidarity with George Floyd riots and #BlackLivesMatter https://www.facebook.com/392472711585577/posts/713052086194303/?d=n
To Our Comrades in America: We Salute Your Struggle, Down with Domination, #BlackLivesMatter June 2, 2020 The American capitalist state, led by President Trump, is waging war against black lives, against antifascists, against the unemployed and the pauperised, and ultimately against the right of the people to defend their right to live in pursuit of social justice. We condemn this display of state power by a government that is showing more and more of its fascist face, calling openly for ‘domination’. We are watching the unfolding of horrific police and national guard brutality, the thousands of arrests, and the American elite’s efforts to suppress the collective anger upon the hideous, racist murder of George Floyd. We know that this is not the first such murder, that this is not the first instance of the American state killing black people as part of the multi-layered, long-term politics of oppression and exploitation that built American and global capitalism. We will never forget the black people who were turned to slaves to make capitalist America. The continent we watch all of this from is Europe. It is the heart of imperialist ethics and politics, and of murderous racism practiced relentlessly against the people of Global South, many of them oppressed and exploited on ‘First World’ ground. Europe is a continent whose wealth is built and maintained through racialised and gendered class war and through hypocritical declarations about embracing democracy while exclusion mechanisms ensure that so-called democracy favours the rich, the powerful, and the white. White supremacists are ruling us in Europe too, more and more. As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to kill in capitalism’s ravaged health systems and economies of horror, the European country we write from, Greece, is about to evict 11,000 of recognised refugees from their places of residence. We stand in shame. The mass media constantly mobilises creepy racism and white privilege to ensure that the electorate tolerates or actually favours and carries the war against the dispossessed. This is the same media that said that George Floyd ‘died in the hands of the police’ - in complete distortion of the truth about the torture and murder of a black American citizen by the American police in which racism appears to be endemic. We know how these killings ‘happen’: on September 21, 2018, in central Athens, nine police officers beat the already publicly beaten LGBTQ activist Zak Kostopoulos who arrived in hospital handcuffed and dead (https://forensic-architecture.org/…/the-killing-of-zak-kost…). Police violence and impunity is an integral practice of domination here too (https://www.opendemocracy.net/…/killing-of-zak-astonishing…/). We want to assure you that we know the truth about the American state being in constant war against black lives, and against anyone who dares to show solidarity. We are aware of the meaning and value of your current struggle in the USA. We know you are facing an indecent, all-powerful enemy, and that your uprising is against devastating, structural injustice. We see as no coincidence President Trump’s attack on antifascist America and the flaring of righteous, collective rage against the latest victimised and extinguished black life. We join all antifascists in Europe and the world in standing by your side, in full knowledge that justice is on your side too. ANTIFASCIST CULTURE, Athens, Greece _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
