Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and the coalition government of New Democracy and PASOK have been forced to attack the neo-Nazi organisation Golden Dawn, after having waited a very long time in a criminal manner.

The factors which have force d it to make this U-turn, because we all remember that until yesterday their tactic was to cover for the neo-Nazis, are obvious.

There was first the blood of Pavlos Fyssas. His murder was a very serious major event. It touched and moved the majority of workers and youth. It was an incident which could not be swept under the carpet as has been the case with hundreds of deadly attacks against immigrants, which were downplayed with the participation of the bourgeois parties, the state apparatus and the mass media.

There was the anti-fascist, anti-racist movement. The anti-fascist demonstrations which broke out immediately after the killing threatened, against a background of strikes and of social anger, to create a new front of struggle against the government.

There was the fact that, at the political and social level, Samaras had his back to the wall. He had to deal with the teaching strike and the perspective of a renewal of the strike of hospital employees and municipal workers. He had to implement new austerity measures and sign a new memorandum on this subject following the demands of the troika and creditors. The political base supporting the government was crumbling. Golden Dawn began to question the hegemony of New Democracy inside the right wing social bloc. The leadership of New Democracy was criticised within its own party and also by the media favourable to it.

It was these factors that finally led Samaras to attack Golden Dawn. He was forced to attack the neo-Nazi party which until yesterday was treated as a brother party by his main advisors, in the context of their strategy of reorganising a right wing social bloc as a mass anti-worker, anti-strike, anti-left current.

The movement of resistance of workers and youth, and especially of the anti-fascist and anti-racist movement, should exploit this governmental operation to bring pressure with the aim of concretely and definitively crushing the neo-Nazis. In order to attain this objective, it is very important to dismantle the links established by the Nazis inside the police, army, legal system, church and big business which have financed Golden Dawn.

The demand to have clarity in all areas is a precondition for defending and advancing democratic rights and popular liberties for the working class and popular masses as a whole.

There is a public debate underway where we should stress one element, the Nazis dont have the right to claim democratic rights. That is because they use them and wish to use them to form political military forces which act in the shadows, in the most anti-democratic manner, against immigrants, against whoever is different, against the trade unions and against the left. This mortal threat, whose nature has been proven by, among other things, the murder of Pavlos Fyssas, has no right to hide behind the fig leaf, as they themselves call it, of democratic rights, rights that we have gained through our combats in the years following the fall of the military junta.

During this period, we should not forget, as the media wish us to, the overall picture, the background of all the political developments residing in the brutal attack of the dominant class and the creditors and the austerity policies with the aim of crushing the social gains of the workers, popular masses and youth.

Samaras and the ND, Venizelos and the PASOK seek to pose as guardians of democracy, so as to obtain the political strength they need to impose a new memorandum. That is why they continue to use the ignoble tactic of attacking the two extremes, which until yesterday gave legitimacy to Golden Dawn by putting it on the same foot as the left and more specifically SYRIZA. The criminal threats of the government against the residents of Chalkidiki and against the administrative staff of the universities who are on strike should alert us to this. We should not allow the reduction of the actual democratic rights of the social majority in struggle in the supposed name of democracy.

Because of all this, the new strategy which has been promised is very dangerous.

In the name of isolating Golden Dawn, there is an effort to create political unity of all parties so as to establish the famous constitutional arc. All left currents should avoid this trap. The fight to isolate the Nazis and the struggle to effectively liquidate Golden Dawn form an integral part of the fight to cancel the memorandum and defend the workers and their social rights against the austerity policies.

The great victory against the Nazis will be the victory against the right wing bloc and against the pro-austerity forces. That will be a political victory of the left, which will prepare the way for a socialist emancipation of society.

That is the direction to which we should firmly commit ourselves, demanding today the real and complete crushing of the neo-Nazis.