What happened is this: On September 30th the Antiauthoritarian Movement, the largest anarchist assembly in Greece, and the most organized by far, organized its third "antifascist patrol" in the slums of central Athens, where Golden Dawn has reigned and terrorized immigrants and anti-fascists for months now, aided and abetted by the police. They work as a mafia there: they "safeguard" the area from those "criminal aliens" but at the same time it is reported that they extort money from local businesses and are rumoured to be involved in drug dealing. They do however have a real following in the area (an area however that electorally voted SYRIZA as first party in the last elections I note). The patrol consisted of perhaps 100 motorbikes with two people each and at least one club per bike.

(Warning annoying music - note around 5' a crowd of immigrants who have come out to cheer them on)

Unlike the previous two patrols, this one caught one of the Nazis in the act of smashing up an immigrants' store. He was severely beaten and the rest of the local nazi gang hid in their basements for a while. However the police was instantly notified, and soon attacked the patrol in full force and with extreme prejudice and violence as if they were protecting "their" side. As the Guardian article details, when the arrested anarchists were eventually sent to police HQ, they were abused and tortured in a manner that reminds one of the military junta's practices. Note that charges were pressed only against five of them. They were not allowed to see a lawyer for almost 20 hours. Despite the fact that the police knew that they didn't have a case against most of those arrested, they continued the mistreatment...

Five SYRIZA MPs questioned the government in parliament regarding this handling of detainees. The Minister of Public Order (Nikos Dendias, a man who would certainly feel comfortable in, say, a Le Pen cabinet) came up with a response that basically accused SYRIZA of "supporting extremists" and didn't even bother to answer on the substance of the question. It is obvious that the political leadership is complicit in this egregious mistreatment. It has elected to harden its stance, as violence seems about to become its only real weapon and Golden Dawn its muscle-men...

Another amazing and shocking thing about all this however, is that the MS media have refused to give it but the slightest and most dismissive of mentions. This was not front-page news in the large dailies (I doubt that it made it to any part of most papers) - only in the party press of the left was it headlined, extensively there, with enough material to base further reporting on). Of course this was never mentioned in any TV programs. There are no MS Media that could cover such stories in Greece, in the same way, and for the same reason more or less, that there are few MS Media that even bother giving SYRIZA equal space or time to present its opinions... Unlike the Nazis who are slowly developing into media darlings...

Thus between an oligarchic press, a pro-nazi police force and a Nazi-leaning ministry of public order Greece is being led to a 21st century Weimar, perhaps the first of many victims of the EU shock-doctrine... Democracy is not an issue because the people that impose austerity have a very, very dim view of democracy anyway....