by Ioannis C. Giannakenas
publisher of Pelasgos Publications
member of the Central Committee of the People's Orthodox Rally

05.06.2008: “Pelasgos” bookstore in the centre of Athens. The paramilitary groups of the Far-Left exercise for the December “revolution” by burning unhindered the nationalist bookstores.

Criminal nature is unfortunately one of the sources of human misfortune and appears in many faces in all levels of social life. However its worst face is when it puts on the cloak of a political ideology, supposedly of “social face”, embodies visions of equality and justice and then “struggles” to “strike the absolute evil”, imposing a manifold worse evil.

Last century inherited to humanity vast experience and knowledge, which however do not seem to have been sufficiently understood so as to be beneficial. The totalitarian ideas and political systems influenced dramatically the human course itself, because they allowed the criminal nature to operate. Though with the end of the Second World War, the Axis totalitarianism had been heavily defeated, the political expansion and threat of the Soviet totalitarianism defined the global balance of power. Three generations were “vaccinated” with the vision of the “October revolution”, that is the great slaughter, the antidemocratic imposition of “the dictatorship of the proletariat” and the “allowed lack of freedom”. Miserable were the people who came in contact with the Communism and their misery depended on the contact level.

Greece, due to its geographical – geopolitical position, had been at the crossroads between West and East from the ancient times. Many times the Greek people had been sacrificed defending Europe and the West from many invasions: Persian, Arab, Turkish and communist. The last sacrifice of the Greek people happened in the 1940’s decade, when after resisting the Axis attack and occupation (1940-1944), they faced a communist rebellion (1944-1949), which tried to transform Greece into a “People’s Republic”. The communist rebellion left behind terrible wounds on the body of the Greek society, because it was the first time such barbarism was practiced by co-nationals. The toll of the communist rebellion on the civilian population surpassed even that of the German occupiers.

Despite the communist defeat on the military field in 1949, the communists, in outlaw between 1949 and 1974 and legally after 1974, managed with the generous support of the USSR to create a dominant political current in Greece. The lack of ideological work by the 1949 winners left the field open to communist propaganda and history forgery. After 1975 the communist ideological domination was heightened, having as allies the socialists of Andreas Papandreou. When in 1981 the Greek socialist party (PASOK) came to power, the leftists went wild. Only after the USSR collapsed was the Left slightly shaken.

Unfortunately the political immaturity and flabbiness of the Greek center-right party (New Democracy), didn’t allow it to rise at the occasion, face the Left and send it to the dustbin of history. In Greece this battle was given by individuals who were not willing to allow the crimes of the Greek communists fall in lapse. From those individuals arose the book publishers who strived under conditions of personal terrorism to defend the national ideas. The role of the patriotic publishers was decisive in creating a defense against and a denunciation of the leftist terrorism. The dynamic they developed, especially after 1990, created the conditions for a political interpolation by those who believed in the traditional values of the nation and respected and honored the sacrifices of their ancestors.

Thanks to that awakening, the ground was prepared for the establishment of the People’s Orthodox Rally (LAOS) in 2000 with Georgios Karatzaferis as its president. In 2004 LAOS elected an MP for the European Parliament and in 2007 it elected 10 MPs for the Greek Parliament. The successful parliamentary activity of these 10 MPs, along with the popularity of patriotic books sold through TV marketing, and the widespread circulation of the books in the Greek society, created great discomfort in the ranks of the leftist establishment, who saw its books take the road towards historical and commercial bankruptcy.

So summer 2008 was reached, when the so-called koukouloforoi” (hooded ones), the “Storm-troopers” of the leftist parastate, launched a series of terrorist attacks destroying with arsons almost all the patriotic bookstores in Athens. On June 5th they destroyed completely, after wounding me, my bookstore, which was the center of the “Pelasgos” publishing house. Afterwards on the same day they burned for the 12th (!!!) time the bookstore of Adonis Georgiadis, a LAOS MP. On June 9th the bookstore “Iera Hellas” of Anestis Keramydas, a LAOS municipal councilor in Thessalonica, was attacked and an employee was seriously injured. On June 21st the bookstore “Nea Thesis” of Ioannis Schinas, a LAOS politician, was attacked by “koukouloforoi” and burned to ground. On July 4th the bookstore “Eleftheri Skepsis” suffered a similar arson attack and on July 16th the bookstore of the newspaper “Stohos” was next.

It is obvious that the goal of the attacking leftist thugs is to obstruct with any means possible the political change in Greece. It is also sad that they believe that the “October Revolution” can be repeated today and are willing to butcher again people so as to satisfy their bankrupt ideological obsessions.

It is a painful impression to the public that the Greek editors and booksellers associations, who are following their own leftist logic, refused to condemn the bookstore arsons. They even refused to answer an open letter I sent to all fellow-editors, which was given great publicity, where I condemn the discriminatory and illiberal position of these organs. Their position however caused greater reactions. A characteristic case was the letter of complaint to them by the Melissa International publishing house, which is based in New York. The editor, Aristides Karatzas, says among other: “What really impressed me was the silence of your associations. I believe that when criminal acts like book-burning are not condemned and punished, basic values like freedom of speech (especially of those who express ideas which we may not agree with) and freedom of press are in danger. I would like to express my deepest sorrow for the tolerance and the lack of any condemnation of those deeply antidemocratic acts”.

Freedom of speech is one of the basic human values and is not negotiable. Even if the intellectual heirs of Stalin wish to put it under constraint, they cannot, because their visions bankrupted in the illiberal and inhuman machine they created. But we have to renounce firmly and actively their legacy. Any negligence is not beneficial to human freedom and progress.