Delenda Carthago
9th October 2011, 20:03
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/el/thumb/7/77/Velouhiotis-lamia-1944-10-19.jpg/250px-Velouhiotis-lamia-1944-10-19.jpg
PART ONE
Why I fought
On 19th October Lamia is liberated. The forces of ELAS,
representatives of PEEA and EAM arrive in the city. On 29th October
after the celebration of the NO (Greek repulsion of Italian invasion
of 1940 into Albania) a meeting is held in the main square, Freedom,
for EAM to celebrate the victory in WW2 with a presence from the whole
district of Pamfthiotida.
Aris gives his most famous speech ever from the balcony of a hotel.
Brothers - Greek men and women of Lamia and the region – I bring
warmest greetings from the General Headquarters of ELAS.
As you will have observed, I am about to make a speech. But this
speech will not be like the speeches you have heard before from the
old party chiefs; I will not promise, as they promised, to build
bridges or make rivers flow. I cannot promise you the world, and I do
not wish to ply you with rhetoric; I wish only that you hear what I
have to say. I will begin with a fairytale.
The immortal Greek race
Once the part of this land called Greece in which we stand was
glorious and happy. It produced a culture which for two-and-a-half-
thousand years has been admired all over the world. Never has a word
been written by the wise or the unwise that is not first attested in
the works left by the creators of this ancient Greek civilization.
Once, therefore, our country was glorious; but it was later enslaved
and its former glory lost. After many years, our country found its
feet again. After a hard struggle against slavery, it was liberated
once more.
With the era of slavery came hardness and darkness. For many years
‘intellectuals’, among them a certain, Fallmeyer claimed that the
Greek race had been extinguished and that its place had been usurped
by other peoples who held nothing in common with the ancient Greek
race. But this claim was proved false. The proof was Hellenism, and
with this proof our country rose again victorious and free.
Neither foreign kings nor local landowners wanted a free and
victorious Greece . Afraid of the French Revolution and its
consequences, foreign kings created among themselves the Holy Alliance
to suppress insurrection. The local landowners were in alliance with
the Turks, and together they robbed the Greek people.
Reaction screeches
The Greek people would not be Greeks - the people of these lands of
freedom and civilization - but a people of the jungle if they failed
to produce leaders who would lead them to freedom. Knowing this,
oppressors foreign and local fought against the Greeks to prevent them
from rebelling and so gaining their freedom.
During the years of slavery the struggle – on a scale great or small,
under arms or without - was waged unceasingly.
From the Greek people emerged a sweeping revolutionary movement lent
impetus by its songs, by the idea of the insurrection of the nation
and by Rigas Feraios, precursor of the Friendly Society. Slain by the
forces of reaction before he could bring his principles into action,
the seed Rigas Feraios sowed grew rapidly; before long the Friendly
Society became a fact. It had thousands of Greek followers.
And the forces of reaction screeched! They signed deceitful treaties
such as that which emerged from the Congress of Vienna in 1815;
Ioannis Kapodistrias was one of these signatories. Under this treaty,
the forces of reaction would first support the national liberation
struggle if it broke out in Greece , only to strangle it later.
Kapodistrias, who is presented in schools as a great and important man
through the display of his portraits and speeches, was the first
destroyer of Greece . However, he did what he did not as Kapodistrias
but as a representative of Greek reaction. It was in this role that he
screeched alongside international and local reaction; it was in this
role that he signed deceitful treaties.
The people advance
Nothing was able to contain the fire of freedom that burned in the
hearts of our people. In 1821, after many trials and tribulations,
they followed the flame of Papaflessas - who used all means, even lies
– in declaring an insurrection. So it was that the revolution began in
the area of Morea in 1821.
At the declaration of this insurrection the powerful of the earth,
foreign and local alike, became frightened. The local traitors, seeing
the impossibility of containing the people and frightened by their
rage, were forced to end their collaboration with the occupiers and to
take part in the popular national liberation movement with the aim of
corrupting it.
The movement against the revolution took on an international
character. The powerful of the earth were frightened. They used all
their trickery to try to crush the revolution. But they failed. For
seven whole years our forebears fought, despite the fact that twice -
in 1823 and 1825 - the forces of reaction in Greece organised a civil
war in an attempt to break the struggle. Thus it was that our
forebears forced all our enemies to suck where once they had spat; to
recognise our struggle and our independence.
Previously no one had believed that this miracle could be achieved by
our own forces and our own people. Some waited for freedom to come
from Russia ; others put their hope in the benevolence of the kings of
Europe . But the revolution proved that it and it alone was capable of
providing freedom for our country. The myth of Philhellenism, through
which we are alleged to have achieved our freedom, was invented so it
would appear that our country was freed not by dint of its own native
strength but by that of foreigners. There were, of course, those
friendly to the Greeks – Philhellenes - who fought and spilt blood for
the freedom of our country. Honour and glory are due them for their
aid to our nation. But they were isolated individuals acting on their
own; the theory of organised Philhellenism is a myth.
The popular character
In the midst of the victory of the revolution, traitors still
dominated our country. The forces of reaction, domestic and foreign,
used all available means in their attempts to corrupt the popular
character of the revolutionary movement and impose a new regime of
slavery. In the end they achieved this. The initiator was Ioannis
Kapodistrias, the man I spoke of earlier; but later, another Ioannis –
Ioannis Metaxas – would attempt to finish the work that Kapodistrias
had begun.
The people believed that once they had achieved the revolution years
of brilliance would follow; the whole of humanity would be on their
side and our country would again guide humanity down new paths of
civilisation and progress. Instead, local and foreign forces of
reaction imposed themselves, bringing with them Kapodistrias and the
Bavarian Dynasty in place of the Ottomans.
Many years of deceit and corruption held us back from progress and
civilisation and threw us instead into desperation, hunger,
immiseration and distihia. Thus Greece , which was once the source of
light and civilisation, sunk to the lowest level of economic and
social and cultural development not merely in the Balkans but in the
whole of Europe .
The betrayal of the Albanian epic
The essence of this backwardness is to be found in the fact that the
forces of reaction directed their energies towards the torture and
exploitation of those who organised popular movements, the cultivation
of conflict within those movements and the propagation among the
people of the idea that it was their lot to live in poverty.
Taking their cue from Kolokotronis, who said that that our country is
an ‘impoverished beggar’, the reactionaries managed to convince the
Greek people that they could not stand on their own two feet; that
they must be governed by foreigners. So the reactionaries called upon
the Powers – the Russians, the English and the French. It was to this
that our rulers had brought us. Later, we were to achieve democracy,
but only because of the struggles of the people.
The snake may shed its skin, but it remains a snake.
The forces of reaction found democracy at fault for the misery of the
people and turned once again to the monarchy. They brought back the
king and commenced more brazenly to exploit the people. To silence the
people’s screams they imposed upon us Metaxas, who had been an agent
of the German High Command ever since he studied at the German
military academy.
Thus it was that after 120 years we fell into slavery again, so badly
had we been governed during those years.
It was in this situation that we found ourselves when a war against
the two colossi began to threaten. But no one thought about how our
country could escape the destruction that war would bring; instead,
knowing that this country was headed for destruction, we entered the
war.
We have documents proving that our rulers intended to make merely a
token effort in the Albanian epic and then hand Greece over to the
fascists. We have documents which prove that during November and
December 1940 we Greeks could have driven the Italians into the sea;
but our rulers instead kept the army restrained until they could use
Germany ’s victories in Europe to justify the argument that Greece was
unable to fight both the colossi. They didn't trust in the
magnificence of our army; neither in its courage, its fearlessness,
its self-denial nor its heroism, even though, hungry and shoeless in
the mountains of Albania, it had fought against fascism with great
ferocity and the aid of the Greek people.
That is how they bound us once more to slavery.
Our people were no longer in a position to continue their resistance,
however fervent their feelings. Even with their ardour, our people
were unable to hold back the assault by the metallic giant of fascism
after they had been sold out and betrayed by their leaders. Although
the people were obliged to submit, they were not defeated, since the
capitulation was signed before the army had even fought. Thus the
defeat was suffered not by our people but by the regimes which had
ruled them between 1821 and 1941. Our people are today are in the
process of turning this defeat into victory--a victory that becomes
ever more complete with the progress of time.
In such a way did the Germans arrive in our land and turn us into
slaves. But our people would not abandon their country, and the
blemish of defeat disappeared when we rebelled. And what did we get
from those who wore the XXclak and bakaliarikaXX? The only thing they
could find to tell us was:
‘Keep calm and silent. Maintain order. We have established a
government; calm down.’
In this, they reflected the will of the Germans. Such words were
spoken by those who have no right to be called Greek; but they could
not compromise the honour of our nation, of which our people are the
guardians.
And yet two and a half months later the noise of the guns began. What
words were spoken then? As in 1821 the forces of reaction conspired
against us. In the beginning, they said nothing about the guerrilla
war; they ignored it. They did as the ostrich does when it buries its
head in the sand while the rest of its body remains visible. They
thought that if they said nothing about the guerrilla war and ignored
it the commotion of war would cease. But it did not cease, and every
day the mountains were stained red with blood.
As the guerrilla war escalated and their silence proved incapable of
stopping it, the reactionaries changed tack; they set themselves to
fight us. They labelled us crooks, animal thieves, gangsters and so
on. They even found people to condemn us because we killed the traitor
and blackmailer Marathea. These people were totally stupid; they
couldn't even recognise that which was in their own interests. They
assumed that, if they attacked and disassociated themselves from us,
our struggle would cease and we would never be capable of tightening
the noose round their necks.
So be it; they were stupid then and they spoke their stupidities
aloud. Let them now eat their words.
The countryside is breathing.
How did this happen? The villagers saw for the first time that they
could safely leave their possessions outside in the open without their
being tampered with. Animal thieving had been eradicated in the
countryside and security of life and property was as it had never been
before. Was this a miracle? No. But for the first time the people of
the villages were in a position of power from which they could fight
back against betrayal, animal theft and other crimes and replace them
with security.
When we mounted our assault on these crimes and on betrayal, the
reactionaries, like women of the aristocracy who refuse to see the
human misery and impoverishment around them and instead concern
themselves with the illness of a stray cat, raised their voices and
condemned us on the grounds that we kill. Under Metaxas, women were
raped; thousands of people were martyred; many were killed and thrown
from balconies by the security services. So many crimes were
committed, even against the old. Yet none among the reactionaries
spoke up. And now they screech, ‘Aris kills!’
Yes, we have killed before and are ready to kill again if need be. Who
did we kill? We have bigger hearts than they. The proof of this is
that we were the ones who were beaten up and hunted down over the
years. We slaughtered those who betrayed the Greeks to the occupiers--
those who stole from the people and committed crimes.
Those who believe that they suffered pain when we justifiably attacked
them are ridiculously stupid, so as to side with them or they are
wholeheartedly partners in crime. Neither did this trick work either
The guerrilla war saves the people
And then the forces of reaction developed a perfect formulation:
‘We have no objection to the guerrillas’ carrying out a national
struggle, but the question is to be resolved by the big powers. What,
then, is the purpose of struggling and dying? The matter will be
resolved by outsiders!
The reactionaries found success with this formulation. Was it correct?
Of course not! And this is why:
In 1941-42 EAM was not yet very strong. That is why the struggle had
not yet taken on a mass character; neither was EAM conducting
guerrilla activity. In 1941-42 approximately 300,000 people died from
hunger and disease in Athens , Piraeus and the surrounding villages
alone, and even more would have died had EAM not mobilized the people
through demonstrations, meetings and strikes. Through these, the
people were given the courage to stop the looting of our production by
a section of the occupiers, to leave the feeding of the people to the
International Red Cross and to observe the situation of Greece
internationally
If the guerrilla war had not prevented the Germans from stealing our
production by ending the concentration on production of goods that the
occupiers favoured the number of victims of hunger and disease would
have been much higher.
PART ONE
Why I fought
On 19th October Lamia is liberated. The forces of ELAS,
representatives of PEEA and EAM arrive in the city. On 29th October
after the celebration of the NO (Greek repulsion of Italian invasion
of 1940 into Albania) a meeting is held in the main square, Freedom,
for EAM to celebrate the victory in WW2 with a presence from the whole
district of Pamfthiotida.
Aris gives his most famous speech ever from the balcony of a hotel.
Brothers - Greek men and women of Lamia and the region – I bring
warmest greetings from the General Headquarters of ELAS.
As you will have observed, I am about to make a speech. But this
speech will not be like the speeches you have heard before from the
old party chiefs; I will not promise, as they promised, to build
bridges or make rivers flow. I cannot promise you the world, and I do
not wish to ply you with rhetoric; I wish only that you hear what I
have to say. I will begin with a fairytale.
The immortal Greek race
Once the part of this land called Greece in which we stand was
glorious and happy. It produced a culture which for two-and-a-half-
thousand years has been admired all over the world. Never has a word
been written by the wise or the unwise that is not first attested in
the works left by the creators of this ancient Greek civilization.
Once, therefore, our country was glorious; but it was later enslaved
and its former glory lost. After many years, our country found its
feet again. After a hard struggle against slavery, it was liberated
once more.
With the era of slavery came hardness and darkness. For many years
‘intellectuals’, among them a certain, Fallmeyer claimed that the
Greek race had been extinguished and that its place had been usurped
by other peoples who held nothing in common with the ancient Greek
race. But this claim was proved false. The proof was Hellenism, and
with this proof our country rose again victorious and free.
Neither foreign kings nor local landowners wanted a free and
victorious Greece . Afraid of the French Revolution and its
consequences, foreign kings created among themselves the Holy Alliance
to suppress insurrection. The local landowners were in alliance with
the Turks, and together they robbed the Greek people.
Reaction screeches
The Greek people would not be Greeks - the people of these lands of
freedom and civilization - but a people of the jungle if they failed
to produce leaders who would lead them to freedom. Knowing this,
oppressors foreign and local fought against the Greeks to prevent them
from rebelling and so gaining their freedom.
During the years of slavery the struggle – on a scale great or small,
under arms or without - was waged unceasingly.
From the Greek people emerged a sweeping revolutionary movement lent
impetus by its songs, by the idea of the insurrection of the nation
and by Rigas Feraios, precursor of the Friendly Society. Slain by the
forces of reaction before he could bring his principles into action,
the seed Rigas Feraios sowed grew rapidly; before long the Friendly
Society became a fact. It had thousands of Greek followers.
And the forces of reaction screeched! They signed deceitful treaties
such as that which emerged from the Congress of Vienna in 1815;
Ioannis Kapodistrias was one of these signatories. Under this treaty,
the forces of reaction would first support the national liberation
struggle if it broke out in Greece , only to strangle it later.
Kapodistrias, who is presented in schools as a great and important man
through the display of his portraits and speeches, was the first
destroyer of Greece . However, he did what he did not as Kapodistrias
but as a representative of Greek reaction. It was in this role that he
screeched alongside international and local reaction; it was in this
role that he signed deceitful treaties.
The people advance
Nothing was able to contain the fire of freedom that burned in the
hearts of our people. In 1821, after many trials and tribulations,
they followed the flame of Papaflessas - who used all means, even lies
– in declaring an insurrection. So it was that the revolution began in
the area of Morea in 1821.
At the declaration of this insurrection the powerful of the earth,
foreign and local alike, became frightened. The local traitors, seeing
the impossibility of containing the people and frightened by their
rage, were forced to end their collaboration with the occupiers and to
take part in the popular national liberation movement with the aim of
corrupting it.
The movement against the revolution took on an international
character. The powerful of the earth were frightened. They used all
their trickery to try to crush the revolution. But they failed. For
seven whole years our forebears fought, despite the fact that twice -
in 1823 and 1825 - the forces of reaction in Greece organised a civil
war in an attempt to break the struggle. Thus it was that our
forebears forced all our enemies to suck where once they had spat; to
recognise our struggle and our independence.
Previously no one had believed that this miracle could be achieved by
our own forces and our own people. Some waited for freedom to come
from Russia ; others put their hope in the benevolence of the kings of
Europe . But the revolution proved that it and it alone was capable of
providing freedom for our country. The myth of Philhellenism, through
which we are alleged to have achieved our freedom, was invented so it
would appear that our country was freed not by dint of its own native
strength but by that of foreigners. There were, of course, those
friendly to the Greeks – Philhellenes - who fought and spilt blood for
the freedom of our country. Honour and glory are due them for their
aid to our nation. But they were isolated individuals acting on their
own; the theory of organised Philhellenism is a myth.
The popular character
In the midst of the victory of the revolution, traitors still
dominated our country. The forces of reaction, domestic and foreign,
used all available means in their attempts to corrupt the popular
character of the revolutionary movement and impose a new regime of
slavery. In the end they achieved this. The initiator was Ioannis
Kapodistrias, the man I spoke of earlier; but later, another Ioannis –
Ioannis Metaxas – would attempt to finish the work that Kapodistrias
had begun.
The people believed that once they had achieved the revolution years
of brilliance would follow; the whole of humanity would be on their
side and our country would again guide humanity down new paths of
civilisation and progress. Instead, local and foreign forces of
reaction imposed themselves, bringing with them Kapodistrias and the
Bavarian Dynasty in place of the Ottomans.
Many years of deceit and corruption held us back from progress and
civilisation and threw us instead into desperation, hunger,
immiseration and distihia. Thus Greece , which was once the source of
light and civilisation, sunk to the lowest level of economic and
social and cultural development not merely in the Balkans but in the
whole of Europe .
The betrayal of the Albanian epic
The essence of this backwardness is to be found in the fact that the
forces of reaction directed their energies towards the torture and
exploitation of those who organised popular movements, the cultivation
of conflict within those movements and the propagation among the
people of the idea that it was their lot to live in poverty.
Taking their cue from Kolokotronis, who said that that our country is
an ‘impoverished beggar’, the reactionaries managed to convince the
Greek people that they could not stand on their own two feet; that
they must be governed by foreigners. So the reactionaries called upon
the Powers – the Russians, the English and the French. It was to this
that our rulers had brought us. Later, we were to achieve democracy,
but only because of the struggles of the people.
The snake may shed its skin, but it remains a snake.
The forces of reaction found democracy at fault for the misery of the
people and turned once again to the monarchy. They brought back the
king and commenced more brazenly to exploit the people. To silence the
people’s screams they imposed upon us Metaxas, who had been an agent
of the German High Command ever since he studied at the German
military academy.
Thus it was that after 120 years we fell into slavery again, so badly
had we been governed during those years.
It was in this situation that we found ourselves when a war against
the two colossi began to threaten. But no one thought about how our
country could escape the destruction that war would bring; instead,
knowing that this country was headed for destruction, we entered the
war.
We have documents proving that our rulers intended to make merely a
token effort in the Albanian epic and then hand Greece over to the
fascists. We have documents which prove that during November and
December 1940 we Greeks could have driven the Italians into the sea;
but our rulers instead kept the army restrained until they could use
Germany ’s victories in Europe to justify the argument that Greece was
unable to fight both the colossi. They didn't trust in the
magnificence of our army; neither in its courage, its fearlessness,
its self-denial nor its heroism, even though, hungry and shoeless in
the mountains of Albania, it had fought against fascism with great
ferocity and the aid of the Greek people.
That is how they bound us once more to slavery.
Our people were no longer in a position to continue their resistance,
however fervent their feelings. Even with their ardour, our people
were unable to hold back the assault by the metallic giant of fascism
after they had been sold out and betrayed by their leaders. Although
the people were obliged to submit, they were not defeated, since the
capitulation was signed before the army had even fought. Thus the
defeat was suffered not by our people but by the regimes which had
ruled them between 1821 and 1941. Our people are today are in the
process of turning this defeat into victory--a victory that becomes
ever more complete with the progress of time.
In such a way did the Germans arrive in our land and turn us into
slaves. But our people would not abandon their country, and the
blemish of defeat disappeared when we rebelled. And what did we get
from those who wore the XXclak and bakaliarikaXX? The only thing they
could find to tell us was:
‘Keep calm and silent. Maintain order. We have established a
government; calm down.’
In this, they reflected the will of the Germans. Such words were
spoken by those who have no right to be called Greek; but they could
not compromise the honour of our nation, of which our people are the
guardians.
And yet two and a half months later the noise of the guns began. What
words were spoken then? As in 1821 the forces of reaction conspired
against us. In the beginning, they said nothing about the guerrilla
war; they ignored it. They did as the ostrich does when it buries its
head in the sand while the rest of its body remains visible. They
thought that if they said nothing about the guerrilla war and ignored
it the commotion of war would cease. But it did not cease, and every
day the mountains were stained red with blood.
As the guerrilla war escalated and their silence proved incapable of
stopping it, the reactionaries changed tack; they set themselves to
fight us. They labelled us crooks, animal thieves, gangsters and so
on. They even found people to condemn us because we killed the traitor
and blackmailer Marathea. These people were totally stupid; they
couldn't even recognise that which was in their own interests. They
assumed that, if they attacked and disassociated themselves from us,
our struggle would cease and we would never be capable of tightening
the noose round their necks.
So be it; they were stupid then and they spoke their stupidities
aloud. Let them now eat their words.
The countryside is breathing.
How did this happen? The villagers saw for the first time that they
could safely leave their possessions outside in the open without their
being tampered with. Animal thieving had been eradicated in the
countryside and security of life and property was as it had never been
before. Was this a miracle? No. But for the first time the people of
the villages were in a position of power from which they could fight
back against betrayal, animal theft and other crimes and replace them
with security.
When we mounted our assault on these crimes and on betrayal, the
reactionaries, like women of the aristocracy who refuse to see the
human misery and impoverishment around them and instead concern
themselves with the illness of a stray cat, raised their voices and
condemned us on the grounds that we kill. Under Metaxas, women were
raped; thousands of people were martyred; many were killed and thrown
from balconies by the security services. So many crimes were
committed, even against the old. Yet none among the reactionaries
spoke up. And now they screech, ‘Aris kills!’
Yes, we have killed before and are ready to kill again if need be. Who
did we kill? We have bigger hearts than they. The proof of this is
that we were the ones who were beaten up and hunted down over the
years. We slaughtered those who betrayed the Greeks to the occupiers--
those who stole from the people and committed crimes.
Those who believe that they suffered pain when we justifiably attacked
them are ridiculously stupid, so as to side with them or they are
wholeheartedly partners in crime. Neither did this trick work either
The guerrilla war saves the people
And then the forces of reaction developed a perfect formulation:
‘We have no objection to the guerrillas’ carrying out a national
struggle, but the question is to be resolved by the big powers. What,
then, is the purpose of struggling and dying? The matter will be
resolved by outsiders!
The reactionaries found success with this formulation. Was it correct?
Of course not! And this is why:
In 1941-42 EAM was not yet very strong. That is why the struggle had
not yet taken on a mass character; neither was EAM conducting
guerrilla activity. In 1941-42 approximately 300,000 people died from
hunger and disease in Athens , Piraeus and the surrounding villages
alone, and even more would have died had EAM not mobilized the people
through demonstrations, meetings and strikes. Through these, the
people were given the courage to stop the looting of our production by
a section of the occupiers, to leave the feeding of the people to the
International Red Cross and to observe the situation of Greece
internationally
If the guerrilla war had not prevented the Germans from stealing our
production by ending the concentration on production of goods that the
occupiers favoured the number of victims of hunger and disease would
have been much higher.