Dimitrios Patelis | Founding Member of the Revolutionary Theory Group (Greece)

Athens, 17 November 2025. When the march reached the front of the US embassy, some demonstrators with red flags  opened wide their enormous, professionally printed banner: ‘Communism is the youth of the world, the freedom and the beauty of the world’[1]! Where did this happen? Was this at an event dedicated to the great communist poet Yannis Ritsos? Or perhaps it was part of an academic discussion, as a response to vague and general claims about the obsolete and irrelevant character of communism? Of course not.

They unfurled it just for show in front of the US embassy during the Anti-imperialist and Anti-fascist march on 17 November, which has been held every year since 1974! This march is one that the imperialists and their local collaborators have been trying to abolish for fifty years. They do everything they can to turn it into an empty, ritualised anniversary celebration devoid of any anti-imperialist or anti-fascist content, because they cannot ban it.

They displayed this banner exclusively for the riot police units, the cameras of the embassy and some press photographers, before folding it up and quietly departing. They had performed their ‘duty’ for another year, providing yet another example of what communists need to avoid when prioritising the objectives of the movement, and once again proving their fealty to the regime, which is an instrument of capital and of the imperialist axis in the country!

After all, as we saw some time ago in Volume Γ2 of the ‘Essay on History’ by the ‘Communist’ Party of Greece (‘C’PG), the position on the decisive involvement of the USA and NATO in the imposition of the 1967 dictatorship has been completely revised. At the time, we incorrectly ‘denounced the coup as being by US and NATO backed and carried out with the approval of the US Pentagon, the CIA or even the US State Department, with the aim of securing American interests in Greece and the wider Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean regions.’ … ‘These assessments did not take into account that the USA did not have a one-dimensional policy towards military dictatorships.’ Since no American marines invaded Greece, as happened in Latin America, ‘characterising the coup as one-dimensionally US-NATO backed overlooked the decisive internal factors that not only led to the planning and organisation, but also to the Junta’s swift ascent to power in only a few hours’!

Therefore, we conclude that, while the Third World War unleashed by the imperialist axis under the leadership of the USA is escalating, some have contractually undertaken to retrospectively purify the USA, exonerating the CIA and all the relevant mechanisms of the crimes of the 1967-1974 military junta in Greece orchestrated by US agents.

The inter-state and state organs of the ideological and propagandistic mechanisms of the Axis proceed to various versions of historical revisionism for the ideological need of manipulating the masses. They therefore strive to rewrite the modern history of the world, Europe and Greece. To this end, the collaborators of the Nazis during WWII are presented as ‘wronged patriots’, since by autumn 1944 they had become collaborators of the British troops in a new imperialist intervention and occupation of Greece, long before WWII ended. Some of them, former members of Nazi collaborator armed forces, became collaborators of the British and the US during their imperialist intervention and invasion of Greece and the civil war. Certain individuals, as officers of the Hellenic Army and CIA agents, imposed the fascist dictatorship of 1967-1974. The bureaucratic propagandists of the ‘C’PG have also rushed to assist in this work, carrying out their own revisionism. They characterise the entire war as an ‘imperialist’ conflict from beginning to end, while condemning the policy of the anti-fascist fronts of the Third International as ‘opportunistic’―as indeed they have done with every anti-imperialist and anti-fascist front in history. They did not stop there in their revision of history.

In volume Γ2 of the ‘Essay on the History’, approved by the Central Committee of the ‘C’PG and concerning the period 1967-1974, the astonished reader learns that the 21 April Junta was neither US-backed nor fascist.

One wonders why the fundamental assessment of the communists about the Junta, which was documented long ago, has changed. Is there new historical evidence? Have assessments of the balance of power changed, and of the positions and roles of regional countries within the USA-NATO sphere of influence, where there are and have been foreign bases and essentially occupying forces? Were the extreme anti-communism and anti-Sovietism, together with the fascist ideology and practice, not characteristics of the Junta? Was its main feature not voluntary servitude to Euro-Atlanticism?

None of this has been refuted in a factual and logical manner. For salaried bureaucratic assets in active service, it is simply a matter of retrospectively ‘substantiating’ the shift towards a reactionary stance of complete rejection, and an aversion to any mention of imperialist dependence or the necessity of an anti-imperialist united front.

The bourgeois class must therefore be presented retroactively as ‘imperialist’, (since it is based on an irrational dogma about ‘interdependencies’ in the ‘imperialist pyramid’), the bourgeois class of Greece, as well as the corresponding elements of its political personnel and its overall superstructure, must therefore be projected as ‘proud, self-willed and imperialist’! We therefore learn from the high-priests of misfortune that:

The centre that organised and imposed the dictatorship acted on its own initiative. It was based in Greece and was part of the Hellenic Army administration, rather than the high command (generals) or the King. It was made up of colonels, lieutenant colonels and officers. Consequently, the coup was not planned by the Americans and NATO, as often happened in Latin American and Asian countries.

According to the ‘C’PG, the unfortunate and blameless US Americans, who were unjustly accused and slandered by communists for so many years, had no reason to want the imposition of the junta, since ‘the USA and NATO did not have a crisis in their relations with Greece, so they did not need a puppet government’!

The USA, NATO, the CIA and their staff, advisers and trainers, as well as their foreign bases, simply had no idea about the junta that they set up. This junta was made up of the same people who had previously served the Nazi occupiers, then the British, and finally the USA.

Furthermore, the ‘C’PG now also rejects the claims of a ‘fascist junta’, since, as the priesthood of historical revisionism decrees:

• The view of fascist governance was mistaken. ‘The junta was not supported by a Nazi/fascist-type party; its leaders were not politicians who used bourgeois parliamentarism to rise to power; they did not have a political organisation youth wing etc’.

• Post-civil war state, deep state-parastate, armed forces, security bodies, monarcho-fascist mechanisms, secret services and conspiratorial organisations such as ‘IDEA’[2], ‘Red Sheepskin’ and ‘Gladio’, which had been set up, trained and staffed by the USA-CIA as subsidiaries of their parent organisations for the establishment and activation of far-right terrorist organisations, assassination missions and provocations, were simply on holiday in the country.

The excessive zeal to serve the imperialist overlords by acquitting them of all blame makes these lapdogs accuse even President Bill Clinton of lying when, during his visit to Athens in 1999, he admitted at the Presidential Mansion that the USA was responsible for overthrowing even that bourgeois parliamentary sham democracy in Greece by the junta of their instruments.

Is it not extremely hypocritical, therefore, after this wretched revision of history, that they are forced to drag themselves to the anti-imperialist march commemorating the anti-fascist and anti-imperialist Polytechnic uprising outside the US embassy?

The group of professional bureaucrats manipulating their constituents today through the abuse and control of symbols and the glorious history of a once revolutionary party, a corpse they now carry around as an organic element of the bourgeois state and its superstructure, has plans. Documented truth is the last thing that interests these mouthpieces of the imperialist axis in the war, tasked with a special mission. Not even logic. They have proven this with their irrational ‘imperialist pyramid’ nonsense, a term they now avoid using since they are internationally ridiculed for their wretchedness and irrationality. For this group, the last surviving staunch fighters who know from personal and collective experience what real communist, anti-imperialist and revolutionary struggle means, are an ‘unfortunate remnant’ they need to overcome, which will be resolved demographically: when these ‘burdens’ pass away.

According to the priesthood’s ‘Essay on History’ (Γ2), the poor US Americans were not to blame, so the bureaucrats in 2025 were forced to participate in a ‘wrong’ and ‘off-topic’ march, which is anti-imperialist and anti-fascist―‘opportunistic’, according to the ‘new’ dogmas of the high priests.

At a time when the slaughterhouses of WWIII are operating incessantly on all fronts and new ones are being feverishly prepared, the group that usurps the symbols of Greek communists contented itself with yet another cost-free ritual.

Not a single slogan about the nature of WWIII or the role of communists in it was heard at this demonstration! There was not a hint of a revolutionary way out of the slaughterhouses of WWIII of the most class-based war in history. There was no mention of the slogan ‘NATO-CIA treason’, which has been shaking Greece and terrorising the imperialists since 1974! There was no mention of the connection between the US-backed junta of the time and today’s axis of aggression: the USA, NATO, the EU and Zionist Nazis. There was no mention of the militarisation and fascisation that the axis is imposing.

When did this ritual take place? The day after the visit of the out of term ‘president’ of the Kiev junta, V. Zelensky, to Athens, during which the country’s involvement escalated and an official decision was made to co-produce weapons systems between Greece and Ukraine! This followed the crude exhortations of Greece’s Minister of War for a ‘culture switch’ and a ‘return to a spirit of self-sacrifice’, so that the people can ‘endure seeing coffins covered with the European flag’. This followed bloodthirsty statements and decisions by political personnel in all countries of the Euro-Atlantic axis of aggression about the need to become accustomed to images of coffins draped in flags. After the blatantly brazen statements/intervention of the new US ambassador to Athens, Kimberly Ann Guilfoyle, about the ‘need to expel China from the strategic port of Piraeus and the country’, involving the violation of international obligations!

Clearly, the imperialist oligarchy adores such impotent, disorienting ‘communist’ rituals and general, vague drivel about communism that is so out of place and time!

These are rituals that amount to mockery and wretched manipulation, since they transform communism into an idle promise and a vapid metaphysical vision of an afterlife. Even beyond this ‘Second Coming’ for the faithful, there is no trace of victorious tactics or hints about the necessary intermediate objectives, specific means or ways of achieving the ‘strategy’, nor any mention of the necessary and sufficient conditions without which there will be no real victorious revolutionary process capable of realising the transition to communism necessary for humanity’s survival in this life!

What do the bourgeoisie and imperialists have to fear from a formation that has officially acquitted the USA of the junta’s crimes and participates in such ‘off-topic’ events out of inertia, ritually, ‘for the eyes of the world’?

Why should they fear a ridiculous scarecrow that plays the part of the Communist Party, brazenly using our historical communist symbols as a mask to officially shout amidst the fire of WWIII:

• That the proxy regime of the Kiev junta, subservient to the axis is ‘waging a just war’ (A. Papariga: ‘The people of Ukraine are waging a just war!’, Corfu, 22 March 2022).

• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is similar to NATO and the USA’s invasion of Yugoslavia, since ‘Mr Putin used the same arguments that NATO and the USA had used in Yugoslavia’ (D. Koutsoumbas, interview on Mega, 2 May 2023).

• ‘Those who seek anti-imperialist fronts are opportunists’.

• The armed resistance of Palestine ‘are terrorists’ (D. Koutsoumbas, speech in parliament, 11 April 2024).

• ‘The people of Israel are also suffering’ (on almost all posters for Palestine). 

• Those protesting against the cruise ships of the Zionist genocide perpetrators coming for ‘rest and recreation’ in Greece are labelled as racists.

• ‘The COSCO galley (implying labour conditions resembling prison labour) and the Chinese imperialists must leave Piraeus’ in full unison with US dictates and orders.

• The Mitsotakis government has never revoked its official recognition of Guaidó as the ‘legitimate leader of Venezuela’ at a time when imperialists are plotting an invasion and occupation of the country under conditions of a genocidal blockade. It supports the direct and indirect agents of the USA in the long-suffering country since it deems the Maduro government to be ‘promoting a policy that serves local capital and further worsens the living conditions for the people, while combining intense anti-communism and authoritarianism against the labour movement’. (See, for example, Rizospastis, Saturday, 11-12 January 2025).

• To label the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the People’s Republic of China, Vietnam, etc., and all anti-imperialist forces as ‘imperialist thieves’.

And many other beautiful and revolutionary things!

They are well worth their wages!

After all, that is why they loudly proclaim demagogic ‘revolutionary’ slogans such as:

• ‘Total renunciation of the system’ [here and now, that is to say, never!], 

• ‘struggle for the overthrow of their power to put an end to the system of exploitation’ [out of place, time and specific historical context, that is to say, never!], 

• ‘the people must forge their own path!’ Rid themselves of capitalist profit and imperialist competition, which create exploitation, poverty and wars!’ [steadfastly awaiting the ‘Second Coming of the Saviour’!]

The usurpation of symbols has limits!

How much longer will militant communists tolerate this mockery without protesting? Are they waiting for their children and grandchildren to carry the red flag with the hammer and sickle at their funerals?

Why endure this humiliation while opportunistic bureaucrats wait for them to die to prevent the experiential transmission of revolutionary tradition from generation to generation? They hope to manipulate the most ignorant youth even more blatantly.

They should therefore turn their backs on the bureaucrats, certain that worthy revolutionaries will honour them and raise the banner of the coming revolutionary struggles with militant consistency!

People are realising that the bureaucrats of the ‘C’PG, whose opportunistic and undermining role in WWIII is becoming ever more apparent, cannot continue to claim life tenure as the exclusive managers of communist symbols and our history.

Their role has now been revealed.

Their undermining and destructive stance is consistently denounced at all serious international meetings, and their wretched ideological constructs about the ‘imperialist pyramid’ are the subject of widespread ridicule.

This is why these bureaucrats are increasingly resorting to the practices of the deep state/parastate: slander, character assassination, lies and threats.

The imperialists of the USA-NATO-EU-Zionist axis adore them for their valuable services in disorienting and destroying the movement. They are so valuable to the imperialists that, if they did not already exist, they would have to manufacture them from scratch to serve their interests in WWIII. This degenerative mutation suits them perfectly, as they have acquired a faithful instrument for undermining the anti-imperialist and communist movements, masquerading as communism and spreading reactionary ideology and toxic practices!

This is why they have been isolated by all the consistent forces of the world communist and anti-imperialist movements. Only a few representatives from some of their allied sects, which they control or have constructed through splits in parties and organisations, with non-existent formations and individuals with questionable backgrounds, meet with them at obscure, increasingly self-referential gatherings such as the ‘European Communist Action’.

The world anti-imperialist movement, led by selfless and unyielding communists and with the catalytic role of the World Anti-Imperialist Platform, is forging the path to victory in the anti-imperialist, internationalist and revolutionary struggle, with the ultimate goal of achieving socialist revolution and communism!

Notes

[1] This is a popular aphorism by the Greek poet Yannis Ritsos (1 May 1909 – 11 November 1990), a communist and an active member of the Greek Resistance during World War II. 

[2] IDEA was an organisation of Greek army officers created after Greece’s liberation from the Axis. Its aim was to counter the ‘potential communist threat’.