The Court of Appeal of the 2nd trial of Revolutionary Struggle, which began in October 2017 and was completed on May 10, 2019 with a central political affair against the Bank of Greece (ECB) and the IMF, is the culmination of the political defense of its action by Revolutionary Struggle in Judicial Proceedings. It involved two expropriations of the Banks that had been taken over by the Revolutionary Struggle, one that did not concern the organization, as well as the interference with policemen in Monastiraki by Nikos Maziotis, which resulted in his arrest in July 2014.
The sentences imposed (life and 129 years for Maziotis, life and 25 for Roupa) by the judges; through their arguments, their attitude and their decisions on the penalties, all the hostility of the state apparatus was directed against the Revolutionary Struggle. And more specifically, political hostility toward a central attack against the Troika and the status of the “memoranda.” This hostility – in addition to our persistence to continue the action of the Revolutionary Struggle against the rescue plans and the social genocide policies that accompanied them, which we expressed through “illegality” and canceling the repressive power of the state towards us – was the result of the stupid attitude… [that accepted] “as inevitable and absolutely necessary” for the orderly and uninterrupted continuation of the operation of the state and the economic status of the Loan Conventions (“memoranda”), in spite of all the tribulations (they knew that will bring) to the majority of society. The attitude of intolerance to every strong and firm resistance to the “monumental” enslavement is particularly intense since the reactions of society have been silenced.
“Politically unaffected justice” in unthinkable since in its form and manner it is an inseparable pillar of the complex of modern power. As for the influence of the political conjuncture on the judicial and legislative functions, we have made special references to our trials, cutting the political crime into different political periods of modern history, that is to say, its recognition and its pretentious treatment in past times up to total refusal to accept the existence of a political opponent in the contemporary representative system of political power… In our time, political “crime” is the most expensive and what demands the hardest possible treatment by the judiciary… which ultimately implies the maximum possible penalties…
While all of these courts state that their “mission” is “the strict application of criminal law provisions,” the two courts of first instance have shown that the attitude of the court – and individual judge – is impossible not to be a political position against the political and social essence of the act – and more specifically the attack on the Treasury – the IMF…
In some cases there is also a direct political intervention by the executive in court. In our case… politically charged interventions [were made] by state superpowers (including Maziotis being placed in the international list of “terrorists” by the USA) while being a prisoner in 2015. All this war effort of the regime against us includes the extreme response that our 6-year-old child had in 2017 at the time of the arrest of Pola Roupa, who was subjected to a unique regime of exclusion and revenge…
Our persistence in the political positions, objectives and choices of Revolutionary Struggle, of which we defended with greater emphasis and determination than ever before, was seen as an “inappropriate” attitude to deal with primary punishments… Especially… with the universal abandonment of any political value given in previous years to the armed action and the effort to show it as a “right political attitude of solidarity,” the abandonment of those who insist on their political choices after conception. And of course, all of this is inherent in an environment of political defeatism and the effort to “ground” the counter-action in a context that does not exceed the limits of the “criminality” critique of the system. And above all, in an environment where the revolutionary project [is considered] ‘outdated’ and ‘out of time,’ a position that confirms the absolute power of the system. That is, in a climate [that is hostile] to the action of the Revolutionary Struggle and its defense in the courts.
Once again in the Court of Appeal of the Second Revolutionary Struggle trial, we deliberately refused to succumb to the dominant (seemingly and only) political climate and make a trial where all of this would be overturned. We chose to better organize our civilian defense, make it more intrusive, highlight more aspects of our organization and the particular attack, and fight the criminal outcome… in a more organized political way. And a more – we would say – absolutely revolutionary way.
And it is in our trials that we have more extensively analyzed the… necessity of the reversal of the regime, the necessity of the social revolution…
Any further reduction of sentences – or the exemption from more accusations – would be an explicit political differentiation of the court from the regime’s political framework, which we knew was not going to happen, while the decision as it stood constituted a subtle differentiation in terms of political treatment… This result, as expected – and as it has been in another trial – particularly in the first trial of the Revolutionary Struggle – “compelled” accusations and penalties for the other defendants. This is because an “application of proportionality” is observed among defendants who are politically defending the actions being tried by the others.
The strategy of this trial has worked towards the transformation of the trials that we have done so far, since we have put a lot of additional strengths beyond the defense policy in the way we did in other trials. To a great extent, this strategy can be distinguished in the third trial of the Revolutionary Struggle… In a more complete form, however, it was presented to the organization’s appeal court. The peculiarity of our political attitude in this court concerns the maximal use of status quoes, arguments, movements, analyzes that advocated and ultimately supported – and even confirmed – our claim and firm allegation of Revolutionary Struggle since its founding: for the revolutionary road as the only way out of the major social impasse of our time.
The Social Revolution emerged from Revolutionary Struggle with greater emphasis than ever before as a unique value and direction, especially during the crisis. However, this prospect has been put forward by the very first proclamation of Revolutionary Struggle as the only way out of a system that brutalizes societies and which… [will] become unsustainable for the social majorities that will be crushed by economic violence and their socio-political depreciation. We have pointed out this direction not only as a proclamation, but by focusing on an attempt to prove that the Social Revolution is a one-way street. Proof that could only be framed by the standing position of the Revolutionary Struggle as expressed and analyzed through the announcements of the organization and the texts from the prison in 2010-2011. Of course, political advocates of our organization, positions and strategy have been the witnesses of political defense in our trial…
Revolutionary Struggle attacked two of the three institutions that deprived the majority of Greek society and was charged with the political law against this attack, the only attack that had taken place at that time and was directly directed against the dictatorship of loan contracts and the supranational institutions that have imposed them…
To the question of “if the overthrow of the regime and the social revolution is not the appropriate response to the modern impasse of capitalism, the crisis, modern economic and political tyranny, then what is?” the silence is over. The demonstration of the impasse of a diffuse, non-strategic subversive social resistance project, emerged in the streets. And as a relentless implication of these historical facts, the necessity of forming a political-social front with a clear direction of the regime’s overthrow and social revolution emerges. Revolutionary Struggle with the choice of armed action introduced the above data long before their necessity from the historical development proved itself. And we in court have shown the consistency of the organization from its establishment to the attack on the Bank and the IMF, but also after it. Armed action and struggle proves to be the right political choice…
Revolutionary Struggle and we as persons have always attempted to develop the material conditions for the implementation of a Social Revolution. The project of the federal system of political and social organization that we have always advocated as the most appropriate model of revolutionary social reconstruction was originally drawn from the revolutionary history itself. But the modern version of the Confederacy in Rojava – Northern Syria – the revolution of our time – was a catalytic claim to prove that the proposal of the Social Revolution today is realistic. Thus, the Revolution in Rojava became the absolute factor in the evidence of the realism of revolutions in our time. Because this is the most decisive of all evidence. Evidence that it is a shame to stay in the cold courtroom, as it cannot be linked to the social reality here, in other words, to the social and political history of this place.
We did not have any delusions, of course, that the court would accept our political allegations, the legal demands we had made, and dispose of the accusations. However, given the harsh political context surrounding us and the political dynamics it creates within the courts, the result has been the subtle controversy of the predominant discourse regarding the essence, motives, and goals of the action of the Revolutionary Struggle…
If we can say that a conclusion drawn from this trial is useful today, it is that in the difficult times we live in the absence of widespread social resistance, with the provocative abandonment by many of the revolutionary struggle [in exchange for] painless protest against systemic extremes (even if this struggle is projected to be subversive) by accepting as regularity the most extreme form of serfdom imposed on the social majority through the “debt economy,” with solidarity degenerating into a case of personal interests, political assaults on repression make it possible “to unleash the fighters from the nails of the state,” finally accepting as inappropriate the regime’s policy of aggression against armed revolutionary action and – above all – against those who insist, do not step back, to support the correctness of the strategy of armed revolutionary action as an inseparable part of the widespread subversive struggle, through the stifling political wall of criminal repression, and in the face of long-term imprisonment – and beyond any legal calculation – is that “sometimes,” the substantial and non-discouraged political defense of armed revolutionary action in the courts, and to the extent that this defense manages to “ground” it on the central political and social issues and to refute effectively the dominant policy, may eventually repel, halt, reverse the merciless state attack on armed fighters.
But beyond and above all, our goal in this trial was beside the political defense of the action of the Revolutionary Struggle, the political justification of each action and the emergence of its importance within its historical context was to demonstrate the profound social necessity of the Social Revolution, the fact that it is the only way to overcome the social deadlock brought about by modern tyranny of the state and capital.
Pola Roupa – Nikos Maziotis, members of Revolutionary Struggle
From: https://mpalothia.net/symperasmata-kai-politiki-simasia-tis-apofasis-toy-efeteioy/