What could be more natural for ‘youngsters’ than to go out and beat people who are presented to them as enemies, threats, dangers, impurities, existential threats? What could be more logical for people who are taught from childhood about the greatness of Hellenism and how inferior other nations supposedly are?

When ministers, politicians, journalists, football fans, teachers, priests, and sociologists proclaim that the country must be ‘cleansed’ of foreigners, what more natural response could there be than the physical violence that follows?

Who beats delivery workers?

Some ‘misguided youngsters’ randomly beat delivery workers. Or at least, that’s the prevailing narrative. In reality, they aren’t acting alone, but rather alongside:

• The state, which inspires them through pushback policies, lets people die at sea, or forces them to return to the hell they’re trying to escape.
• The police, who allow them to act with impunity.
• Politicians who spout their racist ‘opinions’ freely.
• Journalists, with their racist headlines and fake news, spread panic.
• ‘Criminologists’ on the news who try to convince us that racist attacks happen not because we have too many fascists, but because we have too many foreigners.
• Fascist parties and organizations, fascist fan clubs, and the racist education we receive in schools and churches.

What is the real root of these attacks?

We live in a time of poverty and insecurity. Our quality of life is plummeting—supermarket inflation, fuel costs, rent hikes, wage cuts, precarious working conditions, unpaid overtime, unemployment, privatization of our natural and communal wealth, and so on. We are angry and exasperated. Those ‘at the top’ know this well. To prevent us from organizing and turning against them, they use every last inch of the state and parastate machinery to create their racist narrative. They want us to believe that the reason for our poverty and insecurity is not them but the ‘bad foreigners.’ When they say ‘bad foreigners,’ they always mean the working class—the wealthy are simply ‘investors.’

What needs to happen to stop these attacks?

• Immediate response from the labor movement. Unions must take immediate action, including strikes, to show solidarity.
• Pressure on the state by all progressive bodies to take immediate measures to protect delivery workers.
• Immediate response from progressive society. Both through mass mobilizations to act as a barrier to the racist plague and through daily interventions in workplaces, schools, universities, hospitals, supermarkets, etc.

P.S. Fascism is growing not only in Cyprus but throughout the Western world. If the progressive sections of society don’t come together, if the working class loses its internationalist orientation, if we don’t organize against the individualism and indifference of our time, the future will be paved with roses for more and more and more racist and fascist violence.