The Guardian: Golden Dawn: the rise and fall of Greece’s neo-Nazis

Although Golden Dawn’s members sometimes played the game of respectable politics, they were no mere rightwing populists; they were the kind of Nazis you are more likely to read about in history books. Driven by profound racism and antisemitic conspiracy theory, with a fervent devotion to Hitler, Golden Dawn combined street violence with torchlit flag-waving rallies and extreme rhetoric. One of its MPs proclaimed “civil war” to a BBC reporter, while an election candidate promised in front of a documentary crew to “turn on the ovens” and make lampshades from the skins of immigrants, a reference to what Nazi Germany did to Jews, Roma and other minorities in the Holocaust. “The Europe of nations is back,” declared the party’s leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, at a press conference in May 2012. “Greece is only the beginning.” [...]

Court hearings will end this spring, and a verdict is due shortly after, but Greece has already started to move on. Golden Dawn was wiped out in last year’s general election, and a new conservative government has declared the years of crisis over. Many media outlets only cover the trial sporadically. According to the centrist political commentator Yannis Palaiologos, Greece now has an opportunity to draw a line under the populism of both left and right. “As the various populist myths about the causes and possible solutions to Greece’s crisis have been revealed as delusions and outright lies,” he wrote in a piece for the Washington Post last year, “the fuel that sustained extremism has been depleted.” [...]

Golden Dawn was founded in the early 80s, initially as a Masonic society, according to the investigative journalist Dimitris Psarras, an authority on the party. For many years it remained small and semi-hidden, recruiting its members from Greece’s football hooligan scene. In the late 00s, however, it pursued a new strategy, setting up an “angry citizens” group in Saint Pantaleimon to complain about crime it linked to immigrants, mainly refugees from Afghanistan, who had recently moved into the area. Many lived in poverty or destitution, trapped by a Greek asylum system that didn’t work and an EU regulation that would not let them travel elsewhere, but a community was starting to put down roots; some Afghans had opened shops and cafes on the square. [...]

The country’s political and media class was split over how to treat Golden Dawn, since Greece’s constitution does not allow for the banning of political parties. In late 2013, when parliament voted to suspend the party’s state election funding and waive its MPs’ immunity from prosecution, the move was opposed by a minority of leftwingers, one of whom argued that Golden Dawn was “not a classic Nazi party”, since it set itself in opposition to “the dominant bourgeois forces”. In 2014, several defence lawyers for Golden Dawn members who were under investigation appeared on a TV chat show to argue that while they didn’t support the party’s views, they were doing their jobs in the interest of democracy and free speech.

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UnHerd: Can Corbyn learn from the Greek tragedy?

For me, however, there are positives to take away that have implications for the entire project of the global Left. First, Tsipras showed that with a clear narrative, a message of hope and some competent advisers, the far-Left’s project can work in government. The oligarchy, whose two-party system (Pasok and New Democracy) collapsed, expected Syriza to be amateurs: in fact they brought professionalism and openness to an endemically corrupt and chaotic state.

Second, by being radical in opposition, and refusing to give up radicalism even when forced into retreat, Syriza and the wider Greek Left defeated one of the most violent and open fascist threats in the European continent. Its conservative predecessors had tolerated Golden Dawn’s infiltration of the police, and murderous violence on the streets. Without a Left prepared to risk taking power, Greece would have degenerated into a battleground of populisms. [...]

But the political forces emerging out of the 20thcentury Left face two new challenges: the so-called Green Wave, which has swelled the electoral support of Green parties everywhere; and a growing electoral threat from far right or overtly racist parties, some of which are building support among the working class communities where the Left used to be strong. [...]

In future, Left-wing parties will need to look and sound like they care about the planet more than anything else – and the truth is, our tradition has not always done so. The closer you remain to the traditional working class communities which prospered during the carbon era, the harder it is to walk the walk when it comes to zero carbon.

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Jacobin Magazine: Syriza’s Failure Has Hurt Us All

Added to this, a closer analysis shows that the Syriza electorate in 2019 in fact bears little relation with the voters who first put it in government in 2015. Admittedly, given the lack of any credible alternative on the Left (in the broadest sense) of the political spectrum, it has not collapsed entirely. That’s the big difference with what happened to Pasok in 2012, after its own implementation of austerity measures. [...]

In generational terms, it has lost nearly half its support among younger voters (17 to 24 year-olds) but has shed only 4 percent backing among the over 65s. From an electorate polarized around wage-earners and the youth, it is now a party with a nearly uniform average score among most social strata and age classes (around 20 percent) and is ahead of New Democracy only among the unemployed. The “qualitative” profile of its electorate has undergone an even more dramatic change. A look at the choice Syriza voters made among its candidates for the European Parliament is instructive in this regard. [...]

Syriza’s electorate today looks less like the popular base of a left-wing party than the “de-ideologized” clientelist support of a party of government. It is moreover obvious that it is in part the heir to the “social-liberal” Pasok of the 2000s. Syriza came first in just four constituencies nationally, and of these, three were among PASOK’s historic symbolic bastions: two in Crete and one in the northwestern Peloponnese, around the city of Patras, cradle of that party’s long-dominant Papandreou family.

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The Conversation: ‘Far right’ groups may be diverse – but here’s what they all have in common

However, the term “far right” tends to subsume a broad range of parties and groups that differ significantly in agenda and policy – especially economic and welfare policies – as well as the extent to which they support and employ violence. This category includes both parties that have moderated their agendas, distancing themselves from fascism in order to appeal to broader electorates; and vigilante street groups and extreme parties which employ violence, such as the Greek Golden Dawn (GD), the English Defence League (EDL), Britain First and the Italian Casa Pound. [...]

The “far right” umbrella includes parties and groups that share an important commonality: they all justify a broad range of policy positions on socioeconomic issues on the basis of nationalism. The point here is not simply that they are all, to a degree, nationalist; but rather, that they use nationalism to justify their positions on all socioeconomic issues.

The term “right-wing populism”, however, is less appropriate. Populism is an even broader umbrella that often includes disparate parties and groups. To narrow down this category, we often tend to conflate populism and nationalism, identifying a party as populist, not on the basis of its populist attributes – what party doesn’t claim to speak on behalf of the people in a democracy? – but on the basis of its nationalist attributes. But despite the similarities between “populism” and “nationalism” – both emphasise conflict lines, focus on the collective, and put forward a vision of an ideal society – the two are conceptually different. While the former pits the people against the elites, the latter pits the in-group against the out-group.

And so herein lies the problem. If nationalism is always a feature of the far right, as most researchers agree, what is the added value of the term “populism”? To put it another way, what is the difference between a radical right-wing party and a populist radical right-wing party? While populism may or may not be an attribute of some far right parties, it is not their defining feature. Rather, nationalism is.

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Al Jazeera: Calls for coup, firing squads: Greek far right angry at name deal

Nikos Voutsis, a member of the ruling Syriza party and president of the Greek parliament, on Friday called for an emergency meeting to temporarily ban the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party from parliament.  [...]

"The extremists of Golden Dawn are threatening democracy and threatening their political adversaries, saying that they want their heads," Kiritsis told Al Jazeera, explaining that Barbarousis's remarks are part of a broader wave of far-right "incitement to violence". [...]

On Wednesday, Ilias Zagoreos, the head of Athens's First-Instance Prosecutor's office, ordered the investigation into potential incitement to commit a crime and other infractions by a right-wing tabloid.

The move came after the tabloid, Makeleio, published an edition with a front-page image depicting the prime minister, president and foreign minister being executed by a firing squad for supposedly "selling out" Greece's exclusive right to the name 'Macedonia'.  

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Al Jazeera: Greek police: Racist hate crimes nearly tripled in 2017

Hate crimes of this type - among them attacks and hate speech - soared to 133 last year, according to the Hellenic Police's statistics.

In 2016, police documented 48 such crimes.  Meanwhile, the total number of hate crimes more than doubled from 2016 to 2017, growing from 84 to 184 incidents.

Greek police divide hate crimes into five motivating categories: race, national origin or skin colour (133); religion (28); sexual preference (29); sexual identity (12); and disability (nine). [...]

Of the total number of hate crimes carried out in 2017, Greek police said at least 84 of the perpetrators were civilians, five were organised groups, 24 were police officers, 12 were both civilians and unknown actors and 59 were unknown actors.

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Al Jazeera: Why do Italian fascists adore Syria's Bashar al-Assad?

Along with Italy's far-right Forza Nuova, Greece's neo-fascist Golden Dawn, the UK's British National Party (BNP) and Poland's ultra-nationalist National Rebirth, among others, CasaPound is part of an international front rallying on behalf of the Syrian president and sending solidarity delegations to the war-ravaged country. [...]

Asked if there was a contradiction between opposing the influx of Syrian refugees, most of whom were displaced by governmental forces, and supporting Assad, Di Stefano insisted: "They mostly flee from rebels and ISIL." [...]

Guido Caldiron, a Rome-based journalist and author of Extreme Right, argues that CasaPound's support for Assad stems from the group's ideological roots: Authoritarianism, Islamophobia and the perception that the Syrian government has resisted Israel. [...]

Explaining that early Baathists "took inspiration from European fascism, particularly how to build a totalitarian state", al-Shami argued that many neo-fascists also see the Assad government as "resisting Israel and Muslims alike".

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Al Jazeera: Tens of thousands of Greeks protest Macedonia's name

Hundreds of busses transported demonstrators from across the country for the "Macedonia is Greek" demonstration. Tens of thousands assembled in the city centre with organisers claiming more than one million people would take to the streets. [...]

The demonstration comes two weeks after an estimated 300,000 people gathered in the northern coastal city of Thessaloniki to voice their opposition to the negotiations. [...]

As that rally came to a close, anarchist counter-demonstrators clashed with police, and far-right protesters lit an anarchist squat on fire.

Assailants later vandalised a Holocaust monument.  [...]

In Skopje, former prime minister Nikola Gruevski oversaw a programme to erect statues of Alexander the Great, and name highways, buildings, sports venues and the country's international airport after Greece's historical heroes.

Current Prime Minister Zoran Zaev has expressed his willingness to rename the sites and bring down the monuments that have sparked outrage in Greece. [...]

For its part, Golden Dawn leaders have accused the Syriza-led government of national betrayal. On Saturday night, party leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos urged a crowd of 600 supporters to topple "the anti-Greek government".

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openDemocracy: Why are women joining far-right movements, and why are we so surprised?

The core question posed by such pieces is: Why are women joining far-right movements? But we must also ask: Why are we so surprised? After all, these issues are not new. “What attracts women to far-right movements that appear to denigrate their rights? This question has vexed feminist scholars for decades,” is how one historian put it. [...]

“There’s no reason to expect women to be less bigoted than men,” historian Linda Gordon concluded. Her research into the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) estimated that at least 1.5 million American women were members in the 1920s, including one third of all white Protestant women living in Indiana. [...]

“Fascism’s relationship with women has been neither consistent nor predictable,” is Durham’s conclusion. While men may have been more visible in such movments, large numbers of women also participated as voters, members, fundraisers, marchers, party officials, and more. [...]

“Women's roles in far-right and neo-Nazi groups have in the past been underestimated,” she writes. Reports may focus on movement leadership and parliamentary politics, for instance, or front-line acts of violence, while underplaying the importance of emotional and reproductive labour. When one of the Golden Dawn Girls tells her grandchildren “to go play with guns,” Seth-Smith notes that this is also performing a key role for the party.

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Al Jazeera: Anti-fascists vow to fight Mussolini-loving 'militants'

A charismatic man with a patchy beard, Gianelli speaks with jubilance despite running through a laundry list of violence he attributes to CasaPound.

The self-proclaimed fascist party made landmark inroads in municipal elections in November when it obtained nine percent of the overall vote and hopes to make gains in Italy's upcoming national elections in March. [...]

Born as a political movement in 2003, when far-rightists occupied a vacant municipal building in central Rome, CasaPound's name is an ode to the American poet Ezra Pound, who was a supporter of Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini. [...]

Guido Caldiron, a Rome-based journalist and author of Extreme Right, a book that examines the growth of the far right in Europe and elsewhere, says the electoral results in Ostia are "very important because Rome is CasaPound's core. For them, it's a very significant victory". [...]

The efforts at protecting its brand and presenting a respectable face to the public, Caldiron argues, distinguishes CasaPound from other far-right groups that openly celebrate violence against anti-fascists and migrants.

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Al Jazeera: Russia: A resurgent superpower?

Moscow sees itself as a resurgent superpower - but the Kremlin's current ideology opposes almost everything the communists stood for. After Putin's return to the Kremlin for a third presidency in 2012, Moscow has become a global bellwether of neo-conservative, ultranationalist, right-wing and anti-globalist political forces, and the Russian Orthodox Church eagerly fills the void left by the collapse of the Communist dogma. [...]

"I really believe that Russia is the leader of the free world right now," Matthew Heimbach, head of the white supremacist Traditionalist Workers Party, said last December. "Putin is supporting nationalists around the world and building an anti-globalist alliance, while promoting traditional values and self-determination." [...]

Kouprianova translated the works of controversial philosopher Alexander Dugin, who believes that Russia is the world's sole power that prevents the coming of Antichrist and predicts the revival of the Russian Empire through a new "Eurasian Union" with former Soviet republics that will eventually take over all of Europe, into English. [...]

Putin's European supporters include such Eurosceptic and far-right groups as the National Democratic Party of Germany and the Alternative for Germany, Jobbik in Hungary, Golden Dawn in Greece, the Freedom Party of Austria, the Serbian Radical Party and France's National Front. The latter's leader, Marine Le Pen, said she "admired" Putin and admitted to receiving a $12m loan from a Kremlin-affiliated bank in 2014. [...]

The conference was organised by the Russian Anti-Globalist movement, a Moscow-based group that denies ties to the Kremlin. But its leader, a bespectacled seven-footer named Alexander Ionov, admitted to this reporter that the separatist summit was paid for by a $55,000 government grant - and donations from "Texas and other countries".

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Political Critique: Golden Dawn and the Classics

The first book that Nikos Michaloliakos, leader of the Golden Dawn, published was, perhaps surprisingly, a collection of poems on the ancient Greek gods. When asked why he writes about the Greek deities he replied that so did Angelos Sikelianos and dozens of other poets, so why not? The truth behind this is that many of the Golden Dawn neo-Nazis are pagans, as were many of the original Nazis. Christianity was considered a branch of decadent Jewishness: National Socialism was the ideology of paganism, while Marxism and Liberalism were the ideological agents of Judeo-Christianity.

By 1992, the GD chose to conceal its pagan beliefs in order to address larger audiences. They also sided with some Christian fundamentalists, followers of the old calendar, united by their common hatred against Jews. In fact, not only did they suppress their beliefs from their public profile, they have even participated in rallies against a theatre performance in which the figure of Jesus Christ was supposedly insulted. This is because their pagan faith wouldn’t go down well with Greek voters. [...]

This is intended for a general audience. Meanwhile the official journal of the Golden Dawn reads: “the presence of the swastika in Vergina is no coincidence. It confirms the high levels of racial realization of an elite portion of the Greek nation, which knows and honours its Aryan origins.” [...]

National pride derives from what we achieved in the classical past. This “we” is the single greatest unchallenged fiction of all, it is very rarely questioned in the popular reception of the classics. This is not confined to the Golden Dawn. It pollutes the Greek right in general. This is our current minister of public defense, celebrating “the victory over the Persian invader, which was crucial for the survival of western civilization.”

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