Greece’s Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn

By on May 17, 2012 in News 18
Chrysi Avgi

Photo: Ggia (CC)

After austerity follows fascism. Neni Panourgia writes on Al Jazeera English:

By now, nearly everybody has been exposed to the phenomenon of Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi in Greek), the neo-Nazi organisation that received almost 7 per cent of the vote in the Greek elections of May 6.After the initial shock, the question “How is this possible?” was followed by the legitimate worry: “Are Greeks becoming fascists?” Some commentators on various blogs (many of them from northern and western Europe) even left messages urging the Greek electorate to feel shame, the deeper the better, for this unsightly and frightening development.

But let’s set a few things straight. First of all, Golden Dawn, despite its recent claims, is indeed a neo-Nazi party. Their ideology, which they describe on their website as “Popular and Social Nationalism”, gives their precise coordinates within Nazi ideology.

So do the origins of their party, which was founded by Nikolaos Michaloliakos in 1985 under a direct order from the imprisoned leader of the Greek junta, George Papadopoulos. And so do their self-representation, language and tactics. The official publication of Golden Dawn runs articles praising the Nazis and often places photographs of Hitler, Himmler, and Nazi gatherings on its front cover. The members of the organisation have the same uneducated, invented, and highly idiosyncratic understanding of ancient Greece as the Nazis did…

Read More: Al Jazeera English

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  • 1andOnly

    Very sad to see , also one of the biggest talking point in France’s recent election for me was not the win for Hollande but the amount of votes their right wing Nazi party got to . . .

    • Catsnbanjos

      What “right wing Nazi” party? The Front National? They may be a lot of things, but they’re not Nazis. Just take a deep breath and relax, okay?

    • Cadillo

       The FN isn’t a “Nazi Party.”

      “Nazi” and “Fascist” are not synonyms for “Right Wing” – though they’re incorrectly used as such. “Fascism” is a non-linear ideology. The FN is as right-wing as you can get but they lack key characteristics of Fascism. If they get more right-wing they’ll just be more right-wing, not Fascist. No matter how right-wing they get they’ll still just be more and more right-wing extremist. A party has to (1) Anti-Positivist, (2) Anti-Materialist and (3) Anti-Modernist to be Fascist. The FN isn’t even one of those things.

      They’re just an extreme right-wing party. Not Fascist.

      • Anarchy Pony

        So are you the semantics police? Or what?

        • Jin The Ninja

          scared of the implications of a demonstrable relationship between neo-fascism and the reich.

          • Andrew

            Or the demonstrable relationship between neo-fascism and austerity.

          • Jin The Ninja

            a given.

          • Caudillo

            No, just scared of the implications of a poorly educated population using words whose meaning they don’t understand. You can’t stop fascism if you don’t know what it is … pretty much no one in the great unwashed masses know what it is beyond the TMZ pop culture definition, which is incorrect.

          • Jin The Ninja

            the problem is: there are many more definitions of ‘fascism’ than that which you narrowly asserted.

        • Caudillo

          If calling attention to the incorrect use of the word “rock” to refer to a “tree” makes me the semantics police then yes, yes I am.

          If you use words, make an effort to know what those words mean. Otherwise, please sit quietly and observe.

  • Citach

    You are suprised by this????
    Look at the politics of Greek goverment last decades…nonorecognition of any minorites and nationality except greek , forcing a fake problem with Rep. of Macedonia and making issue with their name and origin etc.

    Nothing has changed in Greece, only they cant hide their real face anymore, actually they have no reason to do that anymore they lost their money. 

    • Andrew

      Who expressed surprise?

  • the Macedonian

    There aren’t any minorities in Greece…only communities.

  • Anarchy Pony

    In times of austerity and collapse, neo-fascism becomes a very serious threat, as people seek to reclaim what they lost with jack booted thuggery. Of course they never seem to identify real sources of the problems, just scapegoats that are unfairly singled out.

    • Mr Willow

      as people seek to reclaim what they lost with jack booted thuggery

      That or they simply want the collapse to cease, so in a desperate attempt to ‘save the country’ they hand its entirety over to people more austere in the hopes they will ‘set things right’, allowing the people to return to their stupor induced by entertainment and shopping, while at the same time absolving them (theoretically) of any responsibility to the actions of their new Governors.

      • Anarchy Pony

        Yeah that too.

    • Cadillo

      No, that’s not it. 

      When a group becomes alienated by the group’s colleagues, the group tries to reinforce its own identity through compensation. Greece feels alienated by what was recently their European “family.” 

      One of the members of the Fascist Grand Council in Italy, his name is escaping me at the moment, edited a socialist newspaper in New York in the early 1900s. He said his switch from socialism to fascism was motivated by what he viewed as the failure of internationalism – that Italian workers were treated as dirt even by their fraternal workers on the revolutionary left. In his mind, therefore, the only solution was to reject the Marxist theory of internationalism as an integral component of the revolutionary epoch. 

      Fascism seeks to incorporate the nation into an unified whole in reaction to foreign slights (ergo the term “corporatism” … which has nothing to do with “corporations” other than sharing a similar spelling [despite the recent pop culture myth that it does]). Socialism is the economic bedrock but nationalism replaces internationalism, class coordination replaces class struggle, bottom-down organizing replaces bottom-up. 

      • Mr Willow

        Fascism seeks to incorporate the nation into an unified whole in reaction to foreign slights (ergo the term “corporatism” … which has nothing to do with “corporations” other than sharing a similar spelling [despite the recent pop culture myth that it does])

        And I’m certain ^that^ and the fact that many business conglomerates have ‘Inc.’ after their brand name—as in, Incorporated; the concept that involves businesses having hiring practices that evoke the words of ‘family’ or ‘team’ in welcoming new employees into the ranks, a tactic that is projected onto the rest of the population in the form of brand loyalty (Coke or Pespi, Mac or PC, etc.)—are completely unrelated. . .