Neo-Nazis in Greece « Thread Started on May 3, 2012, 6:32pm »
Threats against Journalists The Aggressive Tactics of the Greek Right Wing
Greek far-right parties could end up with as much as 20 percent of the vote in Sunday's elections. The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party has intensified the xenophobic atmosphere in the country. Those who confront them are threatened with violence, journalist Xenia Kounalaki recounts.
At night, the streets leading to Omonoia Square are empty. That wasn't always the case. The area was the premier multicultural neighborhood of Athens and one of the first quarters to be gentrified. Jazz bars and Indian restaurants lined the streets, separated by the occasional rooms-by-the-hour hotel. It was a quarter full of immigrants, drug addicts and African prostitutes, but also of journalists, ambitious young artists and teenagers from private schools.
Today, the immigrants stay home once night falls. They are afraid of groups belonging to the "angry citizens," a kind of militia that beats up foreigners and claims to help the elderly withdraw money from cash machines without being robbed. Such groups are the product of an initiative started by the neo-Nazi Chrysi Avgi -- Golden Dawn -- the party which has perpetrated pogroms in Agios Panteleimon, another Athens neighborhood with a large immigrant population.
There are now three outwardly xenophobic parties in Greece. According to recent surveys, together they could garner up to 20 percent of the vote in elections on Sunday: the anti-Semitic party LAOS stands to win 4 percent; the nationalist party Independent Greeks -- a splinter group of the conservative Nea Dimokratia party -- is forecast to win 11 percent; and the right extremists of Golden Dawn could end up with between 5 and 7 percent.
My name is Xenia, the hospitable. Greece itself should really be called Xenia: Tourism, emigration and immigration are important elements of our history. But hospitality is no longer a priority in our country, a fact which the ugly presence of Golden Dawn makes clear.
A Personal Attack
Shaved heads, military uniforms, Nazi chants, Hitler greetings: How should a Greek journalist deal with such people? Should one just ignore them and leave them unmentioned? Should one denounce them and demand that they be banned? One shouldn't forget that they are violent and have perpetrated several attacks against foreigners and leftists. I thought long and hard about how to write about Golden Dawn so that my article was in no way beneficial to the party.
On April 12, the daily Kathimerini ran my story under the headline "Banality of Evil." In the piece, I carefully explained why it was impossible to carry on a dialogue with such people and why I thought the neo-Nazi party should disappear from media coverage and be banned. Five days later, an anonymous reply to my article appeared on the Golden Dawn website. It was a 2,500-word-long personal attack in which the fascists recounted my entire career, mocked my alleged foreign roots (I was born in Hamburg) and even, for no apparent reason, mentioned my 13-year-old daughter. The unnamed authors indirectly threatened me as well: "To put it in the mother tongue of foreign Xenia: 'Kommt Zeit, kommt Rat, kommt Attentat!'" In other words, watch your back.
Most Greeks believe that Golden Dawn has connections to both the police and to the country's secret service. Nevertheless, I went to the authorities to ask what I should do. I was told that I should be careful. They told me that party thugs could harass me, beat me or terrorize me over the phone. It would be better, they said, if I stopped writing about them. If I wished to react to the threats, they suggested I file a complaint against Golden Dawn's service provider. That, however, would be difficult given that the domain is based somewhere in the United States.
Like Weimar Germany
A friend told me that I should avoid wearing headphones on the street so that I can hear what is going on around me. My daughter now has nightmares about being confronted by members of Golden Dawn. Three of her classmates belong to the party. The three boys have posted pictures of party events on their Facebook pages. For their profile image, they have chosen the ancient Greek Meandros symbol, which, in the red-on-black manifestation used by Golden Dawn, resembles a swastika. The group's slogans include "Foreigners Out!" and "The Garbage Should Leave the Country!"
The fact that immigration has become such an issue in the worst year of the ongoing economic crisis in the country can be blamed on the two parties in government. The Socialist PASOK and the conservative Nea Dimokratia (New Democracy, or ND) are running xenophobic campaigns. ND has said it intends to repeal a law which grants Greek citizenship to children born in Greece to immigrant parents. And cabinet member Michalis Chrysochoidis, of PASOK, has announced "clean up operations" whereby illegal immigrants are to be rounded up in encampments and then deported. When he recently took a stroll through the center of Athens to collect accolades for his commitment to the cause, some called out to him: "Golden Dawn has cleaned up Athens!"
Yet, Chrysochoidis is the best loved PASOK politician in his Athens district, in part because of his xenophobic sentiments. His party comrade, Health Minister Andreas Loverdos, is just as popular. Loverdos has warned Greek men not to sleep with foreign prostitutes for fear of contracting HIV and thus endangering the Greek family.
High unemployment of roughly 22 percent, a lack of hope, a tendency toward violence and the search for scapegoats: Analyses in the Greek press compare today's Greece with Germany at the end of the Weimar Republic. "We didn't know," said many Germans when confronted with the truth of the Holocaust after Nazi rule came to an end. After elections on May 6, no Greeks should be able to make the same claim.
Joined: Sept 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 3,102 Location: Stany Zjednoczone
Re: Neo-Nazis in Greece « Reply #1 on Jun 17, 2012, 6:27am »
This Is What It Looks Like When Neo-Nazis And Communists Are On The Ballot
Joe Weisenthal | Jun. 17, 2012
ATHENS, GREECE -- I'm sitting inside of a school in a very upscale neighborhood in Greece, where people are voting in today's historic election that could determine whether or not Greece stays in the Eurozone.
Of all the images from inside that have struck us the most, this one takes the cake.
On the table inside the voting location are candidate lists for all the parties.
Right next to each other: Candidate lists for The Golden Dawn Neo-Nazi Party (with its unmistakable swastika-like logo) and the main (but not not only) communist party on today's ballot. You must admit you never see anything like that at a US polling location.
Re: Neo-Nazis in Greece « Reply #2 on Jun 17, 2012, 4:36pm »
Kaima,
When I see this image of the Neo-Nazi party and the Communist party in Greece I have a flash back to a holiday of mine in Italy, Umbria, Città di Castello (a town inbetween the cities Perugia and Arezzo (in Toscane) It was in May 2000, and there had been or were coming elections and in Arezzo next to eachother I saw election Posters of the Neo-fascist Alleanza Nazionale ( a follow up of Movimento Sociale Italiano–Destra Nazionale) and the Party of Italian Communists (Partito dei Comunisti Italiani). In the summer of 1994 I experianced real old fashionate Italian fascism when I was nearly driven over by an Italian black shirt who shouted and brought the fascist (Heil Hitler) salute. In the castle or large Italian villa I stayed in Città di Castello I found fascist like Polaroid images in the antiques nightstand in the room I was staying. People at a party with classical Italian fascist uniforms and nazi symbols on their clothes (swastica's). In a nearby village I saw a local office of the Communist party with the hammer and sickle symbol on the wall outside. It seemed overhtere that the poor agricultural workers were communists and the rich landowners had fascist sympathies. But that is just my observation. In Italy and Spain fascist sympathies never faded away. Fascism in it's classic of Neo-Fascist form is alive and kicking overthere. In both countries there are fans or admirers of Musolini and Franco.
Re: Neo-Nazis in Greece « Reply #3 on Jun 17, 2012, 5:16pm »
Kaima,
Greece has suffered from extremism for many years. The differance with today that for many year that extremism and violence came from the radical left, anarchists and radical communist splinter groups. Part of the xenophobia comes from the influence of reactionairy, ultra-conservative Greek Orthodox clergy which spread xenophobic and ultra-nationalist messages. These messages are often anti-semitic, Muslim (Turks, Albanians, Yugoslav muslims, Arabs and etc.) and non-orthodox christians like Roman-Catholics and Protestants. (You can compare that with the Xenophobe Russian-Orthodox church, which is anti-Roman-Catholic, anti-Muslim and often anti-semitic too) Look at Cyprus and look at the history of Political violence and dictatorship in Greece.
Anarchist or radical leftwing marxist terrorism was carried out in Greece by the Marxist urban guerrilla organizations "Revolutionary Organization 17 November" and "Revolutionary Struggle" (Epanastatikos Agonas — EA) The Revolutionary Organization 17 November, (also known as 17N or N17) was formed in 1975 and believed to have been disbanded in 2002 after the arrest and trial of a number of its members. The group assassinated 23 people in 103 attacks on U.S., British, Turkish and Greek targets. Revolutionary Struggle is a Greek rebel group known for its attacks on Greek government buildings and the American embassy in Athens. It is designated as a terrorist group by the Greek government, EU and United States.
The group first emerged in 2003 with a bombing attack on an Athens courthouse complex, following that up with attacks in 2004 on Citibank and an Athens police station. In May 2004, the group published its first manifesto in the Greek satirical magazine, To Pontiki, in which it expressed revolutionary, anarchist, anti-globalisation and anti-imperialist ideological aims. Following a January 12, 2007 RPG-7 attack on the U.S. Embassy, Greek authorities mistakenly described the group as a spinoff of Revolutionary Organization 17 November.
Responsibility
In a statement published in To Pontiki on January 25, Revolutionary Struggle admitted that it had carried out the embassy attack, claiming that the "strike was our answer to the criminal war against 'terrorism' that the US has unleashed over the entire planet with the help of fellow-traveling states".
Terrorist designation
The European Union added RS to its list of designated terrorist organizations on June 29, 2007. On May 18, 2009, a U.S. State Department spokesman announced in a press briefing that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had formally designated Revolutionary Struggle as a foreign terrorist organization under the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act.
Investigation
In January 2009, Greek police said their ballistics tests showed the weapon used in RS's 30 April 2007 attack was used again in a 5 January 2009 shooting of a police officer. A second weapon used in the 5 January attack was tied by the police to a 23 December 2008 attack on a police bus. That attack was reported to have been claimed by a group calling itself Popular Action (Λαϊκή Δράση, Laiki Drasi), as a response to the 2008 civil unrest in Greece.
2010 arrests
On March 11, 2010, two men were spotted breaking into a car (SEAT Ibiza) in Dafni, Attica at 4.40am and resisted arrest by firing on the police officers. One of them, who was later found to have been on the terrorist watch list since 1995, was shot dead, but the other escaped. However, the escapee left forensic evidence which linked him to previous terrorist attacks. In April 2010 after a long investigation, 6 suspected members of the group were apprehended. The subsequent investigation lead police to over €119,000 in cash, Zastava handguns, fake IDs which were used to rent safehouses, explosives (195 kg of ANFO hidden in a motorbike garage) and detailed plans of future terrorist attacks. Later, police investigating another address in Kypseli rented under another false ID used by the suspects discovered an RPG-7. Other weapons discovered here included many hand grenades, two Kalashnikovs and an MP5 submachine gun that ballistics later linked conclusively to previous attacks. Prosecutors charged the six with participating in bomb attacks, participating in a terrorist group, attempted murder, and other crimes. The accused have previously denied any wrongdoing. However, in late April 2010, the three prime suspects being held confirmed their involvement in Revolutionary Struggle in a letter to the press, but denied that the government could prove they participated in the actions related to their charges. The three also promised to continue their revolutionary activities as long as they are living.
Re: Neo-Nazis in Greece « Reply #5 on Jun 18, 2012, 10:26pm »
Pieter,
While in the back corner of Slovakia a Polish gentleman struck up a conversation, wanting to exercise his English, so we had a pleasant exchange of ideas. One of his questions surprised me - what did I think of the prospects of the Religious Right in America. I had to answer that I do not know what to think, that I cannot understand the American mentality. Anything is possible with our religious right.
They seem to base their voting and actions on principles that seem un-christian when measured by the education the Catholic school gave me. Despite the contradictions in their leaders values and statements, they seem to spring back and grow in following and power in the USA. He was quite shocked when I told him of Newt Gingrich, the "Family Values" icon of the Religious Right, having been married three times and having cheated on two of his wives.
How he can be held up as an icon of any virtue is beyond me. I would expect Bill Clinton, another philanderer, to be placed in the same category, but to be held in higher reverence, as despite his woman chasing his wife and he decided to stick together - more of an "old fashioned family value" as the phrase is in America.
I can imagine a government in the USA resembling that of Iran today.
While in the back corner of Slovakia a Polish gentleman struck up a conversation, wanting to exercise his English, so we had a pleasant exchange of ideas. One of his questions surprised me - what did I think of the prospects of the Religious Right in America. I had to answer that I do not know what to think, that I cannot understand the American mentality. Anything is possible with our religious right.
They seem to base their voting and actions on principles that seem un-christian when measured by the education the Catholic school gave me. Despite the contradictions in their leaders values and statements, they seem to spring back and grow in following and power in the USA. He was quite shocked when I told him of Newt Gingrich, the "Family Values" icon of the Religious Right, having been married three times and having cheated on two of his wives.
How he can be held up as an icon of any virtue is beyond me. I would expect Bill Clinton, another philanderer, to be placed in the same category, but to be held in higher reverence, as despite his woman chasing his wife and he decided to stick together - more of an "old fashioned family value" as the phrase is in America.
I can imagine a government in the USA resembling that of Iran today.
Interesting conversation with this Polish man in Slovakia Kai. In the Netherlands people often have a mistaken or distorched view of Central- and Eastern-Europe. They see Cold war (on the other side of the Iron Curtain), Pre-War or Borat Sagdiyev (the fictive Kazakh journalist, which is portrayed by the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen). The contrast between the secular, humanist, liberal-democratic Dutch view and the religious (christian, Roman-Catholic or Protestant) view of the Northern-American average US-citizen, Pole Slovak or Hungarian can be black and white sometimes.
Where Poles and Americans can have both religious, church/community lives and in the same time can be part of the "secular democratic system and society of voting citizens and legal system respecting and obeying people" and a to a certain degree hedonistic and decadent culture and society of Media, cinema, horeca, nightclubs, and uncontrolable infrastructures and public transport (roads, highways, railways, metro's, planes/airports), peripheries of cities and towns, city parks, lover motels and hotels (places of adultry and swinger meeting points), prostitution, drugs and alcohol abuse, corruption (in the political system, in the economy and within communties -civil society structures-).
In secular countries like the Netherlands and Czech republic the power and influence of the Churches are gone. To some degree the ethics and moral of secular-humanism replaced the Roman-Catholic and Protestant ethics. The rule of legalism (trias politica), the influence of the school system (teachers and professors) and culture that replaced the church (art, music, theatre, cinema and peoples private lives with their hobbies, social networks and etc.) The pure and strictly religious communities, like we had in the thirtees, fourtees, fiftees and early sixtees, the pillarisation, doesn't exist anymore over here. If the majority of a population belongs to the same (National) faith, the Roman-Catholic church, social, religious and political control, like in the Dutch pillarisation time (when catholics, protestants and secular socialists were segregated) isn't possible. These 40 million Poles are a to large group to be under control of the Roman-Catholic church, a State dominated by Catholics or even local communities. Poles are individualistic people like the Dutch and the Americans, and they don't like to be told by authorities about how to run their lives or how to behave. I believe that Poland at the moment is in a process of secularisation. The Polish art is tough and provocative, the Polish society is hetrogenous and thus pluriform. You don't have one kind of Roman-Catholics. The religious right, the Christian Coalition, the TV ministers, conservative (fundamentalist christian) radio talkshow hosts, the Evangelicals within the Republican party, the Dixiecrats (Conservative Southern-Democrats, who are often more conservative, than the mainstream, centrist, moderate, conservative Republicans) and the Tea Party are more influential as powergroups, partywings and lobby groups in the USA than in Europe.
We have our own kind, the rightwing Populists, who merge rightwing and leftwing ideas in another manner than the Nazi's did in the twenties and thirties in Germany, but in a likewise manner using the discontent of the general public about the economical crisis, the monetairy and financial crisis, the (rising) unemployment and costs of living, health care and uncertainty about the future to gain votes.
This Pole in Slowakia is a wise man if he is concerned about the rise and influence of the Religious Right in America. Because that group has been growing for decades. And it has a collective power and energy. Any collective group with a solid base and a large grassrootsmovement of militants, propagandists (agitprop makers), fundraisers, philantropists (the guys who give the money), organisation and political strategy, tactics, strongholds and thus power can be dangerous in potential. Ofcourse you have the instrument of moderation within the bipartisan American democratic system. The average American (I hope and wish) is moderate, pragmatic, democratic by nature, republican due to the constitution (the USA is a Republic, and most Americans are Patriots in my belief). Bit in the case of a continuating recession and a downfall of the economy, extremist forces or dark elements of the past can be back.
American dangers are:
- A government or regime which follows an extreme Isolationalist path. - A xenophobe, militairistic regime which increases Federal powers and gives more power to the FBI, CIA and the Pentagon. - A Fundamentalist Christian regime which creates a Theocracy. (that chance is limited, because religiously the USA is to fragmented and pluriform, to allow one religious grip to get to much power)
Joined: Sept 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 3,102 Location: Stany Zjednoczone
Re: Neo-Nazis in Greece « Reply #7 on Jun 19, 2012, 11:46am »
Back to the 1930s: the hammer, sickle and swastika
By Aristides Hatzis June 18, 2012
Ten days before Greece’s elections, a member of the neo-nazi party, Golden Dawn, repeatedly hit a female candidate of the communist party while appearing live on a television talk show and threw water over a female candidate of the radical left Syriza. The communist had just called him a “bloody fascist” and he addressed her as a “commie”. Greek elites (journalists, intellectuals, politicians) condemned his violence almost unequivocally. Yet the ugliest part of this incident was the readiness of many lay people to defend him, even cheer him, while the neo-nazis rose in the polls.
Unfortunately this episode was not isolated. Despite the narrow victory of a centrist party in Sunday’s vote, almost every day extremist violence breaks out in Athens and beyond. Neo-nazis against immigrants, anarchists and leftists. Anarchists, ultra-leftists and other fringe groups of the nationalist-populist camp against riot police, mainstream politicians, journalists, liberal intellectuals, even artists. Add to this a surge in crime and rising tolerance of violence and you have a clearer picture of today’s Athens. Does it remind you of anything?
That’s right. Greece’s situation recalls the Weimar Republic. Violence (and its banalisation), hate, rage, polarisation, fear, despair and resignation. As for the police, it has already taken sides: neo-nazis won by a landslide in polling stations where officers were assigned to vote.
The electoral results demonstrate the dangers to the Greek democracy. The centre-right New Democracy party may have edged ahead, but the parliament, for the first time in Greek history, will be full of extremists. Besides the neo-nazis and a Stalinist communist party there is Syriza, whose leader is a fan of Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez. It is difficult to find a notable dictator, even among the great butchers of the 20th century, without a steady following in the Greek parliament. The three protagonists of the dreadful TV incident were also elected. Imagine them together in routine parliamentary proceedings. Golden Dawn members have already made it clear they would come down hard on any member of parliament saying something they strongly disapprove of.
How did Greece, the birthplace of democracy, come to have a parliament full of hammers, sickles and swastikas? This is not how it was ever meant to be. After winning independence in the late 1820s, Greece was attached to the west and particularly to the UK, which protected and patronised Greece until it was replaced by the US in the late 1940s. This patronage had some beneficial side effects. Greece was always on the winning side: in the first world war, the second world war, the cold war. From 1929 to 1980 Greece had an average growth rate of 5.2 per cent and was admitted to the European Community as early as 1981 partly as a reward.
The rest is history: welfare populism, cronyism, statism and corruption can describe the Greek political system for most of the period from 1981. This is why Greek people have finally punished the two former main parties (New Democracy and the social-democratic Pasok party) for leading Greece into a horrible economic crisis with huge debts and deficits and a corrupt, inefficient state, unfit for reform and captured by special interests.
This failure of the mainstream political system and of the short-sighted, growth-stifling austerity policies enforced by the European leadership led Greece to the precipice. Greek people are disillusioned, miserable, exasperated and very frightened. They seem to be falling into the same trap again, by rewarding demagoguery, political opportunism and arrogant ignorance. Their knee-jerk reaction was to vote for parties such as Syriza, the rightwing nationalist and populist Independent Greeks and the Golden Dawn. These parties became vehicles for a popular backlash, gathering more than 41 per cent of the vote.
However, more than 50 per cent of Greeks voted for parties strongly committed to European unification. These parties will probably form a government that must achieve the impossible: renegotiate better bailout terms and enforce reforms in the face of fierce opposition from Syriza.
Mario Vargas Llosa wrote recently in El Pais that “Greece is the symbol of Europe and symbols cannot be abolished without that which they embody collapsing and degenerating into the barbaric confusion of irrationality and violence that Greek civilization liberated us from”.
Yet Greece is only a small step away from civil unrest and total collapse. It does not deserve this. Europe has the power to push us off the cliff but also the ability to hold us back and save us. This is not just an economic decision; it is largely a political decision. A fatal mistake will haunt Europe for ever.
![[Home]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/home.gif "[Home]")
![[New Topics]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/topics.png "[New Topics]")
![[Help]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/help.gif "[Help]")
![[Search]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/search.gif "[Search]")
![[Calendar]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/calendar.gif "[Calendar]")
![[Login]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/login.gif "[Login]")
![[Register]](http://images.proboards.com/menu/register.gif "[Register]")
![[Search This Thread]](http://images.proboards.com/search2.gif "[Search This Thread]")
![[Share Topic]](http://images.proboards.com/new/buttons/share.png "[Share Topic]")
![[Print]](http://images.proboards.com/buttons/print.gif "[Print]")
Author
![[avatar]](http://i15.tinypic.com/49bo3kz.gif "[avatar]")
Logged![[avatar]](http://www.any-image.com/images/21660527172892646788.jpg "[avatar]")
![[image]](http://static8.businessinsider.com/image/4fdda4a369bedd142b000011-600-450/greece-communist-nazi.jpg "[image]")
![[image]](http://www.fogliogoriziano.com/wp-content/uploads/alleanza-nazionale2-300x300.png "[image]")
![[image]](http://www.umbrialeft.it/files/2jbmgzo_0.png "[image]")
![[image]](http://www.freewebs.com/greekempireclan/ELA%20Logo%203.JPG "[image]")
![[image]](http://www.newworldsummit.eu/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Epanastatiki-Organosi-dekaefta-Noemvrj.png "[image]")